reading

‘An airport blockbuster and sci-fi war thriller that is definitely one for the boys’ Sunday Mail

‘Chillingly plausible, insanely detailed and meticulously researched [Weapons of Choice is] also great fun’ Big Issue

‘Glorious excitement and meticulous density … Birmingham lays out in fully dramatized scenes just what we’ve lost and what we’ve gained in the eighty years between the rigid certainties of World War II and the flexible grayscales of the never-ending war on terror’ www.scifi.com

Dramatis Personae

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.

Roosevelt, President Franklin D. Thirty-second President of the United States of America.

Black, Commander Daniel, USN. On secondment as Chiefs of Staff Liaison to Special Administrative Zone.

Curtis, Lieutenant Wally, USN. Training Publications Officer, Liaison Division, USN.

Francois, Major Margie, USMC. Combat surgeon and Chief Medical Officer, Multinational Force.

Halabi, Captain Karen, RN. Commander, British contingent; Deputy Commander, Multinational Force; Commander, HMS Trident.

Ivanov, Major Pavel, Russian Federation Spetsnaz. On secondment to US Navy SEALs.

Mohr, Master Chief Eddie. Transferred to Auxiliary Forces, Special Administrative Zone.

Müller, Captain Jurgen, Deutsche Marine. On secondment to Special Operations Executive.

Windsor, His Royal Highness Colonel Harry. Commander, British MNF SAS contingent. Commander Training Squadron.

Homma, General Masaharu. Commander of Imperial Japanese land forces in Australia.

Uemura, Lieutenant Masahisa. Squadron leader, ‘Thunder Gods’, Special Attack Squadron, Sapporo.

Davidson, James ‘Slim Jim’. Formerly Able Seaman, USS Astoria. Chief Executive Officer and principal shareholder of Slim Jim Enterprises.

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.

Willet was groggy from a fortnight of broken sleep. Gone were the days of dialling 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 of this boat. Six hundred channels of bad TV. Thai food. No-fuss contraception.

‘Enter,’ she said, her voice cracking badly. She had to repeat herself, after a cough. ‘Come in, please.’

‘Begging your pardon, Captain, but the XO says we’ve picked ’em up again. He said you’d want to be on the bridge.’

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 blend from Italy.

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.’

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 on the small table beside her bunk. She grabbed a ’temp-made energy bar and peeled back the wax paper, then started chewing joylessly on her so-called breakfast at the same time as she climbed into a pair of grey combat coveralls. She checked her watch: 0431 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 Harbour Bridge, a picture of her sister, and a small watercolour of their parents’ beach house painted by her dad back in Twenty-One marked the room out as her private territory. She was never far from work, however.

The cabin was located all of fifteen metres from the sub’s combat centre, allowing her to arrive in a shade under the promised two minutes.

‘As you were, Mr Gray. I hear we’ve got them by the short and curlies again.’

Lieutenant Commander Conrad Gray 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, as were all those 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 you to say 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, and without satellite cover, they’d been forced to come within six thousand metres 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. Their fate was unknown, but it didn’t take much to imagine what had become of them. The Nazis had taken 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 multi-panel 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 super-cell within which the Dessaix was trapped. Sitting six hundred feet down, the submariners had enjoyed an easy time of it. Conditions topside, on the other hand, would have been 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 Gray,’ 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.’

‘Of course. It was just a girlish whim.’ She smiled, then her features took on an altogether sombre cast. ‘Weapons?’ she said crisply. ‘Confirm target lock and torpedo status.’

Though she couldn’t actually hear or feel it, she knew instinctively when the giant submarine had bared its fangs.

The combat centre 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 onto 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 towards the hijacked French vessel that was struggling through the waves.

‘Countermeasures?’ she asked quietly, although there was no need. The Havoc was fully stealthed.

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 pick-up crew of the Dessaix was 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 millimetres before they reached their goal, the chief defensive sysop cried out. ‘They’re onto us! Threat boards red.’

Willet’s crew was 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 Gray stayed bent over the schematic displays until he was entirely satisfied. Standing upright, he asked, ‘Shall we search for survivors, ma’am?’

