Weapons of Choice — Axis Of Time Book I

by John Birmingham

  “Yes, Prime Minister.”

  30

  USS HILLARY CLINTON, 1939 HOURS, 9 JUNE 1942

  It was quiet as Lieutenant Nguyen sat outside the Clinton’s conference room, nervously holding the plastic folder that contained her briefing notes.

  She was the last briefing officer of the day, and she had a tough act to follow: the poor bastards from physics, who were still riffing on old Star Trek episodes. She patted her breast pocket for maybe the tenth time to make sure the data stick was still there and tried to focus on her breathing in an effort to calm down. She wished she could take Julia and Rosanna into the meeting with her. Nothing seemed to freak them out. But they were ashore, having written her a three-page summary of U.S. antisubmarine operations in June 1942.

  It was a left-handed gift. She was discovering that when you gave a bunch of admirals a golden egg, they invariably come back at you wanting a dozen more.

  She could hear a man speaking with an English accent. He seemed to be saying that they should reprogram Metal Storm to prioritize kamikaze attacks and traditional iron bombs, rather than hypersonic, wave-skimming antiship missiles. It was off-topic, but he had a point, she thought. Resentfully aware that her bloody PhD had come back to haunt her, she quietly cursed her decision to enroll in postgraduate history. That’s when an ensign called her in.

  Her fatigue fell away as she entered the meeting room. She recognized most of the senior commanders from the Multinational Force, but it was the immediate familiarity of men like Nimitz and Spruance that gave her a start. She’d seen those faces countless times in books and on screen, but here they were, alive and looking to her for . . . what? Salvation? To their minds they were still in the first days of a war they could very well lose. A couple of the men who sat with them shook their heads at her arrival.

  She took her place the lectern and fumbled in her pocket for the data stick, nearly dropping it as she tried to slot it home. She exhaled audibly to settle her nerves as the stick clicked into place and the massive wallscreen behind her winked from neutral blue to a map of the world.

  “Good evening. This is a summary of the relevant disposition of forces across the global theaters as of June ninth, nineteen forty-two.”

  She paused briefly to glance up at her audience. Most of the faces were neutral; some, such as her own captain’s, were even encouraging. For the first time, however, she noticed that two men were openly scowling at her; contemporary Royal Navy types, to judge by their uniforms. They sat next to Captain Halabi from HMS Trident, who was acting on Kolhammer’s behalf while he was away in Los Angeles and Commander Judge was briefing MacArthur. Their body language betrayed the insurmountable gulf that she would be asked to somehow cross. Unfortunately, her presentation wasn’t likely to cheer up the Brits.

  “A massive series of battles around Kharkov and Sevastopol, under way at the present time, will eventually see nearly one million Soviet troops killed or taken prisoner. Sevastopol will fall to the Germans on the first of July, two days into the German summer offensive, Operation Blue.”

  As she spoke, a PowerPoint show filled the giant wallscreens. Two-meter windows displaying archival footage of combat on the Eastern Front played in one corner, directly over a panel listing the various German and Soviet formations that would be involved and their losses over the period of the campaign. Rachel snuck a quick peek at the two sour-faced Royal Navy men. No, they weren’t looking any happier.

  Oh well, she thought, here goes . . .

  “British attempts to support the Soviet war effort through shipment of matériel via convoy will be severely hampered by the poor judgment of the first sea lord, Admiral Sir Dudley Pound, who is suffering from a brain tumor that will kill him within a few years—”

  She got no farther, flinching in surprise as somebody smashed an open hand down on the table.

  “How dare you! I’ve had just about enough of this!” barked the Englishman seated next to Captain Halabi. “We’ve sat here all night listening to a bunch of darkies and shrews tell us what we’ve been doing wrong and now this . . . this . . . bloody coolie child has the nerve to come in here and insult Sir Dudley, a man who—”

  “Admiral Murray,” Halabi said through gritted teeth, “I would appreciate it if you would shut the fuck up and listen to the lieutenant, who, I can assure you, is infinitely better informed about these matters than you are.”

