Final impact aot-3

by John Birmingham

  The system Combat Optics had settled on was a variant on the early Paveway bomb series-for which a relatively new contemporary company known as Texas Instruments was being paid a 5 percent royalty in a deal hammered out by Maria O’Brien. The early Paveways had the benefit of being simple, rugged, and well within the capability of local industry to manufacture, given engineering guidance by the principles of Combat Optics.

  So as Lieutenant Anna Torres hauled her Skyhawk jet fighter around, the designator pod lit up and threw a beam of coherent light down onto the cliff face where the Force Recon team had discovered the launch tubes. Torres laid her “sparkle” on a point chosen by the Clinton’s Combat Intelligence as the most likely location for the opening of the shaft, given the data provided by Denny’s patrol before they were wiped out.

  Three Penetrators whistled down through the humid topical air. Pop-out fins adjusted the flight path to keep the wobbling ordnance on course. For Torres, who was used to fire-and-forget systems, it was a nerve-racking business trying to fly the jet, hold the laser on target, and maintain enough situational awareness to avoid a midair collision.

  A voice crackled in her headset. “We got flak.”

  “We’re on it,” another replied.

  She heard a few distant booms and tried to ignore them. Suppressing ground fire wasn’t her department. She had to hold the target…

  …hold the target…hold the target…

  Three blurs flashed across the low-res black-and-white screen she was using to guide the bomb in. Two large puffs of smoke and a single smaller one marked the impact point.

  Then, a split second later, the side of the mountain blew out.

  The footage from the mission recon bird-an A-4 fitted out with 21C battle-cams, a small lattice memory cache, and an old digital transmitter-arrived on screen in the Clinton’s CIC via relay from the Hawkeye a few minutes later. Kolhammer could hear cheering outside the CIC where the vision was playing on screens throughout the ship. The reaction in the Combat Center was subdued by comparison, more of a buzz than an outbreak of whoopin’ and hollerin’.

  It was immediately clear that the bombing run had been a success: the replay showed massive secondary explosions being set off in the wake of the primary blast. Damage analysts on both the Clinton and the Enterprise were already picking the footage apart, but Kolhammer didn’t need to know much more. Half the mountain had blown out. Other scenes ran on multiple screens: strings of high-explosive warheads dropping into what looked like raw jungle, only to detonate, setting off further explosions that bespoke the presence of fuel, ammunition, and more planes-the “half-buried” bunkers Denny had identified.

  On two smaller, flatter islands the Clinton’s second and third Skyhawk squadrons hammered away at more facilities. On one atoll, another Force Recon team called in and adjusted the strikes from a hiding point. The third unit had called in that they were under attack from Japanese ground forces, and nothing had been heard from them since.

  “Enterprise reports they’re launching now, Admiral.”

  “Thank you,” Kolhammer said.

  The islands were now in range of the older, prop-driven attack planes like Spruance’s Skyraiders. Where the A-4s had gone in with precision strikes, the Skyraiders were simply tasked with smashing flat anything left standing.

  “Extraction flights lifting off the Kandahar, sir.”

  Kolhammer grunted in acknowledgment. Maybe Lonesome’s guys could grab up that last ’temp unit. If they couldn’t, nobody else could.

  31

  D-DAY + 39. 12 JUNE 1944. 2310 HOURS.

  HIJMS YAMATO, SEA OF OKHOTSK.

  Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto paused, eyes closed, to breathe in the delicate scent of the tea. There was little to distract him from the brief moment of stolen pleasure. The bridge of his flagship was quiet and orderly as the helmsman held station at the center of the fleet lying off Hokkaido.

  The giant battleship scarcely moved on the light southeasterly swell that rolled away to break softly upon the shore of the large island miles off to port. His surviving carriers rode the same gentle motion of the sea around her. A flight of Zeros, rare radar-equipped night fighters, climbed slowly into the west to patrol the starlit skies above the ruins of the Russian armada.

