Curtis was moving his jaw and slowly squeezing his eyes open and shut. He had no idea what had just happened. "Did we get bombed again? Did they come back?"
"Not exactly, Curtis. But you're a lucky guy. I'll bet those missiles are heading for Pearl."
Then the ground shook with the force of a volcanic event. The sound rolled over them, like that of a planet cracking open.
"I've got to get back to the base," Curtis cried out.
"Don't bother," said Rosanna. "It's not there anymore."
PACIFIC THEATER OF OPERATIONS
"Hurry up, faster-schnell, schnell."
Hidaka had no idea whether the helmsman, the sole surviving Frenchman on board, understood him or knew what he was doing. The giant barbarian had sworn up a storm when he'd rushed into the CIC.
Three Indonesians and a German lieutenant commander followed on his heels, all of them pulling up sharply at the sight of the killing room. The Nazi spoke a little English. Just enough to infuriate Hidaka as he tried to explain that he wanted to slow down the movies from the missiles.
They'd pushed the helmsman into Danton's old seat and the German, whose name tag identified him as Bremmer, relayed instruction in French. It might have been laughable, if the fate of the world weren't hanging in the balance.
The two Europeans bickered and sniped at each other. More of the screens blinked over to white noise as the missiles detonated. And still Hidaka couldn't tell whether Danton had interfered with the attack before attempting to murder them all.
The helmsman directed a spray of unintelligible abuse at Bremmer before waving his arms at the main display. Hidaka's mood went through a swooping series of dives and loops as he saw that the replays were running much more slowly, and that some of the missiles seemed to do exactly as they ought. But others appeared to drive themselves into the sides of mountains or open fields.
"Again, again," he demanded.
Bremmer relayed the instructions, and the movie was rewound-no, replayed, as he corrected himself.
Keeping a much tighter leash on his emotions, this time he was able to see that about half the missiles had gone off course, but not always to ill effect. One that had been heading for the wreck of the Arizona, possibly drawn by its magnetic signature, suddenly veered away and dived on a cruiser, one he didn't recognize. Hidaka couldn't tell what sort of damage was done, but unless Danton had somehow defused the warheads, it still would be considerable.
On other screens, airfields and army barracks were certainly hit. But he counted five windows in which nothing-absolutely nothing-of value seemed to have been targeted. One rocket appeared to land on the beach in front of a hotel. He could only hope that a large number of officers were staying there.
His stomach had knotted itself so tightly, he wanted to be sick. But he would not give in to the convulsions that were trying to force his breakfast back up. He took a deep breath, ignoring the sickly sweet, rancid smell of death. This was going to take a while to work out. But he was supposed to signal Yamamoto the instant they had launched. The grand admiral would already be wondering what had happened.
"Play it again," he said. "Slowly."
OAHU, HAWAII
Good luck and bad habits saved Detective Lou "Buster" Cherry. While he'd been on suspension, he'd taken to calling in at a couple of Big Itchy's bars for a liquid lunch-on the house, of course. He often stayed on for dinner, making selections from the same menu. Even after the Bureau had pulled a few strings to get him back his badge and gun, it was a routine he'd been unable-or unwilling-to break.
So noon found him at one of Itchy's new joints, a place called Irish Mike's, where they had those tasty fucking Buffalo wings he loved so much. Apart from beer and whiskey, there was probably nothing else in his bloodstream now. Except nicotine. And he seemed to recall having a doughnut for breakfast sometime last week.
He'd parked himself in the corner of the bar, where he could watch his subjects, some four-eyed Myron and his greasy girl. He wasn't supposed to pick them up until later, to learn whether they slept together. But after a couple of days on their trail, he'd come to know their routine. Chances were they'd end up at Mike's for lunch, which gave him every reason to be at Mike's, too-perhaps even to get there a little early, to set up a comfy surveillance position and to work on his bent elbow. Mike, who was Maori rather than Irish, and whose name was Tui rather than Mike-well, he didn't like customers who wouldn't bend elbow with the best of them.
And Buster Cherry was fine with that.
He licked the spice from his fingers and took a long, cold pull on his beer. A Bud. Not his favorite, but times were tough all over. He stared at the table next to his targets, watching some flyboy and his squeeze, a nurse from over at Pearl. That way he could keep his eyes on Myron and the broad without being so obvious about it. Besides, the nurse had bazongas out to Wednesday, and half the mutts in the joint were staring at them, so it was a good cover.
You could tell Myron's piece of ass was twenty-first, dressed as she was, although he didn't need to be Sherlock Holmes on that score. The feebs had given him some paper on her, and told him to get more. She was a reporter, name of Natoli, and a looker, too, if your tastes ran to foreign ass.
He could tell that Myron-actually, some gimp called Wally Curtis-was boring her silly, which wasn't surprising. The kid was boring him, too, and he couldn't even hear them over the jukebox playing some shit piece of nigger music from the future. The seventies, it sounded like. He was getting better at picking the era. This particular tar boy thought Buster was a "sexy thing" and he really believed in "Milko," whatever the hell that meant. He'd take Glenn Miller or Bing Crosby any day-no matter what they were saying about Bing.
Detective Cherry had just come to the conclusion that he'd grievously miscalculated the amount of beer he'd need to see off the rest of his Buffalo wings when Natoli started screaming at everyone to get down. Nearly twenty years on the job, he didn't need to hear it twice. That broad moved like she knew a thing or two. He was halfway to the floor, frantically scanning the room for a shooter, reaching for his own piece, when he saw that both she and her boyfriend were under the table, thumbs jammed in their ears, mouths wide open like they were fixing to swap spit or something.
It took a second, but he suddenly caught on.
Must be a bomb.
He got his own ears covered and was emptying his lungs when a cataclysmic roar shook the floor, the bar, the whole of fucking Diamond Head. It was so violent and lasted so long that Cherry thought it might just shake them off the side of the island and down into the sea.
When he was a little kid on the mainland, his old man had taken him up in a clock tower to hear the bell toll twelve. He'd started screaming at the first gong, at the size of it, and the feeling of his insides being shook to jelly. He was back there for a few seconds, until the monstrous rolling thunder trailed off and the sound of a screaming woman cut through the high-pitched whine he just knew he was gonna be hearing all day.
He felt tender inside. Not just his head, which always felt that way, but everywhere, like he was some sort of human fucking cocktail shaker and he'd just made up a couple of hundred daiquiris.
The bar wasn't nearly as badly fucked up as he expected. He'd thought a bomb might have gone off, but apart from a lot of broken glass and some upturned furniture that'd been knocked over by the patrons, there was remarkably little damage. A lot of people were wailing in pain, though, holding their hands over their ears. But there was none of the grotesque carnage he'd witnessed after the Jap attack last December. No severed limbs or chunks of meat hanging from the trees.