A buddy from his first tour of Afghanistan had given him a memento, a piece of shrapnel from the battleground at Shah-i-Kot. It had been mounted on a polished cedar base and inscribed with J. Robert Oppenheimer’s famously mawkish sentiment: I am become death, the destroyer of worlds. It was really just a piece of bullshit bravado, the sort of thing young pilots loved and old men indulged with some regret, because they understood the worth and the cost of such things. But Kolhammer had kept the piece in his private quarters where he alone could see it. His friend was long gone, shot down over Indonesia in 2009, and hacked to death by Javanese peasant militia. So it was a keepsake, but also a personal talisman, because he had become death. He was a warrior before all else, now, and it was his warrior spirit—a reflexive, unthinking turn toward battle—that saved them all.

“Lieutenant Brooks,” he barked at the flatscreen by his right hand. “Have you linked the fleet into our battlenet?”

“We’ve gained hotlinks to everyone who’s available, sir, but we seem to have lost contact with Garrett, Vanguard, Fearless, Dessaix, Leyte Gulf, Sutanto, and Nuku. The Leyte Gulf we can locate, but she’s not responding. Her systems are fried. She’s seven thousand meters away, bearing one-eight-niner. Possibly rammed. The others are missing, possibly sunk. As is the Nagoya.”

“Is Leyte Gulf burning?”

“Negative, sir. And we can’t get a GPS fix on the datum point, either. I’ve tried interrogating GPS six ways from Sunday, but it seems to be down, Admiral.”

“Down?”

“Nonresponsive, sir. The channels are clear, but it’s as though the satellites themselves have been taken out.”

Marvelous, thought Kolhammer, just marvelous. Under attack from God-knows-who, and their position fix goes south for the winter. He stifled an exasperated grunt.

“Thank you, Lieutenant. Find out what happened to those other ships. I want to know yesterday. Link all surviving task force assets for collective engagement. Unsafe laser packs and Metal Storm. Slave combat maces to the Clinton. Hammerheads only, no sunburn. Chapter Seven rules of engagement. Launch on my mark.”

“Aye, sir,” Brooks replied as her fingers blurred over a touch screen. A secondary explosion jolted her and knocked a few flag bridge crewmembers from their stations. “Solutions confirmed, Admiral. Locked and tracking.”

“Engage,” said Kolhammer. At the same instant, four torpedoes speared into the Clinton.

Chapter 5

5

USS LEYTE GULF, 2257 HOURS, 2 JUNE 1942

“Say again!” yelled Captain Daytona Anderson. The intercom was working fine, but the voice at the other end was muted by small-arms fire, screams, and a brace of explosions, which she felt quite clearly through the soles of her shoes.

“Boarders, ma’am. I say again, we have boarders. Armed and hos—”

A single massive explosion shook the entire ship, cutting off the transmission. A recorded voice boomed out of nearby PA speakers.

“Intruder alert. Intruder alert. Intruder alert.”