1945

Chapter 1

The muffled sounds of the nearby explosions cut through his sleep-fog and Lt. Paul Morrell leaped from his cot. A surge of fear ruined his warm and pleasant dream about his girlfriend, Debbie Winston. He grabbed his carbine and ran outside the tent and looked for the source, all the while trying to ignore the nausea and splitting headache that assailed him.

Another explosion came from behind the low hill just to the rear of the camp.

Morrell looked about for help as he ran up the hill. No one was around. They were probably still out celebrating the end of the war, although it sounded as if someone didn't believe it. Could they be under attack from some Nazi fanatics? It sure as hell sounded like it.

Another blast jarred him. He breasted the hill on the run and looked down below him. Then he started swearing softly. Two of his soldiers, Sgt. Cecil Wiles and Cpl. Tommy Nevins, were standing by the stream that ran through the gentle valley. Wiles, staggering ever so slightly, pulled the pin on a grenade and lofted it into the center of a wider section of the stream that formed a nice little pond.

Water geysered up from the pond and so did a number of dead fish. Wiles and Nevins whooped loudly at the sight.

"What the hell are you men doing?" Morrell snapped as he approached. He was furious at their stupidity and enormously relieved that he was not again at war. The two NCOs looked at him dumbly, then Wiles made a waving motion with his arm that might have been a drunken attempt at a salute.

"Fishing," Wiles said, then after a long pause, "sir. We are flicking fishing." Nevins giggled at the witticism and almost fell into the water.

Morrell looked about. The banks of the stream were littered with dead fish. Some had been blown to pieces by the grenades, while others had had their lives snuffed out by the concussion.

"All right," Morrell snarled, "this is enough." His anger was growing. Not only had they scared the crap out of him, but they were endangering themselves along with anyone else in the vicinity. They were destroying government equipment as well as blowing up someone's private property. Worse, his headache was throbbing and he felt as if he would heave.

It wasn't the first time the duo of Nevins and Wiles had gotten into trouble, usually alcohol-related. Even when sober they were only marginally efficient. He wondered just how they had gotten their stripes.

"Why is it enough, Lieutenant?" Wiles asked with mock innocence.

Morrell iterated the reasons and added a last one. "Because I'm ordering you to, that's why."

Nevins hiccuped. "Lieutenant, why don't you flick off."

Morrell was stunned and took a deep breath to calm himself. "Tell you what. You're both drunk, and so's probably half the army. Now I'm gonna be a real nice guy and pretend I didn't hear that. You two get back to camp right now."

Nevins's face flushed in anger and he looked as if he might take a swing at Morrell. However, he quickly thought better of it. Along with being an officer and someone you just didn't hit, Morrell was sober and fit-looking. At five-eleven, he weighed a compact 180, and despite his curly blond hair and innocent-looking blue eyes, Morrell looked as if he could take care of himself, especially in a fight with two staggering drunks.

"No," said Sergeant Wiles. "Let's not forget about it. What the hell's the matter with you, Lieutenant? You know you got a reputation around here as being the choirboy officer. You're a pain in the ass, Lieutenant. Look, the war's over and we got a right to celebrate, and if you don't like it, why don't you get the flick back to your tent and stay there."

Morrell was livid with anger. He'd been with the outfit only a short time in comparison with many others, and he knew he wasn't getting respect from many of the men. Second lieutenants were the lowest of the officer ranks and all too often the butt of jokes by others with more experience. A joke, or even a veiled insult, he could deal with, but this was outright insubordination.

He turned to Wiles. "I think you and your little pal have gone too far. I regret this, but I am going to see Captain Maxwell."

Wiles and Nevins looked at each other, then burst out laughing. "Sure," said Wiles, "you go see the captain. You just do that."

Morrell turned and, in a rage, his headache and hangover forgotten, almost ran the half mile to where Captain Maxwell had set up shop.

Captain Maxwell had commandeered an old two-story farmhouse that had escaped the ravages of both the German retreat and the American advance. Like so many places in Germany outside the major cities, the area in which they were camped looked as if nothing had changed in it for a hundred years. Whenever he saw Maxwell's ornate headquarters, Morrell was reminded of the story of Hansel and Gretel.

Maxwell's clerk looked uncomfortable at Morrell's request, but told him the captain would be downstairs in a minute. Morrell nodded and went into the living room, which served as the captain's office. Maxwell, a stocky National Guard officer about thirty years old, arrived and waved him to a chair. Morrell briefly explained the situation regarding the grenade-tossing and the two NCOs' drunken insubordination. The captain lit a cigarette and stared at the ceiling.

"Dammit," Maxwell finally said.

"Captain?"

"Lieutenant, how long you been with us?"

"About three months. Just before the Nazis finally surrendered."

Maxwell leaned forward. "That's right, just before the war ended. That means you came in on the ass end of a lot of fighting those boys had been going through for more than a year. You even replaced an officer who, while not particularly smart, was fairly well liked. So, how much combat did you see?"

Morrell flushed. "Not much at all, Captain." Only a few minutes, and he'd been scared to death and scarcely able to function. It was nothing in comparison with what the others had gone through, even the two assholes, Nevins and Wiles.

"That's right, and what were you doing a year ago?"

"I had just finished college and been called up."

"That's right, Lieutenant, you finished college. Then you did your basic training in the good of US of A, became an officer, and then got your butt shipped over here to us just in time to see the curtain go down. Do you know what we were doing a year ago? We had just arrived in France and had begun shooting our way across Europe. Know what I was doing four years ago?"

"No, Captain."

"I was managing a grocery store with my father. Then I got called up, and while I was gone, my dad died and they had to sell the store. All that while you were starting college and maybe reading War and Peace. When you go back, you'll have a degree and a future, but for people like me and a lot of others out there, there'll be nothing but shit for a future."

"Captain, are you saying I should have let them keep doing what they were doing?"

"Why not? They were just a couple of hillbilly assholes blowing up some grenades we don't need anymore and killing some kraut fish. Think, Lieutenant, what should you have really done?"

Morrell took a chair and sat down. His anger ebbed. "You're right. I should have taken any remaining grenades off them and left them there to do whatever they wished. If they had protested, I should have gone back for you or someone else to help me."

Maxwell relaxed after his tirade. "Paul, it gets worse. You want me to discipline those guys and I'll do it, only it'll just be an ass-chewing and nothing more. They know they deserve to lose their stripes, but it'll be their word against yours as to what they said, and you know they'll both lie like rugs. When I'm through chewing on them, they'll go back to their ugly friends and laugh at you because they got away with fucking with you."

Maxwell stood and paced the little room. "Look, I dislike those two clowns as much as the next guy, but they're veterans, NCOs, and heroes with Bronze Stars, even though they'll steal anything that ain't nailed down."

Maxwell told him that the two men had been ambushed by some Germans and had to shoot their way out, thus getting their medals. In his opinion, they had been looting a farmhouse when the Germans caught them, which made their fighting their way out something less than heroic.

Damn, thought Paul. He had really screwed up.

"It gets worse, Paul. They've got more than enough points to be discharged. So, in a couple of months, maybe sooner, they'll be home screwing their women and their sheep, and newcomers like you'll be here trying to run an occupation army. Who knows, maybe I'll be away from here too."

Morrell seized on the comment. "And that's the point, Captain, we are still an army, not a mob. Those guys are destroying what we came here to liberate."

Maxwell laughed harshly. "Liberate? Let me tell you something, Lieutenant; we liberated Belgium and France, but not Germany. This fucking country we conquered with a lot of our friends getting killed or wounded in the process, and there's a helluva lot of difference."

"To the victor belong the spoils?"

"Exactly."

"But what about our orders to maintain discipline and protect the people?"

The question amused Maxwell. "Things don't always work out like they were intended, now do they? Take Ike's nonfraternization order, for instance. Did anyone really think they could keep a couple of million horny GIs away from German pussy when the kraut chicks will give you anything you want for some cigarettes, or chocolate, or even a meal? Hell, the Russians are raping them wholesale and we're willing to pay for it. That makes us the good guys."

Grudgingly Paul agreed. That particular order truly was nonsense.

"And, Lieutenant, I am also supposed to employ Germans to run this area and get their local economy going again. Only orders say I can't use anyone who was a Nazi. Now tell me, just who the hell does that leave in a country where even the little krauts became Nazis before they could walk and wore swastikas on their diapers? Communists, that's who, and the brass'd kill me if I used commies to run the joint. At any rate, there aren't too many commies left after Herr Hitler got through with them, so I work with what I got, and that's what you're going to do as well."

"I see the problem," said Paul softly.

"Yeah, and we might as well settle down and enjoy it while it lasts. And might I ask just where the hell were you last night?" Maxwell said with a sneer.

Paul flushed. "At the gasthaus celebrating the Japanese surrender," he said sheepishly. There was no way he could lie about it. The captain had been there as well. It was where he had gotten this morning's headache, which was starting to come back. Shit.

"Yeah, and Herr Gasthaus-meister, or whatever the flick his name is, probably was a good little Nazi just a few weeks ago. Now he's doing his smiling best to get rich and get the U.S. army drunk and laid, and that makes him one of the good guys too."

"Okay, you've made your point, Captain. Now what do you think I should do?"

"Take some aspirin for your hangover and let me think. Now get out of here."

After Morrell had left, Maxwell's clerk told him that Major Lewis had come in the rear door and gone upstairs. Maxwell nodded, went upstairs, and found the major sitting on the edge of the bed in the largest of the bedrooms. One of the two dark-haired fräuleins they'd brought back from the gasthaus the night before was still sleeping, while the other sat in front of the dresser and combed her hair. Both were naked. The sleeping one snored slightly. He couldn't recall just which one he'd fucked and seemed to recall they were sisters. He was slightly concerned that they looked so much younger than they had last night.

The major looked extremely somber, and that worried Maxwell. "What's the problem, Bob?" Maxwell asked.

Lewis pulled a bottle of schnapps from a drawer and took a long swallow. "Tell me first about young Lieutenant Morrell. What's his problem?" Maxwell quickly filled him in on the situation.

"The problem is," Maxwell went on, "that those two idiots are gonna tell everyone they made a fool out of him, and it'll be difficult for him to regain control of the troops. He barely had it in the first place."

Major Lewis took another swallow. It was apparent to Maxwell that the major wanted to get drunk and do it right now. Why? Maxwell wondered.

Lewis belched. "Then ship him out. Put him on the levy to Japan."

Maxwell blinked in surprise. As a prelude to invading Japan, the army had begun sending individuals off to the Pacific. It was rumored that full units would follow. People with a lot of combat experience in the European theater would be returned home to civilian life, while others with less experience would either be retained in Germany or used in the invasion of the home islands of Japan. Orders had come down asking units to "volunteer" individuals, which meant that everyone was taking the opportunity to get rid of oddballs, troublemakers, and incompetents.

Maxwell shook his head in confusion. "Bob, the Japanese just surrendered, didn't they? I thought the levy was going to be canceled?"

Major Lewis looked at the naked woman at the dresser. She had completed combing her hair and was now picking at the remains of some C rations, ignoring them both. "I have bad news for you, my friend. The Japanese may have just unsurrendered."

"Bullshit!" Maxwell sagged into a chair in disbelief.

"It's the truth. Seems there's been some kind of a coup or revolution over there, and the crazy people are back in charge. The invasion is on, at least until the next revolution, and the levy is not likely to be canceled anytime soon. So get Morrell out of here while you still have the chance. Send him off to fight the Japs with our blessing."

Maxwell nodded assent. It was an easy decision to make and would solve a lot of problems. If only he could get rid of Nevins and Wiles just as easily. At least, he consoled himself, they'd be shipped out somewhere soon enough.

Too bad for Lieutenant Morrell, though. He genuinely hoped nothing happened to the young man. Despite being naïve about some things, Morrell was a pretty good kid. On the other hand, Maxwell had a life to live in Germany for the foreseeable future.

God, Maxwell thought, let it be in Germany and not invading Japan. He reached for the schnapps and patted the sleeping woman on her bottom. She moaned slightly but didn't move. Maybe people would get their heads out of their asses and end this thing for good. Maybe the war would end a second time before Lieutenant Morrell even got there. But, what the hell, he had his own life to lead.

Chapter 2

Nothing in the first six decades of his life had indicated that Harry Truman of Independence, Missouri, would ever become president of the United States and one of the most powerful men in the world. Born in 1884, he'd seen combat as an artillery captain in World War I, served as a county judge, and, to the astonishment of many, was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1934. He'd stayed there, accruing seniority and serving his nation honestly, anonymously, and well. In 1944, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had surprised everyone and tapped him to be his vice-presidential running mate.

Although a high honor, the office under FDR was a thankless one. Roosevelt ignored his vice president once the election was done. Roosevelt considered it his constitutional obligation to have a vice president, but nothing said he was required to actually use one. One of Roosevelt 's earlier vice presidents, John Nance Garner, had referred to the job as not being worth a pitcher of "warm piss." The word piss had later been changed to spit in an attempt to sanitize history. Roosevelt could accept this comment, but not Garner's temerity in trying to unseat Roosevelt as president. Garner had been dumped from the ticket, and it had brought about the 1940 pairing of Roosevelt with Henry Wallace. When Wallace's infatuation with Joseph Stalin and all things politically far left, if not Communist, became known, he too became unacceptable.

Enter Harry Truman, who was loyal, hardworking, honest, American, and not likely to lust after FDR's job. For the eighty-odd days he had served as vice president, Truman had been content to accept the honor of the office as a reward for long years of faithful service to his country and the Democratic Party. He considered it a pleasant prelude to a comfortable retirement.

On April 12, 1945, Roosevelt unexpectedly died of a massive stroke in Warm Springs, Georgia, and Harry Truman, the dapper little man with the often snappish temper, had become president of the United States.

Now, as he paced the Oval Office and waited for the others to arrive, he could only ponder how wholly unprepared he had been for the job he now held. He had known absolutely nothing about the development of the atomic bomb or the agreements made by FDR at the Yalta conference in February 1945, where the United States and the Soviet Union had set the pattern for the world's future. FDR had operated in a world all his own, and Truman was only beginning to plumb its depths. He felt he had not disgraced himself at the recently concluded Potsdam conferences and was learning more each day about the office of president. But he sometimes came near to despair at how little he knew and how much he had yet to learn.

Truman had made few changes in FDR's cabinet or command structure. Jim Byrnes had succeeded Stettinius as secretary of state, although Ambassador Grew had been a decent interim choice. Stettinius was now the first ambassador to the United Nations in San Francisco, while the sixty-six-year-old Byrnes had a wealth of government experience to draw on. Roosevelt had referred to Byrnes as his "assistant president," both insulting and ignoring Truman with the term. To the surprise of some, Byrnes and Truman functioned together efficiently.

James Forrestal was the secretary of the navy, and Henry Stimson remained the secretary of war. Adm. William Leahy was chief of staff to the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy. Leahy, a quiet man, sometimes seemed to be dominated by Adm. Ernest King, the navy chief of staff, and George C. Marshall, the army chief of staff. Truman could easily imagine anyone being intimidated by King and Marshall. Forrestal and Stimson would not attend this day. Byrnes, Leahy, King, and Marshall were expected, along with anyone else they chose to bring.

Truman thought it ironic that he, a man who'd never graduated from college, could be in charge of such highly educated and well-qualified men of great renown, and that he now hobnobbed with kings and premiers. It could easily be an ego-swelling experience, and at times Harry Truman thought he could learn to like his new job.

Truman entered the conference room, took his place at the head of the table, and gestured for the standing men to be seated. The only additional member of the group was Maj. Gen. Leslie Groves, the man who had administered and ramrodded the Manhattan Project and the development of the atomic bombs that had recently been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Truman gestured them to their seats and began with characteristic abruptness. "Gentlemen, have we learned anything new in the last few hours?"

Byrnes responded, his brow wrinkled with concern. "As of yesterday, we thought we had a deal with the Japs. The Swedish government, acting as an intermediary, informed us that Hirohito and Premier Suzuki's government had accepted the terms of the Potsdam Declaration, which required them to agree to unconditional surrender. Their radio even warned the Japanese people that a major announcement would be broadcast at noon their time. It now appears that a bunch of fanatic young officers have seized the palace and kidnapped Hirohito. When the noon radio announcement was made, it said nothing about surrender. War Minister Anami, who alleged to be acting on Hirohito's behalf, called for continued resistance and made reference to using the entire population of Japan as human weapons against the United States should we be so foolish as to invade. Anami also said that the rumors of surrender were false and made by officials in the government who had treasonably conspired to act on behalf of an unknowing emperor."

