“It’s nice to be loved, Mr. McTeale. We have clearance from Admiral Spruance to begin search and rescue. Get them away in . . . two minutes . . . Will that be long enough for you to get the word out, Admiral?” she asked Spruance.

He was caught off-guard by the speed at which she had moved, but waved Beanland out of the cabin with a firm instruction to see that his surviving ships were informed of the order.

“Better give us five minutes, Captain. I know it’s frustrating, but we don’t have any of those.” He pointed at the flexipad.

Halabi returned her attention to the Trident’s exec.

“Five minutes then, McTeale. Get onto Fleetnet.”

“Aye, ma’am.”

“Thank you, Commander. Halabi out.”

Spruance pensively chewed his lip and played with the book Halabi had given him.

“You’ve made the right call, sir.”

His eyes were haunted as they met hers.

“I really had no choice, Captain. We’re finished if I can’t trust you. I have no idea how this will turn out. None at all. I don’t even know how I’m supposed to explain to Nimitz what happened tonight. And what happens when Nagumo comes over the horizon? It won’t be me who stops him, will it?”

“No,” Karen agreed. “I guess that’ll be down to us.”

Chapter 11

11

HIJMS RYUJO, 2331 HOURS, 2 JUNE 1942

The thermometer in the pilothouse of the carrier Ryujo stood at minus seven degrees Centigrade, but to Rear Admiral Kakuji Kakuta it felt even colder. The wind running over the carrier’s deck added to the chill, as did the dense banks of fog and damp, clammy air through which the Second Carrier Striking Force had been groping toward the Aleutians. It wasn’t the vile conditions that had halted the progress of the Fifth Fleet’s Northern Force, however.

Kakuta was a warrior, and as such he expected to fight in fog and darkness, to strike at an enemy whose whereabouts or capabilities he might not know for sure. Nothing was certain in war. But this, this was a mystery beyond the ken of simple warriors. It was as though the gods themselves had intervened in mortal affairs. Such things were not unknown, of course. Huge Mongol invasion fleets had twice been destroyed, in 1274 and 1281, when kamikaze—or divine winds, in the form of typhoons—had smashed them to splinters.

But although he was a spiritual man, Kakuta’s rational side understood that clumsy wooden boats that tried to cross the Sea of Japan during typhoon season were liable to meet with disaster. Just as he had been dogged across the northern Pacific by these impenetrable fog banks, hundreds of miles deep and so thick that the nearest escorts—just a few hundred meters away—were transformed into murky shadows, even at midday.