Designated targets aot-2

by John Bigmingham

  Kolhammer knew the story. He even vaguely recalled that Popov had described Hoover as looking like "a sledgehammer in search of an anvil," although he hadn't seen that phrase when he quickly reread the book about Stephenson. He thought it was apt.

  "Well, this is a pain, but I can live with it," Kolhammer said, twirling the antique listening device around his finger.

  "I don't think you can, actually," Stephenson countered.

  Kolhammer took a sip on his cold cup of coffee. It needed more rum. He was tired, and looking forward to a few hours' sleep on the cot he kept in the room next door. But he'd come to respect Churchill's spymaster as much as anyone he'd ever met, and if Stephenson was concerned enough to fly all the way out to California, it probably meant he had some real concerns.

  "How so?" he asked.

  Stephenson leaned forward as if to impart a secret, an unconscious gesture, given that this room was probably one of the most secure places on Earth.

  "You know he's got agents crawling all over the Zone," he said. "And he's probably paying more for informants here than he is throughout the rest of the United States, and probably even in South America, too."

  Kolhammer shrugged. "There's no secrets for him to dig up out here. The Zone operates under twenty-first century U.S. law and custom. He could set up a love shack with Tolson and start selling medical marijuana tomorrow, if he wanted to. No one would stop him. And likewise, he can't interfere with or stop what goes on out here. It's not his turf anymore."

  "No, it's not," conceded Stephenson. "But underestimate him at your peril. Bill Donovan has OSS keeping very close tabs on Hoover, and he says the strain of the last few months is eating the man up. If he lashes out when he goes down, it's you he'll be aiming at and believe me, for a fairy, he hits hard. It's a laydown that he's behind this Un-American Activities bullshit. Donovan says a Bureau car picked up Dies and ferried him to dinner with Hoover and Tolson the night before the committee announced its new investigations. They've been all over one another like cheap Chinese suits for weeks, and remember, not everybody wants to publicly snuggle with Hoover nowadays."

  Kolhammer snorted at the image and put his empty mug aside. A shaded lamp threw a small circle of light onto his desk. He peered into the gloom that lay just beyond. He could just make out a picture of his wife hung on the wall in the shadows on the far side of the room. She was lost to him now. He knew that, and the pain of their separation was never-ending.

  "Bill," he said, "I don't doubt that you're right, and I'll give some thought to whatever precautions might be necessary. But my own comfort is a tenth-order issue right now. I have real enemies trying to kill my people, even as we speak.

  "If I have to deal with Hoover, I will. Trust me."

  Stephenson was not convinced. "You want to follow this HUAC thing very closely, Admiral. Every dollar you spend out here is raised in Washington. And they can cut you off, just like that. Dies isn't the only person Hoover is talking to, and the director is not the only one who wants to jam you back into your wormhole, or whatever it was."

  Kolhammer made a rueful face at that. "Believe me, Bill, there are days I'd love nothing more. But the reality is, we're here. We fucked things up royally by coming here, and now it's my job to set them as right as I can. I know enough politics to watch my back, and if I have to kick someone's head, it'll get kicked. But I'm not going to pick fights for the sake of it. You're right. Our position here is tenuous. Bringing home those POWs generated a lot of goodwill. I get a couple of hundred letters a week thanking me for bringing home somebody's son or husband or brother. But in the end, we don't belong here. Not yet. Not for a fucking long time. And muscling up to somebody like Hoover, who enjoys genuine support-well, that's just dumb."

  Stephenson poured another tot of rum into his empty coffee cup. "That day is coming, Admiral, whether you want it or not."

  "I know. But a smart man chooses his battles. And he doesn't lash out at a strong enemy."

  "Hoover's not as strong as he once was. None of the quality press have moved on him yet, but those pulpy biographies keep turning up like bad pennies, and the yellow press have been running with them. It's hurting him."

  Kolhammer was as still and quiet as a bronze Buddha.

  Stephenson smiled. "But you wouldn't know anything about that, would you?"

  "I think," replied Kolhammer, "that it would be a mistake to personalize everything in terms of Hoover. Not all politics are personal."

