Designated Targets

And hadn’t he taken some bullshit over that—not all of it good-natured, either. Here she was, the most powerful warship in the world, trailing along on the apron strings of a couple of old tin cans. There’d been more than one barroom brawl over it down in Honolulu, although nothing as bad as the riot that had burned down half of Hotel Street just after they’d first arrived at Pearl.

An ASW Seahawk was fueling down on the flight deck, one of the few aircraft they’d be ferrying home. Even with her teeth pulled, the Clinton remained the highest priority target for Axis forces in the Pacific theater. She still represented the single greatest collection of twenty-first-century technology, and there would inevitably be Japanese submarines willing to risk it all just for a shot at her. British Intelligence was even warning that the Germans had uncrated a prototype long-range U-boat specifically to go hunting for her. It was said to be heading their way via the south Atlantic and southern circumpolar latitudes. Not that Judge was likely to lose much sleep over it.

Now, if they’d grabbed a 21C Chinese Warbow submarine through Manning Pope’s wormhole, then sure, that’d be worth staying up late for. But if the Nazis had just dusted off the old Walther blueprints, then there were going to be a bunch of German submariners dying a long way from home sometime soon.

A female lieutenant appeared on a screen to his left. “Captain Judge. We’ll have the vidlink to Admiral Kolhammer established in five minutes, if you’re ready, sir?”

“Thank you, Brooks. I’ll take it in my ready room.”

He stood up and prepared to hand the ship over to his Exec, Commander Takeshi Morgan, as a flight of Hellcats buzzed overhead. They’d be just out of the plant in L.A. As he left the bridge, he tried to imagine the Clinton with F-86 Sabres, or even a squadron of supercharged Corsairs spotted on her decks after the upcoming refit, but it was just too weird. Even four months after the Transition.

SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE ZONE, CALIFORNIA

Kolhammer was always glad to see Mike Judge. They were able to vidlink only once every couple of weeks, when a relay became possible via a series of AWACS planes or Multinational vessels or both.

Jeez, what I wouldn’t give for just one lousy fucking satellite.

Sometimes he thought it was like waiting for the stars to align, a concept that would have amused his wife, an enthusiastic consumer of astrological forecasts and a self-proclaimed skeptic. He never understood how she managed to be both. It’s a chick thing, he supposed.

“Happy trails, Admiral? I don’t believe I’ve seen you smile since we got here.” The stars had, indeed, aligned, and Mike Judge was on-screen, speaking from the ready room next to the Clinton’s flag bridge, where Kolhammer himself had once worked.

The admiral sent another, slightly sadder look down the encrypted link to Hawaii. More a gesture of resignation than a smile. “You caught me out, Mike. I was thinking about Marie.”

“You meet her folks like you were planning to, sir?”

Kolhammer admitted that he had. “It was good, too, Mike. They were wonderful people. Marie used to speak so fondly of her grandpa and her nana, I figured it was because her own parents were away so much with work, and she spent so much more time with them. But they were good people, Mike. The best, like she always said.”

He let go a long breath that he hadn’t even realized he was holding in.

A dialog box opened up in the corner of the screen: LINKS VERIFIED SECURE. The sysops at each point in the communications chain had just confirmed that no Elint sensors were attempting to crack open the link between the two men.

It was time for business.

“We’ll be ready to leave in four hours, Admiral,” Judge reported. “I’ve already got antisub patrols out. All the approaches are clear. You have any word on that phantom Nazi boat?”

“Hysteria and bullshit, as best anyone can make out,” Kolhammer replied. “Having said that, though, I want you to proceed on the basis of a worst-case scenario. After the Nuku and Sutanto landed in Japanese hands, we can’t assume anything. We don’t know for sure that the Dessaix or the Vanguard didn’t make it through as well. One of them might have materialized in Hitler’s bathtub, we just can’t tell.”

“We’ve been running active scans here, sir. Haven’t had a ghost of a return yet.”

“I know. They’re probably back home right now. But they were both stealth ships. And even though I can’t imagine the crews cooperating if they were captured, we have to plan for it anyway. What is it that Lonesome is always saying? Prepare for the worst, and dare the good Lord to disappoint you.”

“Well the worst would be the nukes falling into the wrong hands,” Judge pointed out. “We haven’t heard from our subs since the Transition, either.”

“Yeah, but we would have,” said Kolhammer. “If Yamamoto or the Nazis had got their paws on a boomer, half the world would already be glow-in-the-dark. I’m less worried about them, Mike. But I really want you to sneak back as though you do have a rogue Nemesis cruiser on your case.”

“I promise we’ll sneak out of here like a preacher slipping away from a Reno whorehouse, sir.”

Kolhammer allowed himself another small grin. He did miss Mike Judge’s Texan charm. “Okay. Just don’t fuck around with half-measures, Mike. If you get even a hint that you’re being stalked, I want the Siranui to go wild. How’s Colin Steele doing, by the way. He happy with the way the ship’s running now?”

Kolhammer had promoted the Leyte Gulf’s executive officer to command the Siranui as soon as Steele had gotten out of hospital after Midway. He’d been shot early in the brief battle belowdecks between the crews of the Gulf and the Astoria, the contemporary cruiser in which the late Captain Anderson’s ship had partly materialized. The images still gave Kolhammer the creeps.

“Yeah, he’s pretty much got the cobwebs shook out,” said Judge. “All the software’s been converted. There’s a few differences between the Japanese Nemesis boats and ours, but Steele has had most of those systems taken offline, so his guys don’t have to worry about them. It’ll be cool. Anderson and Miyazaki did most of the hard work before, you know . . .” He trailed off.

Kolhammer didn’t reply, beyond a brief grunt. The investigation into the killing of his two officers on Honolulu had gone exactly nowhere in the past four months. To his own shame, he’d let the matter slip off his radar, too. There was just so much to do. He made a note to e-mail Admiral Nimitz about the case in the morning. He hadn’t been close to Anderson, but she’d been a fine officer, and he’d been very impressed by Miyazaki, the Siranui’s surviving senior officer, in the short time he’d had to deal with him. From all reports, the two of them had worked well together, quickly getting an American crew settled onto the Japanese Self-Defense Force vessel. They deserved better.

Kolhammer returned to his discussion list. “Halabi’s been bouncing her sigint take across to me every twelve hours. Things are grimmer than hell in the U.K., but she doesn’t think the Kriegsmarine would try a sortie while she’s still packing. She’s down to six antiship missiles now, though, with four antisub, and her air defense stocks are at fifteen percent. Pretty soon she’ll be like you, Mike. A floating Radio Shack. But Raeder can’t be sure of that. So he’s bottled up for now.”

“How are the natives treating her, sir? If you don’t mind me asking.”

Kolhammer frowned. “That guy the Brits had as liaison in Pearl, Sir Leslie, he’s been supportive. And Churchill has backed her. I think Prince Harry has been twisting arms at the Palace on her behalf as well. But I suspect she’s doing it tough, Mike.”

“She is tough, Admiral.”

Kolhammer thought he detected something more than professional respect in Judge’s voice, but he let it pass. The new captain of the USS Hillary Clinton wasn’t married. He hadn’t even been seriously hooked up before they arrived here.

“She is, indeed, Commander. Now, see that you get yourself back in one piece,” he continued, changing tack. “I know it’s breaking your heart, but we need to clean out the Big Hill. She’s a lot more valuable to us stripped down to bare bones. The retrofit’s going to take a good eight or nine months, and even then she’s not going to need more than a fraction of the systems she’s still carrying. Meantime, I got Leslie fucking Groves turning up here every