Byrnes shook his head in dismay. "Sir, this was not wholly unexpected. There were many factions in the Japanese government and military who were opposed to any surrender, and they have taken control of both the government and the emperor."

"We were so close," Truman muttered. "So damned close. We were even willing to let them keep their emperor, even though most of the United States would like to see the little bastard hanged. Didn't they understand they could keep Hirohito?"

Byrnes nodded grimly. "I've spoken with the Japanese experts at State and they've informed me that the Jap hierarchy knows full well that Hirohito gets to stay. The problem, as they see it, runs much deeper. It really goes to the fact that their culture and values are so different from ours that we, in their eyes, might as well be from another planet."

Adm. Ernest King's voice was a snarl. "If they don't surrender and do it soon, they may well be blasted to another planet."

Truman hushed him with a wave. "The problem is, do we recommence hostilities or try to wait this out?"

Marshall spoke for the first time. "I don't think we have a choice. What Anami said was a complete rejection of any surrender at this time. We must continue the war."

"I agree," said King firmly. Leahy looked away in dismay. He had taken the failure of the Japanese to surrender very hard. After a moment, Byrnes too agreed.

Truman groaned. "The country has been anticipating an end to the Jap war for several days now. There have been premature and false announcements of peace, and people have been celebrating and dancing in the streets. Now, they have to be told that all their hopes have been dashed and we're still at war with a bitter and fanatical enemy." He turned to Byrnes. "I must go on the air and make an announcement very quickly before the rumors get out of hand."

General Groves coughed lightly to get attention. Although a belligerent and highly confident man, he was outranked and somewhat awed by the people in the room. "Mr. President, gentlemen, I presume you will want a continuation of our atomic bombings?"

Truman nodded. Destroying Hiroshima and Nagasaki had almost brought the Japs to their knees; perhaps more bombs would succeed where the first two had not. It had been Truman's decision and his alone to use the little-understood weapon against the Japanese. He had made the decision hoping to save lives, American lives, and now that decision again confronted him.

As before, Truman did not hesitate. "Do that. When can we atomize another city?"

Groves paused. "Not immediately, sir. It will be at least two weeks before we will have the materials in place at Tinian to assemble another bomb. We are beginning production of the bombs at our facility in Hanford, Washington, but the pace will be slow. We estimate that we can make at least one a month, with a strong possibility of accelerating that pace once we learn more about the process."

Truman mused out loud, "Two weeks. Well, I daresay we can't roll them off an assembly line like Ford does cars." It brought a small, bitter chuckle from the others, even from the dour Leahy, who was vehemently opposed to using the bomb.

Just two days prior, Ford had begun the production of civilian vehicles at a plant in New Jersey, and the other carmakers were lusting to follow. Even without the surrender of Japan, the United States was starting to ease back into a less restrictive economy.

"We might have had a bomb ready a couple of days sooner," Groves continued, "but, with peace so likely, we canceled the planned shipment of fissionable material to Tinian. No need, we thought."

Truman rose and the others did as well. It was a gesture of respect for his new rank that still surprised him. "All right, we have a war to win and I have an announcement to make to the world. I'm afraid our people are going to take this as yet another example of Jap duplicity, and I can't say as I blame them. This is going to make the real ending of the war just that much more brutal and bloody to achieve."

Truman returned quickly to his office. Even without taking into consideration what the fanatics were causing to be inflicted on the civilians of Japan, the thought of sending still more young men to die in battle had almost caused him to weep. He had been so hopeful that the shocks of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, along with the Russians' declaration of war and subsequent invasion of Manchuria, would have caused even the most radical Jap to see the light. It was a horrible responsibility, and he silently cursed Roosevelt for dying and thrusting it upon him.

Japan was not the only problem of immense magnitude that he and the United States had to deal with. The war had ended in Europe, but not the killing, as the oppressed took savage revenge on their oppressors or, sometimes, just the weak. Poles had massacred several hundreds of Jews who had survived the concentration camps and who had tried to reclaim their possessions from Polish squatters. What to do with the Jews, along with the millions of other refugees, was an enormously complex problem.

General Eisenhower had just informed him that the "breadbaskets" of Europe had not produced much in the way of crops this year, and since those lands were now in Russian zones, what grain that would be harvested would be heading for the Soviet Union. Along with feeding England and France, the United States was going to have to find enough foodstuffs for Germany and other countries.

Russia was also on the march in Asia. Stalin was openly supporting the Chinese Communists under Mao Tse-tung in their war against the Nationalists, who, however corrupt and incompetent, were allies of the United States. Russian armies were driving the Japanese armies from Manchuria and Korea, and it looked as if those lands would come under Soviet control. Any hopes that the American possession of nuclear weapons would deter Stalin's ambitions had been dashed.

Last, but hardly least, was the question of the U.S. economy. The country had been on a total war footing for years, and there was a real need to begin boosting the production of civilian goods and integrating millions of returning servicemen into the fragile economy. This had to be done carefully to prevent a return to the Great Depression. After twelve years of economic pain and ruin, there were those who felt that a depressed economy and great numbers of unemployed might be the normal state of capitalism for the twentieth century. Truman fervently wanted to prove them wrong.

At least, Truman thought with some satisfaction, the Widow Roosevelt had finally moved out of the White House and returned to her Hyde Park residence in New York. His wife, Bess, and his daughter, Margaret, were only a few steps away, and their presence was a great comfort to him. He was surprised to find that the Roosevelts, who'd lived in the White House since 1933, had never truly considered it their home and had allowed it to fall into neglect and disrepair. Bess had been appalled at the filth.

Harry Truman grinned. Bess would take care of that little problem. All he had to do was end this damned war.

Chapter 3

P-47 fighter pilot Dennis Chambers had been shot down over northern Kyushu in May 1945. The twenty-six-year-old Army Air Corps captain had endured harsh interrogations from his captors, during which, in accordance with new air force policy, he told them everything he knew rather than resist until the information was pulled from him, piece by bloody piece. Like many downed airmen, he fabricated wild stories that seemed to satisfy the Japs rather than the bland truth that he didn't really know much at all about grand strategy.

Routine beatings left him bloody but not badly hurt, and then he was taken to the prison camp just outside the port city of Nagasaki.

Dennis was left counting his advantages. First, he understood a smattering of Japanese, courtesy of an immigrant houseboy his parents had employed. He gradually picked up enough from his captors to be reasonably fluent, which he kept secret.

A couple of his friends were beaten to death for minor infractions, and he'd watched in horror as one man was beheaded for some unintended insult to a guard. At least that kind of death would have been swift. All too often, punishment consisted of having rations reduced, and since the rations were already below subsistence level, that meant lingering death by painful starvation.

Although bruised and cut, he still had his health, and being a small man a little under average height and build, he didn't require much in the way of food to keep him going. Early in his captivity, Chambers realized that he could stomach eating anything if it meant surviving, and he made a point of digging up worms and eating insects to supplement the small balls of rice the Japanese provided.

This only delayed the inevitable. He was a lean man, and when he did lose weight, it came from muscle and not from any fat. He soon felt himself wasting away and knew that he would soon look just like the others. Men who'd been POWs longer than him looked like corpses, skeletal and covered with ulcerating sores. Several suffered from infections of the scrotum that caused the sac to balloon up several times larger than it should be. Dennis could only guess at their agony.

Chambers tried not to torture himself by thinking about his wife and his home the way so many of the other POWs did. Whenever an unbidden thought did break through his defenses, he blocked it out.

Despite his privations and bleak future, he didn't contemplate escape. After all, where the hell would he go? A white man in the middle of Japan would stick out like a sore thumb. If he tried and was caught, the punishment would be savage and fatal. He and his buddies talked it over. They would wait.

Like every able-bodied American, British, or Australian POW in the camp, Chambers had to work for his meager rations. He and a handful of others had been put to work in one of the small factories on the outskirts of Nagasaki, where he performed menial work under the scrutiny of his masters. He welcomed the work. It broke up the monotony of the days and frequently kept him away from his guards.

Better, many of the civilian workers in the factory were not sadists like the guards and treated him reasonably well. A couple of them even slipped him bits of food from their own meager supplies out of pity for him. He knew he was fortunate to be working where he was. Many POWs were forced to work in the area's coal mines, under extremely harsh and primitive conditions that caused deaths and numerous injuries.

He had been alone in the basement of the factory moving storage boxes when the entire world had lit up about him with an unearthly, incandescent glow. Stunned, thinking only that one of the many American planes often seen overhead had bombed the factory or crashed nearby, he'd simply frozen.

Seconds later, the fist of a shock wave hurled him against a wall and covered him with debris. He later thought he might have lost consciousness. When he did revive to the point where thought was possible, he began to dig himself out, knowing only that the proper direction was up.

It might have taken him hours, but he finally broke through to fresh air and to sights that stunned him. All about him, Nagasaki was destroyed, buildings flattened and burning. Then he looked up and saw a black storm cloud of immense fury churning and roaring above him as it fought the winds that sought to push it away.

Then he knew. Rumors had been rife in the camp of a superbomb that had been dropped on Hiroshima. Most people dismissed it as the hallucinations of starving men, just like the ones that had thousands of Negro cavalrymen on white horses riding to free them. Now he knew the stories of the bomb were true and that it had now decimated Nagasaki.

The bomb had freed him. There was no sign of his guards or his fellow prisoners. If they were dead, it was a shame, but he was alive and he intended to stay that way. If he stuck around, he might get lynched by an angry Japanese mob. There would no longer be any small kindnesses from the Japanese civilians. They would want revenge and he wasn't certain he blamed them. His plans for waiting out the end of the war had suddenly changed. He had to run for his life and hide.

He'd gathered his thoughts. It was reasonable to conclude that no one would ever look for him, and the Japanese people he saw milling about were distracted and would ignore him for the time being.

He was covered with dirt and most of his clothes had been shredded by the blast and the effort of digging himself out. Dennis looked no different from any of the scores of others who milled about him aimlessly and in shock.

Alone in a sea of Japanese people, he'd seen that many had been horribly burned. Some were nothing more than walking corpses who stumbled along on charred limbs before they pitched over and died. Many of the normally modest Japanese people were naked and seemingly unaware of it as the blast had seared clothing right off their backs or burned the fabric into their flesh. Many of them had folds of flesh dangling from them as if someone had tried to skin them and then, for some demented reason, stopped.

In front of him, a specter reached its clawed hand for Chambers. It might have been a man once. Its teeth were visible as stumps in a lipless mouth, and it tried to speak but only a gurgling growl came forth. The thing had no face, and white liquid was where the eyes once were. Dennis realized that the creature couldn't see or hear him, but reached with blistered hands for anything in its mindless path. Dennis stepped aside and let the horror pass. He had to get the hell out of Nagasaki right away.

He selected the corpse of a man who still had most of his clothing and pulled the body out of the roadway. No one noticed him. Then he stripped the body and put on the dead man's Japanese clothing. They were a little small, but he could make them do. For once he was thankful that he had lost so much weight in the camp. No one paid him the slightest bit of attention as people trudged past, their eyes glazed over with their own shock and horror.

He covered his face and hands with dirt and some grease he found by a ruined car, hoping it made him look less Caucasian. Then he'd joined the torrent of humanity, most of it frighteningly silent, as it flowed out of the ruined city of Nagasaki and into the bleak hills that rose out of the northern part of the island of Kyushu. On his way he saw the shattered hulk of the Catholic cathedral of Nagasaki. However small the numbers of worshipers might have been, the only center of Christianity in Japan had been destroyed by an allegedly Christian United States.

As he walked, it further struck him that no one was doing anything for the people of Nagasaki. There was no plan; there was no government left in the area to start helping its people. All had been destroyed and no one knew where to begin. He looked behind him and saw that the pillar of the cloud had finally begun to stream away, and that it had lost much of its peculiar mushroom shape. It had begun to rain large, warm drops, and he wondered if the explosion had caused rain as well. Could the bomb have been so powerful that it changed the weather?

At a point, he broke away from the main throng and struck out into the more rugged area around Mount Tara, which was to the north of Nagasaki.

Hours later and high on a grass-covered ridge, he found the remains of a farmer's hut that must have been abandoned a few years before. He propped up stones and pieces of wood to keep the rain off him. The weather was warm so he didn't fear exposure, but the efforts of the day had exhausted him. He had to rest and he had to find food and water.

Near his shelter, he located a puddle and lapped it like a dog when his cupped hands wouldn't retain enough to quench his suddenly enormous thirst. Then he took a stick and began to dig in the soft ground. It was as he had hoped. The damp earth was full of insects.

As he ate, he decided that, whatever happened from here on in, he was not going back to a prison camp. Even if he died in the hills of Kyushu, he would do so as a free man.

Later, as the days stretched on, he began to wonder. How long could he endure and survive on his meager diet in the mountains of Kyushu? The weather was mild, but winter was inevitable. He had no idea how cold it would get, but it would certainly be much cooler than the present. What if he had to spend a long time in the hills? What if it took years for the war to end? Then he thought of something even more awful, and it made him shudder, nearly cry. What if it never ended? If that was the case, then he was condemned to spend whatever remained of his life running, hiding, and slowly starving to death.

Despite his circumstances, he saw black humor in the alternative possibility that the war would end and he would never find out. That would be just his luck.

Chapter 4

"I'm not too sure which appalls me the most, the rioting by our servicemen in San Francisco, or the civilian riots in other cities," said Marshall.

"They all sicken me," Truman said. "Look at the numbers for San Francisco. An estimated twenty thousand soldiers and sailors ran amok for two days before other military and state police could take control. They rampaged through Chinatown and killed anyone who looked even remotely Asian, hoping, I presume, that they were somehow killing Japs. God, more than a hundred dead and a thousand injured."

"Are you counting the rapes?" Marshall asked.

The riots in San Francisco had begun as a drunken celebration of victory over the Japanese by tens of thousands of servicemen overjoyed that they were not going to be fighting the Japs. When they found out the truth, the celebrations turned ugly. Most of the rapes had occurred during the celebration phase, the murders later on.

"No," Truman said sadly. The document on his desk indicated three thousand reported rapes in San Francisco alone, and God only knew how many unreported. "And will somebody tell me why the people of Detroit felt it necessary to kill another score of Negroes? Hadn't they had enough of race rioting in 1943?"

Where there had not been an Asian population to attack, the colored people of many large cities had become the target of the mobs' wrath.

Secretary of State Jim Byrnes lit a cigarette. "What is happening to these people, these criminals? May I presume there will be a lot of arrests and court-martials?"

Marshall shook his head. "Presume nothing. Most of the rioters in San Francisco are unidentified, except for a few score picked up by the police as drunk and disorderly. As to the rapes, most women won't testify, even if they could identify their assailants. The San Francisco hospitals reported giving out several thousand douches and sending the women home. There were so many raped women they had no other way to treat them. In order to defuse the situation, we are shipping as many of the soldiers and sailors out of California as quickly as possible and have confined the rest to their barracks.

"The police in Detroit and other cities finally seem to have everything under control, and there have been some arrests, although there does seem to be a lack of enthusiasm regarding actually prosecuting people."

"Not if I can help it," Truman snapped.

"Will we get convictions?" Byrnes asked.

Truman rose and paced. "Realistically, in today's climate we don't stand a snowball's chance of convicting someone for killing a Jap, Chinese, or colored man, but women and children were killed and that's something else entirely."

Truman took a deep breath to calm himself. "Which brings me to the point of this discussion, gentlemen. We must show ourselves as striking back at the Japanese in Japan and doing so extremely harshly. The actions of the mobs simply show how much the people's hatred of everything Japanese has increased. General Marshall, what is the status of the next bomb?"

Marshall answered quickly, "The bomb components have been flown to Tinian, and it is being assembled now. We will be ready anytime after the twenty-second of August."

"Good. Now, General, what about a target?"

Marshall paused, knowing that his answer could condemn thousands to death. The sixty-five-year-old five-star general had built the army from a scratch force to a massive entity in only a few short years. He had been the confidant of Roosevelt and was now Truman's trusted adviser.

"Sir, the original list included four Japanese cities that were largely spared conventional bombing in order to get maximum effect from the atomic bomb. Along with Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the list included Kokura and Niigata. If we stick with the original list, then only the last two remain. Air force generals Spaatz and LeMay would like to expand that very short list by also adding Tokyo and Kyoto, and they are backed by General Arnold."

LeMay and Spaatz commanded the air forces in the Pacific, while Gen. "Hap" Arnold was the air force representative on the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Since he was technically subordinate to Marshall, he was not present.