  Stephenson nodded, before changing the topic. "So, how are you settling in here, Admiral? I see you're still sleeping in that damned army cot. Couldn't you at least have requisitioned some kind of inflatable superbed from your own stores?"

  Kolhammer smiled sadly and rubbed at his eyes. "I don't mind. A big bed would just remind me how empty it is every night."

  "Excuse me, I'm sorry," said Stephenson, glancing at the picture of Marie Kolhammer on the desk. "It must be very difficult for you."

  "And millions of others," said Kolhammer. "There's nothing special about me. Listen, Bill," he said suddenly, "would you like the grand tour? I normally can't get to sleep right away anyhow. I like to take a drive before turning in. I could show you the manor, as the Brits say, and drop you into town afterwards."

  "Sure," said Stephenson, finishing his drink. "If you don't mind the drive."

  Kolhammer called through to his PA to lock down the office and tell security he'd be sleeping at home for a change.

  "You'll need your coat," he told Stephenson. "It gets chilly this time of year."

  A female sailor was waiting by his Humvee out in front of the building. "It's been swept, sir. No bugs."

  "Thank you, Paterson."

  "I didn't think Admirals drove themselves anywhere," the Canadian quipped as he swung himself into the front passenger seat. "Or is this just another example of creeping socialism from the future."

  Kolhammer shrugged. "It's like I said. I like to drive. It helps me wind down."

  The campus was laid out around winding roads that had once been sheep and cattle tracks, when the land was owned by a grazing company. It was one of the few areas in the whole Valley not laid out on a grid system. The complex was still small, although large areas of land had been set aside for later expansion. They drove out through the checkpoint at the front gates within two minutes of Kolhammer starting the engine.

  "I thought we'd run over to Sun Valley first," he said. "A lot of the aerospace companies are setting up there. It's close to Glendale airport, and there are good rail links."

  "Fine by me," said his passenger.

  There was almost no traffic on the way. A major change from his own time. They swung north toward the Verdugo Hills and around onto the old San Fernando Road. The temperature had dropped as the night deepened, and without the light pollution or smog of a megacity to block them out, the stars shone down hard and brilliant.

  "Do you mind if I ask you something?" Kolhammer called out over the engine noise and the roar of their passage through the clean, autumn air.

  "Not at all."

  "Why do you care what happens out here? A lot of what you see here in the Zone must make you uncomfortable."

  Stephenson didn't spend long mulling over an answer. "I'm here under orders. Mr. Churchill believes it's imperative that we speed up our research and development. The Nazis are doing so, and their engineers are very good. Better than ours in some fields. He thinks-we both think-that reinventing the wheel would be a criminal waste of time, given the circumstances. The real strength you brought with you was the knowledge and technical skills of your people. Concentrated here they form a-what do you call it? — a critical mass that the enemy can't hope to match. It's important that nothing interfere with what's going on here."

  "So you don't care about the… ah… social… ramifications."

  "Mr. Churchill feels that it's really none of our business," Stephenson replied.

  "No," said Kolhammer. "But of course, Mr. Churchill doesn't ha
ve the complication of up to ten thousand time travelers setting up shop in one of his villages, does he? He's just got Halabi and her crew on the Trident, and maybe a hundred others scattered around-most of them the right sort of chaps who'd have no trouble at all getting membership at a good club in London."

  "Admiral," Stephenson said around a smirk, "you wound me with such sarcasm."

  They turned onto Sunland Boulevard, where North American Aviation was building a massive factory to produce F-86 Saber jet fighters. Work continued around the clock, with the sounds of construction loud enough to hear over the growl of the Humvee. Giant lights illuminated the complex like a sports ground in high summer.

  "How many people do you have working there?" asked Stephenson, all business again.

  "None yet, but there's about thirty aeronautical engineers off the Clinton attached to North American in Dallas and Kansas City. They'll move out here in a few weeks. Mike Judge is going to run the program from our side."

  "There you go, then," said Stephenson. "I'll bet it's the same story all over the Valley. The war is going to be won here, Admiral."

  "I thought I was the tour guide tonight."

