"No! I'll not have it," she protested, spinning on her heel and pointing at them with her parasol. "What bad language and poor manners! How dare you! And we'll beat those heathen monkeys yet, I say. But not if young people like you give in to despair. You should be ashamed. My Charlie would turn in his grave!"

And with that she spun again and waddled off up the street. They watched her go, too surprised to say anything. After a moment, Willet apologized.

"Nothing to be sorry for," Harry assured her. "I'm sure if it was London or-was it Dallas, did you say, Commander?-we'd be just as buggered. I could run into my grandmother for God's sake… except she'd be younger than me."

They walked on the few hundred yards to the sand-stone chambers that housed the headquarters of all Allied forces in the South West Pacific Area. Judge was actually familiar with the building. In his time it had been converted into luxury apartments and an entertainment center with one of the best sports bars on the Pacific Rim. He'd visited it more than once while on shore leave. In comparison, it seemed somewhat crude here in its original form.

They'd seen increasing numbers of military personnel as they approached. The town's civilian population tended not to notice them in the throng of uniforms, but they'd drawn some stares from the contemporary soldiers. The cut and style of their uniforms set them apart.

A surprising number of African American soldiers were on the streets. An engineering battalion, they'd learned. Judge found them to be deferential to a fault. He didn't dwell on it. There were some older branches of his family tree that had laid claim to the sort of good old boys who'd thought regular lynchings and cross burnings were a pretty good idea. He wasn't proud of it.

A double beep on the flexipad in his briefcase warned of an incoming transmission. Normally, live video from the far side of the world could have been instantly relayed via satellite, but of course the sky was empty, so he had to wait a few minutes while the single, highly compressed data burst bounced off the troposphere and down onto a "footprint" that covered more than a hundred square kilometers. His pad was currently located in the center of that area. It was considerably bulkier than a standard flexipad, packed tight with boosted comm circuitry and quantum processors, developed when military planners correctly surmised that their satellites might be among the first targets in any high-level military conflict. Even so, it was grossly inadequate and seemed to be nonfunctional most of the time. Judge really missed instant and reliable comms.

"News from fleet," he told the others.

They hurried up the stairs of the headquarters building, flashing newly printed passes at the guards. Once off the street Judge hauled the pad out of the old leather bag.

He brought up the short, encrypted message. The pad decoded the burst and displayed the text.

"It's from Flag Ops," he told the others. "Operational concepts for the Pacific theater."

"That should please MacArthur," said Willet.

"Am I to be usurped?" roared General Douglas MacArthur.

Commander Judge had racked up a lot of practice being roared at by the late captain of the USS Hilary Clinton. Guy Chandler had spoken in a dull roar even during normal conversations. When something really ticked him off, you could hear him over the din of an F-22 spooling up on the flight deck. Still, being roared at by Douglas MacArthur was a unique and even a worthwhile experience-if you could stand back and appreciate the historical incongruity of getting hammered down by the volcanic temper of the supreme commander of the South West Pacific Area.

"I already have an operation planned to hit back at the Japanese," MacArthur thundered. He stalked over to the large paper map hanging on the wall of his office in Brisbane.

"I've studied the electrical files and information you brought with you, Commander Judge. And even with your forces degraded by the incident at Midway, I still believe you have the power to smash the Japanese advance and drive them from their base at Rabaul. And your very own history books bear me out. We can dig those little yellow fiends out of there now, or kill thousands of marines getting them out of Guadalcanal in August."

Prince Harry opened his mouth to speak, but MacArthur ignored him and plowed on.

"The Japs are stretched thin throughout the southwest theater," he said, tapping the map with a wooden pointer. "If only I'd had the resources, I would have defeated Homma back in Bataan. However, I place my trust in God, who has by some miracle placed you here at my convenience and given me the power to drive these devils all the way back to the Home Islands."

Judge winced imperceptibly at the attempted hijacking of the Multinational Force. But he spoke as soothingly as he could.

"General, as I said, we are more than willing to commit to any future operations. But you must understand that our forces are not-" He paused for just a heartbeat, wondering how to handle this massive but fragile ego. "-well, they're not conventional forces as you would construe the term. They're not equipped or trained to fight in the same way as the forces you command."

"And just what do you mean by that?" demanded MacArthur, an explosive discharge that made them all flinch. "Am I to be undermined? Am I not the supreme commander in this theater? I would have thought that operational judgments were my prerogative. But it sounds like that prerogative is to be usurped. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you are sitting there telling me I don't know what I'm doing."

"No, General," said Judge soothingly. "Please. Just hear me out. As you well know, military doctrine advanced a great deal between the end of the Great War and the start of this one. You yourself were instrumental in recognizing the importance of armored mobile warfare, long before many in the German high command."

That point was arguable at best, but Lieutenant Nguyen had advised him before he left Pearl that he should take every possible opportunity to stroke MacArthur's ego. True to form, the general nodded at the compliment as if it were his due. It seemed to calm him down a little.

Judge continued. "Doctrine and war have likewise advanced in the decades between the end of this war and our time."

Jones then made a fist, unfurling his fingers as he ticked off each of his next points. "Stealth platforms, directed energy weapons, quantum processors, comm nets and bio implants, intelligent munitions, hypersonic flight, high-earth-orbit kinetic-impact devices, remote sensing, night vision. You may well be the finest general on the face of the planet at this time-"

MacArthur grunted and nodded his agreement again.

"-but the greenest marine in our task force has an innate understanding of our war-making capacity, which it will take you some time to fully comprehend. And, as I have explained, we do not have much time."

Judge paused and waited on MacArthur's response. He was surprised by the man's gaunt appearance, but reminded himself that MacArthur had only recently escaped Corregidor, where he'd shared the same privations as his men during the siege. Deep fissures raked his hollow face, and the skin hung slack beneath his chin. He was thinking openly, the play of his thoughts so apparent on his face that no one spoke. He looked up at the three visitors and sighed. "You know, millions died pointlessly in the last war because those charged with its prosecution hadn't learned the lessons of our own Civil War," he said.

"We don't have many lessons to teach you, General," Judge offered to smooth over the difficult moment.

"No, but I hope you have a few for those bastards in Tokyo."

The flexipad emitted another double beep and a long chirrup. Flash traffic.