‘No, I’m afraid not, Mr Gray. The seas are still running at twelve metres 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.

1

D-DAY, 3 MAY 1944, 0300 HRS: IN TRANSIT.

The lead helicopter hammered across the English Channel at the edge of its performance envelope, close enough to the waves that Lieutenant Gil Amundson thought he could feel a fine mist of sea spray stirred up by their passage through the darkness.

The seven men in his chalk were quiet, each alone in his own cocoon of anticipation and fear. Amundson could hear Sergeant Nunez beside him, reciting rapid-fire Hail Marys, working through a set of rosary beads in what looked to the young Cavalry officer like record time. Across the cabin Private Clarke was nervously tapping his heel on the steel plating of the floor, the tempo increasing until it sounded like one of those rock-and-roll drummers. Then he’d curse, punch himself on the leg and go still for a moment, before starting all over again. On either side of him a couple of the boys were dozing fitfully. Or at least pretending to.

That’s how it went the whole way across. Each man playing out what might be his last hour as he saw fit. Some checked their equipment before checking their buddy’s. Some leaned over to get a view of the invasion fleet as it headed for the coast. Corporal Gadsden craned his head skywards, the bulky lens of his Gen2 Starlite goggles tracking his gaze as he picked out Dakotas, gliders, Mustang night fighters and, at one point, a squadron of Sabres miles overhead, all screaming towards France.

Amundson forced himself to go through the plan again. The rapid insertion, the assembly point for his platoon, the mental map of their objective.

He used what little space he had in the chopper to perform a set of isometric exercises, lest his butt fall asleep before they jumped into Hitler’s front garden. He stretched his arms and legs and craned his neck from side to side, a full extension in each direction, which gave him a clear view of the rest of the Cav squadron as it thundered towards the enemy in a hundred and thirty-two Hueys, with another forty Cobra gunships riding shotgun.

It seemed that the demonic roar of so many engines, the great thudding of all those rotors, could surely be heard in Berlin itself. But as quickly as the thought came to him, it was gone.

A glance forward through the armoured glass canopy revealed the firestorm that was engulfing the Pas de Calais. So much high explosive had been dropped on that small region of France that it would have been a wonder if anything bigger than a flea was still alive down there. There’d even been talk back in England that Ike might bust a nuke over the Krauts, although Amundson doubted that. They hadn’t been outfitted to fight in radioactive terrain.

That wouldn’t stop the Nazis, though, he supposed. Axis Sally had been taunting the Allies for weeks now, claiming that the Reich was just waiting for them to set foot on the continent, giving them an excuse to use the first of their many, many A-bombs. Amundson glanced down, then back at the lead elements of the great fleet headed for the beaches of Calais. At least his squadron was too small a target to justify the use of such a weapon. No, they were probably just gonna get chewed to bits by German jet fighters. Ah, screw it.

He figured the same doubts were barrelling through every man in the operation. Eisenhower himself was doubtlessly being tortured by the same sorts of fears. Ever since the Transition, so much was known, but so much more was unknowable.

There was one person who didn’t seem to give a shit, though, and she was sitting directly across from him. She was a civilian, but she’d seen more combat than any of them. Maybe even more than anyone in the whole squadron. Amundson knew a few guys who’d fought in the Pacific, but most everyone else in the 7th had never fired a shot – not in combat – nor had they come under fire themselves.

But they’d trained as hard as any outfit in the world. And in one of those weird, head-spinning paradoxes, they’d learned the lessons of another D-Day, one that had taken place in another world. Amundson knew, for instance, that a field full of French cows most likely wasn’t mined, but that if those cows kept staring at a bush or a hedgerow, there was probably a German hiding there. Their equipment was without a doubt the best. The poor old infantry, down in those Higgins boats, they didn’t get any Starlite goggles, or even body armour. And they were still armed with the M1 Garand, not the brand new assault rifles with integrated grenade launchers.

