Weapons of Choice

by John Birmingham

  He sounded like a father soothing a distraught child.

  Julia watched the marine surgeon as though she were underwater. Everything seemed indistinct and slow.

  “Some things are meant to be,” Ivanov said gently.

  The little girl didn’t say anything, as far as they could tell. She clung to Captain Francois’s leg as the Japanese were pushed and kicked into motion. Duffy saw the women cringe as a group when the Japs drew near. The girl burrowed farther into the surgeon’s fatigues. The marines guarding the Japanese prisoners threw a look at their platoon leader. Chen held still for a few seconds, then nodded once and walked away.

  “Ms. Duffy,” said Ivanov. “Why don’t you turn off your recorder now?”

  Julia gave the Russian a flat look. She considered the wretched figures of the comfort women as they cringed in front of their former captors.

  She slowly reached up and cut the power to the minicam.

  The five prisoners were a study in contrasting styles. Two swaggered over. One seemed to have checked out completely. Another had to be kicked every step of the way. The commandant was subdued and shaking. As they stopped in front of Francois, the Japanese registered that fact that she was a woman. The commandant’s whole body began to tremble. Francois rubbed the girl’s head. One of the women leaned forward and spat.

  “Come on,” said Ivanov.

  They walked over until they were close enough that they could hear the conversation.

  “What’s your name, asshole?” the surgeon asked.

  The camp commander didn’t appear to understand.

  Captain Francois pulled the little girl’s head closer into her lap and covered her ear with one hand. With the other she unshipped her sidearm and fired one shot into the face of the prisoner farthest from her. A fountain of blood and brain matter erupted and the body dropped into the dust like a big sack of shit. Duffy’s heart skipped.

  The women jumped and one began to cry. The child uncurled from her hiding spot and walked over to inspect the corpse. She kicked the twitching body.

  “I asked you what your name is, you rapist motherfucker.”

  The commandant began to babble incoherently. He shut up only when Francois capped off another two of his men.

  The other Japanese man broke and ran. She shot him in the back. The impact lifted him right off his feet. He dropped in a heap a few yards away.

  “Excuse me,” said Francois. As she walked over to the man, who was trying to drag himself away, the girl followed close at her heels. Francois put a bullet into the base of the guard’s neck and he fell still.

  She took the girl’s hand and led her back to the main group. The commandant had fallen to his knees and was begging the marines to do something. They shared a smoke and ignored him. Duffy found herself glad that she’d turned off the minicam. She wasn’t sure why. It was a betrayal of everything she stood for as a journalist. But this was a moment beyond professional considerations.

  The women were recovering from their shock and had begun to crowd forward.

  “You’ll want to keep clear, ladies,” said the marine nearest them. “Give the doc some room.”

  The little girl ran forward and slapped the trembling Japanese commandant in the face. A few of the women shouted encouragement. Captain Francois advanced on him, slipping another clip into her pistol.

  “Honey,” she said to the girl, “stand aside.”

  The child did as she was told.

  “You know what, I don’t really give a fuck what your goddamn name is.”

  She snapped the gun up and fired three rounds into his groin. He spun into the ground, screaming and jamming his hands into the bloody ruin between his legs. Francois let him lie there for a while longer before she shot him in the head.

  She holstered her weapon and scooped up the girl. As they passed Duffy and Ivanov, Julia heard the surgeon whisper.

  “C’mon precious. Let’s get you a hot bath and some chocolate.”

  The child spoke for the first time.

  “I like chocolate.”

  As tears welled up in the surgeon’s eyes, she hugged the bony child to her.

  “Of course you do, darlin’. Everyone loves chocolate.”

  43

  USS HILLARY CLINTON, 1512 HOURS, 25 JUNE 1942

  When the news came, Kolhammer was in his stateroom and very much looking forward to the moment when the safety of this convoy was no longer his concern. He had nearly thirty-eight thousand liberated prisoners under his care and despite the best efforts of the medics, they were still dying at the rate of nearly a hundred a day. Captain Francois told him that was better than they could have expected, given the terrible conditions in the camps, but Kolhammer prayed that they wouldn’t lose too many more.