Byrnes answered quickly, "We've gone over that ground before and there is no reason to change the list. If anything, the decision to not atom bomb Tokyo and Kyoto is even more compelling. Simply put, we need both those cities relatively intact if we are ever to end this war. Tokyo is the administrative hub of Japan, and if we destroy it and the government, possibly killing the emperor, we could wind up with no one remaining in charge to call an end to the war. Quite frankly, gentlemen, I believe that the emperor is the only person who can surrender Japan.

"Kyoto's the religious center of Japan, virtually a city of temples. It would be tantamount to bombing the Vatican and then informing Italy's Catholics that we respected them and their culture. Using atom bombs on Kyoto could easily result in millions more fanatics ready to die for their country than there are now.

"General, we have too much to lose, and, yes, I do recognize the fact that we have been firebombing both cities with tremendous loss of life. But atomic bombs are so devastating that there is no comparison between the two events."

Marshall had expected the response, even supported it, but he felt obliged to forward the thoughts of his generals. "After we bomb Kokura and Niigata, we really don't have any more targets. Kokura's prewar population is less than a hundred thousand, and Niigata 's only a little more than that. Further, the Japanese are finally getting the message and have commenced evacuating their cities. I rather doubt we will be dropping any kind of bombs on civilian refugee camps."

Truman laughed harshly. "Are you telling me we sit here with the greatest and most awesome weapon ever made, and we have bombed Japan so thoroughly that we might not have anything to use it on?"

Marshall nodded. "Precisely."

Truman sighed. "Jesus."

"Mr. President," Marshall continued, "it may be worse than that. According to General Groves, Dr. Oppenheimer and others are reporting that the lingering effects of radiation from the bombs may be far worse than what they expected. They've examined the ground at Alamogordo and the items recovered from there, and the radiation count is still very high, even lethally so. Further, there is a significant body of anecdotal evidence coming from Japan which confirms that hypothesis. It now seems that radiation does not dissipate in a matter of hours or days, but may linger on for months, perhaps years. There are many reports coming from Japan of otherwise healthy-looking people sickening and dying days after exposure to radioactive items. This means that our own soldiers could be at risk if we send them into a bombed-out area without proper precautions."

Truman was exasperated and his voice rose. "General, Jim, we must use a bomb. We must show both the people of the United States, and the fools in Tokyo, that they cannot refuse to surrender without suffering the consequences. If we do not punish the Japanese for this new act of treachery, there might be calls for my impeachment, if not my head. Now, if we cannot expand the list of targets, which of the two cities do you prefer?"

Marshall responded without hesitation, knowingly condemning thousands to incineration and worse. "Kokura. If we have to invade the home islands, the first assault will be on the island of Kyushu. Kokura is a city near the narrow straits between Kyushu and the almost adjacent island of Honshu. Destroying Kokura will have the effect of making it more difficult for the Japanese to move soldiers into Kyushu to reinforce the armies already there. By stretching the definition, Kokura could be considered a military target."

Truman turned to Byrnes. "Any cultural or political problem with Kokura?"

"None whatsoever."

Truman took a deep breath. "Then we will bomb Kokura."

"Yes, sir."

"Very good," Truman said softly. "After Kokura is destroyed, I wish to be fully updated on the plans to invade Kyushu, along with any other options that might be available to us. God help the people of Japan." And God help me, he cried to himself as he considered the additional deaths his decision would cause. But what choice do I have?

Chapter 5

"I'll get it," the pretty blonde yelled as the doorbell rang for the second time, this time insistently. Who could be in such a hurry? Nobody was expected this August evening. She pulled it open and stood there in disbelief.

"Hi," the young man said shyly. He was in uniform, and his gold lieutenant's bars shone in the light from the house.

Debbie Winston screamed and hugged the man at her door, then covered his face with kisses, which he urgently returned.

"Wow," 2nd Lt. Paul Morrell said when they finally broke for air. "Just think, I was worried that you might not be glad to see me." Debbie stopped any further attempt at conversation by again covering his face with kisses while she dragged him into the living room.

The clamor had brought the rest of Debbie's family, and they greeted Paul warmly with hugs and handshakes. Debbie's mother asked him if he had seen his own family, and he assured her that he had, and that he had just come from there. Then they sat him on the couch with Debbie beside him with her arm entwined with his.

"How much time do you have?" Debbie asked, dreading the answer.

"Only a couple of hours. A friend of mine is picking me up and driving me downtown to the train station." He laughed. "I'm not supposed to be here at all. The army flew me from Germany to England, and then from England to New York. My orders say I'm to take the most direct route to San Francisco, and then overseas. I guess they want me in a hurry. I saw a lot of other officers getting the same treatment. However, I just figured that the war would wait a little bit or, better yet, go on without me."

Debbie's mother stood. A whimsical smile was on her face. "Two hours? Somehow I think you two want to spend it alone and not talking to us." She grabbed her husband and Debbie's younger brother and steered them out of the room.

Debbie took Paul's hands in hers and kneaded them in quiet desperation, as if willing them to stay. "Paul, it isn't fair. You shouldn't be going to fight the Japanese. Didn't you do enough in Germany?"

He put his arm around her and pulled her to him. It was a hot evening and she was wearing only a blouse and skirt cut short because of the wartime shortage of materials. He could feel the warmth and tantalizing smoothness of her skin underneath her clothing, and her slender legs were gorgeous.

"Apparently not," he managed to say. "A whole lot of people are being sent from Europe to the Pacific." He decided not to tell her about the incident in Germany that had caused him to be put on the levy to fight the Japs. No need disturbing her with accounts of his own stupidity. "I'm just hoping it's over by the time I get there. Even if everything moves according to somebody's schedule, I don't see how we can do anything about Japan for several months. Of course, maybe if we drop a few more atom bombs on them, there won't be anything left to invade."

She nodded into his chest, conscious that she was staining his khaki uniform with her tears. She was trying not to cry but it was futile. News of the continued war had hit home with a bulletin that said yet another atomic bomb had been dropped on Japan, this one on a place called Kokura. Kokura sounded like a bird calling, not a city that had just been wiped off the face of the earth.

"Paul, it was so terrible here after the peace collapsed. Everybody had been celebrating victory, and then the rug was pulled out from under our feet and the crash was sickening. Instead of your coming home to me, we all realized that soldiers were still going to be shipped overseas to fight and maybe die. There was a lot of rioting here, and a lot of people were killed in downtown. Would you believe someone even smashed the window at Ginsberg's store and stole a couch? Mr. Ginsberg tried to make a joke of it by saying it was an ugly piece of furniture and that the thief had no taste, but I could tell he was shaken by it. Did you know that the governor declared martial law because of all the killings around the riverfront? There was even a curfew for a few days and everyone stayed home or got arrested. I just never believed it could happen here in the United States."

"I know," he said sadly. "I saw a lot of it in the barracks with men getting murderously drunk and then going into town simply to break things and hurt people. It was like the whole world had gone crazy with anger and everyone felt they'd been cheated out of the rest of their lives. Since I was an officer, they had me trying to settle things down and take charge. Funny, but what I really wanted to do was join them and break some stuff myself."

Debbie lifted her head and they kissed again. She was sobbing and realized he was crying softly as well. "Paul, I'm so scared for you. Somehow I thought that your going in the army was a lark, and I was playing at being the brave but lonely woman waiting at home for her man while you marched off with your uniform never getting dirty. After all, the Germans surrendered just after you got there, and then the Japs were going to give up. Now I'm scared that I might actually lose you."

Her voice broke and her chest heaved. "I just want you to come back to me."

Debbie did not add that she wanted him there so she could resolve her own doubts about their future. When he was with her, she was confident that she was in love with him. When he was gone from her, she wondered whether she was doing the right thing by continuing their long-distance romance. She gave no thought, however, to telling him of her doubts this evening.

Paul took a deep breath. "I love you," he said, and they kissed again. "And I am coming back." Then he grinned through his anguish. "Damn, I am glad I took this little detour even though it means I'm going to be late reporting."

"Can you get in trouble?"

He chuckled wryly. "Yeah, maybe they'll fire me. Wouldn't that be a shame?"

She laughed. "Come outside." She took his hand and led him out to the backyard. He smiled as he saw Debbie's family's car, tireless and propped up on cement blocks, testimony to the shortage of rubber and the rationing of gas. Debbie's father took the bus or trolley to work and had been selling his gas-ration coupons in return for other items. It wasn't legal, but everyone was doing it.

Some patio furniture was underneath a tree, and they sat on a porch swing, rocking gently.

It was amazing, he thought, but her entire family seemed to have disappeared. He wondered if they were peering through windows at them and didn't give a damn. His own parents had wished for him to stay and spend what little time he had left with them, but they understood his need to see Debbie before he headed on to the West Coast. Both his parents had been weeping when he left them, but this was the worst departure of all.

"Do you want to get married?" Debbie asked softly, surprised at her own boldness and wondering if she really meant it. "We could run off to Kentucky and get married right away. I know some people who've done it."

He held her even more tightly. "I want to marry you more than anything in the world, but not until I return." And in one piece, he thought. "You're much too young to be a war widow and I won't wish that on you."

"Don't even think like that," she gasped. "Even my brother, Ronnie, is starting to talk like death is just around the corner. He'll be eighteen in a few months and now they're talking like he won't even get to finish high school before he gets drafted. My God, Paul, now they're taking babies in the draft! Isn't anybody left? Ronnie's scared and I don't blame him. I'm terrified for both of you."

Paul wondered what it was like in Japan. Were they drafting children the way the Germans did? He'd seen so many little boys in German uniforms, pretending they were soldiers, but using real bullets. Some were only ten or eleven years old, and a number of them had been killed or wounded by Americans who didn't stop to ask their age. An enemy soldier with a gun was a threat, no matter how old he was. It occurred to Paul that the winner of this awful war might just be the last country with anyone left standing.

They held each other in silence. They kissed and sometimes sobbed. This was not a night for giggling and petting. It was a night for remembering every sound, every word, every scent of each other. They didn't even look up and comment on the sea of stars that was visible. They wanted nothing to distract them from what might be their last memories of each other.

After what seemed like only a few minutes, they heard the sound of a car horn. The interlude was over. She walked with him to the front of the house and they kissed one more time before he got in the car and drove away into the darkness.

Debbie kept a stony façade until the car turned the corner and was out of sight. Then she dropped to her knees and let out a wail. Her parents came running.

Chapter 6

The dust-covered jeep stopped in front of a long row of identical brown army tents. The two MPs in the front watched as the disheveled young lieutenant eased himself stiffly out of the back and removed his duffel bag. They made no effort to help him, nor did any of the soldiers in the area manage to notice the situation either. The sight of MPs delivering a soldier to the area wasn't the slightest bit unique.

One of the MPs, a sergeant, glared before speaking. "Lieutenant, if I was you, I would trot my ass down to tent 721 directly. Do not try to clean up, do not get a bite to eat, do not pass go, do not collect no two hundred dollars. Just get down there and pronto before you get in any more trouble."

"Thanks for the lift, Sergeant, and the warm night of hospitality," he added, and dropped the heavy bag by his left side. He waited and stared until the sergeant reluctantly saluted him. Morrell returned it and turned away.

Tent number 721 was but one of thousands like it in the massive tent city that had been thrown up on the outskirts of Oakland, California, as a means of processing the transient troops en route to the war in the Pacific. The whole camp had an air of temporariness, as if it belonged to a migratory horde that had suddenly appeared and could disappear at will. The roads were dirt and rutted, and the tents were small and shapeless. However, the camp was laid out in a sensible grid that made it possible for the MPs to drop Paul off only a little way from his destination, tent 721. They could have dropped him off right in front, but they wanted to show a little more of their superiority by letting him take a walk.

Paul tapped on a piece of plywood attached to the front of the tent as a crude knocker. "Come in," a voice called, and Paul had that feeling that he'd been here before. It was uncannily like that last time in Germany.

He ducked his head and entered. Then he started to stand upright and come to attention. "Sit down, Lieutenant," said the voice, interrupting that effort. Paul found a camp chair and did as directed.

As his eyes became adjusted to the dimmer light, he saw that the man facing him across a card table that served as a desk was a captain in his late twenties or early thirties. He had dark, brush-cut hair and looked to be fairly tall and rangy.

"Lieutenant Morrell, I presume?"

"Yes, sir."

"Wonderful. Lieutenant, I am Captain Tom Ruger. Now just where the hell have you been? You were supposed to be here three days ago. Almost all the rest of the regimental officers have gone on ahead with the enlisted men, with me left behind to round up strays like you."

Tradition dictated that he was to say "no excuse," or something like that. Right now, Paul was too tired and dirty to care. "Sir, if I hadn't been thrown in jail for no good reason yesterday, I would only have been two days late. As to the rest of it, my orders weren't realistic. I may have had travel priority, but that couldn't get me on planes that weren't flying or trains that weren't moving."

To Paul's surprise, Ruger laughed. "The orders may not have been realistic, but most army orders aren't. If we had told you to arrive as soon as you could, how long would you have taken? A year? Two? As to the other part, you were arrested for the crime of wearing a uniform in San Francisco, which, after the peace riots of a few weeks ago, is now off-limits to all military personnel and will remain that way for the foreseeable future.

"When the cops stopped you, your orders caused the police to worry about your intentions because they showed you were already two days AWOL. If you'd been on time, they'd just have put you on a bus or truck and shipped your sorry ass out here. Since your paperwork condemned you as a probable felon, they decided not to take chances, and that's why they held you in jail. To tell you the truth I don't blame them. There are a lot of people showing up late in hopes the war will be over by the time they arrive."

"I admit the thought crossed my mind."

"As to transportation problems, Lieutenant, the military in the Northwest states are going crazy, which is completely screwing up everything that moves on wheels. The Japs have started sending over firebombs attached to balloons that drift along over the prevailing air currents by the hundreds, maybe the thousands, and into the U.S. They've only caused a little damage: a couple of small forest fires, and a handful of people were killed while trying to examine them. But rumor has it that one of the bombs apparently started a fire at some supersecret installation near Hanford, Washington, and cut the place's electricity. It may have been chance, but it's the sort of thing that drives the brass crazy and disrupts train schedules."

Ruger's voice dropped its tone of banter and turned stern. "Be that as it may, you were still supposed to be here on time. Do you understand that?"

"Yes, sir."

"You planning to make the army a career, Lieutenant Morrell?"

"Hell, no. I mean, no, sir."

Ruger took a piece of paper off his makeshift desk and wadded it up. "Then there's no point in disciplining you, is there? I could maybe have you court-martialed and stripped of rank, but that would be a waste of the time and money the government's got invested in you, and a written reprimand that would ruin your career wouldn't mean squat if you don't have a career to ruin in the first place." He threw the paper away. It landed on the ground, a few feet from an overflowing wastebasket. "You got a family in Detroit? A girl?"

"Yes to both, Captain."

Ruger leaned forward and glared. "I'll bet you deviated from a true straight-line course and spent some time with them, didn't you?"

Why lie? Paul thought. "Yes, Captain, I did. I was off course for about seven hours."

Ruger shook his head in disbelief. "That all? Jesus Christ, Lieutenant, I would have spent a lot more than that with them. After all, you're not likely to see them for a helluva long time."

Paul blinked and Ruger started laughing. "Like I said, Lieutenant Morrell, how can I punish you? Can't fire you, now can I?"

Paul worked up a reciprocal smile. "It wouldn't hurt my feelings if you did."

"Morrell, I'm a reservist myself, so I can't wait for this pile of shit war to end so I can get home to my loving wife and two kids and start working on kids three and four. In the meantime, I've got an infantry company to staff, along with filling a couple of other openings in the battalion for Major Redwald and General Monck. The enlisted men and the rest of the officers left via troopship shortly after the riots, and we are trying to fill the last officer vacancies. It's an unusual procedure, but this whole damned war is highly unusual. You, Mr. Morrell, look like you can do the job. Let's see, you're twenty-three. How the hell did you stay out of the draft for so long?"

"Captain, I was in ROTC in college, had a mild knee injury from high school football, and my dad knew someone on the draft board. Of the three, I think the last was the most significant."

"Not exactly dying to get in, were you?"

"I don't think anybody is. I guess that's why we have the draft in the first place since any rush to enlist ended shortly after Pearl Harbor. But now that I'm here, I'll serve and do my best."

Ruger grunted acknowledgment. "I see you've been in combat."

"Very little. Twice my unit in Germany was under indirect artillery fire, and once we might have been shot at by a sniper. In all cases, I just kept my head down and tried to keep my people from being killed."

"But you actually did something. You didn't lie there frozen in your own crap, now did you?"

