Weapons of choice aot-1

by John Birmingham

  "Okri, you get your ass back to town. Call our guys first. When they got their shit together, let them call the local yokels."

  Private Okri, who could run the legs off the rest of the squad, nodded and took off, being careful not to intrude into the invisible box Sergeant Hardy had drawn around the scene.

  USS KANDAHAR, PEARL HARBOR, 0612 HOURS, 9 JUNE 1942

  Captain Francois and Colonel Jones regarded the body with a mix of sadness and disgusted anger. Second Lieutenant Myron Byers had killed himself with a single shot through the temple. The wall behind his body was still sticky with blood and matted hair. A letter, a photograph, and a wedding ring lay together in a ziplock bag on a fold-down bedside shelf. The lieutenant and his wife of eight months smiled out of the photo. It had been taken on their honeymoon.

  The brief note apologized for the mess in the cabin and asked that his wife's family on her maternal grandmother's side be given the ring, the photograph, and all of his personal items. They were to keep his belongings in trust for her until her eighteenth birthday, many decades away. His savings were to be invested and held in trust for her until that time, as well.

  "Jesus, what a fucking mess," Jones said, despondently.

  Francois knew he was talking about the request, not the cleanup job.

  "You gonna do it?" she asked.

  "It's a man's dying wish," he said. He fell quiet for a few seconds. "I should have been paying more attention, seen this coming."

  Captain Francois rubbed her burning eyes with the heel of one palm.

  "Don't beat yourself up, Colonel," she said. "He won't be that last one we lose this way."

  Jones had already accepted as much. He hadn't had time to think much of his own wife and family. There was just so much to do, although, if truth were known, he was probably avoiding the issue. There had been one or two quiet moments since Midway, but he hadn't sat down by himself to think through the personal implications of the Transition. If they were stuck here, he'd never see Monique or his niece again. It neatly inverted the burden of separation they always felt when he was away on active duty. Now he got to share in their sense of loss, and dread.

  "Colonel?"

  He returned from the unhappy line of thought. "I'm sorry, Captain. You were saying?"

  "I said we might want to think about screening our personnel for acute depression. People are going to respond differently, but some will want to check out, like the lieutenant here. He's not the first, you know."

  That surprised Jones. He leaned over, plucked the ziplock bag up between the tips of his fingers, and motioned Francois out of the cabin. She shut the door behind them.

  "You've had more suicides?" he asked in a low voice.

  "Four," said the combat surgeon. "This is the first on the Kandahar. Oddly enough, they've all been male so far, even though we've got about five hundred mothers serving on ships throughout the task force. You'd think this would have hit them the hardest."

  "What, you're saying women miss their kids more? That sounds awfully old-fashioned, Doctor."

  "Fucking A, that's what I'm saying, Colonel. And it's true."

  Jones was mildly surprised by her fervor, but he chose not to argue with her, even though just that morning he'd found a young marine sobbing on the shoulder of a female petty officer. Jones learned that the man's wife had given birth to a son just a few weeks before the ship had left for East Timor.

  On the other hand, he knew, not everybody was upset by their circumstances. He was aware of a pilot on the Clinton who'd broken out in a huge wolfish grin when he realized he'd escaped three ex-wives and one fat, famously unsympathetic Chechen bookie named Anxious Stan, to whom he owed about forty grand.

  And some lucky individuals, he guessed, were probably too stupid to comprehend the situation at all. They'd react as they did to all the important events in their lives, by continuing to find undiluted enjoyment in eating, sleeping, and evacuating their bowels whenever the opportunity presented itself.

  "So, how serious do you think it could be," he asked. "We're living in a heavily armed village here, Doc. Wouldn't do to have the natives go weird on us."

  Francois took her time with the question, and he knew why. Under normal circumstances, most of the twelve thousand men and women in the task force understood that they might be injured, disfigured, or even killed while on duty. They knew, too, that there was always a fair chance that they'd never see or hold their loved ones again. But even the combat veterans, always the most fatalistic types, knew that war spares many more than it takes. And the cherries naively thought it would all happen to somebody else.

