Takasuka wondered what awaited them ahead. The fleet had been alive with rumor ever since the canceled mission to Midway. Some said the Russians had declared war. Others claimed with righteous certainty that the Americans were about to capitulate. One wild tale originating with an old salt on their sister ship, the destroyer Hokaze, spoke of a gigantic whirlpool that had sucked two American carriers down to the very bottom of the Coral Sea. By the time that rumor had reached Takasuka’s ears, it had twisted itself into a perverse story that as you dropped down the funnel you could see old Viking raiders and the bones of Roman galleys on the gray floor of the seabed.

He never failed to be amazed at the bullshit sailors were able to dream up.

As he stood into the freshening breeze, waiting for a radio message relating what the Zeros had discovered up the strait, he thought perhaps a falling star had dropped from the heavens in front of them. He gazed at the sight, captivated by its simple beauty, until it became apparent that the bright comet trail wasn’t moving from the heavens toward the waves, but across them, toward him.

More lights appeared, and he tried to get a fix on them through his binoculars, but the heaving motion of the ship and the shaking of his hands made it impossible. The fantastic speed of the lights struck him next, and the sense of intent that seemed to lurk behind their progress. At that point he raised the alarm.

Bells rang and Klaxons blared but it was too late.

Lieutenant Commander Takasuka’s existence came to an end inside an expanding globe of hellfire.

Another four missiles shrieked over the scene on their way to Singapore.

Chapter 40

40

SINGAPORE, 2351 HOURS, 20 JUNE 1942

The heel of a Japanese sentry’s boot pressed into the earth fifteen centimeters from the tip of Captain Harry Windsor’s royal nose. The prince’s night vision goggles were switched to low-light amplification and small-unit narrowcasting. The other members of his section, including Sergeant St. Clair and two Australian SAS troops, captured the video feed in lime green on the small pop-up window in the corner of their own goggles.

Harry lay as still and quiet as the warm soil beneath him. He breathed as little as possible. Even so, the smell of Singapore was overpowering, a heady brew of open drains and dried fish, of swamp gas and Chinese spices.

In his own pop-up he could see that both St. Clair and Captain Pearce Mitchell, the ranking Aussie, had drawn a bead on the Japanese soldier. A microlight targeting dot, invisible to the sentry, had settled on the side of his head just above the ear, while another dot, emanating from Mitchell’s silenced HK 9mm submachine gun, had glued itself to the center of his body mass.