"I guess I did manage to move about and function usefully."

"So why'd they get rid of you in Germany? How badly did you flick up?"

Paul explained the situation with the grenades and the discipline. "Funny," Paul concluded, "but all I was trying to do was the right thing."

Ruger nodded. "The road to hell is paved with people trying to do the right thing or something like that. I presume you've learned a little discretion."

Paul grinned. "A lot."

"Fine. Let's get back to you in those combat situations. Were you scared?"

"Shitless."

Captain Ruger nodded. "My first time was in the Philippines last year. I was so scared I maybe did shit, although the place already stank so bad I don't think anybody could tell, and I suppose I'll be scared again when we invade Japan."

Paul's heart sank. "Then it's official?"

"Yep, and you're gonna be part of it. Since you look reasonably human and have almost satisfactorily explained yourself, I'm taking you for my company. We are part of a now-forming infantry regiment, the 528th, Brigadier General John Monck commanding. We are going to be assigned as a reserve force for one of the divisions that's going to invade. We'll be shipping out from here faster than you can say jack shit, so don't even think about unpacking or even leaving this tent without me as a chaperone."

Paul sagged. That soon? Not even a few days' respite? "Do I have time for a phone call? How 'bout a shave and a shower?"

Ruger looked at his watch. "If we move fast, we can both make a phone call. Unless somebody changes their minds, we'll be on a C- 54 in about two and a half hours. You can forget the shower. The plumbing around here is terrible at best."

Ruger stood up and Paul realized the captain was not as tall as he'd first thought, only an inch or so taller than he was. Ruger held out his hand and Paul took it. Ruger's grip was firm. "Morrell, welcome to whatever the hell we're getting into. Now, let's go find us some phones, some food, and maybe even something to drink. You mind eating and drinking in an ugly old tent?"

Despite his apprehensions, Paul smiled. "Not in the slightest, Captain. Uh, do you have any idea where we're going from here?"

"Paul, after a few stops for food and fuel, we will be catching up with our enlisted personnel on that resort spot of the Pacific, Okinawa, and God help us."

Paul's first steps in the Pacific theater would come soon.

Chapter 7

The third atomic bomb followed its precursors at Hiroshima and Nagasaki and fell on Kokura, with the same devastation. Gen. Korechika Anami, minister of war, stared at the small group of grim-faced men who sat with him in that same bunker where Emperor Hirohito had been taken prisoner. The austere walls were now covered with maps and reports that charted the flow of the war that was raging over their heads as American bombers pounded targets in Tokyo and its suburbs. The new leader of Japan wondered what was left for them to destroy in Tokyo.

Beginning with the March fire raids, the city had systematically been destroyed. More than a hundred thousand of her people had burned to death as the fragile wooden dwellings that housed her population of 3 million had gone up like matches.

It was the same in the other cities of Japan. Fire and death.

As news from the bombed city of Kokura filtered in through the shattered lines of communication, and as the death toll from Hiroshima and Nagasaki continued to mount, the sixty-three-year-old General Anami wondered if he had done the right thing by supporting the rebellious young officers whose palace coup had caused the killing to continue. He dismissed the brief spark of doubt. What had been done was right and Japan's fate. Japan would fight on and so would he. He had to. He was samurai and bound by the oath of Bushido to never surrender. But what would Japan fight with? They had to stop the rain of nuclear terror from the skies.

Grudgingly, he acknowledged that the traditional definition of war had been changed. Japanese bravery would count for naught unless he could find some way of halting the bombings. Not for the first time he wondered if he had been born too late. Better that he was already dead and his ashes scattered than to see what was happening to his beloved Japan.

Because of his role in the coup that had captured Hirohito and prevented the planned surrender, General Anami had taken the duties of prime minister as well as war minister. The previous prime minister, Suzuki, had not resigned. He had died of a sudden and massive stroke while being taken into custody, and it offended Anami that the American and British press insisted that the seventy-seven-year-old Suzuki had been murdered. The doddering old man who had survived other coup attempts and outlived assassins' bullets had simply died.

Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo had been imprisoned, although in the comfort of his own home. The fool had insisted on trying to negotiate a peace settlement with the Allies on terms that were unfavorable to the Empire. Later they would decide whether he had committed treason. Probably not, as he was not a soldier and had been following the wishes of his misguided emperor, Hirohito. Togo 's replacement, ex-prime minister Hideki Tojo, had been chosen by the military, and the news had sent shock waves through the Allies. Tojo had been one of the architects of the Pearl Harbor attack, but had borne the brunt of blame for the later failures of the military and been forced to resign.

Anami hoped that Tojo's appointment and apparent return to power would send a clear message that the Japanese Empire was deadly serious in its intent to continue the war. Tojo, however, was a figurehead appointment. The real power to lead and control Japan lay with the handful of men in the room.

Of the other important pacifists, only Marquis Kido, a friend and relative of the emperor's, remained at large. General Umezu, who had openly agreed with the decision to surrender, was also under house arrest. In Anami's opinion, Umezu was definitely a traitor and would be dealt with accordingly.

Anami began the meeting. "The emperor sends his greetings and wishes us well."

Admiral Toyoda's mouth flickered slightly in what might have been a smile. "Then he has not decided to choose an honorable death?" Toyoda was delighted that the war was continuing and, like the others in the room, knew that Hirohito was a prisoner. "And where is our beloved emperor?"

Anami nodded slightly at Toyoda. "Colonel Sakei said that Hirohito intends no such thing as an immediate honorable death. He believes that he can best serve the Empire by living."

The implications were clear. Hirohito would remain alive to forestall his replacement by someone more extreme. Should he die, then the crown would pass to his son, Akihito. But the crown prince was far too young to reign, and a regent would be appointed, presuming, of course, that the crown prince could be found. A second choice would doubtless be Hirohito's younger brother, Prince Takamatsu. Takamatsu stood solidly behind the militarists in their continuing fight.

"As to the emperor's physical presence," Anami continued, "Colonel Sakei has moved him to a place of greater safety. He is in a secure location near the city of Nagasaki. That was chosen because the Americans would not again bomb the ruined place. It also places him away from Tokyo and the possibility of a countercoup." Anami quickly looked upward and the others followed. They could hear the distant thudding of bombs. "It is ironic, but dead Nagasaki is now far safer than Tokyo."

The group nodded agreement. Anami was still taken aback by the way they looked to him for guidance and leadership.

Anami again directed his glance at Admiral Toyoda. "Are there any improvements regarding the navy?"

Toyoda flushed. There was no navy. With the exception of sixteen destroyers and a number of regular submarines, the conventional navy no longer existed. Fewer than 10 percent of navy ships were still afloat, and all other ships of consequence had been sunk or so severely damaged that they could not move.

"We have no carriers, no battleships, no cruisers, and almost no frontline planes. Unless they have been found and destroyed by the Americans, only about a hundred fighters remain, and they are dispersed all over Japan."

Once, the Japanese navy and the swift Zero fighter had ruled both the waves and the skies. Now it was all ashes, and the surviving planes were hidden rather than rising to fight. Even the guns from the remaining ships had been removed and placed in tunnels and bunkers where they would have a better opportunity to repel the Americans.

Just before Pearl Harbor, the late and revered Admiral Yamamoto had said that the Japanese navy would run amok for six months or a year, but that the weight of American arms would be too much. Events had occurred precisely as Yamamoto had forecast.

Anami wondered what role Yamamoto would have taken in these proceedings had he not been killed by American fighter planes.

"General Sugiyama?" Anami asked.

Field Marshal Hajime Sugiyama had been appointed to coordinate the land defenses of the home islands. Anami considered him pompous, but he was a loyal supporter of continuing the war.

"The army is ready," Sugiyama said proudly. "We are two million strong and undefeated, although I have to admit that many of our troops are inexperienced, and not up to our previous standards. Additional formations are crossing over from Manchukuo and Chosen and will assist in the defense of the home islands. Further, we are beginning to enroll millions of Japanese civilians into either militia units or civilian shock troops."

With the exception of the battle for the Philippines, only fairly small units of the Imperial Japanese Army had encountered the Americans. In China, the Japanese army had been victorious and all-conquering up until the Russians had advanced into Manchukuo and threatened the Kwantung army's rear. Now that army was withdrawing its best troops back to the home islands while leaving second-rate soldiers to fight off the Soviets in the lands known by the Americans as Manchuria and Korea.

"General, when will the Russians be halted?" Anami queried.

Sugiyama's confidence was unshaken as he stated unpleasant truths. "The remainder of our armies in China and Manchukuo will be split by the Russian advance. Those in China have been directed to build strong fortifications and defend themselves bravely until relieved, while those in Chosen are withdrawing south and will form defensive lines where the peninsula narrows. By that time, the Russians should be out of fuel and, with their supply lines extended, will be vulnerable to our counterattacks."

Anami prodded, "The Soviets have crossed and landed on what they refer to as Sakhalin Island. Have we overlooked their amphibious potential?"

"No," the field marshal answered tersely. "What was overlooked was the defense of those islands. Our predecessors thought that the treaty with the Soviet Union would render moot any need to protect those lands from those we thought were our allies. Thus, the Russian landings were virtually unopposed. I guarantee you that will not be the case if they wish to proceed farther or attempt to land on Honshu."

Sugiyama's report did not mention the hundreds of thousands of Japanese soldiers either still fighting battles in the islands of the Pacific, or who were withering and starving after being bypassed by the American navy, which could sail anyplace it wished. He was told almost four hundred thousand of Japan's best soldiers were isolated from the home islands by distance and the American navy. They might as well be dead.

"Army fighter planes?" Anami asked. "What numbers are there?"

Sugiyama shrugged. "A few hundred, and they too are dispersed and well hidden until the time is right. But that is not important. We will win this war with courage and adherence to the code of Bushido, not with machines. Victory will go to the brave, and there is no one more courageous than the Japanese soldier!"

Anami said nothing, but again wondered just what good courage was against an enemy who was tens of thousands of feet in the sky and capable of dropping bombs of all kinds on the heads of those brave Japanese soldiers. What good was bravery if the brave warrior could not even reach the craven enemy?

Thousands of American planes flew daily over Japanese lands, and the Japanese military was helpless to stop them. Those few fighters that did fly up to attack them were inevitably shot down. As a result, the draconian order had gone forth that the cities would not be defended from the American bombers. The few remaining planes, along with the precious few warships, would be husbanded until the time of the American invasion. As this occurred, the Japanese military and civilian population would dig into the hillsides and await their opportunity for revenge.

Anami clenched his fists. "Victory is a qualified statement. What we want is to end this round of fighting on terms that will not destroy or humiliate Japan or cause us to violate our oath to the code of Bushido, and which will enable us to prepare for the next round. The question then is, how do we accomplish this most reasonable goal? We understand quite well that the Americans have a different definition of the worth of a soldier's life. In Japan, a soldier's goal is to die for his emperor, while the American wishes nothing more than to survive and go home. Thus, while our soldiers fight to the death, the cowardly Americans surrender at the earliest opportunity."

Sugiyama sniffed. "They are women."

"Be that as it may, the fact of their unmanly behavior has given us a weapon. General Sugiyama, you spoke of arming millions of civilians, but with what? We have very few guns to give them."

"Spears and knives," Sugiyama said proudly. "They will rush the Americans. Then they will stab them and disembowel them."

Anami appreciated the thought, but questioned its effectiveness. However, while uncountable tens of thousands would be killed and stacked in bloody piles before the American guns, many Americans would indeed die as well.

"Good," Anami said, "but the key to our success is the kamikaze." They recalled the sacred story of the kamikaze, the divine wind, that had sprung up those hundreds of years ago to destroy the ships of the Mongol horde and kept Japan safe from invasion.

"The purpose of the kamikaze," he continued, "is not to die uselessly for Japan, but to kill for her, and we must not forget that. If death comes as that which is inevitable and right, then such a death is an honor to one's self and family. But it is far, far better to kill first than to just die, and that is what we must ensure. General, how many kamikaze planes and pilots are ready for the final battle?"

Sugiyama's chest swelled. "At least five thousand, and there are an additional ten thousand planes of all kinds that can be converted into flying bombs. Getting pilots is no problem, and we are hoarding fuel enough for them to make their one-way flights to glory. They will kill for Japan."

"Good. Now, what about the navy, Admiral Toyoda?"

The admiral responded proudly. "While we lack larger craft, we have over three hundred midget submarines, along with many manned torpedoes and many hundreds of smaller craft that are intended to attack and ram American ships. Again, the fuel, while scarce, will be sufficient for a onetime thrust. The navy too will kill and die for Japan."

Anami permitted himself a smile. "Then all we have to do is make this rain of nuclear death stop. I must confess that, when the first bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, I thought that the Americans would have no others. Sadly, I was wrong and I apologize for my ignorance. Yet, we are not without recourse."

He paused and saw that he had their attention. "To my surprise and dismay, the Hiroshima bomb was followed by the Nagasaki attack only three days later. This was obviously intended to make us think they had many bombs in their arsenals." Anami paused again and smiled grimly. "Yet, it took almost two weeks for a third to be dropped on Kokura. That tells me that their number of bombs and their ability to produce them is extremely limited. They likely had two to begin with and used them at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, thinking we would surrender as a result. When we did not, they had to manufacture a third. I am certain they are right now building a fourth and fifth of the infernal devices. But, I am just as certain that we have a couple of weeks before any will be ready for use."

Anami looked about, waiting to see if they agreed with his logic. When no comments were forthcoming, he continued, "During these few weeks given us, we will prey upon the American weakness regarding the deaths of their soldiers to force them to stop using atomic bombs on us."

"How?" interrupted Toyoda.

Anami ignored the breach of protocol. "We hold many thousands of American and British prisoners of war, along with numerous Australians and Dutch. I propose that those prisoners now held in the home islands be brought to our cities and held as hostages against nuclear attack. I further propose that Allied prisoners in Manchukuo and elsewhere, particularly those senior officers like Wainwright and Devereaux, be transported to the home islands to swell the numbers who will die if we are attacked. I also propose that we immediately inform the Americans and British of our intentions."

There was a stunned silence, then the men in the underground bunker rose and applauded General Anami.

Chapter 8

Sgt. Joe Nomura knew he was in trouble when he saw the two men walking briskly down the row of beds in the hospital ward. He was the only person in the ward in Saipan, so he couldn't hope that they would pass him by.

Joe lay back on his bed in his underwear and relaxed as they stopped in front of him. "Gentlemen, what can I do for you?"

The two men appeared to be in their thirties. They were dressed as naval officers, commanders, and carried briefcases. While one was dark-haired and the other light, the two looked disarmingly like tall and well-muscled twins. The lighter-haired one spoke. "Sergeant Nomura, I am Commander Johnson and this is Commander Peters. We would like to speak with you for a few moments."

Nomura sat up. It was awkward because his left arm had been amputated at the elbow. "Has my discharge come through?"

Peters and Johnson looked at each other; slight confusion registered on their faces. "No," said Johnson, "we don't know anything about that."

Nomura waved his half an arm. "Do you mean that the army intends to keep me on as a one-armed soldier? That's ridiculous. There's nothing more I can do. I've given enough, don't you think?"

"I understand," said Peters.

"Do you?" Nomura sneered.

Johnson opened his briefcase and pulled out a sheet of paper. "Let's see. Sergeant Jochi Nomura, aged twenty-eight. You were born on the island of Oahu in Hawaii, in some town I can't pronounce. At age eight, your parents, who were employed by a shipping company, took you to Japan, where you lived until you were seventeen. At that point, you returned with them and lived in Honolulu, where you remained until the start of the war."

Johnson halted for a moment to see if Nomura would comment. He didn't. "Almost immediately after Pearl Harbor, you volunteered for the army and, after basic training, were assigned to the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and were later shipped over to Italy. You were wounded slightly and returned to combat. Then, while rescuing comrades who were pinned down by a Nazi machine gun, you were shot and suffered the loss of your left arm just below the elbow. You were awarded the Silver Star for that action. That, however, did not stop you, and you were voluntarily assigned as a translator to help the army convince Japanese civilians here on Saipan that they would not be harmed by us, and that they should surrender."

Joe Nomura laughed harshly. "Helluva great job I did. I stood there and yelled for them to come in, while all the time they were throwing themselves off the cliffs only a hundred feet away from me. I'm through. I want my discharge. One-armed soldiers with Silver Stars get to go home, and you goddamn well know it."

"Joe," Peters said, "we'd like to make you an offer."

Now it comes, Nomura thought. "Who are you guys? I know you're not navy."

"We're not?" asked Peters, looking a little hurt. "I'm disappointed. I rather thought we looked the part."

