“We’re going to have to get on the ball with this stuff,” murmured King.

Kolhammer pointedly ignored the chatter behind him and concentrated on the acting Multinational Force commander.

“It’s very obvious . . . oubl . . . urder,” said Halabi, her voice and image jumping as the signal bounced erratically off the troposphere.

“Any suspects yet?” Kolhammer asked loudly.

“Oh yes, thousands of them,” Halabi said.

Great, thought Kolhammer. Halabi continued before he could reply.

“There’s more, Admiral. The Nuku has been found. It materialized on top of a mountain in New Guinea. About half of it was fused into the rock, but the rest was sticking out, and I’m afraid the Japanese have got their hands on it.”

King and Eisenhower suddenly appeared at Kolhammer’s shoulder.

“What the hell is this about?” King demanded to know.

Kolhammer held up a hand to fend him off.

“Just a minute, Admiral. Captain Halabi, do we know status of the ship? What weapons and sensor systems were intact?”

Halabi disappeared inside in a small blizzard of static, which lasted for a few seconds. Kolhammer asked her to repeat herself.

“From the picture we . . . our intelligence analysts don’t . . . they could . . . retrieved the choppers or most . . . mast-mounted arrays. They were buried . . . looks like the ship’s CIC would have been cut in half by the edge of the mountain. But that . . . the forward missile mounts and a lot of incidental technology they . . . unbolted and walked off with.”

“Suffering Christ,” spat Admiral King. “Is she saying the Japs have their own missile boats, now? I knew this would happen. I knew those little bastards would get hold of this shit.”

“Settle down,” said Kolhammer. Turning back to the small screen, he collected his thoughts before going on.

“All right, Captain. You’re on the spot. I’ll leave the micromanagement of the Nuku to you. But I suggest we lay a world of hurt on that mountain ASAP.”

“Already in hand, Admiral. We’re just working our way around the lack of GPS now. We’ve got one catapult patched up, and we should have a strike inbound within four hours.”

“Good work. What about Anderson and Miyazaki? What’s the situation there?”

Kolhammer ignored King’s muttered resentment at the distraction.

“We had a real pissing match with the locals at the crime scene,” said Halabi. “Nimitz intervened on our behalf. We got carriage of the forensics—Captain Francois off the Kandahar is handling that. And your Captain Lunn is working with the local DA’s office on the investigations.”

Sitting on a footstool, hunched over the minicam sending his image back to Pearl, Kolhammer clenched and unclenched his fists.

“Local cops doing the footwork?” he asked.

“I’m afraid so,” said Halabi, unconscious of the effect her words had on Admiral King.

“Arrogant fucking limeys,” he muttered.

Kolhammer leaned forward and tried to focus on the stuttering video image.

“We got any hand at all in the detective work?”