Designated Targets

Following their example, he put aside his own concerns. The warrior who drew his blade without confidence was doomed. Hidaka said the missile strike had done an enormous amount of damage, and his own air assault would surely add to the Americans’ woes.

“Captain,” he said, sitting a little straighter in his command chair, “signal the fleet to redouble its vigilance. There will be enemy submarines in front of us. And a counterattack from Midway remains possible.”

The bridge crew took their lead from Yamamoto’s renewed vigor. Backs straightened. Orders were barked out just a bit more crisply. Everywhere he looked, he saw evidence of Japan’s finest young men, willing to die in the service of the empire.

It wasn’t right for him to let them down with maudlin displays of anxiety.

Lieutenant Wally Curtis just couldn’t believe it. He had thought of the jet planes as indestructible. And yet there they were, every last one of them, totally fubar. A dozen or more piles of burning wreckage.

Hickham Field was littered with scrap metal and human body parts, but most of the crash crews and fire engines were clustered about the tarmac where the F-22s from the Clinton had been parked. They were all gone, except for two that had been up in the air when the missiles came over. And he’d heard they had been banged up when they had to land on a normal road surface, because there was no undamaged runway anywhere that could take them. The undercarriage of one had collapsed when it fouled in a big pothole, and the other had clipped a power pole and just about torn off a wing.

That was the scuttlebutt, anyway. He hadn’t seen it himself, and as Rosanna kept telling him, unless you actually saw it happen, it probably didn’t.

Well, he’d seen this happen hadn’t he? Curtis had thought he’d never again see anything to equal Midway, but this came close. They’d driven in to Hickham, flashing three different types of ID at the guard post, which was too busy to check them properly, anyhow. The base was a write-off. It was hardly recognizable as a working facility.

Rosanna was too busy filming to answer any of his questions, so he turned to Detective Cherry instead, which was pretty strange when he thought about it, because the policeman was supposed to be following them.

“You think the Japs are gonna invade, Detective?”

Cherry laughed, but it was a sour, shriveled-up sound. Curtis didn’t think there was any humor in it at all. “Sure, kid. You sucker-punch a guy this good, you gotta give him a good kickin’ while he’s down. Finish him off if you can. That was their mistake the first time around. They shoulda finished us back in December last year.”

“What should we do, then? I tried to get back to my unit, but it’s just a big crater now. I couldn’t find anyone at Pearl.”

“Forget Pearl,” Cherry said. “The Japs are gonna be over to bomb the rubble soon enough. You know how to fire a gun, boy?”

“I did basic,” Curtis protested, feeling as if Cherry was somehow disregarding his martial prowess.

The detective let go another one of his humorless laughs, as a series of explosions destroyed a hangar full of Wildcat fighters a couple of hundred yards away. Curtis flinched and ducked, but Cherry hardly moved. Rosanna swung her little movie camera around to take in the new action.

“Basic, huh?” Cherry said. “Well, that’s good. Killing a man is pretty basic, when you get right down to it. Put a bullet in him. Or a knife. Put your hands around his neck and choke him to death. You think you could handle that, son? Killing a man right up close like that? Smelling him as he shits his pants and calls out for his mama?” Cherry’s eyes were lifeless as he spoke. In a way, it was more disturbing than if he’d been ranting.

“I can handle myself,” Curtis replied weakly.

An air raid siren began to wail before the cop could reply. Curtis spun around, almost describing a complete circle before he spotted the danger: dozens of planes coming in from the west, diving toward the airfield out of the late afternoon sun.

“Rosanna!” he yelled. “Run.”

They all ran, heading for a slit trench twenty yards away. About a hundred others hand the same idea as the first bombs began their whistling descent.

Both Rosanna and Cherry surprised him. She by jumping into the shelter and then popping right back up to film the attack while others cowered on the floor. Cherry by the speed with which he covered the distance to safety, and then by pulling his service revolver and taking potshots at the Japanese planes.

The policeman wasn’t the only one doing that. A crackle of rifle and pistol fire grew into a minor torrent as men, and even a few women, opened up with small arms. Curtis felt less than useless, having no weapon to shoot. He crouched and hurried over to Rosanna’s side. She had turned, and was now filming down the trench, capturing the resistance to the bombardment.