Designated targets aot-2

by John Bigmingham

  "It is, Mr. President. In his home… or his motel room."

  Roosevelt contained a chuckle with only the fiercest of efforts. He wondered how on earth Kolhammer did it.

  He placed the video stick into a desk drawer.

  "What matters now are results, Admiral. Mr. Hoover knows I want results on the questions of who set those bombs, and how they managed it. If he is to have a future as director of the FBI, he'll get me those results."

  For the first time Kolhammer offered something without being asked. "He'd get them a lot quicker if he didn't have so many agents crawling around the Zone. Or following your wife, with all due respect, Mr. President."

  Roosevelt used his tongue to work free a piece of meat that stuck between his teeth during lunch. It covered his reaction to Kolhammer's comment about Eleanor. He'd been livid when he'd seen the data about how Hoover had been opening her mail and having her followed around. But he wasn't about to lay that card on the table. As much as he'd come to respect and even like Phillip Kolhammer, he still wasn't a hundred percent sure about him. After all, he could well be a Republican, couldn't he?

  "I'll make sure the Bureau stops wasting its time in California, Admiral. You can be certain of that."

  "I'd like to be, Mr. President."

  Roosevelt patted the desk where he'd deposited the data stick. "You can."

  28

  LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

  True Grit was the best goddamn movie Eddie Mohr had ever seen. It was a hell of a shock, seeing John Wayne all fat and old and grizzled, but Mohr had seen enough birthdays to have no trouble imagining himself like that, so it wasn't entirely a bad thing. After all, even missing one eye and carrying a huge spare tire, Rooster Cogburn didn't give much away in the ass-kickin' stakes.

  Mohr had seen the movie five times now: two times for free on the base up at San Diego, and three times on his own dollar at a theater in downtown L.A., where he was now. The youngsters, they all preferred that Star Wars shit, but it just left him cold. How you could get into something that was so far removed from reality, he just didn't know. But True Grit was as real a story as he'd ever seen, even the bit at the end with John Wayne doing his one-man cavalry charge, reins between his teeth, six-shooter in one hand and Winchester in the other. That was a great fucking ending, not like that dumbass Apocalypse Now. He'd had to see that one in the Zone, because it was banned everywhere else, and he wondered why the hell he'd bothered when that bald bastard chopped up that poor fucking cow.

  Mohr shook the image from his head as Marshal Cogburn yelled at the bad guys to fill their hands. After three weeks without a break, he was gonna enjoy-

  "Oh, goddamn. What now?"

  The lights in the theater came up, and the management came on over the PA, telling everyone they had to get out in a fast but orderly fashion. Luckily Grauman's Egyptian Theater, a less famous cousin to Grauman's Chinese a few blocks west, was only a third full, because there was nothing orderly about the way most of the patrons suddenly flew for the exits. Some idiot even shouted that there had to be a bomb in the joint.

  Mohr rolled his eyes to heaven. He dawdled at the rear of the crush, ready to start pulling people off each other if it got out of hand. But the ushers and the good sense of a couple of other customers prevented a serious bottleneck from building up. As the choke point cleared, he saw a couple of AF uniforms at the exit. A black airman and a white sailor.

  "Hey, you guys know what's up?" he asked.

  The black guy, a flight sergeant, inclined his head toward the manager in the lobby, who was quickly handing out refunds and trying to hurry the stragglers outside. "He said a bomb went off on a trolley car over at Van Nuys. The city is shutting down the electric railway and all sorts of stuff. Like theaters, I guess."

  "Oh, for fuck's sake," said Mohr.

  "Hey, chief, how we gonna get back if they shut down the rail?" asked the sailor, a young middie whose name tag read LINTHICUM.

  "Initiative, Mr. Linthicum. Let's get out of here and find a bus. You coming with us, Sarge?"

  Fight Sergeant Lloyd thought it best if he did.

  They collected their refunds and stepped out into the bright light of a warm autumn morning. Mohr was still squinting into the sun when the tomato hit him.

  "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 whic
h 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."

  Eisenhower didn't seem put out by that. Instead he threw Kolhammer off balance with a pause and a change of tack. "I thought you handled that scene in the Oval Office very well, Admiral. Hoover was really gunning for you."

  "He's been gunning for all of us, from day one," said Kolhammer. "Well, maybe day two, when he figured out that he had no secrets from us."

  "Rumors have been swirling around him for years," said Eisenhower. "But he's wounded, not crippled, Admiral. You'll want to watch yourself."

  "I have bigger problems than that fruit and nut bar," said Kolhammer.

  "For now you do. That won't always be the case." Eisenhower waved a hand toward the map on the wall. "This isn't the only war you're fighting, Admiral. Don't make the mistake of assuming you have to fight every battle on your own. Not everybody in this country is as frightened of the future as Mr. Hoover."