"Hell no. First of all, your insignias aren't correctly put on, and more important, I haven't said sir, haven't stood up, and haven't been very nice to you at all. Real officers would have eaten me alive for that, one-armed hero or not."

Johnson laughed. "Good call. We're from the Office of Strategic Services, the OSS, and we'd like you to help us."

Joe was momentarily puzzled, but then the light dawned as the bottom dropped out of his stomach. "Oh, shit, you want me to go into Japan, don't you?"

Both men nodded. "You're perfect," said Johnson. "You've lived there, you're of Japanese descent, and you're wounded, which means their secret police won't bother you."

"Fuck off."

"Joe," said Peters, "we have to know what's going on in there, and we desperately need the damn few people in the world like you. We don't have any spies in Japan and we can't land regular agents. To belabor the obvious, a white man in Japan would stand out."

Nomura had to laugh. "Well, ain't that the truth. Having a white skin ain't always an advantage, now is it?"

"Will you at least consider helping us?" Johnson asked.

"What's in it for me?"

Peters saw the small opening and responded quickly, "You'll be discharged, but kept on as a government employee with the equivalent pay and privileges of an army captain."

Joe stood slowly, his calm Japanese face suddenly an alien mask of scarcely controlled rage. The change in his bearing and demeanor startled the two OSS recruiters, and they stepped back quickly and in shock.

"God damn it!" Joe screamed. "You think you can buy me? Look, assholes, in the past couple of years a lot more has happened than my losing my arm for a country that doesn't give a shit for me! I'm alone in this fucking ward because, after spraining my ankle out on those cliffs, no one wanted to be around a Jap, not even one with a Silver Star. Y'know, in Italy I saw white Americans shoot Japanese Americans and ignore the fact that we were supposed to be fighting the Germans together. Whenever we went to a town in Italy, we were spit on and called yellow Japs and a helluva lot worse."

Jochi Nomura glared at them. "And that ain't all. My dad lost his job because of his skin and nobody cares that he's a naturalized citizen. And now my parents are living in squalor in some fucking concentration camp like convicts whose only crime is having a yellow skin. And do you know what's the worst?" A stunned Peters and Johnson shook their heads numbly. "A couple of weeks ago some white guys who'd busted into the camp grabbed my mom and raped her because she was a Jap. They fucked my mom! Anybody besides your daddy fuck your mom lately?" Nomura sat down heavily. "Now, try to tell me again why should I help you?"

Johnson lowered his head in embarrassment while Peters looked away. "I'm sorry. We had no idea," Johnson said softly. "Sergeant, we're both truly sorry. It was just our fervent hope that you and others like you would be able to go into Japan and provide us with the information we need to help stop the killing. Look, nothing can ever make the past good again, but we have to start somewhere building the future, and we can't do that until the war ends. I guess I don't blame you for telling us to kiss off. We'll go now. Good-bye, Sergeant." The two men turned to leave.

Joe sighed, "I'll go."

Both men blinked. "What?" Johnson managed.

Nomura smiled bleakly. "My parents are fine. They're living in Honolulu and not in some camp, and if somebody touched my mom, she'd cut their balls off. The rest of the shit I told you about the white soldiers picking on us is true, and it's also true that no one is in this ward with me so they don't get confused and think I'm one of Hirohito's boys who are still hiding out in the hills. In a way it's okay, though. I kind of like it being alone. Besides, despite the fact that me and people like me are getting fucked over royally, it sounds like I might actually be able to help end this fucking war, right? I want to prove once and for all to the government that Japanese Americans are not the enemy."

Johnson smiled, while Peters looked a little angry at being misled. "Mr. Nomura, you're a real bastard," Johnson said, "but we like that in an agent. When can you leave?"

Nomura looked around at the empty room, hostile in its silence. "Is right now soon enough?"

Chapter 9

President Truman could barely contain his anger and frustration. First, the destruction of the city of Kokura had elicited no response from the Japanese. It was inconceivable to him that the deaths of tens of thousands of Japanese civilians could be ignored by the Japanese government. What would it take for them to surrender? Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and now Kokura had ceased to exist, and so many Japanese civilians had been reduced to ashes. And all for nothing. Were the Japs even human? he wondered. At least their leaders weren't, he concluded. But this was not the only problem.

President Truman's voice tended to rise an octave when he was upset. "I thought I now understood at least a little of what I needed to know in order to be president, but now you're telling me there are still more deep, dark secrets that have been kept from me." He sagged in his seat. "This is beyond incredible."

Secretary of State Jim Byrnes leaned over and touched the president's sleeve. "Mr. President, I just found out now myself, although I have to admit I suspected and am not surprised." They were seated on facing couches in the Oval Office. An uncomfortable-looking Gen. George C. Marshall sat on a colonial-style chair at Truman's left.

"So," Truman said resignedly to Marshall, "what you are telling me is that we're reading the Japs' mail and that we've been doing it for some time, unbeknownst to both them and me."

Marshall nodded. "Yes, sir, and the secret is so closely held that I'm not at all surprised you weren't told. Much of our success in this war has been dependent upon our ability to decode Japanese transmissions and to keep that fact secret."

Truman almost sneered in his frustration, but held himself in check. "Really?"

"Yes, sir. With the exception of those actually working on the project, very few are aware of our successes in this area. Sir, at one point we thought that President Roosevelt was careless in his handling of secret Japanese documents that we'd decoded, so we took him off the list of recipients for almost a year."

Truman's jaw dropped and Byrnes gulped in astonishment. Byrnes stammered, "You arbitrarily deprived the president of important information?"

"Mr. Secretary, we gave him all the summary information he needed. We did deprive him of source documents and other items that would indicate we had broken the Japanese codes.

Our term for the effort is 'Magic,' and through it we've been able to read virtually all Japanese diplomatic radio transmissions and most military ones. The British have done the same thing with the Germans, and they call it their Ultra program. They are, by the way, as secretive about it as we are. The important thing is to keep in mind that neither the Japanese nor the Germans yet have any inkling that this is going on. As a result, the Japanese continue to use the codes they have been using. Even though the war with Germany is over, we still think that retaining secrecy will prove useful.

"Sir, if the Japanese were to find out, they'd change their codes and we'd be blind for a long, long time. It took almost two years to break the Japanese diplomatic code, and we don't have that kind of time to go through all that effort again."

Byrnes took a sip of his coffee. "What you're telling me, General, is that President Truman, should he be elected on his own in 1948 and have his own vice president, would be well advised to keep this secret from that poor soul just as FDR kept it from him."

"Exactly," said Marshall with just a trace of a smile.

Truman waved his hands. "The next election will keep. Unless this war is brought to a speedy and successful conclusion, I won't be able to run for dogcatcher in 1948. Now, what does all this message reading tell us."

"It tells us that there is turmoil in Japan's hierarchy," said Marshall. "The military is in fairly firm control over the armed forces and is moving to consolidate, but their grasp is not as solid as it could be in other areas."

Byrnes agreed. "From what I've gleaned, Japanese diplomats both in Japan and in their embassies in neutral nations are virtually unanimous that the war must end on almost any terms. Tojo may have been appointed foreign minister, but he does not have the support of his staff. We also feel that the other nonmilitary sectors feel that way as well, but are powerless as long as the military remain in control. We are getting further indications that the majority of the civilian population wishes for an end to the war, but they too are helpless."

Marshall continued, "Even so, our military intercepts also indicate that the Japs are moving to reinforce their existing forces in Kyushu. They have anticipated correctly that Kyushu will be the first target of our assault on the home islands."

"Damn," said Truman.

Marshall paused. He knew this would be the most difficult to tell the volatile Truman. "Mr. President, we are also hearing that the Japs may be moving Allied POWs into strategic positions to deter us from using any more nuclear bombs on their cities."

Truman sat bolt upright. "No!"

"I'm afraid it's almost undoubtedly true, sir, although their effort is incomplete as yet. The Japs hold about a hundred and forty thousand Allied prisoners, maybe ten thousand of which are Americans, and we think about half of those numbers may be on the Jap home islands. The rest are scattered all over the place with large portions in Malaya and Burma. Many of our captured senior people are in camps in Manchuria. According to the intercepts, they are among those being sent to Tokyo and other important places in the home islands."

"That's against the Geneva Convention," Truman said sadly.

"Yes, it is," Marshall responded, "but we never signed the Geneva Convention, although we have been adhering to its terms on a voluntary basis. The Japanese have never shown any interest in obeying it."

Truman's face turned red in frustration. "I will presume that the Japs plan on making this a public pronouncement fairly soon, don't they?" Marshall nodded, and Truman threw up his hands. "First you tell me that we're running out of targets, and I agree with you. Kokura was a wretched little place to destroy. Then I'm informed that the Japs are evacuating their cities, which further reduces our nuclear opportunities, and now you tell me that American and British POWs are going to be used as human shields to prevent our using atom bombs against whatever happens to be left in Japan. Is that right?"

Marshall sat unmoving. "That's right, sir. Other than causing the movement of our prisoners to target areas, you're right, the bombing of Kokura has had virtually no impact on the Japanese. I would suggest that we suspend nuclear operations against Japanese cities and create an inventory for tactical use in support of the landings on Kyushu. Conventional, nonnuclear bombing of Japanese targets will, of course, continue."

"Of course," Truman said in a dejected whisper. "Agreed."

"I'm sorry, Harry," Byrnes said solicitously, "we all had such high hopes that the bombs would end the war."

Marshall paused. There was another point to make. "We are starting to see the volume of decodeable traffic dry up, and that will hinder us. The Japanese now have few outposts and even fewer ships with which to communicate, and their home island radio transmitters have been destroyed to a very large extent by our bombers. They are now relying on telegraph and telephone, which we cannot intercept, as well as using human messengers and couriers."

"Another ironic price of success," Truman mused. "May I presume we are reading Stalin's mail as well?"

Marshall nodded solemnly. "Not as well as we'd like. You may also presume that we are reading British messages, and that they are reading ours."

Byrnes found it amusing. "Lord, what a wicked, wicked world we live in."

Truman stood and the two others left. Now he could walk the corridor to the real White House and try to relax with Bess and his Margaret. Maybe he could have a drink and play the piano. Maybe, he laughed aloud, he would play the piano so loud the whole wretched building would collapse on his head.

He chuckled. At least that would solve one of his problems.

Chapter 10

In the six months since she'd been commissioned, the officers and crew of the U.S. submarine Moray had seen only limited action in the Pacific. With the Japanese military and merchant fleet shrinking through combat attrition, there were fewer and fewer targets for a prowling sub to find and sink. Locating even those handful that remained involved hazardous trips through Japan's Inland Sea, that myriad of channels that separated and flowed through the multitude of large and small islands in the Japanese archipelago.

To the Moray's captain, Comdr. Frank Hobart, the last patrol had been a frustrating disgrace. Nothing sighted and nothing shot at. They had returned to base with all torpedoes snug in their racks and were silently ridiculed by their more successful and experienced peers. Thus, he was delighted to be sent to Okinawa for what was described as a special mission to Japan. How special he didn't care. One more chance, Hobart thought, for a few kills, and a better chance at staying on in a postwar navy that was sure to shrink and want to keep only the best and the brightest. And the most aggressive, he kept adding. He had to make a name for himself before it was too late.

Neither he nor his crew were unduly surprised when the five men and their equipment came on board at Okinawa. The men were all dressed in black and all had their faces covered like bandits. Even more curiously, one of the men, the smallest of the five, had only one arm.

The Moray was a Gato-class submarine stationed off northern Kyushu, one of more than sixty in that efficient and effective category. She was 307 feet long and displaced 1,525 tons. Along with ten torpedo tubes, she had a three-inch deck gun and a 20mm Oerlikon antiaircraft gun. The Moray was a formidable weapon and had been built at Mare Island, California, in late 1944.

The sixty-five men in her crew normally lived in cramped and abominable conditions, which were exacerbated by the presence of the five additional men and their equipment. To make matters worse, the five secreted themselves in the captain's cabin and wardroom and stayed there for the duration of the short voyage, thus pushing out the officers who would normally have lived there.

From Okinawa to Kyushu was less than five hundred miles, and Captain Hobart was confident he and his crew could gut out the overcrowding for another chance at the Japs. His crew was not as confident. While skilled and professional, many had this nagging feeling that Hobart was aggressive to the point of recklessness, and most did not share his confidence in wanting to tweak the enemy one last time. They also wanted the five interlopers gone from their boat and their little breathing room back in their cramped world of tubes, pipes, and bad air.

When the Moray surfaced at night just a mile off the northern coast of Kyushu, everyone was relieved that at least part of their journey was over. With precision and dispatch, the five men, still black-clad and masked, emerged on deck with their gear and a rubber raft. Silently, they pushed off, and four men paddled while the fifth, the one-armed man, sat unmoving in the center of the small craft. Within minutes they had disappeared into the darkness. The sky was only partly cloudy, and starlight and moonlight made the Moray fairly visible if anyone knew where to look. Prudently, her skipper submerged her farther, until only her conning tower was above the surface of the gently rolling sea.

"Skipper?"

"Yes, Randy?" Hobart tried not to show his impatience. His second-in-command, in his opinion, did not show proper aggressive spirit. Randy Bullard was a reservist who'd made it known that he wanted to go home more than anything else. Well, he would go home when his captain decided, and not before.

"Captain, I strongly suggest we submerge to periscope depth. There's just too much of us showing and we are very close to enemy territory."

Hobart sniffed the air and looked about. It was humid and he thought it might soon rain. There was no sign of anything on the sea or in the air, and the brooding hills of Japan, so tantalizingly close, were dark and still as well. It was the middle of the night and the Japanese were asleep, even those who had survived the nuclear assaults on Nagasaki and Kokura. He wondered if he should risk a look at Nagasaki 's harbor after finishing this assignment.

"Negative, Randy. Let's air the place out. It stinks like a stable down there. Besides, those banditos in the raft have to be able to see us in order to find their way back to us." Besides, Hobart thought silently, he didn't want to give in to his weakling of an exec.

Only just before the raft had shoved offhad Hobart been given the final portion of his orders, which informed him that only one of the five men- he presumed they were Marine Raiders- would actually be leaving the sub. He was dismayed and knew his crew would be unhappy as well, because it meant that the intolerable living conditions would be improved only slightly. Screw it, he thought. Get them back here so I can look for some Jap shipping.

After what seemed forever, a lookout spotted the raft on its way back. Despite his annoyance at having to keep them, Hobart felt relief and admiration for the boys who had paddled their human cargo to Japan and come back without incident. Hobart thought it would be wonderfully exhilarating to be able to say he'd actually set foot on Japanese soil. He ordered the sub to surface higher so that the men and their raft could be taken aboard via the deck hatch.

A little less than half a mile away, Comdr. Mochitsura Hashimoto looked transfixed through the periscope of his submarine, the I-58. The I-58 had just returned from its last patrol confident it had sunk an American battleship, only to find that Japanese naval intelligence now believed it was the heavy cruiser Indianapolis that he'd sent to the bottom of the Pacific. No matter, he had been successful. For quite some time, Japanese sub victories had been few and far between; thus, it was with a kind of delight that he saw the silhouette of the conning tower piercing the surface. The shape was American and he was insultingly close to Japan.

The I-58 was a fairly new addition to the Imperial Japanese Navy and, at 355 feet long, was believed to be larger than any American sub. She could simultaneously fire six thirty-foot-long, oxygen-driven torpedoes that had a range of several miles and a speed of over forty knots. She also had a 5.5-inch deck gun and several machine guns as antiaircraft protection.

Attached to the I-58's deck were four kaiten human torpedoes. Because of the need to make room for a rider and a rude steering mechanism, the kaiten were slower and had a smaller warhead.

But they would never miss. The kaiten would be launched at a suitable target and the pilot would steer into it. The human torpedoes were a German device so there was a release mechanism that, theoretically, would save the pilot. The release would not be needed. Not one of the kaiten pilots would think of not dying.

During the cruise, the kaiten pilots had been a problem for Commander Hashimoto. They had begged for the opportunity to hit the American battleship that had turned out to be a cruiser, but Hashimoto had denied them because he thought their efforts would be wasted. The shot was so easy that human guidance was unnecessary. Wait, he'd counseled.

Now they were at him again, begging and whining like children for the right to obliterate themselves against an American ship. In a way, he felt sorry for them. They had pledged to die, and to return safely to port was a disgrace, even though it wasn't their fault. They had set out to die, so die they must or suffer shame. A kamikaze pilot generally went out with only enough fuel in his plane for a one-way trip, so a return was unlikely. Even if a kamikaze didn't find an American warship, he would find a reasonably honorable death by crashing into the sea.