  Yamato’s sister ship, Musashi, was silhouetted by a quarter moon that bathed the enormous battle wagon in a soft, silver glow. The rest of the Combined Fleet’s big gun platforms-the Kongo, Nagato, and Yamashiro-were out of his line of sight, but the evidence of their work lay all around. Soviet naval power had been smashed by the warrior spirit of the Thunder Gods.

  A score of destroyers churned up the waters, alert to the possibility that even one American or Russian submarine might sneak in among the resting giants on a suicide mission. As Yamamoto admired the sight and raised the thin porcelain cup again to his lips, he could only marvel at the fates that had placed him here.

  When the general staff had dispatched him to attack the Americans in their lair at Pearl Harbor, so long ago, he had considered it madness. There was no way to strike at the barbarians’ production centers, and he knew it would only be a matter of time before the weight of America’s industrial base was brought to bear against his country.

  Even then he had underestimated his enemy’s ability to recover-and later, to exploit the windfall of the Emergence. Many of his colleagues still blamed the time travelers for all the evils that had befallen them since mid-1942.

  But Yamamoto knew better. It wasn’t the Siranui or the Clinton or even that damnable submarine the Havoc that was to blame for the eclipse of Japan. The blame lay squarely with Japan herself. Where were her guided missile destroyers? Where were her antisubmarine helicopters?

  Or jet fighters, or hovercraft? The Americans and their allies had responded to the Emergence with much greater speed and flexibility and even more ruthlessness than anybody in the empire or the Third Reich. This wasn’t merely a facet of their industrial capacity. There was something in the way they viewed the world, something about how they approached war itself, that made them infinitely more daunting an opponent than even he had suspected.

  No, they were not weak and corrupt, as they had appeared to be all through the 1930s. When finally aroused, they had proven utterly formidable, and they made war without remorse or honor. Their bombers had burned half of Germany to ash and bones, and would soon do the same thing to Japan. Their soldiers, sailors, and airmen had fought just as valiantly as his own, and increasingly they did so with weapons he knew would be completely beyond the capability of his own countrymen to produce.

  They were going to win, of that there could be no doubt. The admiral finished his tea and passed the cup to an orderly, who silently bore it away. He wished to sit quietly, for just a minute longer, admiring the vista of the fleet that stretched out around him. To watch the moon’s rays caressing the barrels of the Yamato’s guns. It was a fine and stirring sight. If only it could be an omen, of a bright future beyond war’s end.

  For the end was close now.

  Had there been another path he might have taken? Some decision made-or not made-that might have changed everything?

  Perhaps. Perhaps not. Above all else, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto was a warrior, and no matter what he would have prosecuted this conflict to the last, even if the cause was hopeless. But that did not free him of regrets. He no longer entertained the hope that Japan would survive this conflict in anything like her current form.

  Too many mothers grieved, he knew. Too many fathers faced the end of their lives without a proper heir. Too many of his own had been committed to the deep. How many more, he wondered, had yet to die?

  And to what end? Was his country fated to be enslaved by the godless Stalinists? Would it be better to surrender to the Americans, to throw themselves on the mercy of people they had attacked without warning, and fought without pity? Would Roosevelt and his allies even accept an unconditional surrender at this point? The Australian prime minister seemed int
erested in nothing less than the annihilation of the Japanese people, which was understandable, given the numbers of his own citizens who had been murdered by General Homma’s forces. And Roosevelt had pledged to levy the most terrible of punishments on Nippon for the actions of Hidaka and his men in Hawaii. Less temperate voices in the United States had even called for the entirety of the Home Islands to burn inside an atomic firestorm, leaving nothing but fused glass from the northernmost tip of Hokkaido to the southern shores of Kyushu.

