"What the fuck?"
A rotting apple struck Lloyd on the head.
The fruit came from a rowdy group across the street, which he'd mistaken for disgruntled movie patrons. They were bunched up where roadworks partly blocked the footpath. Looking at them now, Mohr could tell that they were off-duty sailors and soldiers, all 'temps. There were about fifteen or twenty of them, and the way they'd gathered around in a tight group, all turned inward, he could tell somebody was about to get the shit kicked out of him.
A cruising police car slowed down as it passed by; then it sped up and disappeared around the block.
"Shit," said Mohr. "You guys gonna back me up?"
He headed across without waiting for their reply. Lloyd fell in beside him, with Linthicum bringing up the rear.
As they got closer, dodging in between the traffic, he heard somebody call out, "Hey, it's the nigger lovers and their boy."
With that, it didn't matter that they were outnumbered. Mohr was past thinking rationally. He grabbed a steel picket and wrenched it out of a pile of earth and broken asphalt.
A corporal came at him with his fists up, but Mohr just swung the heavy iron bar into his face with such casual violence that he might have been taking the top off a boiled egg. The corporal's head snapped back with a wet crack and three or four teeth flew out. As he dropped, Mohr swung an overhand blow onto his shoulder, feeling it break like a soft twig.
The dark energy holding the group together drained away instantly, allowing him to get a better look at what had been happening. A kid in a torn AF uniform was down, already unconscious and covered in blood. Half his faced had been pulped. Mohr didn't know him, but he looked like some sort of Mexican.
"He's a fucking zoot-suiter, Chief. He deserved it."
Mohr turned a pitiless eye on the man who'd spoken, a big dumb bastard in an army uniform. "You want some of this, shit head?" He held up the steel rod, which was noticeably stained with the corporal's blood.
The private backed down. "No, sir."
"Do you think you could help him up, Mr. Linthicum?" Mohr asked the midshipman he'd met inside.
The young man nodded. He and Lloyd pushed their way in through the crowd. It was then that Eddie Mohr finally realized there was something else wrong. He hadn't paid attention to the sound of sirens when they'd emerged on the street, but now that he did, they were everywhere. And at least five or six columns of smoke were visible rising over the city.
"What the fuck's been going on here?" he asked.
WASHINGTON, D.C.
"More bombs?" asked Kolhammer.
"No, sir," said Black. "Riots. Both in Chicago and L.A."
They'd moved from the White House to the War Department offices in the Munitions Building on Constitution Avenue, for a smaller meeting. Just the two of them with Eisenhower, and his secretary to take notes. Kolhammer had wondered whether they might meet Kay Summersby, but then remembered that Ike himself wouldn't meet her until he got to England. Who knew if that would ever happen now.
He'd been waiting on Eisenhower, dwelling on the ripples of blood and consequence his arrival had created, when both his and Commander Black's flexipads beeped with incoming traffic.
Black scanned the message first and told him what had happened. "It's weird, sir. It looks like your zoot suit riot in L.A., and the black riot that would have happened in Chicago in your nineteen forty-three. They're early, though. And quite a few of our people have been caught up in the violence, back in L.A."
"Have they been specifically targeted?"
Black frowned and read more of the message from the Zone. "Hard to say. There's some guy in a hospital, one of your sailors off the Leyte Gulf, says he was attacked by a mob which blamed him for Hawaii and the bombings and for the Japs invading. But the police radio is carrying lots more reports of sailors and soldiers ganging up on the local pachucos."
"And in Chicago?"
"Straight out black-and-white race riot. A big one. But nothing on why yet."
Kolhammer had his own ideas about why, but he kept them to himself for the moment.
Eisenhower turned up at that point. They'd scheduled this meeting to discuss what role Kolhammer's units out West would play in the wider global conflict.
"Let's talk worst-case scenarios first, Admiral," he said. "What can you give me right now?"
Kolhammer beamed the relevant files across to Ike's flexipad before passing across a hard copy. "There's a test squadron of Sabers out at Muroc, which I'd be happy to certify as battle ready. Two prototype midair refuelers are good to go, which means we can get those planes over Hawaii if you choose. Of course, they won't have a lot of payloads to deliver. The rockets are still in beta phase, but the cannons are fine. We've got ten thousand MK-One assault rifles, with grenade launchers, but we don't have ground forces ready to deploy with them. Colonel Jones gave up a significant number of his people to supply training cadre, but it's a slow business, and sending them now really means killing most of them, for no appreciable return."
Eisenhower turned the problem over in his mind. "What about the First Marine Division?"
Kolhammer had hoped he might suggest that option. The First had never made it to Guadalcanal. The destruction of the Fleet at Midway had robbed the Allies of any means of getting them there, and Yamamoto had seized the opportunity as part of his mad dash south to take a stranglehold on the island, at the same time as he pushed nine divisions into New Guinea through Rabaul.
"MacArthur's blooded them on the Brisbane Line," said Kolhammer. "They've been working in with the Eighty-second, so they'd be familiar with our methods. The Aussies have been replacing their Lee Enfields with a thirty-aught-six Kalashnikov variant that's a close copy of our MK-One. So the marines could train with them down there. I'd say they're good to go."
"MacArthur will scream blue murder. As will Curtin, and with good reason."
"If the Japanese take Hawaii and keep it, Australia will go down, and New Zealand with it. We'll be boxed in on the Pacific. And then the Atlantic, if England falls."
Eisenhower turned around in his old, wooden swivel chair to look at the map that hung on the wall behind his head. "Okay. Leave the politics to me," he said at last. "I'll get the First marines ready for redeployment. Which raises the question of how we get them to Pearl with that rogue ship of yours lurking around."
"The Siranui can escort them, if we turn her around right now. The Clinton's close enough to San Diego that we can cover her with the Raptors we've got on shore."
"How many Japanese do you have left on that vessel, Admiral? The Siranui?"
"Nine. All volunteers. They've been helping with the changeover to the Leyte Gulf's crew. We couldn't have done it without them. All of the software was in kanji script."
"Good for them, but I'm afraid they'll have to sit this one out."
Kolhammer didn't reply immediately. He'd fought very hard to keep his "enemy alien" personnel out of prison, and just as hard to protect the Siranui's crew from the prejudices of the 'temps. He trusted each of them with his life, but he could understand Eisenhower's point, and he could tell there'd be no shifting him on it.
"Okay," he agreed reluctantly. "We can cross-deck them to the Clinton, for now. The software changeover is complete, anyway. But they're going to be assigned to active duty under my command, General. I'll not have them treated with a lack of honor."