He caught sight of Natoli and Curtis busting out of the front door, and he chased after them without thinking about it.
For such a dive, Irish Mike's poorly named bar was superbly located. As soon as he stepped outside and his eyes adjusted to the fierce sunlight, he had a panoramic view back along Waikiki toward the harbor. An enormous cloud, looking just like a big mushroom, had swallowed up half of Honolulu. His balls contracted, and ice water filled his gut. He'd heard about those fucking things. They were bad fucking news. Even the cloud could kill you if you breathed it in or let it touch you.
Nevertheless, he was nailed to the spot, completely unable to move. The whole island seemed to be covered in twisting clouds of smoke. Pearl, Hickham, Schofield Barracks-they were all lost inside the firestorms.
But strangely enough, so were the mountains in the center of the island. And something had obviously exploded with great force a mile or so off Waikiki, where there was nothing but empty water.
"Hey, are you a police officer?"
At first he didn't realize they were talking to him.
"Hey, you there, are you a cop?"
Cherry looked up stupidly. His targets were walking toward him. He followed their eyes, looking down and seeing his.38 growing out of his hand like a blue metal tumor. It was so much a part of him that he'd forgotten about pulling it.
"Uh, yeah," he said, knowing that his surveillance was over, if not exactly blown.
"You got a radio? In your car?" Natoli asked. "You still got your car, right? You've been following us in that piece of shit for three days now?"
Blown, all right.
"What? Huh? Oh, yeah. Over there." He waved his gun in the general direction of the car.
"The black Dodge, I know. Do you have a radio?"
"Why?" He couldn't get his brain out of first gear.
"Just come on," said the broad. She raised a dust trail, she moved so quickly. When she reached the Dodge, she wrenched open the door with a yank.
"Hey, you can't do that!" he protested, starting to get his senses back at last. The sound of three gigantic eruptions reached them from the burning maelstrom of Pearl Harbor. He looked away from Natoli and Curtis, but he couldn't see a thing through the smoke.
"Secondary blasts," he said to himself, musing that only a cruiser or a battleship going up would sound like that. He saw the gimp playing with his police radio, and then with the car's own set.
"Get the hell outta there," he called out.
They emerged from the front of the Dodge, but not because of him.
"It's fried," said Curtis. "EMP."
"What?"
"Electromagnetic pulse. Every piece of wiring on the island is probably fused."
"Oh," said Cherry. "That's bad, right?"
PACIFIC THEATER OF OPERATIONS
It wasn't nearly as disastrous as he had feared. Hidaka had watched the footage over and over again. It seemed that Danton had got to the entire opening salvo. One missile had fallen into the ocean and two more had speared uselessly into a mountain range. But one that had been meant to land on Ford Island had instead devastated Honolulu. Half of the city was probably gone, according to the helmsman.
Of the second launch series, only one had been wasted, flying right over the Fleet anchorage and continuing on for another two hundred miles before dropping into the water. The other Lavals had all found their intended marks, or hit near enough as made no difference.
He turned away from the display to take in the slaughterhouse that was the Dessaix's Combat Information Center. There had been no time to clean up yet. The dead lay where they had fallen. This was a disaster, but his attack was not, and the next phase of Operation H.I. could proceed.
Hidaka asked Bremmer to organize the Indonesians to police the mess. Then he moved over to the communications station. This, at least, he had been trained to operate, if only on the most simplistic level. As he opened a secure channel to send a compressed burst to Yamamoto, he wondered how best to present what had happened.
There was no point in avoiding the truth.
He began to type.
Dessaix has launched successfully. Some missiles sabotaged, but strike unaffected. Proceed to next phase. tora. tora. tora.
He read the brief note. There would be a torrent of questions from the Combined Fleet, but Yamamoto knew what he needed to know.
The Hawaiian Islands were defenseless, and awaited the killing stroke.
25
It had been his idea to come down to Miami early this year. Washington was hell, what with everyone staring at them like circus freaks, and Roosevelt was playing both ends against the middle. Hoover hardly knew where he stood nowadays. Under those circumstances, and with a gloomy winter in the offing, a week or two at the Gulfstream had proved irresistible.
They would normally have traveled across the country to vacation in Southern California, for the racing at Del Mar, but he simply couldn't stand the idea of setting foot on the West Coast again, as long as that power-mad German Jew was running wild out there.
It's a pity, he thought as he snugged the silk kimono around his sturdy frame. They always made him feel so welcome in La Jolla. He and Clyde had first refusal on Bungalow A at the Del Charro, where the management ensured that everything was perfect. He always had direct phone lines to Washington; three ceiling fans, because he hated what the air-conditioning did to his sensitive skin; new bulbs in every lamp and light socket; two rolls of scotch tape; a basket of fresh fruit; and a bottle of Jack Daniel's for himself and Haig amp; Haig for Clyde-gift-wrapped, of course.
The Gulfstream, down in Miami, was fine, too. Staying there meant being able to use his complimentary box at Hileah whenever there was a race. But it wasn't his first choice, and J. Edgar Hoover was used to getting his way.
"Oh, Clyde," he said irritably, "go put on the gown I bought for you. You look a terrible sight in your socks and boxers."
Tolson was barely speaking to him after the argument they'd had at the track, earlier that day. Hoover was certain that Clyde had been flirting with one of the models who was hanging out with Lewis Rosenstiel, calling her "dearie" and "darling" and patting her on the knee and thigh, which were both scandalously exposed, in the new fashion.
Somebody knocked at the door.
He heard Clyde curse under his breath. The man had a stinking temper when he was cross. And to make it worse, much worse, he was also quite drunk tonight. He stomped over to the door, jerked it open, and stood there in his underwear. "What the hell do you want?" he barked.
Hoover couldn't hear what was said in reply, but Tolson exploded.
"Well, I don't see that that's any of our goddamned business!" he yelled. "Probably some thug from California. I understand that's how they do things in their day. So why don't you just get back in your little car, and get the hell out of here. I'm sure you can find your way out to the Valley. Just follow the army of perverts."
That would normally have been the end of if, but Hoover could still hear the low, insistent murmur coming from the front porch. Clyde started screeching again, unintelligibly this time. He sounded positively unhinged, and Hoover grew concerned that he might lash out. He was a big, powerful man, Clyde.