"Possession is nine-tenths of the law, Admiral. They're in his theater. And I'm surprised at you. You're always trumpeting the case of Japan over Germany. If they can catch the Japs at Hashirajima they'll cripple Tojo. After that, well, I thought you'd want to get your own hands on Kolhammer's ships for the Pacific, too."

King tried to look insulted, but failed. Roosevelt smiled again.

"I'm approving the operation, Admiral. Let Kolhammer run it his way. We'll worry about the niceties afterward. This business in Honolulu with the murders and the riot, I fear it's a taste of more to come. If these characters can pull this off, it will create a reservoir of goodwill, and I suspect we're going to need every drop of it."

The planning room of the USS Kandahar was only a third the size of the Clinton's main conference center, but marines are a hardy bunch, quite capable of working up a major op without the benefit of buffet service or an espresso machine. For many of the 1942 personnel, a mix of Marine Corps and navy officers, this briefing was their first real exposure to a twenty-first-century environment. A few of them struggled to maintain their focus in the face of numerous distractions, both technological and human. Lieutenant Commander Black felt fortunate to be one of the few who'd already begun to adapt to the situation.

The officer who delivered a short history lesson on the original liberation of the POW camp at Cabanatuan on Luzon was Lieutenant Gina De Marco, a strikingly pretty blond woman who already had a reputation among Black's contemporaries as a ball breaker.

Sure enough, a wolf whistle greeted her when she took the podium. If she was supposed to giggle and blush at that provocation, somebody was in for a shock. Lieutenant De Marco fixed the offender with a frigid stare.

"Do you have a particularly small penis, sir? Is that why you feel the need to compensate for your inadequacies with this behavior? If so, let me assure you, it didn't work. You still have a very small penis, and now you look like an idiot, too."

De Marco's shipmates exploded into hoots of laughter. The whistler and his buddies didn't really know where to look, and settled on a range of more or less shit-eating grins as their response. The lieutenant's microcelebrity grew just that little bit more potent.

She continued without further interruption, silencing the room with her grave delivery.

"The death toll for American personnel at Cabanatuan in June of this year will be five hundred. In July it will reach eight hundred. There are also civilian prisoners being held, many of them women who have been or will be forced into sex slavery by the Japanese."

The uniformly white male audience of '42 personnel squirmed quietly as the flatscreen behind the Lieutenant segued through dozens of archival images of the death camp, including some of white "comfort women." Sitting in the second row, Lieutenant Commander Black found the images disturbing, as he was meant to, but he was also unsettled by the methodical, dispassionate way in which the beautiful young woman went about her briefing. He didn't need to ask whether all the young women of the future were so confounding. He already knew from personal experience.

Black shook his head at the memory of Julia crippling that guy in Honolulu.

He still didn't know how he felt about it. She was the most challenging and vibrant woman he'd ever met. But sometimes he found himself wondering what planet she came from. She shared with De Marco an ability to deal dispassionately with the most gruesome of subjects. It was kind of off-putting.

The pretty lieutenant was still talking, and he dragged his attention back to the briefing.

"In nineteen forty-four the Army Rangers who rescued the POWs from the camps had extensive help from local guerrilla forces, which we can't expect because of the confused situation on the ground in Luzon. However-"

Dan found himself wondering whether this woman had ever kicked a man half to death. If you got past her beauty, she certainly looked competent enough in her camouflage fatigues.

"-the rescue was accomplished with the loss of only two Rangers, Corporal Roy Sweezy and Captain James C. Fisher. One of the prisoners died of a heart attack during the extraction."

The screen behind the lieutenant filled with still photographs taken by combat photographers from the 832nd Signal Service Battalion, who had accompanied-or would accompany-the Rangers on the rescue mission to Cabanatuan. The images drove all thoughts of Julia from Dan Black's mind. Like his fellow officers he gaped in horror at the skeletal, nearly inhuman creatures who stared out at them.

"These are the defenders of Corregidor, gentlemen," said Colonel Jones, taking over from De Marco. "Your comrades and our forebears. Thousands of others did not make it. Some were killed during the siege of the island, but most died on the forced march into captivity and during years of internment in the death camps. There is nothing we can do for the men who are gone, but there are thousands of our people we can still save."

Black wondered whether he was the only one in the room who noted the colonel's use of the phrase our people. More than a few of his contemporaries had been mouthing off on the way over about having to work with Negroes and Mexicans and uppity women, completely oblivious to the hovercraft crew that contained examples of all three. Black was surprised at how tiring he found the endless gripes on the subject, and wondered how Kolhammer's people managed to keep a lid on their temper.

The briefings continued for hours, finishing late in the day with an address by a female "combat surgeon." "We'll need more transport," said Captain Francois, "enough for about twenty to thirty thousand men. And most of them will be in very poor shape, so we can't just toss them into the hold of a troopship. They'll need something better than that if they're going to survive the return trip."

She stood in the briefing room of the Kandahar, five hours after Lieutenant De Marco had opened the session. The air in the room felt close and stale to Black, even with the air-conditioning running. Papers and coffee cups littered the floor, and normally crisp uniforms were becoming disheveled. The planning session was taking so long because of the need to constantly explain basic issues such as in-flight refueling to the "temps." Black wasn't sure how he felt about being called a "temp." It didn't sound very dignified.

"The good news," Francois continued, "is that the sort of care they'll require is intense, but very basic. There's not much apart from some drugs and megavitamin and mineral supplements that we'd need to add to the amenities you already have for treating the sort of malnutrition and illness we're likely to see. What we need from you are medics and lots of berths on big comfortable ships."

Nimitz raised his hand to speak.

"Excuse me, Doctor. I can deal with that right away. We have a lot of converted liners that have just finished ferrying troops to New Caledonia and Australia. They moved about fifty thousand men, and their equipment. They might fit the bill. They're not as luxurious as they once were, but they'd be more agreeable than a hammock in the hold of a Liberty ship."

"That sounds just fine, Admiral. What about medics?"

"We'll round them up," Nimitz promised.

Rachel Nguyen was growing accustomed to these strange conferences that were as much history tutorials as intelligence briefings. This group was smaller than many she'd spoken to over the last few days and was composed entirely of twenty-first-century Special Forces-SEALS, SAS, Marine Recon. They should have been a more intimidating audience, but unlike some others they accepted her right to be here. Whatever she had to say, they wanted to hear.