  "They should be," replied Kolhammer. But he regretted doing so.

  LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

  The guy in the back of the car was beginning to spasm and vomit up bile. Mohr thought they might lose him before they made it to the hospital. The driver, some Good Samaritan who'd surprised the hell out of Eddie by pulling over and offering to help, kept veering into the oncoming traffic as he craned around to ask if the kid was going to make it.

  "I don't know," said Eddie. "They fucked him up pretty good."

  Flight Sergeant Lloyd was in the front passenger seat, while in the back Mohr and Linthicum nursed the unconscious victim of the mob attack. The chief had been forced to crack another one of those losers across the head with his makeshift club to get them to break it up. He'd belted a sailor with blood on his bell-bottoms, figuring that was as good as a guilty verdict in a proper court.

  "And the rest of you can fuck off right now, unless you're hungry for some of this, too," he'd growled, waving the steel picket around.

  They hadn't argued.

  Mohr and Lloyd had been trying to rig up a litter to transport their patient when a black Packard Clipper, driven by a silver-haired gent called Max, pulled over and offered them a lift. Frankly, Max looked like he had the sort of old money that'd make Scrooge McDuck seem hard up for a buck, but he didn't even take off his expensive suit jacket when he helped pick up the kid. He just mucked right in and got blood all over it.

  "I know a private clinic we can take him to," Max said, almost swerving into the path of a fire engine as it shot past in a red blur. "The big emergency wards are all going to be stretched past what they can handle, anyway. This madness is all over the city. And you can take it from me, the police aren't making it any better."

  "You a doctor, Max?" Mohr called out over the muted roar of the Packard's 356-cubic-inch straight-eight.

  "Hell, no. My family's in oil. You boys are with the Zone, right? Your friend there, too."

  "We are," Mohr confirmed, "but we don't know this guy. We just found him."

  Max took them out of the city, driving hard past mobs of drunken servicemen and small groups of angry-looking Mexican kids in ridiculously oversized suits. Half of Bunker Hill looked like it had been set ablaze, and they saw a huge mob at war with itself a few blocks down Third Street, near the tunnel entrance.

  At times, Mohr was sure they reached a hundred miles per hour, an insane speed, but Max stayed hunched over the wheel, all the way up into the hills. A motorcycle cop seemed to think about giving chase at one point, but the dispatchers must have had something better for him to do, because he peeled away almost immediately.

  "Those assholes are just letting this happen," said Max. "And you can bet there's a reason behind it. Did you hear? The same thing's happening in Chicago, with the blacks over there, of course. Mark my words, gentlemen, some baby-fascist like Anslinger or Hoover will get their grubby little mitts all over this."

  "Jeez, Max, you sound more like a Wobbly than an oil man," Mohr said, smiling for the first time since they'd left the theater.

  "Like I said, my family's in oil, Chief. But I'm not. I had enough of that in the Great War. Drove a St. Chamond tank with the French at Laffaux Mill. Damn thing turned over in a ditch and caught fire. I swear, I could still smell burning Frenchmen a year later. Never again, Chief. This car is my one indulgence. The rest of my life I try to live according to the teachings of Henry Thoreau. You know him?'
/>   "Another French tanker?"

  Max burst out laughing, and nearly put himself into a ditch again. "Not likely. Okay, we're here. Let's get your friend seen to."

  Max took them off the street and through a grand, gated entrance into what looked like a mansion.

  "It's a private facility," he said as they slid to a halt on the gravel driveway. "Half of Hollywood comes here to dry out, but they have a fully equipped emergency ward, too. You never know when Veronica Lake is going to turn up."

  "Uhm, do you think they'll let us in?" Flight Sergeant Lloyd asked doubtfully.

  "Don't worry, son. The only color that counts here is money. My family's probably built a whole wing onto this place over the years. They'll let us in, all right. Let's go."

  Two white-suited orderlies carrying a stretcher were hurrying toward them, down a sweeping staircase that led up into a blindingly white building. They didn't even break stride when Mohr and his motley band emerged from the car covered in blood.

  "Hello, Mr. Ambrose," they called out simultaneously.

  "Hello, Louis. Mandy," Max answered. "I wonder if you could see to my young friend here. He's in some distress."

  They relieved Mohr and Linthicum of their burden, placed the kid on the stretcher, and disappeared back up the stairs without another word. The chief didn't know what to say. He had never, in his whole life, been witness to such a thing. He'd always thought it was compulsory to be a complete asshole once you got to be rich enough to get away with it.

  But Max was already climbing back into the car, saying there'd be other people downtown who needed his help. "Are you coming?" he asked.

  "I guess so," said Eddie Mohr. His companions just nodded.

  29

  BERLIN, GERMANY