  It was the sort of thing he might expect of Adolf Hitler. Yamamoto scowled at the thought of the fuhrer, whom he had met twice, and whom he had regarded as little more than a sentient beast. He was convinced that even if they had triumphed over the Allies, it would only have been a precursor to yet another global war. There was madness in the hearts of the Nazis, and they would never be satisfied with a world that was not completely remade in their own image. Could there be any question that Hitler, or Himmler, or whoever came after them, would have turned on their erstwhile partners in the end?

  None at all, in his mind.

  Yamamoto realized with an irritated frown that his mood had soured even further at the thought of the hideous little German and his warlord cabal. It might be time to get on with the work of the day-another grinding series of planning meetings to shore up the defenses of the Home Islands against the coming storm. There would be no time now to return to the Marianas.

  They would fall.

  He levered himself to his feet just as a young sublieutenant called out. “We have an incoming air strike from Vladivostok at the edge of our radar field, Admiral. MiG-Fifteens.”

  Yamamoto sighed inwardly. “Have the fleet withdraw beyond Kunashir, and prepare to receive the attack,” he replied. “Thus we will be at the very edge of their combat range when they arrive. Coordinate the air defense net from here, and launch the rest of our night fighters in twenty minutes at-” He checked the clock. “-twenty-three thirty hours.”

  “Yes, sir,” the young officer barked.

  If nothing else, the men’s morale was high, which was only to be expected. They had fought a great battle against a superior foe, and had comprehensively bested him. The situation on Hokkaido itself was not nearly so clear-cut, however. The Soviets still had significant forces intact, and although they were now cut off from reinforcement, they were going to be very difficult to defeat.

  Already the defense of the Home Islands had been thrown into disarray by the Communists’ surprise attack. Yamamoto wasn’t supposed to be here. He was supposed to be protecting the Marianas. Some of the army divisions now fighting on Hokkaido were supposed to be preparing for the defense of Guam.

  The wreckage of the Soviet Pacific Fleet was an apt metaphor for his own personal feelings, Yamamoto realized. As the Yamato made steam for the waters of the northwest Pacific, it left behind a sea of bobbing, burning flotsam. His men had achieved something akin to a miracle here, yet the grand admiral felt burned out and cast adrift. He wondered whether anyone would even remember the feats performed today by the Imperial Japanese Navy, in the Battle of Okhotsk.

  Probably not, if the Bolsheviks prevailed.

  Perhaps, if the Allies won.

  A lieutenant appeared at his elbow with a folded piece of paper. “A message, sir. From Admiral Onishi.”

  Yamamoto took the note and read it in silence. His face remained a stone mask, but inside, as he absorbed the information the communique contained, he felt as though he were in free fall. Tumbling end over end toward oblivion.

  No, there would be no repeat of the success of the Ohka raid. Onishi had just sent word, coded via a onetime pad.

  Spruance and Kolhammer had destroyed the hidden bases from which his special attack forces would have struck at them.

  The Marianas lay open and defenseless.

  D-DAY + 40. 13 JUNE 1944. 0314 HOURS.

  HMAS HAVOC, PACIFIC AREA OF OPERATIONS.

  “Firing solutions laid in, Captain. We have four target locks. Yamato, Musashi, and two unidentified cruisers.”

  “Thank you, weapons. Keep ’em locked up, but hold fire for now.”

  Jane Willet stood with her arms folded, staring at the flat-panel display on which she could see at least nine major surface combatants. Two were burning brightly amidships, hours after the Soviet air attack out of Vladivostok, but it remained to be seen whether the damage they’d taken was fatal. The Havoc’s CI had drawn light blue boxes around them. No sense wasting a perfectly good torpedo on a dying ship.

  Flashing red target boxes lay around four of their sister ships. Two of them were behemoths-the battleships Yamato and Musashi. Two were flattops.

  More likely than not Grand Admiral Isoroku Yamamato sailed on the Yamato. Was he on the bridge right now? There…in the lower left-hand corner of the screen? She could pick it out quite easily in both infrared and LLAMPs mode.