  Jones doubted anyone really knew what the circumstances in which they now found themselves meant.

  "Depression's not something a biochip will pick up," she said finally. "I can't scan for it, but we've got to figure it'll be there. Everyone's going to fit somewhere along the spectrum, from mildly ticked off to thoroughly suicidal. But how that will manifest, I can't tell you, Colonel. I'd say there'll be a few incidents over the next week or two, as everyone adjusts. But I'd be hopeful that most would adjust, and pretty well, too. These aren't normal people. They accepted the prospect of their own deaths when they signed up. I guess we'll see."

  Jones weighed the plastic bag in his hands. It felt very light to be the sum trace of a man's life.

  "It's not death, though, is it?" he muttered. "More like exile."

  A couple of exhausted seamen arrived from the mortuary to clean out the cabin. Francois gave them their instructions before pushing off back to the hospital. She was due to fit an artificial heart in eight hours and wanted to check on the patient's preparation. Jones fell in beside her.

  "Here's a question, Colonel," she said. "How are you going to get the money to his family?"

  "Dunno, Doc. Hadn't really thought that one through. Now you mention it, I can't exactly authorize a Net transfer."

  "No net."

  "Right."

  "Another question, seeing as how you got so much time on your hands. Even if you find a bank to deposit the money in, how much do you actually put in? One of your platoon leaders probably pulls down as much a year as President Roosevelt did in nineteen forty-two. Did you think of that?"

  Jones felt a little peeved.

  "No, Doc. But thank you so very much for pointing it out."

  "Well, it raises more than a few questions, don't you think? If we're trapped here. Like, who pays our bills and wages? You've got marines going ashore in Honolulu for a few hours' liberty tomorrow. How are they going to buy a beer? Amex credit stick?"

  "Damn. I've got no idea."

  Before Francois could entangle him any further his flexipad began to beep. So did hers. They excused each other and took the calls.

  Both swore at exactly the same moment.

  Their eyes locked and they knew they were dealing with the same issue.

  "Secure the site," said Jones in a flat voice. "I'll be there ASAP."

  Francois signed off and gave Jones a challenging look.

  "I'm going, too. I worked Srebrenica and Denpasar for the UN. I'm crime scene qualified."

  Jones held up his open palms.

  "I'm not standing in your way, Doc."

  The admiral's stateroom was so much larger than her cabin back on the Trident that Halabi felt lost in it. She'd tried to convince Kolhammer she could just as easily act as task force commander from her own ship, but he'd insisted she work from the Clinton during his absence. He wanted the locals to give her the respect she was due, and nothing demanded respect like 130,000 tonnes of fusion-powered supercarrier. Even if it was a little scratched and dented.

  She'd enjoyed the luxurious surrounds for about thirty seconds, until she realized how close she was to the flight deck and how poorly insulated were Kolhammer's quarters; not that she was going to get a lot of sleep while he was away. The giant flatscreen on his desk was completely blocked out with files flagged for her immediate attention. Until she muted the speakers,
a tone announced the arrival of a new "highest priority" e-mail every few seconds, and her schedule apparently contained more meetings than the day had minutes. Her paternal grandmother had a saying that seemed appropriate.

  "Let's not try and eat the elephant in one whole bite," Halabi muttered to herself.

  She was about to open a report detailing distribution of the fleet's remaining war stocks when a window opened on the screen, displaying the rather drawn features of Captain Margie Francois.

  Halabi was on site, grimly shaking hands with the combat surgeon twenty-five minutes later.

  The scene looked chaotic from the air, with helicopters, Humvees, Honolulu PD cars, old-fashioned jeeps, and at least a hundred or more individuals all buzzing around the victims. When she touched down and exited the chopper, Halabi got an even stronger sense of barely controlled mayhem. A small group of Colonel Jones's marines was butting heads with the local police and MPs, trying to keep them from stomping all over the crime scene. Jones himself stood as still and silent as a black granite obelisk while a heavyset white man in a bad suit turned beet red, screaming and gesticulating at him.

