Final Impact (43 page)

“Well?” growled Stalin. “Good news, I hope.”

“I…I’m sorry, Comrade General Secretary,” said Beria. “No. It is not good news. A Japanese carrier has launched over a hundred suicide planes at the Kamchatka facility. Our MiGs shot down most of them. But nine made it through. Three of them dived into the reactor building. It has been destroyed. Most of the facility has been destroyed.”

For once, Stalin surprised him. Rather than exploding he simply shook his head, like a man who has just seen a dancing two-headed dog. “But how? How did they get near enough? Was the navy not patrolling those waters? Timoshenko?”

The defense minister looked aghast. “Most of our modern ships were deployed to the Kuril campaign. But we did leave some advanced destroyers in place.”

“Not enough,” said Beria. “They’re gone, too.”

“It must be the Americans,” said Molotov, the foreign minister. “They must have had a hand in this. Just as they let the fascists escape from Western Europe, they have let this Japanese carrier escape. They must have. How else would Yamamoto have known where to strike?”

Beria turned back to Stalin with the greatest reluctance, expecting to find those cold, dark eyes on him, blaming him. But the Soviet leader was lost, deep in thought. Silence descended on the room for a long time. Laventry Beria peeked out of a window, where the heavy drapes had come apart a few inches, allowing him a view of what appeared to be a glorious late-afternoon sky.

“I have decided,” said Stalin.

D-DAY + 43. 15 JUNE 1944. 0749 HOURS.
IN-FLIGHT, SEA OF JAPAN.

The Red Army Air Force did not run to the luxury of in-flight refueling, but with a range of seventy-two hundred kilometers, the short hop from Vladivostok to Japan would not stretch the capabilities of the Tu-16. It was a stretch for
Kapitän
Gadalov and his crew, however. They had flown the length of the USSR, through eleven time zones, stopping to refuel three times. That had been a cautionary measure, but one the men had appreciated, as it allowed them to disembark for an hour to stretch their legs and breath some fresh air.

The coast of the
Rodina
slipped away behind them. The squadron leader of the fighter escorts waved to them as the morning sun glinted off the bubble canopy of his MiG-15. He, too, had flown across the vast expanse of the republic but, with a much more limited range, had set off two days earlier and been forced to land for refueling more than a dozen times. It would have been easier to use one of the squadrons based out here in the east, but Moscow insisted on using the same personnel and equipment as in the original raid on Lodz.

Gadalov did not mind. It was an honor to serve the people and workers of the Soviet state, and to be chosen twice for such a mission was a rare distinction. He had been lavishly fêted since Lodz. His pension had been increased to the level of a general’s, and his family had been moved out of their cramped apartment in Kiev into a dacha that had once belonged to a Romanov prince. A true believer in the revolution, however, he was happier simply to have served his comrades and, as everyone said privately, to have sent a warning to the capitalist West: they should not imagine the Soviet Union was going to disappear anytime soon.

“Two hours to go, precisely,” announced Lieutenant Gologre, his navigator-bombardier.

Gadalov acknowledged the update.

If he had any regrets about what he was about to do, they were simply that these bombs would not be dropped on the Nazis. As much as the Japs needed punishing for what they’d done to the Pacific fleet, he reserved a dark little corner of his heart for the so-called master race. He could only hope that he would soon be back over the skies of Germany with another bomb bay full of nuclear fire.

D-DAY + 43. 15 JUNE 1944. 0922 HOURS.
TOKYO.

The grounds of the Imperial Palace were always beautiful, but Emperor Hirohito particularly enjoyed them at this time of year. It was not as picturesque as during the cherry blossom festival in April, of course. But there was something exquisite in the warm stillness of the morning in summer. It was as if time itself were suspended while the day hovered on the edge of creation. Hirohito thought anything might be possible. His people might be saved. His throne delivered from the threat of the godless Communists and arrogant Yankees. Why, Prime Minister Tojo had sent word this very morning of another stunning victory over the Bolsheviks somewhere in their northeastern territories. An attack by the navy on some secret atomic facility. As long as the empire could still reach out to strike and cripple the enemy like that, there was hope. Even with Admiral Yamamoto dead and the Combined Fleet gone, there must be hope. He had personally approved of Yamamoto’s approach to the Emergence barbarian Kolhammer. The admiral had thought him the most likely of their enemies to see reason, and that had not changed.

