Weapons of choice

The combination of her voice and another two or three prods with the stun rods collapsed the brawl, which had been largely confined to an area around the doorway. Anderson pushed her way in among the rowdy combatants, roughly elbowing aside anyone who didn't give her space. She had her own sparking baton, but she didn't use it on anyone. The unruly squall tapered off into a bruised and sullen stillness.

Slim Jim backed away from Mohr, who still had murder in his eyes, stepping on tiptoes so he could see Anderson.

"Well, I'm waiting," said the captain.

Lieutenant Commander Helen Wassman stepped forward over a number of fallen sailors. She was bleeding from the nose and had a real shiner rising on her left eye.

"I'm afraid it was my fault, Captain," she said.

"The hell it was!" cried a white man to her rear.

"This racist asshole bitch-slapped the doc," somebody else called out.

Chief Mohr forced his way past Slim Jim, drawing up beside Anderson and looking down at the prostrate form of Lieutenant Charles.

"Oh, that'd be fuckin' right," he said darkly.

16

USS ENTERPRISE, 0409 HOURS, 3 JUNE 1942

Karen Halabi was only too aware of the outlandish presence she introduced to the small space. The men around her had so far paid due deference to the respect Spruance seemed to accord her, but she could tell from the prickling of her skin and the occasional hostile glance that she was there under his sufferance.

Spruance stared morosely out at the burning wreckage of his task force.

Dawn was coming, and the extent of the carnage was no longer hidden by full darkness. A few hours from now, they all knew Japanese planes would be over Dutch Harbor on a diversionary strike. The American commander was fast approaching the point where he would have to contact Admiral Nimitz in Pearl and try to explain what had happened. Halabi didn't fancy changing places with him. Down below on the flight deck, a landing signals officer from the Clinton waved in a Seahawk with four survivors just plucked from the water.

"Michaels," said Spruance, "have the Gwin and the Benham stand-by the Leyte Gulf for salvage and evacuation. They are to place their men under the direction of Captain Anderson on the Leyte Gulf. She'll command the operation."

There wasn't so much as a murmur of dissent, but Halabi could feel the men bristle. Spruance remained silent, watching the lights of the helicopters as they hovered and swooped against the black curtain of the Pacific night. Karen would swear that her neck was burning with the intensity of the glares being directed at her by some of the bridge crew. But she clasped her hands behind her back and tried to take what small measure of consolation she could from the experience of riding atop one of history's greatest warships.

She was startled out of her reverie when Spruance next spoke.

"Your people are very professional, Captain. They've saved a lot of men tonight."

He didn't add what a few men around him no doubt thought, that Halabi's people had killed even more.

"Standards haven't slipped, Admiral."

"How long have you been at war, Captain?" Spruance asked in a distracted voice.

"Myself? Twelve years, sir. But it's a different kind of war. More complicated, I suppose."

"I don't see how that could be," Spruance said.

"Politics, religion, history." She shrugged. "It gets very complicated, believe me. Often we're not even fighting other states, just a state of mind. Ideas."

Spruance turned completely around. Silhouetted against the glass, it was nearly impossible to see his face. "You can't fight ideas with rockets and guns."

"On the contrary, that's exactly what you were doing out here, Admiral. You came here to kill men and sink ships. But it was ideas that sent you and the Japanese to war. And it's ideas about how men and women should live that have sent England to war with Germany. I know that all sounds far too abstract, what with so much blood being spilled. But even after Pearl Harbor, you don't understand the nature of the thing you're fighting."

Karen watched as Spruance folded his arms in the dark space of the bridge.

"You sound like you're running for Congress-sorry, Parliament."

"It's just my MA showing. Conflict studies at Cambridge. You'll have to excuse my academic interest in your war. It happened a long time before I was born. But we studied it closely. Because of the immense scale of violence and cruelty this conflict unleashed, there persists in our culture a horror of war, a belief that it is an unmitigated evil, even though this is also recognized as a just war. One that could not be morally avoided."

"Because of Pearl Harbor," said Spruance.

"No. Because of Auschwitz."

Spruance shook his head. "Sounds like a Kraut name, but I've never heard of it."

"You will."

USS HILLARY CLINTON, 0409 HOURS, 3 JUNE 1942