  "What the hell is going on?" the acting task force commander asked.

  "Nothing good," said Francois. She took Halabi by the arm and walked her away a little. "One of our platoons was out on a run this morning when they found the bodies, and they called us before the locals. Well, of course, Honolulu PD's tear-assing around with an atomic wedgie over that and…"

  Halabi's puzzlement must have been written all over her face, because Francois backed and filled for the Englishwoman.

  "They've got their knickers in a twist," she explained.

  "Oh right. Thanks."

  It was going to be a scorching hot day. Halabi noticed that even at so early an hour she didn't cast much of a shadow. She could hear another siren approaching, possibly two, as the marine went on. Francois didn't seem to care who overheard her.

  "We can't have these dumbass crackers all over our crime scene," she complained, sweeping a hand in the general direction of the local authorities. "Granted we're not a homicide squad, but we've got a lot of expertise in war crimes investigation and we sure as hell got better procedures and equipment. These guys don't even know what DNA is. You gotta get them to step back, Captain. Let us take care of our people."

  Halabi ran her eyes over the beach again. A hundred meters away Jones was still doing his stone face. The suit was still screeching at him and flapping his arms like a giant flightless bird. The marines and the cops and military police were getting even more muscular with each other.

  And the corpses of Captain Daytona Anderson and Sub-Lieutenant Maseo Miyazaki had begun to stiffen with rigor mortis.

  "What were they doing out here?" the British officer asked.

  Francois squinted at the bodies. She shrugged.

  "We don't even know they got whacked out here. Could have been hit in town and dumped. There's a team from the War Crimes Unit coming over to work the grid."

  "Was it working out, having Anderson and her people on the Siranui?"

  Francois shrugged again. It seemed to be a compulsive gesture with her this morning.

  "Far as I know, but I couldn't tell you for sure. I wasn't there. But I didn't hear anything. Why? Did you?"

  Halabi shook her head. "No. Just wondering."

  "Well, they had good reason to be together," said Francois. "It can't have been easy, integrating the two crews. Language difficulties and so on. If I had to take a guess, I'd say they were having a drink at the Moana, probably just sorting some shit that was better handled through back channels. Maybe they went for a walk. I doubt they'd have strayed too far, though. We're not encouraging any of our people to mix it up with the locals yet."

  "Looks like they did," said Halabi.

  "Maybe," the marine surgeon agreed. "But it's all guesswork and that's all it's ever going to be if we don't quarantine this site and let the CSI team go to work."

  Halabi nodded. She checked her watch.

  "Okay. I'll call Nimitz. I'm sure he can sort out the turf war. And then I'd better see if I can raise Kolhammer, but I'll be buggered if we can contact him so far. I'll tell you what, Captain, I'd sell my arse for just one little satellite."

  20

  GORMON FIELD, LOS ANGELES COUNTY, 0406 HOURS, 9 JUNE 1942

  A cold, unseasonable wind blew down off the California mountains, across the howling wastes of saltbush and hardscrabble. Outside the corrugated iron arch of the Quonset hut, grit hissed through the air and dead leaves spattered against windows covered with heavy blackout curtains. Dust devils swirled across the new concrete tarmac. A single oil lamp lit the knot of men gathered in the Spartan setting.

  A rifle squad stood at ease at the rear of the room, separated from two loose knots of men in uniform and civilian clothes at the other end. The two groups coalesced around a frail figure in a wheelchair. He had a blanket draped over his legs and was forced to shoo off a young officer who unwisely attempted to wrap another around his shoulders. An older man, one of the civilians, detached himself from the conversation he'd been caught up in and wandered over to the wheelchair. He sported a shock of white hair, and his deeply lined face had worn a perpetually harassed and haunted expression for years. His wife had died not long ago, but that wasn't what lay behind his melancholy. He hadn't laughed freely since fleeing from Germany in 1933.

  He affected a cheeky smile now, however, and offered up a book of matches.

  "Mr. President. Do you need a light?"