But had Kolhammer responded to the message?

If he had not had time, might he still do so, before it was too late to stop the Communists?

The emperor paused on a small wooden bridge to listen to the trickle of water and the trilling of a night heron, up well past its bedtime.

He died listening to birdsong as a small, brilliant sun bloomed overhead.

D-DAY + 43. 15 JUNE 1944. 1153 HOURS.
HMAS
HAVOC,
SEA OF OKHOTSK.

“Target lock, skipper.”

“Thank you, weapons. On my mark—”

“Begging your pardon, Captain, but you may need to see this.”

Captain Jane Willet felt a brief flicker of irritation, but suppressed it immediately. Her crew were well trained, and would not interrupt her without good reason. She stepped away from the offensive systems bay and raised an eyebrow at her duty comm officer.

“Yes, Mr. McKinney?”

“Flash traffic on Fleetnet, ma’am. Immediate cessation of hostilities in the Pacific. All units to hold position, further orders to follow in an hour.”

Before she could say anything, more text scrolled across the screen in front of her young officer. She saw his eyes go wide, just for a moment. The Combat Center of the submarine was already hushed and taut as they prepared to put a torpedo into the
Nagano,
but she was aware that the tension suddenly seemed to ratchet up a few notches for everyone on duty.

“Tokyo has been confirmed destroyed by an atomic strike of Soviet origin. Japanese national command has shifted to Hashirajima Naval Base, with Admiral Moshiro Hosogaya acting as chief of the Imperial general headquarters. He has formally contacted Admiral Spruance to offer an unconditional surrender.”

“Bugger me,” said Roy Flemming, her boat chief. “They nuked Tokyo for Kamchatka, eh? Mad bastards.”

Willet eyed the defenseless carrier steaming southward on the huge flatscreen to her left. There were no planes spotted on its flight deck. It had carried nothing but jet-powered
Ohkas,
and every one of them had been launched at the Soviet nuclear site. Farther up the body of the submarine a smaller screen played video of the three Soviet destroyers she’d been forced to sink to allow the
Nagano
to carry out its mission. Before they reached port her IT boss would scrub away every quantum flicker of evidence linking the Australian submarine to their demise; the contemporary government would never be informed.

There was one loose end left, however. The
Nagano
itself. While her crew remained unaware of the guardian angel that had shepherded them north, the ship could still not be allowed to return home. After-action analysis of her mission would reveal a very large question mark over how she’d have survived the hazardous, high-speed run to deliver her suicide planes.

“I suppose if I were Lord Nelson, I would just put a telescope to my blind eye and pretend I hadn’t seen anything,” said Willet.

“But you’re not, are you, ma’am?” said Flemming.

“Nope. Weapons, still got a target lock?”

“On six tubes, ma’am. Programmed for simultaneous impact.”

“Very good. Fire them all. Now.”

The weapons sysop swept his fingers across a touch screen, lighting up six icons, before thumbing a final command. The sub vibrated slightly as all the warshots left their tubes at the same time.

“Why do you think they lit Tokyo?” asked Flemming as they waited for the kill.

She shrugged. “Temporary madness. Show of strength. Vengeance for Okhotsk. Who knows with the Sovs? They’re a bunch of fucking Klingons, those guys.”

The ADCAP torpedoes closed the gap to their prey quickly. A drone at sixty-five hundred meters followed the
Nagano
in LLAMPS vision, and the ship’s Combat Intelligence provided a simulated display of the attack on another screen. Less than a minute after launch all six warheads simultaneously struck the refitted
kamikaze
transporter deep below the waterline, detonating with such force that the vessel completely disintegrated.

“Good shooting, everyone,” said Willet. “Now what do we have on the threat boards?”

“Nothing immediate,” her executive officer reported.

Willet sighed, feeling tired and hollow.

“Okay, that’s good. We’ll need to linger a little while and ensure there are no survivors.”

D-DAY + 44. 16 JUNE 1944. 0633 HOURS.
USS
HILLARY CLINTON,
PACIFIC AREA OF OPERATIONS.

