He breathed slowly and deeply, trying to calm himself as they moved closer to the enemy. The tunnel was gloomy, but he worried about being spotted anyway. Only he and Barbaro had entered; the others were waiting for them back in the jungle, beyond the large canvas sheet that obscured the mouth of the cave.

It had been painted to match the surrounding rock face, with small plants stitched into the fabric-a cheap but effective disguise. He wondered how much work had gone into the facility. How much of the cave system was natural and how much carved out by men? Slave laborers, if he knew the Japs.

Yukio’s boots sang on the iron rungs as he climbed. The ladder was thin, and the drop to the floor of the cave would be nasty.

He kept his eyes focused on his hands as he climbed. It probably wasn’t necessary to inspect the launch tunnels every day, and it certainly wasn’t part of his duty, but he had made it his responsibility anyway. What if the American suddenly appeared on the horizon without warning? He’d heard sailors talk of invisible American ships, cloaked by some device from the future that had allowed them to sneak in among the Combined Fleet at Hashirajima and sink so many vessels.

Sailors were notorious for the stories they made up, but there could be no doubt that the Allied navies enjoyed remarkable advantages in technology. It was a proven fact some of their new ships and planes baffled the radar sets that Japan had bought from the Reich, and the very act of turning on the radar seemed to act as a beacon, attracting swarms of rockets and bombs when the gaijin were about.

Given all that, he thought as he neared the top of the ladder leading up to the launch tube, it was only prudent to make sure that they were ready to get away at a moment’s notice. Literally. And he’d meant what he said to Onada. If an Ohka struck an obstacle on the rails, it could be disastrous, perhaps even destroying the entire base in an explosion that set off a chain reaction among the dozens of Ohkas lined up for launch.

So he would check the launch tunnels for any problems, obstructions-anything that might interfere at the last minute. And he’d do so every day, if no one else would.

Reaching the top of the ladder, he poked his head over the rim.

Denny and Barbaro were almost at the end of the tunnel, carefully inching forward along the floor. It was a precarious business. The slope was steep; crawling down it, Denny felt as though they might slip forward and tumble over the edge into the midst of the enemy.

About eight feet from the opening, he could already see that they’d struck pay dirt. The huge cavern was crowded with the Japanese flying bombs he’d been tasked to locate. Ohkas, if he remembered right. These things looked just like them. The wings were a little swept back, and they looked bigger than he’d expected, but they had to be the jet-powered kamikaze planes everyone had been expecting.

A quick radio call, and this nest of vipers would be somebody else’s problem. He was just about to turn around and start the climb back when a head popped up over the edge, and he found himself staring into the startled eyes of an enemy soldier.

“Fuck,” Barbaro hissed.

The Jap screamed something out in his own language. Everyone on the floor of the cavern froze and stared up in their direction.

Then all hell broke loose.

Americans!

Yukio almost tumbled back off the ladder, he was so surprised.

“Americans!” he screamed. “Americans in the launch tunnels!”

He reached for his holster, scrambling for a gun, cursing as he remembered that he wasn’t wearing it. It was forbidden to carry sidearms in the caverns. An accidental discharge might set off a calamitous explosion.

The faces of the enemy registered shock and fear.

He almost slid down the ladder, but stopped himself at the last moment. A cringing, animalistic response welled up in him, urging him to flee.

But screaming his kiai instead, he vaulted up the last couple of rungs.

Denny shot the guy in the face. One round from his.45 took off the top of the Jap’s head and sent the corpse cartwheeling backward into space.

The sound broke a spell that had hung over the tableau, and instantly the room below them was seething with enraged nips.

“Get back to the others,” he shouted at Barbaro, unslinging his carbine and flipping the selector to full auto. He squeezed off a long burst that cut down a couple of the enemy running toward him. “Get word back to fleet. They gotta knock this place down. Bomb it to fucking rubble.”

“But-”

“Just fucking go. I’ll be right behind you.”

Barbaro took off up the steep incline, tripping once on the rail and cursing.

Denny cringed, expecting a hail of return fire, but none came.

He flipped his selector back to single shots and started picking off targets.

He just had to give the others a few precious minutes to get the word back to fleet.

The recording ended abruptly with a clatter of gunfire and the harsh, staccato sounds of someone shouting in Japanese. The admiral nodded at the sysop to close the file. The CIC staffer shut it down with a few key clicks and awaited further instructions.

Kolhammer’s expression didn’t betray in any way the feelings he had about the transmission. A comm screen deployed from the ceiling of the Clinton’s Combat Information Center, dropping in front of him and revealing a somber-looking Ray Spruance.

“I don’t think there’s any doubt that they’re gone, Admiral,” Kolhammer said. “And given the data Willet sent through from Okhotsk, we’ll be coming within range of those things very soon. I have a Skyhawk flight fitted out with bunker busters, ready to roll on your say-so.”

If he expected a fight from Spruance, he didn’t get one. The ’temps really had hardened up in the last two years. In some ways they seemed even more inured to suffering than folks had been in his own time. Less of a victim culture, he supposed. Last he’d heard, at least eighty thousand Frenchmen and women had died in the preparatory air strike over Calais. You couldn’t pull shit like that back up in the twenty-first without most of the media and half of Congress demanding that you be indicted as a war criminal. Or a Nazi, he thought with yet another spasm of twisted irony. That was always a fave, whenever people at home were exposed to the actual brutality of warfare. Out would come the tar and the feathers and the hand-painted NAZI sign to hang around somebody’s neck.

Somebody like him.

But Spruance remained focused on the big picture, no matter how grim-faced he was at having to listen to the destruction of Sergeant Denny’s patrol. They had to assume that the other Force Recon units inserted on two nearby islands had been compromised, as well. Yet they couldn’t allow that to distract them.

“I agree, Admiral Kolhammer,” Spruance said. “Launch your planes.”

…

In the short walk out to her Skyhawk, Flight Lieutenant Anna Torres began to leak sweat. The air temperature was hovering over forty degrees Celsius, but down on the Clinton’s flight deck it seemed to be about half again as much. The roar of jet engines, the heavy traffic in personnel and equipment, the reflected heat scorching off the composite decking-it all created a very uncomfortable environment. She didn’t envy her chief as he readied the stepladder just beneath the cockpit. He must have been broiling inside his coveralls and powered helmet.

Torres gave him a thumbs-up as she strapped in and the bubble canopy slid down into place. She could have sworn there were about twice as many people watching from whatever vantage points they could grab as she ran through preflight. That was only to be expected. Although the A-4s had been flying off the Clinton for a few months now, this was their true baptism of fire. Slung beneath her fuselage on the centerline hard point she had a laser-guided sixteen-hundred-kilo GBU-20. A bunker buster that could chew through five meters of reinforced concrete before detonating. She was also carrying a couple of thermobaric glide bombs, two under each wing, and four hundred rounds of 20mm cannon ammo.