  He hadn’t spoken to the combat surgeon about the incident at Cabanatuan. There were rumors that things had gotten way out hand in there just after she’d turned up. But Kolhammer had personally spoken to half a dozen of the camp’s female inmates and none of them said they could recall anything untoward happening.

  He doubted that, but as long as nobody was complaining he didn’t see much point chasing up ghost stories. He had more pressing issues to worry about. They couldn’t put off the inevitable. He knew that when they returned to Pearl he was going to get hammered from all sides. He’d been able to push through the rescue mission because nobody yet knew what to do about the Multinational Force. But he understood that with each day that passed, the novelty and shock of their presence would recede and the politics of the situation would quickly assert themselves. Roosevelt’s commanders were already fighting among themselves, trying to gain control over his fleet. The British government was still demanding that their ships—and the Australians’, for that matter—be detached from the Multinational Force and placed under London’s control immediately. And it seemed that absolutely nobody among the contemporary Allies would consider just leaving the force intact.

  They still hadn’t located any of trace of the British and French ships Vanguard and Dessaix. And given the discovery of the Nuku on top of that mountain in New Guinea, and the loss of the Garrett in the Southern Ocean, he was a lot less sanguine about the prospects of their turning up safely or having been left behind.

  Kolhammer rubbed his tired eyes and wished that he could just crawl under the covers of his bed and wake up back home next to Marie. He still felt her absence like a hole in his heart every minute of the day. For all of the mind-bending complexities of the Transition, it was still the intimate, personal consequences that had the power to undo him. In his worst moments he suspected that if he alone could somehow sneak back to be with her, he might just abandon everything here. Duty, honor, friendship. Everything. Just for the chance to be with his wife. After all, this was not his war.

  He had an awful feeling that the blood and horror of the past weeks was going to be matched by a crude ugliness of spirit once it became obvious to the wider world that they were not going back where they came from. The murders of Anderson and Miyazaki seemed to lend credence to that fear.

  Francois had been in his ear about the investigation, or the “so-called” investigation, as she constantly referred to it. Nimitz had been more than helpful and sympathetic, but everything just seemed to jam up in the lower levels. He hadn’t met the detective who’d caught the case but he’d heard all about him from Francois. Buster Cherry was not a figure to inspire confidence. Kolhammer was deeply worried that the killing was only the start of their problems here.

  They were trapped without hope of getting home, but he had no idea what to do next. His intercom beeped and Commander Judge appeared on the screen, saving him the trouble of pondering the matter any further.

  “Admiral, it’s the Sutanto,” he said. “She’s turned up and she’s in trouble.”

  KRI SUTANTO, 1515 HOURS, 25 JUNE 1942

  The Japanese had conferred a new rank on Usama Damiri, in honor of his bravery and sacrifice in the service of the emperor. He wa
s now Captain Damiri of the Imperial Japanese Navy (Auxiliary Forces). He snickered at the idea as shells exploded harmlessly in the waters around him. The Sutanto plunged on through the rain of salt water, her little autocannon firing at her pursuers, which were two thousand meters abeam on both sides of the ship.

  Every time the deck gun spoke, it raised small buds of fire on the decks of the Japanese destroyers. Every time they returned fire, they missed. Damiri hoped they wouldn’t get lucky—or unlucky, as the case would be.

  As amused as he was by the insistence of the infidels that he accept the commission into their service, he couldn’t fault the courage of the skeleton crew on those three vessels. They knew they wouldn’t survive this mission, and yet they were all volunteers.

  “We have the Clinton on channel three, my sheik.”

  Damiri’s mouth was dry. Not with fear, of course, but with excitement and anticipation. They were so close now. If he could plunge a dagger into the heart of the infidel empire now, it might never arise to oppress the Dar al-Islam. He took a deep breath to steady himself before taking up the microphone. The other two martyrs on the bridge watched him expectantly. He invested his performance with as much ersatz desperation as he could muster.

