“It’s quite amazing,” the president said. “Do you know they’ve sent nearly a hundred motion pictures, and thousands of books, all inside this box?”

Marshall, who’d just arrived from Washington, shook his head a fraction. He was still spinning from the cables he’d read on the flight over. He wasn’t sure what had most upset him, the loss of the fleet or the arrival of the time travelers.

Goddamn!

Time travelers. Every time he used that cockamamie phrase he wanted to slap some sense into himself. But Roosevelt, King, and Eisenhower had all been out at the airfield when the rocket planes had come in. Eisenhower was still out at Muroc with Kolhammer’s people and a dozen staff officers who’d flown across the continent overnight. King and the president, alone in the luxury suite except for the ubiquitous Secret Service detail, were still talking excitedly about the planes when Marshall arrived. And they weren’t the only ones.

Down in Australia, MacArthur was already on the warpath, beating the drum so loudly you could hear him across the Pacific. He wanted Kolhammer’s marines, the tanks, the planes. Everything. He wanted to take them to Tokyo next week. Marshall felt like he was a long way behind in the game of catch-up.

He snuck a glance at Admiral King. The navy chief and MacArthur openly despised each other, but there was an issue on which they were of one mind. Japan first. Marshall, who knew the real threat lay in Nazi Germany, was expecting to get caught in a pincer movement between them.

Despite the terrible losses at Midway, King seemed to have reconciled himself to the changed circumstances. He’d already presented the Joint Chiefs with his broad recommendations for deployment of the new assets. Unsurprisingly, under King’s proposal none of them, not even the British forces that arrived with Kolhammer, would find their way back to the Atlantic. The old dog had even suggested allowing Kolhammer to retain control of his task force as an integrated unit, just to keep the ships together and concentrated in King’s personal fiefdom, the Pacific.

If Marshall weren’t careful and quick, Roosevelt would probably back the shift in strategy, just to regain some control over the runaway course of events.

The president certainly was taken with that electrical book, or whatever in hell it was.

“Will you look at this, General Marshall?” Roosevelt said with real wonder. “A space rocket to Mars.”

Chapter 24

24

USS HILLARY CLINTON, 1055 HOURS, 9 JUNE 1942