"Hurry up, faster-schnell, schnell."
Hidaka had no idea whether the helmsman, the sole surviving Frenchman on board, understood him or knew what he was doing. The giant barbarian had sworn up a storm when he'd rushed into the CIC.
Three Indonesians and a German lieutenant commander followed on his heels, all of them pulling up sharply at the sight of the killing room. The Nazi spoke a little English. Just enough to infuriate Hidaka as he tried to explain that he wanted to slow down the movies from the missiles.
They'd pushed the helmsman into Danton's old seat and the German, whose name tag identified him as Bremmer, relayed instruction in French. It might have been laughable, if the fate of the world weren't hanging in the balance.
The two Europeans bickered and sniped at each other. More of the screens blinked over to white noise as the missiles detonated. And still Hidaka couldn't tell whether Danton had interfered with the attack before attempting to murder them all.
The helmsman directed a spray of unintelligible abuse at Bremmer before waving his arms at the main display. Hidaka's mood went through a swooping series of dives and loops as he saw that the replays were running much more slowly, and that some of the missiles seemed to do exactly as they ought. But others appeared to drive themselves into the sides of mountains or open fields.
"Again, again," he demanded.
Bremmer relayed the instructions, and the movie was rewound-no, replayed, as he corrected himself.
Keeping a much tighter leash on his emotions, this time he was able to see that about half the missiles had gone off course, but not always to ill effect. One that had been heading for the wreck of the Arizona, possibly drawn by its magnetic signature, suddenly veered away and dived on a cruiser, one he didn't recognize. Hidaka couldn't tell what sort of damage was done, but unless Danton had somehow defused the warheads, it still would be considerable.
On other screens, airfields and army barracks were certainly hit. But he counted five windows in which nothing-absolutely nothing-of value seemed to have been targeted. One rocket appeared to land on the beach in front of a hotel. He could only hope that a large number of officers were staying there.
His stomach had knotted itself so tightly, he wanted to be sick. But he would not give in to the convulsions that were trying to force his breakfast back up. He took a deep breath, ignoring the sickly sweet, rancid smell of death. This was going to take a while to work out. But he was supposed to signal Yamamoto the instant they had launched. The grand admiral would already be wondering what had happened.
"Play it again," he said. "Slowly."