  "Well then, drive on, MacDuff."

  They motored away from the island of light back into the dark bowl of the Valley, heading toward the glow of Sepulveda and Ventura. No blackout covered the L.A. Basin, which lay under the protection of an all-seeing Nemesis array. Traffic along Ventura was heavier, with a lot of cars from the city having hauled themselves over Cahuenga Pass and down into the Valley for a look-see. The neon signs of burger joints and all-night bars were strung along the side of the road like cheap Christmas lights. A dusty coupe sped past, full of teenagers who cheered and waved at the Humvee before powering into the night.

  "Probably going to park outside a strip club for a couple of hours," said Kolhammer. "Trying to work up the courage to talk their way in."

  "I saw my share of strippers in Paris during the Great War," said Stephenson. "I doubt there's much would surprise me here."

  "Yeah?" said Kolhammer, who knew he was wrong.

  The strip fell behind as he pointed the car at the foothills below the Hollywood ridgeline. The edge of the Zone was up there, at the boundary with L.A. A few lonesome lights winked at them from behind trees hiding the mansions of movie stars and producers. More of his loyal subjects.

  For a while he'd had to assign two lieutenants to the job of screening him from the depredations of studio executives who thought the most important thing about the Transition was the access it gave them to a vast library of their own product they hadn't had to spend a dollar actually making. As frustrating as it was-and he'd come this close to shooting Sam Goldwyn-it had led him to make a decision that would probably alter the course of history as profoundly as the disaster at Midway had. It just wouldn't be as obvious or spectacular.

  He agreed with everything that Stephenson had said earlier. But he'd also been speaking true when he said he was no position to get into a public brawl with Hoover, or any of the forces behind him. If his arrival here was going to mean anything beyond chaos and madness, Admiral Phillip Kolhammer would have to be willing to reach out and shape events with his own hands. But he could not be seen to be doing so.

  He'd given a lot of thought to the problem, and in the end he could see no way around it.

  He had carefully drawn up his plans, selected the right personnel, and put them to work in the Quiet Room.

  9

  PT 101, CORAL SEA, SOUTHWEST PACIFIC AREA

  The tropical night was inky black, but out on deck, the wraparound goggles, which seemed to mold themselves onto the face, turned everything a bright emerald green. Everybody tried them at least once, and the worst anyone could say was that you lost a little depth perception, but it was a hell of a lot better than groping around in the dark.

  "I'll bet somebody back home is making a packet, building these things," Chief Rollins said as they bumped over a slight swell on their way out.

  "Not these, Chief," Lohrey replied. "That's a sixth-generation set of Oakleys you got there. The gelform seal alone is about seven decades beyond what you could manufacture here. But you're still right. At least two British and three U.S. companies are working on prototypes of a basic NVG. Of course, the Germans will be doing the same."

  "What about the Japs, ma'am?" asked a young seaman.

  "Doubt it. Not if they're smart, anyway. German optics are much more advanced. Tokyo would be better off leaving it to them, and not duplicating the effort."

  Peering at the screen, Kennedy checked his position against Ross's boat. They were both booming along at top speed, following directions given by Lohrey and Chief Flemming, who talked to each other as though they stood just a few feet apart, rather than riding on separate boats. The night was particularly warm, and the blast of air across the decks was refreshing after having hidden out in the stillness of the mangroves all day.

  The pilothouse was lit by Lohrey's glowing data slates, but they had covered the boat's windows with heavy black plastic. To steer, the helmsmen on both PTs were using the feed from a couple of dinky little "battle-cams." Lohrey and Flemming had rigged them up that afternoon, before spending a couple of hours acquainting the crewmen with the most basic functions of the equipment they'd brought on board. "Just in case we get killed," Lohrey had said in an offhand manner that had unsettled Kennedy.

