Designated Targets

There were no Lycra bodysuits, powered helmets, or carbon-fiber bike frames to be had in 1940s New York, but both of those girls had done their best to pull off the look. Julia was sure their raked-back riding helmets were made of papier-mâché, and the sunglasses were strictly Ray-Ban aviators from current stock. But they must have stayed up late for a whole week cutting and sewing their black overalls to have them fit so tightly. And where they got the Day-Glo strips from, she had no idea.

The two boys jumping from foot to foot in front of her hadn’t invested nearly so much effort. She looked in on Dan again. He was deep into some unpleasant conversation. Normally she’d have just tapped on the window and waved him good-bye as she rushed off to the job, but she wanted to know what his call was about.

“Okay,” she told the kid. “But it’ll have to be quick. You wanna music vid? Sativa or J-Two? Or I’ve got some very old Britney Spears here. I’m guessing you boys would be right into Britney.”

“Oh, wow!”

“Awesome!”

“Okay, check it out,” she said, bringing up a vid file and glancing at Dan again. “If you try a runner on me, though, I’ll shoot you down before you get ten feet away.” She let them catch a glimpse of the SIG Sauer in its holster under her leather coat. That seemed to excite them even more than the Ericsson.

As she was waiting for Dan to emerge, growing impatient, she heard the unmistakable rumble of a bomb going off a few blocks away.

SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE ZONE, CALIFORNIA

“I need you on the next flight to Washington, Dan,” said Kolhammer. “I’ll be catching a red-eye myself, when I’ve wrapped up here. I don’t doubt this bombing campaign is related to Pearl and the U.K., but we haven’t seen anything to indicate an invasion of the U.S. mainland. Most likely, it’s a feint. At any rate, I’ve got everybody above the level of bird colonel or equivalent hammering me for ray guns and space rockets. I’m afraid you’re going to have to be my flak catcher.”

Black seemed to be standing in some sort of library. Kolhammer could see shelves full of books behind him. The navy commander made a visible effort to pull himself together.

“I’ll just see Jules off, Admiral. I got a feeling she’s going to be busy here, anyway. Then I’ll get straight out to Idlewild.”

“Thanks, Dan. I’ll have Liao make sure there’s a seat for you.”

They signed off, and Kolhammer cut the link.

He brought up the latest flashes on his desktop display panel. Nine bombs had exploded within a twelve-minute period, in three cities. Four in New York. Three in Chicago. Two in Washington. And not one of them had taken out a hard target. Subway cars, trains, buses, and two department stores were reported as having been hit. Civilian deaths were high. Not what he thought of as mass casualties, but it was going to rock the fucking house for the locals.

There was no vision available on Fleetnet just yet, for which he was grateful. He didn’t need to see that shit anyway. Arms and legs looked the same the world over when they were blown off with high explosives. And there’d be the usual obscenity of tiny little limbs torn from children’s bodies, given the nature of the targets.

He shook his head and suppressed the images for the moment. As horrifying as it was, it wasn’t even the crisis of the day for him.

That was over in Hawaii.

He did have visuals streaming from there. Mike Judge, still en route to San Diego, was providing the link he needed to see what was happening on Oahu.

A drone on station above Honolulu had recorded the attack, which was lucky in a cold, left-handed way, because there weren’t many Task Force assets left to file a report. Hypersonic cruise missiles had wiped out most of Hickham Field, where the F-22s and support craft he’d left in place to secure the island had been destroyed. Slagged by a sunburn missile. A Laval, by all indications.

Other airfields had been partially, or totally, destroyed. And Pearl Harbor looked worse than it had the first time. A low-res, jumpy, live-action feed from the drone showed massive losses. The only saving grace was that it could have been so much worse, if Spruance hadn’t been safely tucked away in the southwest Pacific, supporting the Kandahar’s battle group.

That was where the counterstrike would have to come from, if they still had the ability to launch one. A dense ball of lead was growing in Kolhammer’s stomach as he began to see the outline of Yamamoto’s design. And it wasn’t just him, of course. He was clearly coordinating his strategy much more closely with the Nazis now, trying to make up for the odds that had been stacked against them.