Final Impact
Authors: John Birmingham
CONTENTS
FOR ROSE AND ANGUS MACKAY,
neighbors, friends, and deadline firefighters
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
ALLIED COMMANDERS
Arnold, General Henry H. (Hap). US Army Commander of the Army Air Force.
Churchill, Winston. Prime Minister, Great Britain.
Curtin, John. Prime Minister, Commonwealth of Australia.
Eisenhower, Brigadier General Dwight D., US Army. Head of War Plans Division. Appointed Commander of US Forces, European Theatre of Operations, June 1942.
King, Admiral Ernest J., USN. Commander-in-Chief of the US Fleet and Chief of Naval Operations.
Kolhammer, Admiral Phillip, USN. Task Force Commander, Commandant Special Administrative Zone (California).
MacArthur, General Douglas, US Army. Commander, Allied Forces, South-West Pacific Area. Headquartered in Brisbane, Australia.
Marshall, General George C., US Army. Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Nimitz, Admiral Chester, USN. Commander-in-Chief, US Pacific Fleet.
Roosevelt, President Franklin D. Thirty-second president of the United States of America.
Spruance, Rear Admiral Raymond A., USN. Commander, Combined Pacific Task Force.
Stimson, Henry. US Secretary of War.
ALLIED PERSONNEL
Black, Commander Daniel, USN. On Secondment as Chiefs of Staff Liaison to Special Administrative Zone.
Danton, Sub-Lieutenant Philippe. Ranking officer on
Robert Dessaix.
Denny, Sergeant Adam, USMC Force Recon.
Flemming, Chief Petty Officer Roy, RAN. CPO HMAS
Havoc.
Francois, Major Margie, USMC. Combat surgeon and Chief Medical Officer, Multinational Force.
Grey, Lieutenant Commander Conrad, RAN. Executive Officer, HMAS
Havoc.
Groves, General Leslie. Director of the Manhattan Project.
Halabi, Captain Karen, RN. Commander, British contingent; Deputy Commander, Multinational Force; Commander, HMS
Trident.
Harrison, Sergeant Major Aubrey. 82nd MEU.
Howard, Lieutenant Commander Marc. Intelligence Officer, HMS
Trident.
Ivanov, Major Pavel, Russian Federation Spetsnaz. On secondment to US Navy SEALs.
Jones, Colonel JL, USMC. Commander, 82nd Marine Expeditionary Unit.
Judge, Captain Mike, USN. Commander, USS
Hillary Clinton.
Kennedy, Lieutenant John F., USN. Commander PT 101.
Kicji. Guide to Pavel Ivanov.
Liao, Lieutenant Willy, USN. PA to Admiral Kolhammer.
Lohrey, Lieutenant Amanda, RAN. Intelligence Officer, HMAS
Havoc.
McTeale, Lieutenant Commander James. Executive Officer, HMS
Trident.
Mohr, Chief Petty Officer Eddie. Transferred to Auxiliary Forces, Special Administrative Zone.
Müller, Captain Jurgen, Deutsche Marine. On Secondment to Special Operations Executive.
Nguyen, Lieutenant Commander Rachel, RAN. Multinational Force Intelligence Liaison to South-West Pacific Area HQ.
Rogas, Chief Petty Officer Vincente, US Navy SEALs.
Snider, Sergeant Arthur, USMC. 1st Marine Division. (Contemporary.)
St. Clair, Sergeant Major Vivian Richards, British SAS force.
Steele, Captain Colin, USN. Commander JDS Siranui.
Viviani, Lieutenant Colonel Nancy. Production Chief for Admiral Kolhammer.
Willet, Captain Jane, RAN. Commander, HMAS
Havoc.
Windsor, His Royal Highness Major Harry. Commander, British MNF SAS contingent. Commander Training Squadron.
GERMAN COMMANDERS
Göring, Reichsmarschall Hermann. Chief of the Luftwaffe.
Himmler, Reichsführer Heinrich. SS Chief.
Hitler, Reichschancellor Adolf.
Oberg, General Karl. SS Commander in Paris.
Speer, Albert. Minister of Armaments.
Zeitzler, General Kurt, Wehrmacht Chief of Staff
GERMAN PERSONNEL
Brasch, Colonel Paul. Engineer. Reich Special Projects.
Skorzeny, Colonel Otto. Personal bodyguard to Adolf Hitler.