  “Mayday mayday, this is the Sutanto under Acting Commander Damiri. Come in please, Clinton. We are under attack by pirate forces. We have casualties and require immediate assistance.”

  Damiri fed a random layer of electronic interference into the signal. It would help if they were scratching their heads at the other end. Typically, a woman’s voice answered.

  “Sutanto, this is Clinton. We have you on the arrays. Can you confirm you are under attack by three surface combatants?”

  Damiri flicked a series of switches to fire off the only two antiship missiles he’d been allowed to keep. They smoked off the rails and lanced away, homing in on the nearest ship. It was an old Wakatake-class destroyer, built in 1922. The contrails of white smoke arced over the waves and touched down on the forecastle of the doomed ship, exploding in a vivid flickering flash.

  “Only two now,” he radioed back.

  There was a moment’s delay.

  “Got that one, Sutanto, good shooting. Hang on tight. Cavalry’s on its way.”

  Usama Damiri smiled. He knew now that this would be his last day on earth.

  He made sure the radio microphone was dead before turning to his comrades.

  “Allahu akbar!” he cried.

  “God is great,” they shouted in unison.

  Commander Konoe coughed quietly into his handkerchief. It came away spotted with dark, glutinous blood. He folded the small square of cotton and dabbed at the sweat that threatened to run into his eyes, all the time staring at the spot where the Huyo had sacrificed herself. Nothing remained of the gallant destroyer beyond a patch of burning oil and some floating debris. He couldn’t quite believe how quickly she’d gone when the barbarian rockets had slammed into her.

  He only hoped that when his time came, he could acquit himself with such bravery.

  He leaned into the speaking tube. Every breath was a rasping torture. The sickness was advanced, and the exertions of the last days had not helped. Not that it mattered.

  “Fire the forward mounts,” he croaked.

  The 4.7-inch battery of the Karukaya barked and he nodded as the shells exploded harmlessly astern of the Sutanto. He couldn’t quite believe the Americans would be able to follow the course of this counterfeit duel from so far away. But the grand admiral himself had assured Konoe that it was so, and that his contribution to ultimate victory would not go unnoticed in the imperial palace.

  How proud his parents would be when they received a letter from the emperor’s own assistant private secretary, thanking them for their son’s sacrifice.

  He swelled with pleasure at the thought. Not just for himself, but for the other men on board. He very much wanted to make one last round of the ship, to speak with each of them before they died, but duty demanded his presence on the bridge. There were so few men to run the ship, to fire her weapons and fabricate the radio traffic that would attend such a dramatic chase. Nothing could be left to fate.

  “Fire,” he ordered again.

  A young midshipman rushed into the bridge with a note for Konoe, telling him that the American planes had arrived. They were so quick! The young boy was suffused with an almost saintly glow. Konoe experienced a fleeting sense of shame in the face of the middie’s piety. The commander had volunteered for this mission because he had less than six months to live anyway. The wasting illness that had taken his mother and older brothers was almost done with him, too. But this youngster had willingly thrown himself into the teeth of the enemy.

  “Good work, Sato!”

  The midshipman straightened himself up and snapped out a parade-ground salute.

  Konoe returned the gesture. Then he died.

  “Aircraft inbound, my sheik, bearing two-three-one thirty-two kilometers out. Raptors, judging from their speed.”

  Damiri thanked the young petty officer.

  It would not be long now.

  Static flared on the radio and a woman’s voice crackled from the torn fabric of the speaker box.

  “Sutanto, Sutanto, this is Flight Lieutenant Anna Torres off the USS Hillary Clinton. We have you on visual. Commencing payload run.”

  “Hurry up Clinton, hurry please. We are running low on ammunition.” Damiri babbled, hoping that he wasn’t overplaying the act.

  “Be cool Sutanto. The bad guys are toast.”