Even though he’d been honed to a razor’s edge and was riding at the head of the most powerful cavalry unit ever assembled, Gil Amundson couldn’t help but wonder. Would he crumble when the first bullet zipped past? Would he freeze up over the landing zone? Would he fail his men? And would he look like a coward in front of this woman who seemed not to give a damn that they were less than an hour away from certain death?

The chopper banked sharply as the dark sky to the north suddenly filled with dozens of beautiful, sinuous lines of light. Tracer fire. Where the hell was that coming from? They’d been told the air force was going to bomb the coast back to the Stone Age.

He struggled to get a view of the rest of the squadron following the lead chopper. He heard the copilot calling in a position estimate for the antiaircraft batteries, and half expected to see a couple of gunships peeling away to deal with them. But everyone stayed in formation, and pressed on towards the objective.

They left the lead elements of the fleet behind them. The only movement on the sea was a rippling crescent of reflected moonlight as they sped on. The pilot’s voice crackled out of a speaker above Amundson’s head.

‘We’ll be over the coastline in five minutes.’

Amundson looked south as four gunships pulled away, their job to rake the ground clear of defenders. When he looked back at the woman, she was talking to Gadsden. Or rather, he was yelling something in her ear. She smiled and nodded.

Amundson felt a brief, irrational surge of jealousy. He slowly and deliberately stamped it down. She wasn’t his girl, after all. They’d shared a bed in London for a couple of nights, made love in ways he hadn’t thought possible – and which wouldn’t have been, if he wasn’t in such amazing physical shape. But she’d made it clear that she wanted nothing more than sex. She didn’t even like to cuddle. The couple of times he’d tried, she had rolled on top of him, fucked him insensible, then rolled off and gone back to sleep.

When he’d told his best buddies, Lieutenants Savo and Lobes, they’d stared at him like he’d just won the Kentucky Derby. And when he said that, actually, it kinda bugged him, they just looked at him like he was out of his mind.

Julia Duffy was famous. And beautiful. And rumour had it that she was as rich as a Rockefeller. So if he didn’t feel like sharing her bed, then Savo and Lobes reckoned they’d be more than happy to volunteer. After all, if she was good enough for the President of the United States of America – well, he’d be president someday, at least, if he survived the war – then who were they to turn her away?

Amundson caught himself staring at her just before she locked eyes with him. He glanced away guiltily.

Julia kicked him. It would have hurt if he hadn’t been wearing a thick rubber knee pad.

‘You and your boys, you’ll be fine, Lieutenant,’ she called out over the noise. ‘Don’t sweat it. You’re gonna eat those fuckers alive. Garry fuckin’ Owen.’

The men in his chalk roared back: ‘Garry Owen!’

Amundson smiled. But he felt sick in the pit of his stomach.

About three months after the Allies had retaken Hawaii, a package arrived for Julia at the New York Times. She’d been back home for a month by then. After the slaughter on Oahu, the paper insisted that she take a proper holiday, and to everyone’s surprise she agreed.

She’d still been with Dan at that point, but she hadn’t gone out to the Zone. Hadn’t even bothered to phone and tell him she was back. Mostly, she just stayed drunk.

She did manage to visit Rosanna’s family, and for about three hours in their company she felt half-human. But she fell apart when Poppi Ugo brought out the family album and insisted on taking her through every shot they had of Rosanna. She’d guzzled down nearly three-quarters of a bottle of grappa, crying hysterically all the time, and passed out on the couch. She woke up at three in the morning, shivering under the Natoli family quilt, then vomited and snuck out the front door, leaving twenty dollars to cover the dry-cleaning bill. Hours later she remembered that dry-cleaning as she knew it didn’t exist yet.

She’d gone back to apologise, but the Natoli clan refused to hear it. They tried to talk her into staying for another hundred and eighty-eight course dinner, but fearing a meltdown she had begged off and fled back to the city. The next she heard from them was when this package turned up at the Times.

The mailroom cleared about a thousand items a week for Julia. Letters from servicemen she’d written about. Cookies baked by their moms. Crayola drawings by little girls who said they wanted to grow up and be just like her. And, at the other extreme, hate mail and death threats from fans of the former FBI director who blamed her for his ruin, or from nutjobs who just didn’t like her. There were plenty of those. Many of them worked for the same paper as her.