Not so the kaiten. Commander Hashimoto was adamant that in their use they would not jeopardize the I-58 or waste themselves in any attempt. The I-58, and a few like her, were all the Imperial Japanese Navy had to fight off the Americans, and while suicide might be a future option, Hashimoto did not think that now was the right time. Hashimoto was also acutely aware that many of the large Japanese subs were now being used solely to ferry troops and supplies to isolated garrisons, and he was gratified that he was still able to carry out combat operations and not have to operate as an undersea transport.

The American sub looked just about right for the kaiten to make their final efforts. The target was small and a miss would be too likely with a conventional torpedo.

"Two," he said to the eager faces, and two men ran forward to climb through the connecting hatches and take their places in the kaiten while the others moaned their dismay.

The American sub insolently rose farther out of the sea. It appeared that there was activity on her deck as well. Hashimoto's senior torpedo officer signaled that the kaiten were ready, and the commander gave the order to fire. The I-58 rose slightly by the bow when the human torpedoes were launched, and the helmsman kept tight control on the ship to ensure that she wouldn't breach and reveal her position.

On board the Moray, the deckhands had just about finished stowing the raft when a lookout screamed. "Torpedoes!"

Without looking, Hobart yelled for an emergency dive. Men tumbled down the hatches, breaking bones in their haste to be off the deck and into the perceived safety of the Moray. In seconds, her bow had started to move and dip beneath the gentle waves. Hobart, who had been overseeing the reloading operation, saw that the sub was going to dive with him still on the deck. He turned and watched in horror as twin lines of bubbles shifted and directed themselves toward the Moray. As the sub struggled to find the safety of the depths, Hobart knew it was useless. The devil-guided torpedoes would find her. He bowed his head and waited. In his last second of life, he thought he saw a face looking at him from the torpedo as it crashed into the sub.

Joe Nomura, alone on a hill overlooking the sea and with his gear safely hidden, sat in silence. The first explosion was immediately followed by another, and the Moray's dark shape lifted out of the water before plunging, broken, to her death.

From the suddenness and totality of the explosions it seemed highly unlikely that anyone on the Moray had survived. Even if they had, he could not jeopardize his mission by going after them. God help them, he prayed silently, and God help me. He felt the despair of being completely alone.

The explosions would bring attention from the Japanese military. A chill breeze blew by him and he clutched the tattered remains of his Japanese army uniform tighter to his chest. It was time to begin his mission.

Chapter 11

Brigadier General Monck saluted. General Eichelberger returned it and held out his hand. "Welcome to Manila, General, and congratulations on your promotion."

Monck flushed with pleasure. "Thanks, General, but it was really quite unexpected."

"Nonsense. I understand you did a fine job with that armored unit in the Ruhr. I just wonder how you'll adapt to being an infantry commander fighting Japs after riding around with a hundred tanks at your disposal and taking on the Nazis?"

Monck chuckled. "I'll make do. General, I was an infantryman well before I knew anything about armor, and I didn't expect to find much armor here in the Pacific theater. Island-hopping and amphibious warfare don't call for massed tank formations. It'll be like a homecoming for me to be working with infantry again."

An orderly brought coffee, which Monck took gratefully. He'd spent a lot of time on an airplane and felt the caffeine stirring in him. Eichelberger took a sip and put his cup aside.

"General Monck, as soon as I've briefed you and you've finished your coffee, you'll meet Mac Arthur. Then you'll be heading off to Okinawa to take command of your new regiment. Current planning has that regiment in reserve for one of the divisions that will take part in the initial phase of the invasion of Japan, the assault on Kyushu. It'll likely be the 41st, which is still being reorganized. The 41st has a long and proud history of action in the Pacific, but, like so many others, has taken a lot of casualties and has lost a lot of men because of the damned policy of rotating long-service soldiers back to the States."

Monck said nothing. While he privately agreed that men who had endured years of hell should be sent home, it meant that the best and most experienced soldiers were being replaced by men with little or no combat experience.

"So," Eichelberger added, "your regiment will be overstrength at just under four thousand men and filled with recruits who don't even know each other. You'll have about a month, maybe two at the most, to whip them into shape, so work them wisely and hard. Their lives will depend on it. General Krueger, who is unavailable to meet you right now, will command the attack on Kyushu. I am functioning as MacArthur's planning and operations chief for the second phase of the fighting, which will be the final attack on the island of Honshu and the city of Tokyo."

Monck hoped they would not pay dearly for that rush. And he knew the reason for his new command to be overstrength. It was expected to go in early and would be taking heavy casualties. The regiment would need the extra men to function after getting mauled. It further answered the question why he, a brigadier general, was getting a command that would ordinarily fall to a bird colonel. Thanks for nothing, he thought.

"General Eichelberger, just how firm are the plans for the invasion?"

"As firm as anything that is being thrown together in haste. I've got to admit we didn't think it would really come to this, and we didn't start planning in earnest until recently. Only two things are certain: first, that the invasion will be in the very early part of November, and second, that it will be on the island of Kyushu rather than anyplace else. Don't worry, Monck, we'll get this all sorted out and muddle through. Now, have you ever met MacArthur?"

"No, I have not."

"Well, it should be an experience. MacArthur is a very complex person, though I presume you've heard horror stories about his monumental ego?"

Monck grinned slightly. "I don't think I should answer that, General."

"That's right, you shouldn't. First rule is never speak ill of a living legend. Seriously, General Douglas MacArthur is both a genius and his own worst enemy. You know that he graduated at the top of his class at West Point and achieved academic standards that no one's ever come close to?"

Monck did, of course. MacArthur had graduated in 1903 and gone on to be decorated for valor in the Vera Cruz incursion in 1914 and then again in France in 1917. Whatever his faults, MacArthur did not lack personal bravery. MacArthur had then gone on to be army chief of staff, had worked organizing the Philippine army, had retired, and had then been brought back to both command the Philippines and help defend them against the pending Japanese threat. His work had been far from complete when the Japanese attacked in December 1941.

MacArthur now commanded the American armies in the Pacific, had controlled the Southwest Pacific and the Philippines, and, if the rumors were true, would be in overall command of all the ground forces that would take part in the invasion of the Japanese home islands.

"General Eichelberger, I went to the Point with the class of ' 14. MacArthur the student was a legend, even then. I was one year ahead of Eisenhower."

"Why'd you leave the military, General?"

Monck shrugged. "A perceived lack of a future and cruel economic conditions. I didn't get to France in World War I, so I thought my career was shot. That and I was married to a wonderful woman who insisted that the children I kept impregnating her with be able to eat."

Eichelberger sympathized. Military pay in the days before the current war had been horrendous at best. "How many kids?"

"Four. Two boys and two girls. One of the boys is in England, while the other is, thank God, still in school."

"You know, if you'd stayed in, you'd likely have three stars like Ido."

"Or I might be an over-the-hill and overweight major at a desk in the Pentagon. Can't change the past, General, I'm just glad I've gotten this far. Thank God I stayed active in the reserves."

"Are you planning on staying on after the war?"

"If the army'll have me, yes. It took me a while to realize it, but this is my calling." Monck grinned. "Of course, my kids are almost all old enough to find food on their own now."

Eichelberger rose. The interview was drawing to a close. "Good, then you will not want to screw up your meeting with MacArthur. He is a very proud and complex man, and some people find it comical. He also doesn't trust everyone, and some people think him paranoid for that. He strongly feels that Washington betrayed him and left his Pacific command to wither on the vine in the early days of the war when they declined to rescue his men from Bataan and Corregidor. History will decide whether he is right or wrong when everything about those tragic events comes out.

"But make no doubts about it, MacArthur is a very strong and forceful commander who has conquered about a quarter of the globe and done so with very little resources. He will not suffer incompetents or anyone else who stands in his way."

Monck had also stood. "General, there are those who say he wants to be president."

"They may well be right. He may just run for president on the Republican ticket when this war is over, and, yes, that would be very interesting. It also may well be the reason he makes certain that all battle announcements come from his office. You came from Europe, where people like Patton and Bradley got a lot of publicity, but that's not MacArthur's style. For right or wrong, damn few people back home have ever heard of anybody named Eichelberger or Krueger, and you would be well advised to make sure that no one hears of John Monck either."

"Understood."

"Good, and stay on the good side of Generals Willoughby and Sutherland as well. They work directly for MacArthur and think the sun rises and sets on him. They will cheerfully ruin anyone who they think is either working against their leader or who has a private agenda. If you run afoul of them, you will be through in the military, and there won't be anything either Krueger or I could do to change things."

"Understood."

General Sutherland was MacArthur's chief of staff, while Willoughby was in charge of intelligence. Willoughby was rumored to be haughty and arrogant, while Sutherland had recently returned from a brief banishment because of what may have been an affair with another officer's wife. The banishment was supposed to have been permanent, but MacArthur would hear nothing of it and Willoughby had returned.

"Good," Eichelberger said. "Let's go."

They walked down a short corridor and entered a large waiting room. They were immediately admitted to MacArthur's large and well-appointed office. It looked more like something in the Pentagon than a place where a major battle had been fought only a few months earlier. Monck wondered if this was what a papal audience was like. Like a young plebe, Monck snapped to attention and reported. This pleased MacArthur, who rose from behind his ornate wooden desk and smiled. MacArthur was surprisingly tall, slim, and had a stern and hawklike face. His eyes seemed to flash with excitement.

"Welcome to the Pacific, General Monck," MacArthur's stentorian voice boomed.

"Thank you, sir, it's a pleasure to be here and working for you." Monck noticed that both Willoughby and Sutherland had taken up positions flanking MacArthur. The set of their stance said that they were ready to protect their liege lord. MacArthur, erect and dark-haired, looked to need little protection from anyone. It was hard to realize that MacArthur was sixty-five and had already retired once.

"I see you served under Eisenhower. Fine man Ike. He was my chief of staff in Washington for a while, and I thought he was an excellent clerk. I'm a little surprised he's gotten as far as he has, though. Did you know him well?"

"Very little, sir. While I recalled him from the Point, our paths never crossed in Europe. He sent me a letter of congratulations on my promotion, but that's about it."

The answer seemed to satisfy MacArthur that Monck was not a part of the Eisenhower club. "General Monck, I am supremely confident that your tenure as a combat commander here will be a brief but successful one. The Japanese are finished and it's only a question of time before they realize it. We have done our studies"- MacArthur turned to Willoughby, who almost smirked- "and we firmly believe that the Japanese military will break when we invade Kyushu and that there will be minimal casualties."

MacArthur then laughed sharply. "There are those in Washington and elsewhere who think the Japanese will resist strongly, but they are wrong. The Japanese will be defeated in open battle by our overwhelming strength, and they will break and retreat, just as it happened here in the Philippines. When that occurs, the war will be over. Do you know what happens then, General?"

Monck felt that he was sweating and almost prayed it didn't show. "No, sir, I don't."

MacArthur had an almost dreamy look on his face. When he answered, it was almost as if he were giving a speech or were a missionary preaching to the heathen. "When the Japanese surrender, I will become the military governor of Japan. When that occurs, every man, woman, and child in Japan will be under my thrall, and that includes the emperor. Yes, General Monck, the emperor of Japan, the God-Emperor Hirohito, will acknowledge me as his superior. Think of it. After all these years of fighting, they will kowtow to an American."

Sutherland whispered something to MacArthur, who nodded impatiently. There was doubtless another appointment, and Monck's brief time before the throne was up. He departed with Eichelberger, who patted him on the back and said he'd done just fine, and don't forget to avoid correspondents and publicity like the plague.

Brig. Gen. John L. Monck assured him he wouldn't. He found his driver and rode back to the airstrip wrapped in thought. He needed a drink and a conversation with Major Parker, whom he'd sent on a snooping expedition of his own.

He found Parker in the shade of a tent, sipping a can of cold beer. Parker took one from a cooler and offered it. Monck swallowed half the can in one gulp.

"Did you meet God?" Parker asked irreverently.

Monck finished the beer and grabbed another one. "No, I met his boss, MacArthur. Jesus, you wouldn't believe it. I wonder just what the hell we've gotten into."

"General, did you get the crap about taking only light casualties if we invade?"

"Yeah, and I believe it about as much as I do the tooth fairy. What did you find out?"

Parker took another can for himself. "MacArthur has this disturbing habit of proclaiming victories before the fighting's over. Yes, the Japanese were defeated here in the Philippines and have retreated, but they haven't surrendered. After causing more than fifty thousand American casualties, they've just gone to ground in the hills and are awaiting word from Tokyo of what to do next."

"How many are still left?"

"Maybe fifty thousand under General Yamashita here in Luzon, plus smaller groups elsewhere. They don't have any tanks, damned little artillery, and less ammunition, and they may be starving to death, but unless they are ordered to surrender, someday someone's gonna have to go in and root them out, and that's gonna be bloody painful."

Parker rubbed his forehead with the cold can and continued, "Mac thinks the campaign is over and he can move on, but it's far from complete, and I don't like his casualty estimates any more than you do. I don't know what the exact numbers are, but he based his estimate on what happened here in the Philippines and not the fanatical resistance we met on Okinawa. A little bird told me he's now saying we can have all of Kyushu for only fifteen thousand casualties because the Japs are in such bad shape and we are so unbeatable."

Monck crumpled the can and threw it against the side of the tent. How could Mac Arthur say it would cost only fifteen thousand to take one of the home islands of Japan when the battle for the Philippines had already consumed four times that? How could he ignore the horrific casualty percentages that had been suffered on Iwo Jima and Saipan, as well as most recently on Okinawa. It didn't make sense. "Then why is he doing it, Don? Why the low numbers?"

Parker checked his watch. "Two reasons, and then we'd better catch our plane. You may be a general now, but that plane has a schedule to keep and other brass to ferry around the Pacific.

"First, he actually believes the battle for the Philippines is over and that he's won, and in a lot of ways he's right. The fact that it's incomplete is irrelevant to him. That's just the way his mind operates. He's finished with the Philippines and he wants to move on to the next challenge. He's right that he's won the campaign, but the fighting is still subject to flare-up at any time.

"The second reason is a little more insidious. It is widely believed among some members of his staff who used to be my friends that he avoided giving a higher estimate of casualties because he feared Washington would have called off the invasion. No invasion, no glory, and no victory. No victory and he can't become Hirohito's boss. Thus, Willoughby and Sutherland baked up some wild-ass low numbers on his behalf, and MacArthur grabbed them like the Holy Grail. Now he can invade with a clear conscience because his staff said it's okay."

"Oh, Lord," Monck said with a groan. An enlisted man told them their plane was ready. They grabbed their carry-on bags and headed across the hot runway for the transport plane. "What do your friends say about the real estimated numbers?"

"General, there is the slight possibility that Willoughby and Sutherland are right. But as to my friends, they're all scared to death that it could be a bloodbath."

Chapter 12

Reluctant OSS agent Joe Nomura knew that the Moray would sail away and leave him, but its sinking left him wondering if anyone in the United States even knew he was alive.

He'd hidden his supplies quickly, so not to attract enemy attention. A patrol had indeed confronted him in the rugged terrain after the explosions that signaled the end of the Moray.

After a few questions from their sergeant, Joe realized that his disguise worked. A one-armed veteran in a tattered uniform was of no concern or threat to the patrol. The soldiers were solely interested in whether he had seen or heard anything unusual regarding the explosions. They didn't even ask to see his carefully forged army papers. He was just too innocuous. He told them he had heard the explosions, but had seen nothing, and they brusquely sent him on his way.

The next day, Joe joined the milling throngs of refugees that clustered around hospitals and stood in long lines at food distribution centers near Nagasaki. He'd seen refugees before, but never so many, and never with so many of them injured. The hospitals were obviously overwhelmed by the catastrophe and could only handle the more serious injuries. Simple burns and broken bones didn't qualify one for medical care. These victims either found help elsewhere or endured. There was no choice for them.

Joe had also never seen so many people who both looked like him and who were in such obvious physical and emotional agony. The sight of the children, mute with horror, moved him more deeply than he ever thought possible.

However, without an arm and dressed in tatters, he blended in perfectly. This made him confident and he wandered about, listening to conversations, and occasionally asking questions of medical personnel who were helping to treat the most horribly injured. To his surprise, many were more than willing to talk about their experiences, although he got depressed when people inquired of him about their loved ones. He was a soldier, wasn't he? They thought he should know these things. It almost made him weep when they asked him about missing children.

