Off to the west, the sound of big and medium-sized guns never let up. All of Oahu belonged to the United States Navy and Marines-all of it except one lump of rock and cement that made the U.S. hold on everything else a hell of a lot less secure than it should have been.

Smoke wreathed Fort William Rufus, the fort everybody, limey and Yank alike, called the Concrete Battleship. "Why the devil did the damned English have to go and build a fort right there?" Carsten said.

"Drive us crazy?" somebody next to him suggested.

It was as good an answer as any, and better than most. Anybody in his right mind would have thought batteries on the mainland were plenty to keep Pearl Harbor safe. The Royal Navy had to have been hearing voices when it built an artificial island to go with those mainland forts. But, since the mainland forts had fallen to the Marines and the Concrete Battleship was still very much a going concern, maybe the English hadn't been so stupid after all.

The twelve-inch guns in the fort's two turrets had sunk a cruiser and a couple of destroyers, and damaged two battleships to boot. Until it was reduced, the Pacific Fleet couldn't use Pearl Harbor for an anchorage. If the British sortied from Singapore, either alone or with the Japs from Manila, there was liable to be hell to pay.

But how were you supposed to take a fort you couldn't wreck? Pounding by naval guns had chipped and pitted the steel-reinforced concrete that made up so much of the superstructure, but no shells had been lucky enough to land right on top of a turret. Admiral Dewey had offered the fort's garrison full military honors if they surrendered; scuttlebutt was, he'd even offered them safe passage to anywhere they wanted to go in British or Confederate territory. Whatever he'd offered, they'd said no.

And so, brute force and sweet reason having failed, the Navy was trying something new: sneakiness. Carsten didn't know which bright boy in glasses had come up with this scheme. What he did know was that, if it went wrong, nobody would ever find enough pieces of him to bury.

The freighter rounded the headland and sped toward the stern of the Concrete Battleship. The only gun it had ever had that could be brought to bear in that direction was a three-inch antiaircraft cannon, which wasn't turret mounted. The limeys weren't going to use that one now; the bombardment had long since wrecked it.

It was the only one in the plans, anyhow; what was hidden away in the depths of the fort was anybody's guess, and one that made Carsten want to run to the head. But to keep the garrison too busy even to worry about what was sneaking up on them, the Navy was plastering the place again. Shells burst on it, sending up smoke with a core of fire, and all around it, sending up great columns of water. Watching all that made Carsten want to pucker, too. If one of those shells was badly aimed Most of the Navy ships were at extreme long range, for good and cogent reasons. The Concrete Battleship could still return fire-and did, with a salvo from one of its big-gun turrets. The noise of those two twelve-inchers going off was like the end of the world.

Closer and closer the freighter came. Carsten moved up to the bow, with the rest of the Navy files and Marines carrying rifles. At the bow was a boarding tower that looked like something out of Sir Walter Scott or other tales of medieval adventure. But, considering that the roof of Fort William Rufus was forty feet above the waterline, the boarding party was going to need help getting up there.

All at once, the Navy guns fell silent. Carsten approved of that; a couple of shells had come closer to the freighter than to the Concrete Battleship. The ship slid up to the stern or rear or whatever you wanted to call it of the fort, making contact with a decided thump.

"Well, if those bastards didn't know we were here, they do now," somebody close to Carsten said. That was undoubtedly true, and did nothing to make him feel better about the world.

A couple of Marines at the top of the boarding tower secured it to the broken concrete atop the fort. They waved. Sailors and Marines swarmed up the ladder, fast as they could. Sam was somewhere near the middle of the rush. His feet seemed to touch only every third rung. Then he was up on top himself, running through rubble to make sure no limeys came out of their starboard sally port to interfere with what the Americans were doing.

He got down behind a broken chunk of concrete and pointed his Springfield in the direction from which the British would come if they were trying something. He hoped to Jesus they wouldn't-after all, what harm could a few American sailors with rifles do on top of a fortress that had defied every big gun the U.S. Navy owned?

"Here come the guys with the hoses!" a Marine corporal yelled.

And, sure enough, here they came, up over the boarding tower with hoses just like the ones the Vulcan had used to fuel the Dakota. The Concrete Battleship had no fueling ports, of course. But it did have air vents, and the combat engineers knew where they were. They weren't badly covered with broken concrete, either; the Englishmen would have made sure of that.

Somebody fired up through one of the vents. An engineer howled and reeled backwards, clutching his shoulder. Carsten, seeing that plenty of people were covering the sally port, ran over to the vent and shot down into it a couple of times. He didn't know how much good he did; he heard the bullets ricocheting off the metal of the air ducts.

"Hell with that, sailor," an uninjured combat engineer barked at him. "Take Clem's place on the hose and hang on tight."

"All right," Sam said agreeably.

At the rear edge of the Concrete Battleship, somebody yelled "Let 'er rip!" down to the freighter. The hose jerked in Carsten's arms like a live thing. He did have to hang on tight, to keep it from getting away. A stream of thick, black liquid gushed from the nozzle and poured down the vent. Twenty feet away, another hose crew sent more of the stuff into the opening to a second ventilator shaft. Petroleum odors filled the air.

"What the hell is this stuff?" Carsten asked, doing his best to breathe through his mouth.

"Two parts heavy diesel oil, one part gasoline," the combat engineer answered. He let out a wry chuckle. "You don't want to go lookin' for a match for a cigar right about now, do you, buddy?"

"Now that you mention it, no," Sam said.

The engineer laughed again. "Good thinking. Real good thinking. We got ten thousand gallons of this stinking shit on that freighter. Take us maybe ten minutes to pour it all down on the limeys' heads."

"Good pumps," Sam observed. "Damn good pumps."

"It's not like we've got time to waste up here," the combat engineer said. He and Carsten held onto the hose till it suddenly went limp. Then he took a surprisingly small square box out of his pack and set it by the vent. In spite of his warning to Sam, he did light a match and touch it to the fuse. He looked up and grinned. "Now we get the hell out of here, is what we do."

"Yes, sir\" Carsten grabbed his rifle and ran for the boarding tower. Most of the boarding party was already off the Concrete Battleship. A couple of engineers were still busy lighting more demolition charges here and there on the roof.

Sam went down the boarding tower even faster than he'd gone up it. He wanted to get away from Fort William Rufus, far away, as fast as he could. "Everybody off?" somebody yelled. When no one denied it, that same voice shouted, "All astern full!" The freighter backed away from the Concrete Battleship.

"How long a delay did you put on those fuses?" Carsten asked the combat engineer, who'd come down right behind him.