Weapons of choice

Admiral Yamamoto, Captain Takayanagi, all of the officers who had assembled on the high walkway were mesmerized, watching to see if the strange wingless plane would falter, to be slapped from the sky by a rogue surge of the deck. How the pilot could see through the darkness and the typhoon of spray thrown up by that huge propeller was anyone's guess.

But clearly, he could. With one last skillful dip, the craft settled onto the deck and the roar died away as the pilot cut power to the engine. As if by sorcery, giant propeller blades materialized above the cockpit, revealing how this miraculous device stayed aloft. A dozen sailors ran forward with ropes to lash the thing to the deck.

KRI SUTANTO, 0237 HOURS, 3 JUNE 1942

"Ensign Tomonagi, come quickly, the captain is stirring."

Tomonagi followed the crewman back into the wardroom of the Sutanto, where the man whom Moertopo had identified as the ship's commanding officer was indeed throwing off his coma-like unconsciousness.

Tomonagi's stomach heaved, and a thin, greasy film of sweat quickly lacquered his forehead. But Commander Hidaka's instruction has been quite explicit.

"You two, quickly!" he barked at a couple of his own sailors. "Grab him and follow me."

A handful of Indonesian ratings who tried to help with their skipper were roughly forced back by armed guards.

"We shall take care of him," Tomonagi declared. "Go back to your duties."

None of them understood a word he said, but the tone was unmistakable. Reluctantly they stood by as their captain was carried from the room, his body convulsing in the arms of the sailors who bore him away.

Tomonagi led the small party out into the fresh air and over to the plasteel safety rail. He looked around for witnesses but apart from another Japanese sentry, there were none. He nodded at the sailors, who heaved Captain Djuanda over the side. They heard the impact very clearly as his body hit the icy waters. There was no scream.

HIJMS YAMATO, 0328 HOURS, 3 JUNE 1942

Lieutenant Ali Moertopo didn't know enough about Admiral Yamamoto to be awed. His flagship, the battleship Yamato-now, that was awesome. But the man himself just looked like another pissed-off sushi chef. He'd come to recognize the type. It appeared as if they were all over this ocean.

Moertopo stood beside and slightly behind Commander Hidaka in the planning room of the Yamato, a huge space to the eyes of somebody who had been confined to a comparatively tiny ship like the Sutanto. Before them lay a large table with a map of the Pacific covered in little wooden boats and flags, symbolizing the disposition of hundreds of Japanese naval vessels, surging across the empty wastes of the northern Pacific. Now, apparently, they were in disarray, and the men responsible were facing a solid wall of dark uniforms and darker faces.

Overhead, lights glinted off Yamamoto's shaven head as he listened to Kakuta and Hidaka attempt to explain themselves. The grand admiral's face remained utterly impassive, but the men around him glowered with increasing degrees of incredulity and umbrage. When Kakuta finally fell silent, a terrible, ticking stillness blanketed the gathering.

"And you, Lieutenant Moertopo. What say you of all this?" asked Yamamoto at last in thickly accented, but otherwise flawless English.

Moertopo, who had quickly downloaded everything he could find on Yamamoto and Midway from the Sutanto's Fleetnet storage banks, wasn't surprised by the man's grasp of the language. He now knew that Yamamoto had studied at Harvard, and later worked in Washington. But he was nevertheless shocked at being spoken to directly by the supreme commander of the Combined Fleet. He had been rather looking forward to keeping his opinions to himself. Hidaka prodded him forward.

"What do you want me to say… sir?"

"Do you really expect me to believe that you are from the future?"

"No."

"Then why waste my time with this fiddle-faddle?"

Moertopo thought he understood the slant of the question, even though it had been phrased so oddly.

"I do not expect you to believe it. But it is true. I was born in nineteen ninety-seven."

"I see."

The room again fell into uncomfortable silence.

"And how did you come to be here?" asked Yamamoto after a short interlude.

"I do not know," Moertopo answered truthfully. "But here I am."

"And here your friends are, too, the Americans," Yamamoto stated flatly.

"You believe that?"

"Our radio intelligence has detected a very large volume of traffic from the Midway area. A battle has been fought there. But not by us."

Moertopo quickly scanned the faces behind Yamamoto, hoping for some sign of how to play this. All he found, however, was a wall of anger and suspicion.

"We picked up those signals ourselves," said Moertopo. "It appears that the Americans have hurt each other very badly."