A pair of titanic blast waves of rippled out from the mist-shrouded plateau, atomizing the Indonesian warship and every Japanese soldier working on her.

“Jeez, Stiffy,” Llewelen said to her wingman, “you really don’t see that sort of thing every day.”

They watched the recorded footage from the Raptor’s belly-cam for the third time. A Sony digital projector threw the image up onto a screen in Roosevelt’s suite at the Ambassador Hotel. After the first run-through, Kolhammer watched the others rather than the video, which had arrived as a compressed, encrypted burst from Hawaii. Like the audience in a V3D theater, they swayed from one side to the other as the Raptor weaved through the winding valley on its way to take out the Nuku.

He wondered if any of the Indonesians were alive when the missiles hit home. If so, it was a pity, but Halabi had made the right call. The target had to be hit.

At least nobody in this room would disagree with that. Marshall, Eisenhower, King, and the British ambassador Lord Halifax had all joined Roosevelt for a private briefing on the raid and the implications of the ship’s discovery by Japan. Kolhammer shut off the projection as the attack ended for the third time.

A moment’s silence descended before Lord Halifax spoke up.

“I wish we’d had some of those Raptor thingies last year, when Hitler was bombing us silly.”

“That was very impressive, Admiral,” said Roosevelt. “Destroying that ship in four hours.”

“And it was a British captain who ran the show, was that right?” asked Halifax. “The PM will want to know about that.”

Kolhammer nodded. “Captain Halabi is acting force commander in my absence. She did good. But if we’d had satellite cover we could have killed that target inside twenty minutes. And the Japanese have probably made off with a good haul, anyway. I’m sorry, Mr. President. It’s a complication for you.”

King spoke up from the couch across the room. “And for you, Kolhammer. Even if you could get back home before, you couldn’t go now. Not with the Japs having grabbed Christ-only-knows-what sort of weapons off that ship.”

“You don’t need to explain my responsibilities to me, Admiral King,” Kolhammer said pointedly. “I’m going back to Pearl to confer with my task force commanders on that very issue. And we know exactly what sort of weapons may have been salvaged—primitive ones, by our standards. The Indonesians weren’t running the world’s best navy.”

Eisenhower interposed himself between the two volatile tempers. “We’re going to have a hell of a time making this work, gentlemen. I suggest we stop beating up on each other and think about how we deal with the Japs. And with the Nazis, God help us, if they can lay their hands on any of this.”