Armanno grabbed a pair of binoculars and followed the seaman’s pointing finger. The world was even more confused and unstable when viewed through the glasses. They emphasized every movement of the violently pitching destroyer. Still, he managed to catch a few short glimpses of a ship that reminded him of a giant manta ray slipping across the surface of the ocean. It was hard to tell, being thrown about so much, but there didn’t appear to be any guns on the deck. He wedged in tighter against the corner of the bridge and tried to keep the sleek, alien shape steady within the field of the glasses. The twinned lens circles shuddered as the Hamman’s two forward turrets coughed long spears of flame and smoke into the night again.

The Japs weren’t firing at all, at least not that he could make out.

“What the hell is this?” Armanno asked himself.

“Lieutenant, we’re coming up on range for the torpedo launch.”

“Okay,” he said, dragging his attention back to the mammoth carrier, which was still blotting out half the sky. It was weird, the way the Japs just weren’t fighting back. Not a single round came from anywhere along its flank.

Maybe they haven’t seen us, he told himself. Just as well.

“Arm the portside tubes,” he called.

“Arm the portside tubes!”

“Torpedoes armed!”

“Torpedoes armed, Lieutenant.”

Armanno waited half a second, expecting the executive officer or even the captain to appear. It seemed like a very long half second.

“Fire!” he called out, at last.

Chapter 3

3

HMS TRIDENT, 2241 HOURS, 2 JUNE 1942

Captain Karen Halabi, commander of HMS Trident, had never seen anything like it before. It was like looking into a doll’s house. For a few short moments, before the seas rushed in, the vessel’s internal spaces were completely exposed, as though a vengeful deity had sliced off the bow with a knife, had made it vanish, like a profane magic trick.

She was certain that she was dreaming, and yet sure that she couldn’t be. She had spilled a mug of hot coffee on her leg, and the pain had jolted her to her senses much faster than those around her. Her senses, however, had presented her with a nightmare.

She was slumped in her command chair, a giant burn blister already rising on her thigh. Around her the bridge crew were dead or unconscious. The bright light of the tropical day was gone, swallowed by an oily blackness. And four or five hundred meters away, on a collision course off her starboard bow, she could see the helicopter carrier HMS Fearless. It had been—well, lopped seemed the right word, almost. She was paralyzed, staring at a cutaway diagram as if from a children’s book.