"I need you on the next flight to Washington, Dan," said Kolhammer. "I'll be catching a red-eye myself, when I've wrapped up here. I don't doubt this bombing campaign is related to Pearl and the U.K., but we haven't seen anything to indicate an invasion of the U.S. mainland. Most likely, it's a feint. At any rate, I've got everybody above the level of bird colonel or equivalent hammering me for ray guns and space rockets. I'm afraid you're going to have to be my flak catcher."
Black seemed to be standing in some sort of library. Kolhammer could see shelves full of books behind him. The navy commander made a visible effort to pull himself together.
"I'll just see Jules off, Admiral. I got a feeling she's going to be busy here, anyway. Then I'll get straight out to Idlewild."
"Thanks, Dan. I'll have Liao make sure there's a seat for you."
They signed off, and Kolhammer cut the link.
He brought up the latest flashes on his desktop display panel. Nine bombs had exploded within a twelve-minute period, in three cities. Four in New York. Three in Chicago. Two in Washington. And not one of them had taken out a hard target. Subway cars, trains, buses, and two department stores were reported as having been hit. Civilian deaths were high. Not what he thought of as mass casualties, but it was going to rock the fucking house for the locals.
There was no vision available on Fleetnet just yet, for which he was grateful. He didn't need to see that shit anyway. Arms and legs looked the same the world over when they were blown off with high explosives. And there'd be the usual obscenity of tiny little limbs torn from children's bodies, given the nature of the targets.
He shook his head and suppressed the images for the moment. As horrifying as it was, it wasn't even the crisis of the day for him.
That was over in Hawaii.
He did have visuals streaming from there. Mike Judge, still en route to San Diego, was providing the link he needed to see what was happening on Oahu.
A drone on station above Honolulu had recorded the attack, which was lucky in a cold, left-handed way, because there weren't many Task Force assets left to file a report. Hypersonic cruise missiles had wiped out most of Hickham Field, where the F-22s and support craft he'd left in place to secure the island had been destroyed. Slagged by a sunburn missile. A Laval, by all indications.
Other airfields had been partially, or totally, destroyed. And Pearl Harbor looked worse than it had the first time. A low-res, jumpy, live-action feed from the drone showed massive losses. The only saving grace was that it could have been so much worse, if Spruance hadn't been safely tucked away in the southwest Pacific, supporting the Kandahar's battle group.
That was where the counterstrike would have to come from, if they still had the ability to launch one. A dense ball of lead was growing in Kolhammer's stomach as he began to see the outline of Yamamoto's design. And it wasn't just him, of course. He was clearly coordinating his strategy much more closely with the Nazis now, trying to make up for the odds that had been stacked against them.
His teeth ached and his jaw muscles clenched as he bit down on his fury. There was only one place such an attack, with Laval multipurpose cruise missiles, could have originated. The Dessaix. No other ship in the Multinational Force was carrying them. They all thought she'd been left behind, until now, but she'd obviously come though the Transition and fallen into the hands of the enemy. He could tell, from the substandard attack profile that the original crew wasn't responsible-or not all of them, anyway. If the Dessaix had launched a properly coordinated attack on Hawaii, there'd be nobody left alive.
As it was, the damage was still catastrophic. And it wasn't over yet, either. He'd bet the farm on that.
Admiral Phillip Kolhammer looked at the pictures coming out of Hawaii and he knew in his bones that the Japanese were on their way.