  New orders had come through from MacArthur's office via an encrypted data burst, requiring them to secure a number of survivors after the attack. That meant rewriting the plan, because Lohrey had originally designated the warships as secondary targets. Now they had to make certain the destroyers were sunk first. Some little Asian woman called Lieutenant Commander Nguyen (it sounded like Noo-win to him) had appeared in a recorded movie to brief them about it. The boats they had thought were troopships apparently looked more like prison transports now. They were still supposed to sink them, but now they had to grab a bunch of survivors for interrogation, too. That order came all the way down from MacArthur's office, but Kennedy suspected that Captain Willet was somewhere in back of it.

  The PT boat skipper thought it very cold-blooded, and not at all the sort of thing he'd expect from a woman, although looking at Willet's intel boss, Lieutenant Lohrey, he'd bet his bottom dollar that she'd killed many more times than he had. When the revised orders came through, she'd been largely unconcerned, quickly redesigning the attack plan to knock out the destroyers first. Then they could nail the transports and pluck a few prisoners out of the wreckage without having to worry about any interference.

  "Are they all like that, Moose?" he'd whispered to Leading Seaman Molloy at one point.

  The survivor of the Astoria, a huge slow-witted fellow, had nodded sagely. "Aye, Skipper. I wrote my old man about them-you know he's on the Chicago PD-and he said they sounded a lot like gangsters' molls. Just as soon cut a man's throat as look at him."

  But the thought hadn't put Kennedy off at all. Now, as they approached the point where they would wait for the Japanese, in the lee of a small, uninhabited island, the skipper of PT 101 found himself drawn to this female officer again. He couldn't help but admire the hourglass curves of the visiting lieutenant as she bent over a slate, jotting notes on the much smaller flexipad that she held in one hand. There was a two-foot swell running, but she had no trouble keeping her balance, and she moved around the cramped confines of the wheelhouse as though she'd spent her life there.

  He wondered if she had a boyfriend or-even more exciting-a girlfriend somewhere. Possibly away up in the twenty-first century, when-

  "We have contact," she announced. "Six thousand meters out and tracking south-southeast. Mr. Kennedy, you might want to have your men come to general quarters."

  "I might at that," he agreed. "Chief, let's have at them, shall we?"

  Chief Petty Officer Dave Rollins nodded once. "Aye, sir." Then he slipped through the blackout curtain, adjusting his borrowed night-vision goggles as
he left.

  Kennedy nudged the engines up so that the gurgle of the supercharged V-12s increased to a moderate growl. He could feel the power surge coming up through the deck as he grabbed his helmet and checked the straps of his Mae West. The Australian submariner donned her own helmet, the one that looked like SS headgear, and then fitted a pair of outsized reflective goggles over her eyes. She tugged at the straps on her body armor and fit the flexipad into a clear plastic pocket on her forearm. In doing so, it seemed to Kennedy, she transformed herself, losing even more of her individuality. Becoming less of a living, breathing thing than the creaky, roach-infested boat on which they sailed.

  She looked like a killer, and nothing less.

  It was an effect emphasized by the toneless voice in which she communicated with her comrade on the other PT boat. They exchanged information in a language that Kennedy recognized as English, but which was so heavy with jargon as to be impenetrable.

  Lohrey turned her bug-eyed goggles on him and said, "Havoc confirms that Big Eye has designated five kills. Mr. Kennedy, on screen you'll see five thin beams. They're being directed onto the Japanese ships from the surveillance drone we've got keeping station above them. They're invisible to the enemy. They'll flash in sequence to mark the priority targets. So the first blinking line, there, is designating the lead destroyer. When she's taken out, the beam marking her sister ship will begin to strobe."

  They'd been through this before, but Kennedy didn't mind being led through the mission again. Truth was, he felt more than a little unsure of himself. They were mashing together some very different fighting techniques, but he put away his misgivings and simply concentrated on not fucking things up.

  "All ahead, full," he ordered, and the growl of the boat's engines became a roar as they leapt toward the enemy.

  In the Combat Center of the Havoc, Captain Jane Willet watched the attack on-screen. Kennedy's boat was the first contemporary vessel she'd set foot on, and it had left a strong impression. Standing in the slightly antiseptic chilled air of her own submarine, she couldn't help but remember the raw sense of displacement she'd experienced as they climbed aboard the 101, to be greeted by its famous skipper.