He clamped a hand on the shoulder of a terrified-looking boy who couldn’t have been more than nineteen. “You’re going to be all right. Do you understand? You’ve trained for this and you wouldn’t be on the Izumo if you weren’t one of Japan’s finest.”

The boy nodded weakly and Akiyama continued on. He felt a great sense of pride at the efficiency and speed with which his men were carrying out their duties, but much more than that he felt fear. The irony of a peaceful Asia was that neither player in this conflict had access to battle-hardened troops. The best he could do was stagger the younger sailors with those who had years in the defense forces. That meant very little, though, if those older men had never been in a combat situation.

There was simply no way to turn away from the fact that there were hundreds of terrified young people precariously balanced on opposite sides of a razor blade.

6

6

President’s Private Residence
The White House
Washington, DC, USA

Good to see you, Mr. Klein,” the head of the president’s protection detail said.

“Dave,” Klein said, returning the greeting.

He’d known David McClellan since the man had joined the Secret Service almost twenty years ago, and there was no more tight-lipped operative in the entire government. The perfect man for the job.

President Sam Adams Castilla was alone—it was nearly midnight and his wife, Cassie, would have gone to bed hours ago. He didn’t rise, instead watching his old friend approach with a cold Coors in his hand.

In the past, they’d been more open about their meetings, casting themselves as two childhood friends getting together to talk about old times. Lately, though, Klein had become concerned that the intelligence background that had made him an ideal choice to head Covert-One would raise suspicion. Now he flew as far beneath the radar as possible.

Castilla took a sip of his beer before speaking. “It hasn’t hit the papers yet but yesterday a Chinese missile cruiser targeted Japan’s new battleship with attack radar.”

“The Senkakus, I assume?”

The president nodded. “I’ve already got Russia, North Korea, the economy, and the entire Middle East to deal with. Now this.”

“It’s a lot of ships and a lot of bad blood in a very small area.”

“It’s World War Three in the making is what it is,” Castilla said, his voice rising in volume.

Klein pointed to the door behind which Castilla’s wife was sleeping, and the president lowered his voice. “It’s a lot worse than most people know. Look, I like Prime Minister Sanetomi and I’m sympathetic to the fact that what happened during the war is ancient history. But it frankly doesn’t matter what I think. It matters what the Chinese think. And to those assholes, the Rape of Nanking might as well have been last Tuesday.”