  "Why, thank you, Professor. I wouldn't have thought it would take a genius to work that out," said Franklin Delano Roosevelt, throwing a severe glance at his disapproving aide, the one with the blanket.

  As Albert Einstein struck a match and leaned in to light the Camel at the end of FDR's long black holder, a distant roar reached them, like a single bass note from a thunderstorm, drawn out for an impossible length of time.

  "They're here," said Einstein, as the tobacco caught light and the president took in a deep draft of smoke.

  "I want to see this," FDR declared.

  His aide hurried forward.

  "Mr. President, I don't think-"

  "Just push me to the door," snapped Roosevelt. "I want to see these rocket planes."

  He stubbed out his cigarette with a show of annoyance.

  "There! You can wrap me up like a granny, if that makes you feel better. But I'm going to see these things with my own two eyes."

  He clamped the cigarette holder back between his teeth. The broken, stubbed-out butt, still stuck in the end, lent him a slightly crazed air as he gripped the wheels of his chair and began to push himself toward the flimsy wooden door of the hut. Half a dozen military men moved to help, but Einstein was closer than any of them. He took the handles of the chair and leaned into it.

  "Let's go see what the future brings, Mr. President."

  A few of the civilians, scientific advisers for the most part, managed to scramble out into the biting wind before Einstein parked the president's chair in the doorway, effectively bottling up everyone behind them. An undignified scramble for position took place, with Brigadier General Eisenhower and Admiral King grabbing the best spots on either side of Einstein. The rest either gathered at two small windows or tried to see over the shoulders of the men jammed in the entryway.

  Shivering slightly under his blankets, but determined not to show it, the president leaned forward until he could make out the end of the runway. An Army Air Force colonel had briefed him about the rush job to prepare the landing strip. It was three times longer than the main runway at Muroc, he'd said. It seemed a hell of a wasteful thing to Roosevelt, all that extra cement and hard work for a couple of planes. But it surely wasn't the craziest thing he'd heard in the last week.

  No, that had to have been the moment when an ashen-faced navy commander had appeared to tell him what had happened at Midway. Roosevelt shook his head at the memory as he spotted flashing red-and-
white lights descending from the northwest.

  "Hell's bells, Turtletaub," he'd yelled out at the unfortunate officer just a week earlier. "What madness is this? Next you'll be telling me space lizards have landed."

  Well, he'd had to apologize to the young man later, hadn't he? It turned out the world had flipped completely off-balance, and now here he was, stuck out in the California desert, waiting to meet men from the future.

  Damn it all but he needed a cigarette.

  "Interesting," said Einstein as twin spikes of blue-white flame speared from the tail of the dartlike craft as it roared down out of the night sky and past the hut at a seemingly breakneck speed. "Those are the jets they told us of, Mr. President."

  The aircraft seemed like death incarnate to Roosevelt. Every line seemed to threaten violence. More than a few of the onlookers gasped like children at a fireworks display, awed by the screaming passage of the sleek, lethal craft.

  As the president wondered whether they'd built a long enough runway, parachutes unfurled behind the monster.

  Another plane just like the first descended from the night sky. Its very appearance suggested something deadly, like a flashing blade or a bullet. Blinking lights gave away the position of yet another two aircraft banked up behind them. A familiar drone gradually emerged from beneath the monstrous thunder of the rocket planes.

  "Prop-driven," said Admiral King. "I guess they don't-"

  He never finished the sentence, stunned as he was by the appearance of the third aircraft. It looked a lot more conventional than the first two, a bit like a Grumman Goose, or even a Catalina, at a stretch. But in contrast with the windswept lines of the rocket planes, this lumbering barge sat underneath something that looked like a giant cigar welded to a couple of struts sticking out of the fuselage. It droned past without deploying chutes, and then the last plane touched down. It was the least prepossessing of the three.

  "Looks like a transporter," said someone behind Roosevelt. He didn't recognize the voice.

  One of the civilians huddled in the small group out in front of the hut turned around with his hands jammed deep in his duffel coat.