"Fine by me," said his passenger.
There was almost no traffic on the way. A major change from his own time. They swung north toward the Verdugo Hills and around onto the old San Fernando Road. The temperature had dropped as the night deepened, and without the light pollution or smog of a megacity to block them out, the stars shone down hard and brilliant.
"Do you mind if I ask you something?" Kolhammer called out over the engine noise and the roar of their passage through the clean, autumn air.
"Not at all."
"Why do you care what happens out here? A lot of what you see here in the Zone must make you uncomfortable."
Stephenson didn't spend long mulling over an answer. "I'm here under orders. Mr. Churchill believes it's imperative that we speed up our research and development. The Nazis are doing so, and their engineers are very good. Better than ours in some fields. He thinks-we both think-that reinventing the wheel would be a criminal waste of time, given the circumstances. The real strength you brought with you was the knowledge and technical skills of your people. Concentrated here they form a-what do you call it?-a critical mass that the enemy can't hope to match. It's important that nothing interfere with what's going on here."
"So you don't care about the… ah… social… ramifications."
"Mr. Churchill feels that it's really none of our business," Stephenson replied.
"No," said Kolhammer. "But of course, Mr. Churchill doesn't have the complication of up to ten thousand time travelers setting up shop in one of his villages, does he? He's just got Halabi and her crew on the Trident, and maybe a hundred others scattered around-most of them the right sort of chaps who'd have no trouble at all getting membership at a good club in London."
"Admiral," Stephenson said around a smirk, "you wound me with such sarcasm."
They turned onto Sunland Boulevard, where North American Aviation was building a massive factory to produce F-86 Saber jet fighters. Work continued around the clock, with the sounds of construction loud enough to hear over the growl of the Humvee. Giant lights illuminated the complex like a sports ground in high summer.
"How many people do you have working there?" asked Stephenson, all business again.
"None yet, but there's about thirty aeronautical engineers off the Clinton attached to North American in Dallas and Kansas City. They'll move out here in a few weeks. Mike Judge is going to run the program from our side."
"There you go, then," said Stephenson. "I'll bet it's the same story all over the Valley. The war is going to be won here, Admiral."
"I thought I was the tour guide tonight."
"Well then, drive on, MacDuff."
They motored away from the island of light back into the dark bowl of the Valley, heading toward the glow of Sepulveda and Ventura. No blackout covered the L.A. Basin, which lay under the protection of an all-seeing Nemesis array. Traffic along Ventura was heavier, with a lot of cars from the city having hauled themselves over Cahuenga Pass and down into the Valley for a look-see. The neon signs of burger joints and all-night bars were strung along the side of the road like cheap Christmas lights. A dusty coupe sped past, full of teenagers who cheered and waved at the Humvee before powering into the night.
"Probably going to park outside a strip club for a couple of hours," said Kolhammer. "Trying to work up the courage to talk their way in."
"I saw my share of strippers in Paris during the Great War," said Stephenson. "I doubt there's much would surprise me here."
"Yeah?" said Kolhammer, who knew he was wrong.
The strip fell behind as he pointed the car at the foothills below the Hollywood ridgeline. The edge of the Zone was up there, at the boundary with L.A. A few lonesome lights winked at them from behind trees hiding the mansions of movie stars and producers. More of his loyal subjects.
For a while he'd had to assign two lieutenants to the job of screening him from the depredations of studio executives who thought the most important thing about the Transition was the access it gave them to a vast library of their own product they hadn't had to spend a dollar actually making. As frustrating as it was-and he'd come this close to shooting Sam Goldwyn-it had led him to make a decision that would probably alter the course of history as profoundly as the disaster at Midway had. It just wouldn't be as obvious or spectacular.
He agreed with everything that Stephenson had said earlier. But he'd also been speaking true when he said he was no position to get into a public brawl with Hoover, or any of the forces behind him. If his arrival here was going to mean anything beyond chaos and madness, Admiral Phillip Kolhammer would have to be willing to reach out and shape events with his own hands. But he could not be seen to be doing so.
He'd given a lot of thought to the problem, and in the end he could see no way around it.
He had carefully drawn up his plans, selected the right personnel, and put them to work in the Quiet Room.
9
The tropical night was inky black, but out on deck, the wraparound goggles, which seemed to mold themselves onto the face, turned everything a bright emerald green. Everybody tried them at least once, and the worst anyone could say was that you lost a little depth perception, but it was a hell of a lot better than groping around in the dark.
"I'll bet somebody back home is making a packet, building these things," Chief Rollins said as they bumped over a slight swell on their way out.
"Not these, Chief," Lohrey replied. "That's a sixth-generation set of Oakleys you got there. The gelform seal alone is about seven decades beyond what you could manufacture here. But you're still right. At least two British and three U.S. companies are working on prototypes of a basic NVG. Of course, the Germans will be doing the same."
"What about the Japs, ma'am?" asked a young seaman.
"Doubt it. Not if they're smart, anyway. German optics are much more advanced. Tokyo would be better off leaving it to them, and not duplicating the effort."
Peering at the screen, Kennedy checked his position against Ross's boat. They were both booming along at top speed, following directions given by Lohrey and Chief Flemming, who talked to each other as though they stood just a few feet apart, rather than riding on separate boats. The night was particularly warm, and the blast of air across the decks was refreshing after having hidden out in the stillness of the mangroves all day.
The pilothouse was lit by Lohrey's glowing data slates, but they had covered the boat's windows with heavy black plastic. To steer, the helmsmen on both PTs were using the feed from a couple of dinky little "battle-cams." Lohrey and Flemming had rigged them up that afternoon, before spending a couple of hours acquainting the crewmen with the most basic functions of the equipment they'd brought on board. "Just in case we get killed," Lohrey had said in an offhand manner that had unsettled Kennedy.
New orders had come through from MacArthur's office via an encrypted data burst, requiring them to secure a number of survivors after the attack. That meant rewriting the plan, because Lohrey had originally designated the warships as secondary targets. Now they had to make certain the destroyers were sunk first. Some little Asian woman called Lieutenant Commander Nguyen (it sounded like Noo-win to him) had appeared in a recorded movie to brief them about it. The boats they had thought were troopships apparently looked more like prison transports now. They were still supposed to sink them, but now they had to grab a bunch of survivors for interrogation, too. That order came all the way down from MacArthur's office, but Kennedy suspected that Captain Willet was somewhere in back of it.