JAPANESE COMMANDERS
Hidaka, Commander Jisaku, IJN. Interim Military Governor of Hawaii.
Homma, General Masaharu. Commander of Imperial Japanese land forces in Australia.
Oshima, General Hiroshi. Japanese ambassador to Germany.
Uemura, Lieutenant Masahisa, Squadron leader, “Thunder Gods,” Special Attack Squadron, Sapporo.
Yamamoto, Grand Admiral Isoroku, IJN. Commander-in-Chief, Combined Fleet.
USSR
Yukio, Lieutenant Seki, Commander Special Attack Squadron, Caroline Islands.
COMMANDERS
Beria, Lavrenty Pavlovich. Head of NKVD.
Khrushchev, Nikita Sergeyevich. Prisoner.
Molotov, Vyacheslav Mikhaylovich. Foreign Minister.
Stalin, Josef Vissarionovich. General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party.
CIVILIANS
Davidson, James “Slim Jim.” Formerly Able Seaman, USS
Astoria.
Chief Executive Officer and principal shareholder Slim Jim Enterprises.
Donovan, William. Chief of the Office of Strategic Services.
Duffy, Julia,
New York Times
feature writer. Embedded 82nd MEU.
Halifax, Lord. British Ambassador to USA.
Hoover, J. Edgar. Director, FBI.
Natoli, Rosanna, CNN researcher/producer. Embedded 82nd MEU.
O’Brien, Ms. Maria. Lawyer, former USMC captain, 82nd MEU. (Retd.)
Stephenson, William. Churchill’s personal representative in the USA.
PROLOGUE
CHRISTMAS DAY 1942
HMAS
HAVOC,
210 NAUTICAL MILES
SOUTH-SOUTHEAST OF THE KURIL ISLANDS
Captain Jane Willet came awake in an instant—even before the chime rang at her cabin door. At least that’s how it seemed.
It’s probably just my mind getting bent of out shape.
Willet was groggy from a fortnight of broken sleep. Gone were the days of dialing up a stim surge from her implants. Indeed, most of the things she had taken for granted were long gone. Close friends and family outside this boat. Six hundred channels of bad TV. Thai food. No-fuss contraception.
The chime rang again.
“Enter,” she said, her voice cracking badly. She had to repeat herself, after a cough. “Come in, please.”
The door slid to the side, and a female sailor stuck her head into the cabin. “Begging your pardon, Captain, but the XO says we’ve picked ’em up again. He said you’d want to be on the bridge.”
“Thank you, Bec.”
Willet sat up and ran her fingers through her hair, gathering the thick, shoulder-length mass of tangles and split ends into a workable ponytail that she tied off with an elastic band. The sailor stepped into the room and over to the counter, then poured a mug of coffee—the last of the boat’s stock of premium-blend Illy. She handed it to the captain.
“Ah. Thanks again. Champion effort.” Willet took a sip, and it felt as though the caffeine went straight to her cortex. Young Sparrow brewed a very mean cup of coffee.
Jeez, I’m gonna miss this when it runs out,
thought the submarine commander.
Wonder how long it’ll be after the war before anyone imports a decent Italian blend.
Aloud she said, “Tell the XO to keep his finger off the trigger until I’ve got some pants on. I’ll join him in two minutes.”
“Aye, Captain.”
Her orderly disappeared, closing the door as she left. Willet took a long slug of the coffee, brewed warm rather than hot so she wouldn’t scald herself. She set the mug down in a recess on the small table beside her bunk. She grabbed a ’temp-made energy bar and peeled back the waxed paper, then started chewing joylessly on her so-called breakfast at the same time as she climbed into a pair of gray combat coveralls. She checked her watch.
Zero four thirty-one hours, local.
She’d been asleep for less than two hours.
Washing down a mouthful of the bar with the last of her coffee, Willet gathered up her flexipad and left behind the small personal space of her cabin. Some novels, a few black-and-white photographs of the Sydney Harbor Bridge, a picture of her sister, and a small watercolor of their parents’ beach house painted by her dad back up in twenty-one marked out the room as her private territory. She was never far from work, however.
The cabin was located all of fifteen meters from the sub’s Combat Center, allowing her to arrive in a shade under the promised two minutes.
“Captain on deck!”
“As you were. Mr. Grey, I hear we’ve got them by the short and curlies again.”