  A couple of years ago she would have been able to put a hypersonic combat mace through the blast windows and drop it into his lap from six hundred klicks away. If she wanted to take him down this morning, though, things would have to get a lot more intimate. The Havoc’s retrofitted ADCAP torpedoes only had a range of six thousand meters. She’d have to go in under the destroyer screen to launch.

  It wasn’t a particularly daunting prospect, really. Most likely, the Japanese wouldn’t even know she was there until the warheads went off.

  Sitting thirty-five kilometers away, stalking her prey via the Big Eye drones hovering far above the enemy, Willet rubbed at her hot, tired eyes and weighed the options. The Japanese had done reasonably well at beating off the MiG-15s that had shown up a few hours back. According to the Big Eye sensors, they had controlled their fire using a fleetwide radar system similar to the Siemens models the Germans had been deploying with their triple-A batteries.

  But for now the question was, what was she going to do?

  The last of Japan’s heavy hitters were sitting squarely within her crosshairs. As weakened as she felt without her original armory to call on, she still had more than enough firepower to rip the heart out of the Imperial Japanese Navy, or what was left of it.

  Whether or not it would be wise to do so was another matter.

  Willet stared at the screen where the enemy ships appeared to be heading south again. A few feet to the left was another display, wherein the land battle for Hokkaido continued. The Soviets had stopped their advance and appeared to be digging in, awaiting resupply that would now probably never come-certainly not by sea, anyway. Did the Sovs have the capacity to build an air bridge to the island?

  Nobody knew.

  Nobody knew much at all about their capabilities. That the Soviets had built up their Pacific fleet over the last two years came as no surprise to anyone. The extent to which they had done so, however, came as a shock. As did the MiGs, the missile boats, the electronics systems. And the biggie, of course-that fucking nuke they’d busted on Lodz. What other nasty little surprises lay in store? With no intel coverage coming out of the USSR, she couldn’t say.

  But while the full extent of Stalin’s capabilities might remain obscure, his intentions were not. Not to anyone with access to even a modest historical archive.

  “Comm,” she said, “better dial up Fleetnet. See if you can get Spruance and Kolhammer for me. I think I’m gonna kick this one upstairs.”

  “Excuse me, sir. You’re needed online.”

  Kolhammer had been dreaming, pleasantly, of his wife. Marie had traveled to Germany to meet him when he flew into Ramstein, after his stint as the UN administrator in Chechnya. They’d flown straight out to Italy and enjoyed four wonderful weeks together in Rome, staying in a small penzione off Piazza Navona.

  He’d been dreaming of a cafй where they’d had a late breakfast every morning in the local style. A coffee, a pastry, and a look around. Kolhammer awoke from the memory, lying fully clothed on the couch in his quarters. He hadn’t even made it into bed.

  “Coffee, sir. NATO standard.”


  “Thanks, Paterson,” he rasped, his voice thick with sleep. “Online you said?”

  “On the screen at your desk, sir. Captain Willet and Admiral Spruance.”

  “Okay. How long did I nap?”

  “Hour and a half, sir.”

  He dragged himself up and over to his desk. Marie was smiling out of the photo he always kept there, and in his disoriented, half-waking state, he thought for just a moment that when he was finished he might be able to sneak down to the cafй with her.

  Damn.

  The image of the Australian submariner and another of his task force commanders brought him back to reality with an unpleasant tug. “You’ll have to excuse me,” he said. “I was stacking a few Z’s.”

  “Me, too,” Spruance grunted.

  “My apologies, gentlemen,” said Captain Willet, who looked disconcertingly wide awake, “but you need to be in on this. I’m trailing the Japanese Combined Fleet, away from the Kurils. They’re withdrawing south after finishing off the last of Yumashev’s guys. I have target locks on a couple of carriers and Yamamoto’s big gunboats. The Yamato and Musashi. I have enough warshots to take them down, and probably to sort out the rest of his capital ships, too. But…”

  In the window on Kolhammer’s fifty-eight-centimeter flatscreen, Jane Willet shrugged and raised her hands.