  Ah, that’d be Rear Admiral Sir Leslie Murray, CBE, thought Nguyen.

  “I don’t have to listen to this!” Murray declared.

  “No, you don’t,” agreed Halabi. “You can leave anytime you want.”

  Rachel could see that Halabi was only just containing her desire to strangle the man. She won the battle of wills, however, and Murray returned to his silent glaring.

  The acting commander of the Multinational Force spoke to Nguyen in a much calmer tone. “Please go on, Lieutenant. I believe you were about to discuss the destruction of Naval Convoy PQ Seventeen.”

  “I was, ma’am, thank you.”

  She composed herself, and returned to her notes, determined not to lift her head again until she was finished. “PQ Seventeen is scheduled to depart Iceland for Archangel on June twenty-seventh. It would consist of fifty-six freighters, an oiler, six destroyers, and thirteen other vessels. Admiral Pound, wrongly assuming the German battleship Tirpitz was loose, ordered the convoy to scatter and the escorts to withdraw. Aircraft and submarine attacks then sank twenty-four unprotected ships, carrying nearly three and a half thousand motor vehicles, four hundred and thirty tanks, more than two hundred aircraft, and nearly one hundred thousand tonnes of supplies. The losses, coming at the most critical juncture just before the summer blitzkrieg, and the subsequent refusal of the Western Allies to force the convoy route again for many months, lead to a severe strain on the relationship between the Allies and the Soviet government.”

  Rachel drew a breath and peeked up. Commander Murray still looked furious, but kept his own counsel for the moment. About two dozen strong, her audience was a study in parallel but contrary natures. Nobody looked comfortable or remotely assured. She’d nearly majored in psych before switching to postgrad history, and would have loved to watch a video of the whole meeting, to tease out the personal clashes, to watch alliances take shape as the various interests maneuvered for dominance.

  What a pity the outcome was so far from academic with thousands—if not millions—of lives dependent on the decisions that would be made in this room. She was glad the burden of choice did not fall on her.

  “In North Africa,” she continued, “the Afrika Korps under Rommel are due to press an offensive to El Alamein . . .”

  She delivered the rest of her brief speech with growing confidence, now that she knew Halabi would act as her shield. She reminded the senior commanders that the SS was carrying out an atrocity in Lidice at that very moment. She warned of attacks on convoys bound for Malta on the fourteenth and fifteenth of June, detailing the individual losses to air attack, torpedo boats, and surface raiders. She pointedly advised the British liaison officers to attend to the inadequate state of Tobruk’s defences—advice she could just tell they were going to ignore. She told Nimitz that General MacArthur should know that significant Japanese forces were supposed to land in New Guinea on July 22, and as things stood they would be opposed only by a limited number of Australian militia.

  She concluded by pointing out that tens of thousands of Allied POWs were, for the moment, being held in large central camps in the Philippines and Singapore, and that many of them would die quite wretchedly over the next few years of their captivity. At each stage of her talk a panel of the wallscreen switched from displaying the world map to running images of the relevant topic. There was no escaping the human consequences of Lidice, or the Bataan Death March.

  “Is there a point to that, miss?” asked Admiral Bill Halsey. “Or are you just rubbing our noses in it?”

  Rachel was familiar with Halsey’s reputation as a b
lunt speaker. She struggled not to take it personally.

  “I’m just doing my job, Admiral. You have the information I was asked to provide. Making decisions on the basis of that information is not my responsibility.”

  “Thank you, Lieutenant,” said Captain Halabi, forestalling any reply from Halsey. “Does anybody have any questions relating to the presentation?”

  Rachel handed over the data stick that held the briefing information and extended background notes. Halabi inserted the stick into her flexipad and broadcast the files around the room. Rachel could see that each of the contemporary officers had been provided with a flexipad, and she wondered how many would actually use them.

  “Lieutenant, how long will it be before those POWs are dispersed to labor camps?” asked Colonel Jones.

