“And your business will be in Hashirajima,” said Nimitz.

“If they’re at home. We won’t be going right in, so we won’t be able to use the torpedoes. But we’ll deploy a drone to light up the targets for us, then we’ll slam them with hypersonic cruise missiles. They drive themselves into the body of the target vessel and then go supernova. It’s quite a sight. Like a tiny sun has materialized inside the hull. Makes a hell of a mess. My weapons chief can brief you fully, if you wish. But all you really need to know is that one missile will kill a battleship or an aircraft carrier, or you get your money back. The Japs, they won’t have clue what hit them. If they’re real quick thinkers, they might just realize something’s wrong, and then they’ll be dead.”

“And I take it you have this stealth business, too,” said Fraser.

“We have a full range of stealth protocols and countermeasures. But most of them are redundant in this environment. The material coating our skin will simply absorb the primitive sonar available in this period. We could be sitting directly under a contemporary sub hunter, having a keg party, and they wouldn’t have a clue. It’s not fair, but then, you know, tough shit.”

Nimitz was beginning to suspect that Bull Halsey would warm to this blunt female.

“You seem very motivated, Commander.”

Willet’s face didn’t soften, but her posture did, just marginally.

“My great-grandfather was captured in Malaya, sir. He died on the Burma railway in 1943. The Japs caught him trying to escape, killed nine of his mates right there in front of him. Then they tied him to a tree and used him for bayonet practice. But right now, he’s in Changi. I never knew him, of course. But I loved my granddad, and I remember him crying when he’d talk about his father. I’d like to give him back his old man.”

Captain Francois mashed the palms of her hands into the balls of her eyes, trying to rub out the feeling of hot sand. She hadn’t slept in twenty-six hours, and it was beginning to affect her judgment. She would need to get some time in the rack very soon. But first she had one more cut to make.

She leaned forward, her lower back aching, and scanned the list again. The screen showed a register of every patient she might—just might, mind you—be able to transfer from the fleet’s shipborne hospitals to Pearl’s more primitive shore-based facilities. She needed to free up another 150 beds to accommodate the critical cases they would likely pick up in Singapore and Luzon.

She just didn’t see how she could do it without killing at least seventy or eighty patients.

“What a fucked-up way to earn a dollar,” she grumbled.