The package from Rosanna’s family lay on her desk for about two weeks before she could bring herself to do anything about it. Worried that she might fall apart in front of her colleagues, Julia had carried the parcel back to her apartment and left it in a closet for nearly a month. It took a fifteen-hour liquid lunch at the Bayswater before she could get it back out of the closet, and two pots of black coffee before she could take a knife to the packing tape without cutting a finger off.

She had no idea what was waiting in there. Part of her thought the Natolis might have sent the quilt over for her to clean up. But the package wasn’t big enough, and when she spilled the contents of the thick, padded envelope onto her Castiglioni coffee table, a small ‘Oh!’ escaped her, and she had to run to the bathroom to be sick again.

The snoring man in her bed stirred but didn’t wake as she lost a whole day’s worth of Manhattans and finger food in the bathroom. She sucked a few mouthfuls of cold water straight from the tap, thought about taking a shower and decided to go without, lest she wake up the asshole in her bedroom.

Walking very unsteadily back into the lounge area of her huge open living space, Julia studied the sad collection of personal effects that lay on the tabletop. Rosanna’s flexipad and a dozen data sticks, a traditional leather-bound diary, some jewellery, a Hermès scarf, her imitation Bordigoni handbag, a wristwatch, a small piece of notepaper and some cosmetics.

Julia stared at the pile of detritus for a long time while her stomach threatened to rebel again. She tried to think, but it was as though her mind could gain no traction. It kept slipping over the sight in front of her, refusing to latch on to anything in particular. After a few minutes, with a shaking hand, she picked up the piece of paper.

Rosanna’s great auntie Tula had written on it in her large, looping style.

Dearest Julia,

A very kind Captain Schapelli from the army came by today with a large carton of little Rosie’s belongings recovered from Hawaii. She had made out a will and hidden it in her apartment. The Japanese killed everyone there, I hear, but they never found Rosie’s last testament or the things she had hidden away. Captain Schapelli, a lovely boy, but Jewish, insisted that we send them to you. He’s quite a fan. There is a larger box, which we could not afford to send because of the postage being what it is these days, and Captain Schapelli says there are some things in there for you, too. We would love to have you around for dinner again, and you could collect the things little Rosie wanted you to have. Please do call or write.

Love and best wishes,
Tula.

Eight months later, Julia sat braced against the forward bulkhead of the lead chopper. It was the 7th Cav’s first charge since they’d gone tearing around after Pancho Villa.

She adjusted a shoulder pad as Corporal Gadsden yelled something into her ear about a couple of London barmaids he’d screwed a few weeks earlier. What a dick, she thought, but she just smiled and nodded.

Her titanium weave armour was way past its expiration date. It’d been repaired time and again with reactive matrix panels and patches bought, borrowed and occasionally stolen from other Twenty-First century reporters who didn’t share her enthusiasm for frontline action. So it had taken on the appearance of a camouflage quilt. The ballistic plating was brand new, though, thanks to Rosanna, who had left all of her own, mostly unused equipment to her friend.

A brief, sad smile died at the edge of Julia’s mouth. Still lookin’ out for me, babe.

The copilot’s voice crackled inside her powered helmet. ‘Ten minutes to insertion.’

Amundson repeated the call and held up both hands. Everyone nodded.

Julia could see that the young officer was trying to control his nerves. She guessed it had less to do with fear of being killed than it did with fucking up and letting everyone down. He was a sweet kid, really. They’d had some good times in London, even if he was a little clingy. In fact, thinking about it, she’d spent more time with Gil than any man she’d been with after Dan died. And now the poor kid was shitting himself.

‘You and your boys, you’ll be fine, Lieutenant,’ she yelled over the uproar. ‘Don’t sweat it. You’re gonna eat those fuckers alive. Garry fuckin’ Owen.’

She punched the air between them.

The men grinned fiercely and called out the 7th Cav’s war cry.