Lieutenant Commander Conrad Grey stepped aside from a bank of flat-panel screens, a quick nod inviting her to take his place. She could see that he was tense, like everyone present.
“The sea’s calmed down a fair bit up there, skipper. We’re getting clean capture on the sensors now, the best we’ve had in three days. Their cocks are on the chopping block, ma’am. Just waiting for the magic word.”
Willet took in the sensor feed with a glance. Once upon a time, they would have made this kill from a much safer distance, but in such foul weather, without satellite cover, they’d been forced to come within six thousand meters just to use the boat’s own sensor suite. Tracking something as dangerous as a
Sartre
-class stealth destroyer was like snuggling up to a nest of vipers.
At least it would have been under normal circumstances.
The
Dessaix,
however, wasn’t under the command of its normal crew. Mostly their fates were unknown, but it didn’t take much to imagine what had become of them. The Nazis had captured the ship while they were all still comatose from the Transition, so there wouldn’t have been a chance to resist. If any still lived, they were probably hanging by their thumbs in a Gestapo cell somewhere in Germany.
Willet leaned back into the gelform seat padding and peered intently into the multipanel display. There was no video feed to examine, only animations of the boat’s electronic intelligence haul. The
Havoc
had five small drones left, but they weren’t robust enough to cope with the extreme conditions above. Three days earlier two giant storm cells had merged to create a supercell within which the
Dessaix
was trapped. Sitting two hundred meters down, the submariners had enjoyed an easy time of it. Conditions top-side, on the other hand, would be evil.
They were bad enough that tracking the ship had been near impossible. They’d lost contact again and again. At last, when the weather showed signs of abating, they had her—and the chance of taking her down.
“You know, Mr. Grey,” Willet mused, “we may not have to bother with this after all. Mother Nature might just do our job for us. It looks to me like the
Dessaix
is struggling.”
“Better safe than sorry, ma’am,” her XO cautioned.
“Of course. It was just a girlish whim.” She smiled, then her features took on an altogether somber cast. “Weapons?” she said crisply. “Confirm target lock and torpedo status.”
“Aye, ma’am. Both confirmed. And we’ve reached firing depth.”
“Well, then, let’s not drag it out. Open tubes.”
Though she couldn’t actually hear or feel it, she knew instinctively when the giant submarine had bared its fangs.
“Tubes three and four open, ma’am.”
Willet did not hesitate. “Fire.”
“Firing three. Firing four, skipper. Clean shots. Tracking now.”
The Combat Center was normally a hushed environment, but when a warshot was loosed, a preternatural stillness came over the dozen men and women working there. In the bad old days a sub captain would have followed the torpedoes to their victim by watching through a periscope. Just two years ago Willet herself would have observed the killing stroke on the ship’s holobloc, where the action would play itself out as a ghostly, three-dimensional image. But now all she had was a crude computer-generated simulation as her last pair of Type 92 torpedoes accelerated toward the hijacked French vessel that was struggling through the waves.
“Countermeasures?” she asked quietly, although there was no need. The
Havoc
was fully stealthed.
“None deployed yet, ma’am. They haven’t made us.”
She nodded, but couldn’t help chewing her lip. She had just fired off the last of their offensive weapons. There were no more shots in the locker—the cruise missile bays and the torpedo room were empty. If they missed with this strike, and the pickup crew of the
Dessaix
were any good, she would have to dive deep and hide out down there for a
very
long time.
Two indicator bars, showing the distance to the target, crawled across the nearest screen. Five millimeters before they reached their goal, the chief defensive sysop cried out.
“They’re on to us! Threat boards red.”
Willet’s heart rate surged, but then her weapons officer spoke up.
“We got a double tap, skipper! Clean hits.” He added, “She’s gone.”
Willet’s crew were disciplined, and nobody cheered, but the commander of the HMAS
Havoc
spoke for them all. “Outstanding piece of work everyone,” she said quietly. “Congratulations.”
Lieutenant Commander Grey stayed bent over the schematic displays until he was entirely satisfied. Standing upright, he asked, “Shall we search for survivors, ma’am?”
It didn’t take long for her to consider the question. “No, I’m afraid not, Mr. Grey. The seas are still running at twelve meters up there. We can’t take the chance. Bring us around, and let’s get back to the lake. Prepare an encrypted burst for Pearl, San Diego, and Sydney, then send it when we get within range.
“And have Ms. Sparrow brew me a hot chocolate. I’m going back to bed.”