  “The first group of about three thousand have already left from Changi in Singapore for the Burma–Thailand railway. Another fifteen hundred will go on July eighth. All of the officers will be moved on August sixteenth. Casualties among Allied POWs in Japanese camps will run between thirty to forty percent, depending on the individual situations at each camp. I’m afraid that hundreds of Americans have already perished on the forced march from Bataan to prison in central Luzon.”

  Nimitz, who clearly was tired and grappling with an infinitely more tangled web of problems than he’d ever imagined might arise in this war, rubbed at his eyes and spoke quite irritably, which Rachel knew was unusual for him.

  “I don’t see where this advances the discussion of our strategic options, Colonel Jones. Nobody has to tell us what a bunch of bastards the Japs are. There’ll come a heavy reckoning for their crimes in the future, but the best we can do for those men who’ve been captured is to defeat the enemy that’s torturing them.”

  “In fact, Admiral,” Colonel Jones said carefully, “that may not be true.”

  Nimitz was beyond understanding. He gave the marine commander a blank look and indicated with a weary gesture that he should explain.

  “If they were our men,” Jones said, “we’d go and get them.”

  Two hours later, Rachel couldn’t keep her eyes open. She’d been sent back to her office after her presentation to further research the POW issue. She had been awake for all but four hours of the last forty-eight, and was nearing the time when she would have to sleep or get a stimulant patch. Those things always gave her hideous nausea, so she was hoping to grab a little shuteye, but she was called into Halabi’s temporary quarters aboard the Clinton to present her supplementary data.

  “Here it is, ma’am,” she said, stifling a yawn as she handed Halabi the data stick. “It’s only preliminary. If we all go at it tomorrow, we can get a lot more for you.”

  The British officer wasn’t alone. Colonel Jones was perched on the edge of a desk, and another marine—a doctor to judge by her insignia—was nursing a glass of something on the couch, resting her eyes. Rachel knew that American ships were supposed to be dry, but she was certain she could smell bourbon. The doctor sat up and smiled at her. It was too late for formalities.

  Halabi gestured for Rachel to sit down.

  “Would you like some coffee, Lieutenant?”

  “No, thank you, ma’am. I plan to sleep soon, if that’s all right.”

  “Good luck to you,” Halabi said sympathetically. “I’d like you to fill in Colonel Jones and Doctor Francois concerning that note you sent me after your briefing.”

  Rachel felt more than a little uncomfortable with the request. She’d beamed Halabi the message as an afterthought.

  “All I said,” she began, “was that we’d have little trouble defeating the Axis navies if we engaged them ourselves. Even with the damage we took at Midway. Their weapons and doctrine are generations behind our own. But just as they’re generations behind us, so are the Allies, not just technically, but culturally, as well. We can help here. We could probably rescue those guys in the prison camps, for instance, and they’d be insanely grateful. At least at first.

  “But if we’re here permanently, we pose a significant threat to their way of life just as surely as would defeat by the Axis powers. Not as dire a threat, of course. But a threat nonetheless.”

  “How so, Lieutenant?” came the deep bass rumble of Colonel J. Lonesome Jones. She suspected he already knew the answer.

  “This is nineteen forty-two,” she said. “Begging the colonel’s pardon, sir, but by the standards of this time, you are not an African American—”

  She was going to continue, but she didn’t have to. Johnson finished the thought for her.

  “No. I’m a nigger.”

  “And I’m a little coolie girl,” said Rachel. “And Captain Halabi is a half-breed, and some of us are wogs and kikes and dagos. These guys aren’t Nazis, but they’re not going to understand us. And my guess is that what they don’t understand and cannot control, they’ll eventually treat as threatening.”

  “There’s nothing eventual about it,” said Francois from the couch. She rubbed her eyes. They looked very red and watery to Rachel.

  “It’s already begun,” the doctor went on. “The riot down in Honolulu today, Borghino getting shot, Anderson and Miyazaki getting whacked. I tell you . . . what they did to that woman . . .”

  Halabi looked like she was about to ask the doctor to shut up, but the surgeon plowed on anyway. She was bitter and furious, and she spat her words out like poison darts.