That gave him the idea of volunteering to work in a hospital, and in the ensuing days, his services were accepted at several places where he helped with some of the more odious tasks, such as carrying out bodies. When one doctor asked him why he was doing it, Joe had drawn himself to attention and announced proudly, "Even a one-armed man can serve his emperor." The doctor had sucked in his breath and bowed to Joe in deference and respect to his sense of honor.

From several nurses, he heard the complaint that they had no bandages, no medicine, and, even if they had, these wouldn't work against the new sickness caused by the bomb.

From doctors he heard puzzling comments over the weakening effects of radiation. They wondered why some were spared while others were dying, and they compared notes while in his hearing.

The doctors were perplexed by people who appeared healthy, then collapsed, sickened, and died from radiation poisoning. How, they wondered, did one treat wounds that would not heal and burns that could not be quenched? Almost to a man they cursed the United States for the agony it had brought to Nagasaki. There were no curses for the Japanese government. Whatever thoughts the medics might have had in that regard were kept prudently in check. Anyone might turn someone with dissident thoughts in to the national military police, the kempei.

Usually the kempei wore ordinary military uniforms with distinguishing red and khaki armbands, and Joe saw several of them. Just as often, though, they wore civilian clothes and kept their identity a secret. From his briefings, Joe knew they were ruthless and, as the situation in Japan deteriorated, were becoming brutal. In many cases, they had the right to inflict summary judgment and punishment upon individuals.

Joe never stayed long at one place, often just a few hours, as he drew himself closer and closer to the center of Nagasaki. As he passed through the devastated and flattened city, he wondered just how the damage at Hiroshima could have been worse, yet he had been told that it was. Kokura, he'd heard, had suffered about as much as Nagasaki.

But it was Nagasaki that interested his superiors in the OSS. Nagasaki was on Kyushu, and that was considered relevant because of the open rumors that gave Kyushu as a probable, but still secret, target for the invasion. Hell, he thought, some secret. Even the Japanese he overheard speculated that Kyushu was a likely place for the Americans to land.

Nagasaki's destruction had occurred more than a month earlier, and the United States was concerned about the effects of lingering radiation on both places and people. Joe'd been given little packets of film to utilize in areas or on things where he suspected radiation. He was told that the extent to which the film was exposed would indicate the strength of radiation. He unobtrusively tagged these and checked them in private.

As he performed these experiments, a disturbing picture emerged. First, while radiation had dissipated somewhat, it had done so inconsistently. Areas in Nagasaki were still so hot that the Japanese had cordoned them off and permitted no one to enter. He wondered what effect the radiation would have on an American army moving through the area.

He found that people who had been under the mushroom cloud when it slowly fell back to the earth were seriously ill, with many of them dead or dying. The bomb had generated dirty outbursts of rain, which contaminated drinking water.

Most disturbing were the continuing incidents of seemingly healthy people who suddenly came down with serious cases of radiation sickness. Joe could only speculate on the causes. Either they had come in contact with something that was radioactively hot and had cooked them, or they had been contaminated earlier and it had taken days, even weeks, for the sickness to reach a point where they were incapacitated.

Joe found both options equally disturbing when he again contemplated the idea of GIs moving about and fighting in the poisoned land.

As to the other wounds he saw, the burns and fractures were nothing he hadn't seen before, only multiplied a thousandfold until the sheer numbers became numbing. That so many civilians had died came as no surprise to his sensitivities either. He had seen what modern warfare could do to Italian villages and knew that death in war was indiscriminate. However, he was concerned by the many cases of blindness. Most people who had seen the atomic explosion had suffered at least some vision damage. It was worth noting and he filed it mentally.

He was also intrigued that not all people near the center of the blast were killed or injured. The many hills in the area seemed to have shielded some from the effects of the blast, although others had been hit by the radiation that fell from the bomb cloud if they were unlucky enough to have it blown in their direction.

It was time to unearth his radio and report. Not only did he have enough information to give his masters, but he felt a strong urge to let them know he was still alive, and that he had not gone down with the Moray, which he presumed was listed as missing. He hoped he wouldn't have too much trouble with the code they had given him. Joe would have to keep his messages short and to the point, changing frequencies and radio locations with each message. Trouble was, he now had a lot to say and doing it would entail a lot of risk.

Nomura trudged the weary miles out of Nagasaki and onto the hill where he had squirreled his precious cache of supplies and equipment. With his stomach aching with hunger, he was even looking forward to army rations, although he would have to be careful and not eat them all up. At best, he had enough to last him only a few weeks. After that he was adrift along with the civilian population of Japan.

He looked across the valley and saw motion on a hill about a mile away. Joe squinted and watched. It was definitely a human, although he- or she for that matter- seemed to be moving erratically. Probably someone else who was injured or deranged, he decided, or even one of the numerous blind people. Well, well, he had neighbors. Nothing surprising and certainly nothing to be alarmed about, although he made a mental note to check out the surrounding area once more. With so many refugees about, things could literally change overnight, and there was always the possibility of the kempei doing some random snooping.

As long as the threat was not too great, he was not worried about taking care of himself. Along with the radio and the food, the OSS had thoughtfully provided him with a number of weapons, including a couple of Japanese ones. If necessary, he had no qualms about using them on some of those people who looked like him.

Joe glanced across the valley again and realized that the person he'd seen had disappeared from view. Now he definitely thought he should check things out a good deal more thoroughly. And he would take a Japanese pistol with him when he did it.

Chapter 13

Their first look at the tortured island of Okinawa came when the C-47 transport plane banked slightly while still several miles away from the long, thin island. From that distance, the island looked to Paul Morrell and Capt. Tom Ruger like a pale strip on the horizon, an item in the vast ocean that was barely worthy of notice.

Okinawa was innocuous and deceptively like a score of other islands they had either flown over or stopped at briefly. Even as they flew closer, they had a hard time thinking of the apparently tranquil patch of land as a cause of so much bloodshed.

"They fought like hell for this place," Ruger muttered. "I wonder what they'll do when we actually land on Japan proper?"

Paul Morrell craned his neck to see out one of the plane's few tiny windows. Okinawa, roughly sixty miles long, narrow, and only 340 miles from the Japanese mainland, had been invaded by Lt. Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner's Tenth Army on April 1, 1945. For a while it seemed as if the Japanese weren't going to fight as the Americans overran the northern two-thirds of the narrow island in only a few days, with little in the way of resistance. The army's big problem had been the care and feeding of the thousands of terrified Okinawan civilians who had clogged the island's few roads. The gentle Okinawans had been told that Americans were monsters and they had been delighted to find out otherwise.

But as the Americans moved toward the southern tip, the island became a study in hell. It took until June 22 for them to secure Okinawa, although individual Japanese soldiers and a few small units were rumored to be still hiding in Okinawa's more rugged areas.

Both sides paid an enormous price. Of the almost one hundred thousand Japanese soldiers on the island, only seventy-four hundred had been taken prisoner. Most of those taken were Okinawan militia who had been poorly trained and equipped, and not as fanatic about fighting to the last man as their Japanese neighbors. The nearly eighty thousand Japanese regulars had chosen to die along with their commanding general, Mitsuru Ushijimi, who had committed suicide on the last day of the battle.

General Buckner had been killed in an artillery barrage at about the same time. Nearly eight thousand soldiers and marines had died in the campaign, and another thirty-two thousand had been wounded.

The campaign for Okinawa had brought additional terror as Japanese kamikazes were used in large numbers for the first time in the war. A large number of ships had been sunk or damaged by these kamikazes, and many, many sailors had been killed or wounded. If Okinawa was a forecast of the future, both men felt the future was to be dreaded.

Yet, as Morrell and Ruger drew closer and overflew the anchorage, their spirits were buoyed. The waters around Okinawa were filled with what looked like limitless numbers of warships of all sizes and types, all massing for the assault ahead. Battleships and carriers, along with attendant cruisers and destroyers, were arrayed farther offshore in the deep waters, while transports, landing craft, and other and more plebeian and utilitarian craft huddled nearer the shore.

The island itself appeared to have been transformed into a floating military base. The central and northern portions in particular were an ocean of tents and temporary buildings that made the transit camp back in California look minuscule in comparison. The flatter central portion contained several airfields, and their C-47 landed without incident and taxied quickly off the crowded runway to make room for the next plane. They were just another flight ferrying in from somewhere as part of the huge buildup of forces.

As they climbed, stiff-jointed, out of the transport and onto the hot field, Ruger remarked, "One more plane and the goddamn island's gonna sink, Lieutenant." Several other planes circled and waited their turn to land, while hundreds of others were parked wingtip to wingtip on the fields adjacent to the air bases.

"I almost wonder if there's any room for us. My God, why doesn't someone take a picture of this and send it to the Japs. It'd scare them into surrendering," Paul said in awe.

Ruger and Morrell had arrived at the shattered island several days ahead of the troopship carrying the other officers and the enlisted men of the company. This gave the two men time to reconnoiter the area and make plans for the training the men would have to have. Paul took it as a compliment that Ruger seemed to both like him and respect his opinions. Why the hell hadn't he had a captain like Ruger back in Germany?

Thus, when the rest of their men came ashore from their cramped transport, the situation was fairly well organized. What Paul and Ruger were not prepared for were the sullen looks on the men's faces, along with the hatred and disgust in their eyes. They bitterly resented that they had been sent out to fight while so many of their buddies were heading home.

"Shit," Ruger whispered, "we got a helluva morale problem on our hands. I thought the troops would be unhappy, but this is a lot worse than I ever thought it would be."

With that, Ruger distributed the almost 250 men in his command to their respective platoon officers. Before they got settled in their barracks tents, Paul gathered the sixty men in his platoon around him in a large and informal cluster. Only his platoon sergeant, SSgt. Frank Collins, a rawboned and red-haired Kentuckian, looked even remotely friendly. Collins looked exhausted; it had been a rough and tedious transit from California as he and the other officers and NCOs had gotten little sleep. Much of their time was taken up with breaking up fights.

"Gentlemen," Paul began after Collins introduced him, "how many of you have eighty-five points?"

Eighty-five points was the magic number a man needed to be rotated back to the States and discharged. The number was based on a formula that included a man's total years in service, time in combat, number of dependents at home, and a handful of other things. But the bottom line was simple. Eighty-four or less and he stayed put.

There were exceptions, of course, and they almost always worked in the army's favor. First, the program only included combat soldiers, so support and administrative types were in for the duration. Also, if a person had a unique skill, such as the ability to speak Japanese, then he was screwed no matter how many points he had.

Paul looked at his men. "Since I don't see any hands raised, I guess nobody's going home. Well, I'm not either, and I'm not any happier than you are. In fact, I'm kind of pissed off about it. I don't have eighty-five points or anywhere near that, so we're stuck with each other."

Paul had spent a little time going over their service records and knew that a few of them were achingly close to that magic number. Most, however, weren't anywhere near it.

"Let me be blunt. Like you, I'd much rather be home with my family and friends too, but it's not gonna happen. I'm not going to give you a bullshit rah-rah speech or insult your intelligence about how much we're going to do to win this war. But we're not going home until this thing is over, so we're all gonna have to make the best of it. Captain Ruger's goal, and mine too, is to have everyone make it through this safely. By the way, that includes my ass getting back in one piece too.

"In order to do that, we're going to start first thing tomorrow morning doing some of the hardest training you've ever seen. It's gonna make basic training look like a high school dance. The purpose will be to get you back in shape- some of you look like you haven't exercised since the Japs hit Pearl Harbor- and improve your weapons training along with small-unit tactics. We figure we've got about a month before we ship out, and we're going to make the most of it."

With that, Paul dismissed the men to get a meal and a good night's sleep. He saw Collins looking at him carefully.

"How badly did I do, Sergeant?"

"You gonna be marching with us tomorrow, Lieutenant?"

The question surprised Paul. "Of course. Where the hell else would I be?"

Collins relaxed and smiled. "Well, not every officer does what he asks his men to do. I was on Luzon with an officer who rode in a jeep every chance he got, regardless of what his men were doing. Nobody was too upset when his jeep ran over a mine. You march with them and share their problems with them, then they'll come around. They won't love you, but they'll respect you." Collins saluted casually. "See you in the morning, Lieutenant."

Paul looked around at the small and undistinguished portion of Okinawa his platoon called home. He heard a throbbing noise and looked skyward to see a pair of American fighters streak overhead. In the darkness, he couldn't see what they were exactly, although he thought they might have been F4U Corsairs from one of the outlying carriers.

It struck him that they were on patrol, and that he was a few hundred miles from Japan, on an island jammed full of targets. He wondered if the next planes he saw or heard would be Japs and shuddered.

Chapter 14

It occurred to Joseph Grew, the former ambassador to Japan, that an assassin with a bomb could force the United States to end the war simply by killing the people who were now staring at him in some expectation.

In the Oval Office along with President Truman and Secretary of State Byrnes were Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal and Secretary of War Henry Stimson. Directly representing the military were General Marshall and Admirals Leahy and King.

"I have asked Ambassador Grew to talk to us today to help us put the Japanese situation in perspective," Truman began. "You will recall that Mr. Grew served as ambassador to Japan from 1932 until that fateful month of December 1941. Along with his staff and their families, they were exchanged for the Japanese ambassador and their staff and returned to the United States in early 1942."

Grew nodded. "First, let me say that my own opinions are not particularly in total favor at State." He glanced at Byrnes, who smiled slightly and nodded for him to go on.

"I learned to love the Japanese people and their culture during my almost nine years as ambassador. I found the ordinary people to be gentle and friendly. However, a few, primarily some of those in the military, have proven capable of the most bestial cruelties to their fellow man, and that includes their own fellow Japanese. In my opinion, this war should be ended by negotiations and we should forswear the idea of forcing the Japanese to accept unconditional surrender. To do anything else will only extend the bloodshed needlessly."

It was a paradox in Truman's administration that the State Department, led by Byrnes and Dean Acheson, was pressing for unconditional surrender and the bloodshed that would ensue as a result of that policy, while the military wanted a negotiated peace that abandoned the position of unconditional surrender and, thus, eliminated the need for an invasion. Truman thought it surprising that, in this regard, his generals and admirals were far less warlike than the diplomats.

"We appreciate your candor," Truman said. "Now please proceed."

Grew reminded them that the Japanese archipelago, referred to as the home islands, consisted of four larger islands and hundreds of smaller ones. The island chain ran from the southwest near Korea and northeast toward Siberia and extended for more than twelve hundred miles. Honshu was by far the largest of the islands, and all were hilly and rugged, which forced much of the population into a number of crowded cities. A great deal of the land was not suitable for farming, although the Japanese had incredible ingenuity regarding agriculture. They grew a large quantity of their food, primarily rice, and they also fished extensively in the surrounding waters.

"The islands are warmed by four currents coming from the south. This results in a climate that is astonishingly mild and temperate."

"And that could mean several growing seasons, couldn't it?" Truman inquired. As a Missourian, he knew a bit about farming.

"In some instances, yes. Which is why, despite our bombings and blockades, there has been no starvation. Severe food rationing, yes, but no starvation. At least not yet.

"Over time, the remoteness of the Japanese islands insulated the people from the activities on the mainland so that they developed a concept of uniqueness. That uniqueness resulted in the Japanese thinking of themselves as a master race. That idea on their part predates the Nazis by centuries."

King interrupted, "Then how the hell did the Japs get in bed with Hitler? What would have happened if the Axis had won the war? After all, you can't have two master races on one planet, can you?"

Grew smiled at the thought. "God only knows. For the short run, they probably would have divided up the world between them; but, in the long haul, I'm certain they would have fought for each other's portion.

"One other thing," Grew added. "They hate being called Japs. They vastly prefer the word Japanese. Jap is a term they consider an insult. It's almost like referring to them as niggers."

King laughed hugely. "Well, ain't that too goddamn bad. They should've thought of that before they started this war."

Grew continued, "Gentlemen, in Japan we have a military-ruled society that considers itself superior to other races and nations and is destined to rule the world. Japan considers any other peoples to be inferior to them, and that includes other Asian and yellow-skinned people as well as whites and blacks. They define the Chinese as barbarians, and the Koreans they control are virtually enslaved. The Okinawans are considered second-class citizens, as are several peoples of the islands north of Japan.

"When Japan took Formosa in 1895 and Korea in 1910, they were profoundly shocked when the inhabitants of those lands wouldn't see things their way. This caused the Japanese to react harshly to this inconceivable situation. It is consistent with how they later behaved in Manchuria, the Philippines, China, and elsewhere. They are baffled and infuriated when someone disputes what they religiously feel is their right of primacy in a world destined by God to be Japanese."

"Jesus," muttered Byrnes.