As the troopers began yet another round of equipment checks, Julia performed her own pre-combat routine. A software aid scanned all of her built-in combat systems, most of which were useless now anyway, for want of tac-net coverage. She unsheathed her knife. The monobonded carbon blade was a dull grey, but more than razor sharp. Her Sonycam was powered up and loaded with four blank data sticks – again thanks to Rosanna – enough for two days’ continuous filming. Her medikit was an eccentric mix of original 21C supplies, some AT stuff, and some plain old-fashioned ‘temp gear – assorted twentieth-century items she’d scavenged here and there.

Apart from a gene shear contraceptive, which of course she couldn’t switch off now – and hadn’t that been a fucked-up decision? – her bio-inserts were tapped out. If she took a round in the guts, there’d be no warm flush of anaesthetic from her thoracic pips. She’d be screaming for a medic and a shot of morphine, just like the best of them.

‘Five minutes.’

Amundson repeated the gesture he’d made before, except this time he held only one hand up. A harsh burning smell reached them and one of the cavalry troopers, Private Steve Murphy, asked her what the hell was going on.

‘Be cool,’ she called back, ‘and learn to love the smell of napalm in the morning.’

When nobody got the reference, she rolled her eyes.

‘It’s the air force. They would have come through here and bombed the shit out of the place about an hour ago. That’s what you smell. Toasted Nazis. Mmm-hmm. Crispy.’

Gadsden sniggered. Murphy seemed to ponder the point before nodding his approval.

The chopper banked to the right and began to lose altitude as it put on speed.

‘Just passed over the release point,’ reported the copilot.

In the cabin, the pilots were now free to ditch their maps and fly by dead reckoning. They were close. The door gunner primed his thirty cal. Amundson glanced around quickly to catch a look at the whole squadron as it formed up for the assault. Like the others, Julia tugged at her chinstrap and cinched her pack just a little tighter.

Huey and Cobra gunships roared past them on both sides as she waited for the familiar snarl of mini-guns and the whoosh of rockets leaving their pods.

‘Lock and load,’ Amundson cried at two minutes out. A dense black canopy of trees sped beneath the skids.

The Cav troopers tapped their mags against their steel pots before slapping them into place. Julia did the same, pulling the charging handle back along with everyone else. The bolt carrier slapped the first round into place. After Hawaii she’d switched over to using the same ‘temp weapons as the units she covered.

Other than a small stock of ammunition kept for research purposes, none of the original loads that had slipped through the Transition remained. All of the marines coming out of the Zone, and a few of the ‘temp forces like the Cav here, were now loaded out with AT gear like the M4 assault rifle, a workmanlike copy of Colt’s venerable old martyr-maker.

Indeed, fitting her goggles and sweeping her eyes over Amundson’s chalk, it was hard to separate them from some of the units she’d covered as a young pool reporter in Yemen. Swap their drab olive battle dress for Desert MARPAT, and you were almost there. The knee and elbow pads, camel backs, combat goggles, webbing and weaponry were all Twenty-First variants, manufactured decades ahead of their time.

The 7th Cavalry Regiment, along with all of the other regiments in the 1st Air Cavalry Division, were still ‘temp units, however, which meant that some things were very different. There were no African American cavalry troopers riding in this or any other helicopter. And no women. Other than Julia.

‘Thirty seconds!’ Amundson yelled.

‘Clear left,’ the crew chief called.

‘Clear right,’ the door gunner added.

The world turned opal green inside Julia’s Oakleys when she powered up the low light amplification system. They were descending rapidly onto a large field where dozens of black and white – or rather, dark jade and lime green – dairy cows scattered in fear. A wire-guided rocket, a stubby little SS-11, swished overhead and detonated behind a copse of oak trees. Secondary explosions followed and the night erupted. The chopper flared over their LZ, and Julia stood up.

‘Let’s go!’ Amundson yelled.

THE BEGINNING

Contents

John Birmingham

FINAL IMPACT

WORLD WAR 2.3

PENGUIN BOOKS

Final Impact

Acknowledgments

Dramatis Personae

Prologue

1