  Damiri rolled his eyes and smiled at his comrades on the bridge. They all turned binoculars on the remaining Japanese ships, which were performing beautifully. Their guns fired ceaselessly, raising geysers of water all around the Indonesian vessel.

  Damiri felt compelled to wish them all the best in Hell.

  But he didn’t pick up the radio. There would have been no point.

  The explosion that tore up the nearest destroyer was so violent that he shivered in the face of it. He’d watched the dark, hypersonic bolt as it skimmed across the waves and speared into the Karukaya. But he hadn’t been ready for the titanic eruption that followed. Even in bright sunshine the flash of the blast dazzled and partly blinded him. Somebody cried out.

  “Allahu akbar!”

  The other Japanese destroyer perished in identical fashion, ripped apart about three thousand meters off the port side. A few seconds later Damiri distinctly heard the tinkle and clatter of metal rain on the steel cladding of the Sutanto.

  He gestured for the others to shut up and composed himself before keying the radio mike.

  “Thank you Clinton. Thank you.”

  The dark, predatory blur of a F-22 streaked past about six hundred meters away.

  “Buy me a beer back in Pearl, Sutanto. We’ve got some tall tales for you.”

  The fighter rolled over and accelerated away. Apart from two thick clouds of dark oil smoke, almost nothing remained of the Japanese ships.

  The speakers crackled into life again.

  “Sutanto, this is the Clinton. Please advise us of your status.”

  Damiri grinned.

  “We’re alive, Clinton! But we don’t know what’s happened. Our communications are down, our GPS is gone, we can’t raise anyone. And these pirates!”

  A new voice, masculine, broke in over his chatter.

  “Sutanto, this is Admiral Kolhammer. Please advise us of casualties at your end.”

  Damiri raised his eyebrows. The infidel leader himself. Any anxiety he had felt before was gone now. He gazed contently out over the long swell of the western Pacific.

  “Admiral Kolhammer, sir. I am Sub-Lieutenant Damiri, acting commander of the Sutanto. Captain Djuanda is dead. Many of the officers are dead or injured. We have eighteen killed and twelve badly wounded. Over.”

  Kolhammer’s voice growled out of the speakers.

  “Can you care for your own casualties, Ensign? I’m afraid we have a situation here,
too. There’s little point sending medevac out to you. Our own facilities are already swamped. Over.”

  Damiri didn’t want to press too hard. The last thing he wanted was to have Americans coming aboard now. But he had to play for real, too.

  “We’ll probably lose two or three men in the next few hours, sir. Over.”

  “I’m sorry about that, Damiri, but you have to try to hold on. We just don’t have the facilities.”

  Damiri rolled his eyes. That was so like them.

  “Acknowledged,” he said, not needing to fake the hint of bitterness in his voice.

  “We’ll be with you in five hours, Sutanto. And you’ll have air cover for all of that time.”

  “Thank you, Clinton,” said Damiri. It was an effort to squeeze the words out.

  Was there a waking hour in the last month when she hadn’t been confronted by legions of the doomed? Captain Francois couldn’t recall one. From the moment she’d regained consciousness after the Transition she’d seemed to be running from one casualty to the next, an endless line of them stretching out to a vanishing point somewhere in her future.

  Her fingers twitched as she half considered dialing up another shot of stimulant from her thoracic implants. But she stayed her hand. The ward was full of patients, and most of them were not combat casualties. The liberated prisoners needed treatment for starvation, suppurating jungle ulcers, malaria, fungal infections, and a hundred minor aftereffects of captivity. But unlike the rocket rush of madness that had blown through this place after Midway, these patients died more slowly and, she supposed, more comfortably. Dozens of medical staffers moved among the beds. They adjusted drips, changed dressings and bedpans, administered medicine and vitamin shots.

  She was losing patients every day, seventy-six of them since she’d come on shift eighteen hours ago. But by the dismal math of her profession, that wasn’t bad. She knew that were it not for the facilities available throughout the modern ships of the task force, hundreds more would succumb every day. She examined her heart and found it to be scabbed over with scar tissue and barely pushing blood through her veins.