The picture of his wife was real, not a quantum image on a thin-screen. Protected by a small sheet of glass, housed in a simple dark wooden frame, Marie Kolhammer smiled out at her husband from across the gulf of time. She was sitting at a garden table on the back deck of their house in Santa Monica, a light lunch of bread, cheese, and fruit laid out in front of her. A half-filled glass of white wine in her hand. He had taken the snap the last time he’d been home, just before leaving for the Timor deployment.

Admiral Phillip Kolhammer wondered where his wife was now. The idea of another world, of his world, remained strong with him. Shortly after he’d arrived here he’d spoken with Albert Einstein, who’d assured him that in a way his wife was closer to him than the shirt on his back. The idea kept him from going mad with grief.

Many of his colleagues had adapted to their new lives in the past. Some, like Mike Judge and Karen Halabi, had found companions from among the thousands of men and women who’d come through Manning Pope’s wormhole. Others had partnered up with locals, and as with all relationships some had worked and some hadn’t. That was just the way of things. He would be nothing like that, however. Kolhammer kissed the image of his wife before rubbing the impression of his lips off the glass with a shirt cuff and replacing the old-fashioned photograph on his desk. He and Marie had often discussed what would happen if one of them was lost to the other, and in all of their discussions it had been implicit that she would be the one left behind. They had joked about it gently. Him saying that he was too wrinkled and salty and goddamn rough-headed to attract another woman foolish enough to marry him. While Marie had always insisted there could not be a more “difficult” woman than her in any of the continental states. They had known that whatever happened, there could be no others for them.

A deep breath, held for too long, escaped him.

“Oh darlin’, I do miss you…,” he said softly.

His PA, Lieutenant Liao, appeared in the doorway, coughing discreetly. “General Jones is here, Admiral.”

“Thanks, Willy, send him through.”

The commander of the Eighty-second stepped past the lieutenant into Kolhammer’s day cabin, saluting and standing at attention. Kolhammer waved him in and bid him to sit down on the old brown couch across from his desk.

“Well, Lonesome, are you disappointed?”

Jones let the formality run out of his posture. They were old friends now. “Disappointed at what, Admiral? Not getting killed? Not getting my boys and girls killed? No. Of course not. Some of the youngsters are pissed as hell. But they’ll get over it. I’m already proud of them. And as we both know, there’ll be time and opportunity enough for getting killed in the future.”

“Oh yeah,” said Kolhammer. “There’ll be plenty of that.”

He stood up and made his way over to a side table. A small plate of cookies sat next to a gurgling coffeepot. A new one, just out of the States.

“Would you like a brew, Lonesome? We’ve got ten minutes before the meeting?”

“Sure. And one of those little choc-chip motherfuckers wouldn’t go astray, either.”

Kolhammer smiled as he poured two mugs and handed one, with the plate, to the big marine. “You hear the Sovs have signed up to the cease-fire?”

“Heard on the way over,” said Jones. “Guess they figure they were checked for now.”

“They’ll be back,” said Kolhammer. “For my money, that’s why they nuked Tokyo. They’re preparing the ground. If they couldn’t have the city themselves, they figured they’d give us the ashes.”

“They nuked Tokyo because of Kamchatka,” said Jones. “Getting even. Sending a message.”

“That, too,” the admiral agreed. “Seems just about everyone with a nuke seems to be sending a message these days. Might be an idea if they all took a breather, don’t you think, before there’s nobody left to get the goddamn message.”

Jones dunked a cookie and sipped from his coffee mug. “You think Roosevelt’s gonna let them have half of Japan?”

Kolhammer shrugged.

“He’s going to have a hell of a time telling them no, unless he plans on flash-frying a whole bunch of their cities before they have a chance to hit back.”

“He doesn’t strike me as the type,” said Jones. “He’s no Hillary.”

“No,” agreed Kolhammer. “He’s not.”

They sat in a companionable silence for a few moments, each man alone with his thoughts. Kolhammer was trying to weave some sense of what might happen from everything that had gone wrong. It was not a happy prospect. You’d have thought that knowing how things
would
have turned out, folks might have been some way along the track to figuring out how they
should
have turned out. But no. People seemed to have an infinite capacity for willful ignorance. It wasn’t just the Soviets running wild over half the world, or civil wars in places like Palestine and South Africa. It was back home, too. Things would never come to a shooting war there, but you could see there were some hard days coming as the country tried to digest its future.