  “They stuck a piece of piece barbed wire inside her, and used it like a fucking pipe cleaner. I tell you, Lonesome, if we catch these assholes and they still get away with it, I am going to personally draw down and cap ’em myself.”

  Halabi folded her arms uncomfortably.

  “Now, Doctor, I don’t think it’s come to that—”

  “But it’s coming, Captain, believe me. You didn’t meet that asshole detective today. I’ll lay money on the barrelhead that he soft-pedals the whole thing, and when it turns out to be some good ol’ local boy, the fix will go in. You can fuckin’ bank on it. They plucked two slugs out of that chief petty officer this afternoon. Damn near killed him. But do you think they kept the fucking things? Even though we specifically told them to hold on to them, so we could test them? No. They’re ‘missing.’ Lost in the confusion at the hospital. It’s already begun.”

  Rachel thought Halabi was going to argue the point.

  But she didn’t.

  31

  BERLIN, 0721 HOURS, 8 JUNE 1942

  The sealed case traveled from Japan to Europe in the diplomatic pouch of the Spanish embassy’s military attaché. He took a Portuguese flying boat to Ankara and thence to Athens and Berlin, where the package was turned over to a colonel of Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler’s personal guard. From there it went directly to the SS head himself.

  Himmler was a quiet man. His hands were dainty and lined with blue veins. He always looked short of sleep, and he wasn’t given to histrionics like many of his colleagues. He licked his lips, took a sip of the herbal tea in the cup on his desk, and read the instructions for operating the device that Steckel had sent.

  He wondered, briefly, whether he should have it checked. It might be a bomb.

  He read the instructions again, and then summoned his secretary.

  “Wait until I am out of the room, then press this button,” said Himmler. “I will return momentarily.”

  The young man, clicked his heels together and barked, “Immediately, Reichsführer.”

  “No,” sighed Himmler. “When I am safely out of the room. Not until then.”

  The flint-eyed young man nodded.

  Three minutes later, Himmler was back. The device, a flexipad, according to Steckel, glowed serenely atop his desk. His secretary was impressed.

  “It is made by the Braun company,” he said helpfully. “German technology is a wonder, mein Reichsführer.”

  Himmler nodded and dismissed him from the room. He perused Steckel’s notes again, and followed the first set of instructions.

  The hands
ome, perhaps too-pretty face of the SD man filled the glass plate on the front of the pad.

  “Heil Hitler!” he shouted.

  Himmler jumped in fright and his secretary came rushing back in.

  “It’s all right,” the SS chief said shakily. “It is just a recording on this unit.”

  “Remarkable,” said the young man as he retreated again.

  Steckel continued to speak on the screen.

  “Reichsführer, I have taken the liberty of sending you this device because the wonders we have discovered out here must be seen to be believed. With the help of Major Brasch and our Japanese comrades, I have prepared a short presentation for you, outlining some of the major developments.”

  Himmler propped the pad up against a framed picture of his mistress. It threatened to fall under its own weight. He carefully picked up his tea and sipped as a series of movies played over Steckel’s voice.

  It was both amazing and infuriating. He felt certain there was a great deal he wasn’t being told. The color movies, which were astoundingly sophisticated, detailed weapons systems and technology that boggled the mind: missiles that could fly into space and spit dozens of insanely powerful warheads onto different cities, killing millions of people and destroying whole nations in the blink of an eye. Infantry uniforms with padded armor that could stop a round from a Mauser. Machines in the sky that could listen in on every telephone conversation or radio broadcast in the world, and sort them into the relevant and immaterial. Oh, what the Gestapo could do with that!

  But nowhere in this litany of magic tricks was there an explanation of how an inferior race, from a country no one had ever heard of, could possibly develop such things. How could a mud race such as these Javanese peasants prosper in the very first century of the thousand-year Reich? Where did the führer appear in this fairy tale? This astounding contraption and Steckel’s tales of Untermensch from the future raised the obvious question.