"Indeed. Those in charge will not- can not- surrender even though they have been defeated in every definition of the term, and even though they know it. The code of Bushido is sworn to by every officer in the army and navy. In it he promises to never retreat or surrender. If he does surrender, he is considered dead by his family and government. If a surrendered Japanese soldier should ever be repatriated, he expects to be executed; thus, many of them are quite willing to fight to the death once death is an inevitability.

"They are a little more pragmatic about retreating. It is recognized as a part of maneuvering and it is an accepted virtue for a commander to save his men for another day. We've all noted that the Japanese fight to the last man only when there is nowhere else for them to retreat to. But a defeated general will often commit suicide in his shame at having failed his code and his emperor.

"In our recent announcements, we offered to let the Japanese keep their emperor subject to the wishes of the Japanese people, required that Japan be occupied by us, and further required that alleged war criminals be tried by us and, if found guilty, punished. Those officers, those modern samurai who consider themselves descended from medieval warriors and who follow Bushido, simply cannot do this. In fact, they cannot even comprehend what we are talking about. We tell them they must surrender unconditionally when they are not allowed to surrender at all. As to surrendering unconditionally, I'm not certain the concept even translates into their language.

"They also feel our terms desecrate the emperor. After all, how can the emperor be subject to the will of the Japanese people when he owns them? Although very much a figurehead, Hirohito is titular owner of every person and every piece of property in Japan.

"Additionally, the occupation of Japan by us is unthinkable according to Bushido. As to them being tried by us for war crimes, that too is inconceivable because they do not feel they have committed any crimes. How can living according to the code of Bushido, and aiding in the destiny of the master race, be any sort of a crime? Unthinkable. All of this goes to the essence of their fears: that Japan and her culture will disappear in the wake of an American victory."

Truman was aghast. "We plan no such thing."

"Unfortunately," Grew said grimly, "our words and actions conspire against us. For proof, all they have to do is look and see how we've dismembered Germany and replaced the Nazis with our own administrators. They see that happening to Japan and are terrified. Their propagandists have also done a marvelous j ob of scaring their own population half to death. There are millions of civilians who adamantly believe that Americans are monsters with blood slavering from their teeth, who will rape their women and eat their children alive.

"Laugh if you will at the absurdity of it all, but think of what we thought the Japanese would do if they landed in California in 1942. Bear in mind too that the overwhelming majority of the civilian population has never seen a European, much less an American. We might as well be from another planet as far as most of them are concerned."

"Do they all feel this way?" Truman asked, thinking of an earlier conversation in which that same "other planet" analogy was used.

"No. The diplomatic and administrative officials did not take any oath to adhere to Bushido, and the civilians, like the enlisted men in the army and navy, are stuck in the middle and just do what they're told. Some of the military give only lip service to Bushido."

Marshall was unconvinced. "Isn't it possible that they're not wanting us to try them as war criminals is nothing more than an attempt to save their own evil skins?"

Grew shrugged. "Absolutely. As to those who have pledged to die for Nippon, I really don't know how many will actually do that when the time comes. Almost surely a large number will fight, although many of them will be under orders and not necessarily enthusiastic about the idea. The enlisted military are trained very brutally and will obey without thought, while many of the civilian volunteers will be sent to battle under guard and be shot if they falter."

"Absurd," said Leahy. "The idea of a whole nation committing suicide is not rational. Nor is sending people out to certain death."

"Why not?" Grew admonished him gently. "We revere Nathan Hale and others who give their lives to save others when they had the chance to do otherwise. And"- Grew turned directly to Marshall and King- "haven't you or your field commanders ever sent someone out to do something that would likely result in their death?"

"But that's the exception," said Marshall, "while what you're describing is the rule. When we order men to fight a battle, we know that people will die, but we're elated when they don't. We don't have a national policy that requires suicide."

"Yes," said Grew. "And that is part of the cost of Japan's developing in such an isolated manner. As I said, their sense of values is, in many ways, so alien to us. I'm certain," he added wryly, "they feel the same about us."

"If their emperor is a god and god wants peace," Truman asked, "why are we still fighting? Why don't they obey their god and stop?"

Grew answered, "Because we should never think of Hirohito as god in the same Judeo-Christian way we were brought up to use the word. At best Hirohito is a demigod, or godlike. He became godlike when he became emperor and not before. When he dies, the new emperor, now a mere mortal, will become godlike. Which brings up a point. Hirohito must avoid being assassinated. If the military doesn't like the god-emperor they have, they are perfectly capable of killing him and putting a new one on the throne. Japanese god-emperors grow old, sick, and subsequently die- or can even be overthrown and murdered- and that's much the way it is with Hirohito.

"This is a paradox: only the emperor can order the Japanese to surrender. No one else will be obeyed by the fanatics in the Japanese military. We can defeat them and conquer them, but without the word of their emperor, many will not surrender. They have their own intelligence sources and must be aware that we are reducing the size of our military, which they will take as a sign of weakness and be encouraged by it. It will not alter the fact that they are defeated and know it full well, but they will not, can not, surrender. Again, only Hirohito can release them from the code of Bushido."

Truman stood and looked out the window. "And the fanatics have Hirohito."

Chapter 15

As he vomited bile onto the ground, former POW Dennis Chambers was happy that at least the diarrhea had let up. He had thought he was doing so well. His diet, one he would once have considered repulsive, had actually been helping him gain strength. The bugs, worms, and occasional mouse, coupled with leaves and grasses, were filling and apparently nutritious.

He thought he knew what had disagreed with him so violently and vowed never again to eat the leaves ofthat particular broad-leafed plant.

"Jesus," he moaned, and lay back on the earth and belched hugely. Right now he didn't care if fucking Hirohito himself came by and took him prisoner. After a while he noticed that he had stopped vomiting. Of course, he had nothing in his stomach to puke, but that hadn't kept him from trying before.

After a few more minutes, he even began to feel a little hungry, but he didn't think his stomach could handle a nice, juicy worm. And he had been doing so well, he thought again.

But doing better had come with a price. With hunger pangs satisfied, he was no longer able to avoid thinking of life back home in California. When he slept, he saw his wife's face. In his dreams Barb was always smiling at him with that half-wicked, half-insolent look that he loved, and her golden hair was loose and hanging down on her tanned shoulders and to her firm breasts. Then, when he awoke, he felt empty and alone.

Then he heard the voices. At first he thought he was delirious and imagining things. But then he realized that the voices were in Japanese, that they came from the other side of the ridge, and that the voices were all males. This was bad. He had checked out the area before and found it empty, but obviously something had changed and it couldn't be for the better.

He stayed where he was until night fell. Then he moved carefully up the few yards from where he lay to where the hill crested. Crawling on his hands and knees, he slithered over the top and found a place where he could look down the slope to the valley below. A handful of men were hard at work heaping leaves and branches on sections of canvas that covered a pair of Japanese fighters. He blinked in disbelief. The planes were Zeros or, more precisely, Mitsubishi A6M2 carrier fighters. Once they'd been the finest plane in the air, but they'd been eclipsed by the newer American planes, and Dennis had shot down two of them himself. But what were they doing here? Of course, he answered himself, without carriers to launch from, the Japanese had to stash them on land.

The Japanese were dispersing their aircraft in small groups to avoid the overwhelming superiority America had in the air. During his strength-building and worm-eating days in the hills, he had seen a number of U.S. planes flying overhead. B-29 bombers, like schools of silver fish, flew high up in the sky, and hordes of fighters searched and stalked their prey from much lower altitudes.

Once, he had stood on the top of a hill and watched a P-51 Mustang streak through the air below him. Below him! He was lost in a strange land and standing above an American plane! He had screamed at the sight of the Mustang so near, yet so far away. The fighter had swept the valley again and had flown so close that he could see the pilot's face as he insolently surveyed his domain and looked for targets. The P-51 pilot gave no thought to the ragged-looking man on the hill, if he saw Dennis in the first place.

Dennis jerked his thoughts back to the present. What was he to do about the Jap planes and the men who were so close to him? He counted four people at the little camp. That made sense. Two pilots and two mechanics. There were no other guards- after all, they were safe in Japan, weren't they?- but all four probably had weapons. All Dennis had was a piece of metal he had sharpened against a rock and used as either a knife or a shovel, depending on the need of the moment.

It was, he decided sadly, time to move from this place to a safer one. Then he saw something that changed his mind. One of the mechanics opened the flap of a tent and, stacked neatly in the back, were several bags of rice. Even better, they were filled with wild rice, which was much more nutritious than the white version. If he could somehow get his hands on that rice, then he would be able to really improve his health and his chances of surviving. But was it worth the risk? He closed his eyes and wondered what Barb would have him do. The answer came quickly. Her last words to him had been "Come back to me."

On a densely wooded hillside in Kyushu near Nagasaki, Joe Nomura struggled with the radio supplied him by the OSS. It wasn't that the thing was bulky. It was surprisingly small and compact. The problem was operating it with only one hand with a beginner Boy Scout's skills with Morse code. There simply hadn't been time to make Joe Nomura an expert, and he struggled with what he had to say. This too was difficult. Never a great scholar, he now had to be the soul of brevity and conciseness, which were language skills he'd never considered important.

Of the two, brevity was the most in his best interest. It had been hammered into him that the Japs had listening devices and would, sooner or later, likely pick up his transmissions. Then they would try to locate him using triangulating devices that he only barely understood. He could only hope that they would discover him later, much later. Like 1950.

To help maintain his security, he'd been given a number of radio frequencies to use and the order in which to use them. All of this, coupled with the need to frame a concise yet accurate message about what he'd learned about conditions at Nagasaki and the other parts of Kyushu he'd seen, made him sweat with frustration. Then, of course, he had to put it into the very basic code they'd given him to use, which was basic to Johnson and Peters, but was difficult for him. Joe wondered how long it would take the Japs to decode it if they picked up his transmissions.

Finally he tapped out his message. It told his superiors of the lingering horrors of Nagasaki, of the people still dropping over and dying from the radiation sickness, and of the Japanese government's total inability to do anything about it. He closed his message by telling his unseen compatriots that he would have more information for them soon.

As he shut down the radio, he automatically looked skyward. He had been told that he would be transmitting to specially equipped planes that would be waiting for him to call. He fervently hoped they were indeed up there, circling. Then, using his teeth and his one hand, he repacked his gear. It was difficult, but he half-dragged and half-carried the equipment to a new site about a mile away. He didn't think the Japs had picked up this first signal, but he wasn't going to take unnecessary risks by transmitting from the same place twice.

When he'd finally hidden the radio in the ground and covered the site with leaves and branches, he walked away. In a few minutes, he was just another displaced and crippled Japanese soldier. Only he knew just how lonely and afraid he really was.

Chapter 16

President Truman slowly read through the handful of summary sheets while the others waited for him to finish. He was reading the updated overall plan for the invasion of Japan. It bore the code name Downfall and was divided into two different and sequential operations.

The first phase of Downfall, Olympic, was scheduled for November 1, 1945, which was only a little more than six weeks away. The second phase, Coronet, had a tentative date of March 1, 1946. Truman noted that the invasion dates were called X-Day, in silent testimony to the fact that D-Day would forever be associated with the Allied landings in Normandy in June of 1944. Prior to Normandy, every invasion date was referred to as D-Day.

Olympic was the invasion of the island of Kyushu, while Coronet was the invasion of the Kanto Plain on the island of Honshu. The Kanto Plain contained the cities of Tokyo and Yokohama and was the ultimate goal of the operation that would end the war. With Coronet clearly dependent on the success of the imminent Operation Olympic, the president found himself staring at the numbers and trying to assign them some identity.

Olympic would be the largest amphibious invasion ever attempted in military history. Nine divisions in three corps would assault three separate landing areas simultaneously. They would be backed up by five other divisions and at least one independently operating regimental combat team. Three of the divisions in the initial assault were marines, while the rest were army.

The numbers for the navy were even more staggering. Halsey's Third Fleet contained fourteen large carriers and six light carriers, along with nine new battleships, twenty-six cruisers, and seventy-five destroyers. Halsey was to attack targets inland.

Spruance's Fifth Fleet was even larger, with scores of escort carriers and more than four hundred cruisers and destroyers. Spruance was charged with protecting the amphibious force, which counted the almost fourteen hundred ships that would carry more than half a million men to battle.

The island of Kyushu had been chosen because it contained reasonably satisfactory landing areas, two magnificent deepwater anchorages, airfields, and, most important, was within range of land-based air cover from Okinawa and Saipan. This latter point was critical. Without land-based cover, the invasion would be dependent on carrier planes, whose operations were limited and could be shut down by the weather and were vulnerable to Japanese kamikaze attacks.

Despite its gigantic size, the Olympic part of Downfall had specific goals and only called for the conquest of the lower third of the island. Kyushu was about twice the size of Massachusetts and roughly divided in two by mountains that separated the north from the south. The army believed that the Japanese could be driven from the southern part and contained in the north while the south was developed as a base for staging and supporting Coronet.

November first had been chosen because it represented both the amount of lead time necessary to develop and launch the attack as well as being after the end of the annual typhoon season. Typhoons had savaged the American fleets off Okinawa and elsewhere, and a recurrence could be disastrous for the expedition. One typhoon had ripped through Okinawa in early August and caused a great deal of damage to equipment being gathered for the landings on Kyushu.

All of the units involved in the operation were among those already in the Pacific theater. No divisions would be drawn from Europe for Olympic, although two armored divisions were scheduled for deployment from Europe for Coronet in 1946. There were no appropriate areas for massed tank assaults on Kyushu, although there were such places on the Kanto Plain. The infantry and marine divisions would still have their regular quota of tanks, many of which would have flamethrowers instead of cannon.

On X-Day, the marines would attack the southwestern tip of the island and begin to drive overland across the Satsuma Peninsula toward Kagoshima Bay, which ran north-south and roughly split the southern end of Kyushu in half. The two army corps would land on the east side of Kyushu, and one corps would also drive on toward Kagoshima while the second took Ariake Bay. Ariake was on the southeastern end of the island and, even though it was the smaller of the two anchorages, was itself large enough to hold a large fleet.

Truman was bemused because someone responsible for planning must have been a car buff and had named all the sites and areas accordingly. Thus, the marines' main landing areas were Taxicab and Roadster, while the army would be in Town Car and Station Wagon. Specific beaches were named after particular brands, and it was a little unnerving to see future battlefields named Ford, DeSoto, Buick, and Chrysler, along with many others. Attacks just prior to November first would take place on several smaller islands off Kyushu.

Truman put down the folder. "Casualties and options, gentlemen."

As usual, Marshall answered. "Casualties are impossible to predict, as they are based on several unknowns. First, we don't know how many Japs will be facing us on Kyushu, and second, we don't know how hard or how well they'll fight." He took a deep breath, obviously reluctant to give such an estimate. "We have run several analytical models based on the invasions and campaigns of Leyte, Luzon, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, as well as the latter stages of the European war from Normandy to its conclusion. Right now our best estimate for Olympic alone is two hundred thousand casualties from all causes, combat and noncombat.

Truman shook his head. "And if we have to go forward and attack Tokyo, how many for Operation Coronet?"

Leahy took his turn. "Perhaps another ninety thousand battle casualties, which, if the noncombat casualties are added in, would bring the total for the campaign up to nearly a half a million. And these are only for the ground forces. We estimate at least another ten thousand naval personnel will be casualties, primarily as a result of kamikaze attacks for Olympic alone. The Japs are hoarding their planes for just such an attack, and they will come at us in the thousands. Some are bound to get through, just as they did off Okinawa."

Truman wondered, "How many kamikaze planes did the Japs throw at us at Okinawa?"

"About two thousand," King said, "and they sank almost forty ships, although all were smaller ones. While several hundred ships were damaged, nothing larger than a destroyer was sunk. A couple of our carriers suffered grievous wounds. The Benjamin Franklin was struck by a kamikaze and eight hundred of her crew were killed with hundreds more wounded. We think that many more than two thousand kamikazes were launched, but that a goodly number of them simply got lost or just fell out of the sky for mechanical reasons. That won't happen at Kyushu since we'll be hundreds of miles closer to the kamikaze bases. When the Franklin was hit, she was just off Kyushu.

"The kamikazes, Mr. President, scare the hell out of the navy, and I don't mean just their planes when I use the term kamikaze. They have kamikaze boats and subs, even human-piloted torpedoes."

"Scares the hell out of me as well," Truman muttered.

"Of course," Marshall injected, "we are of the opinion that a decisive American victory on Kyushu stands a good chance of making the Japanese surrender. If that's the case, we won't have to launch Operation Coronet and invade near Tokyo."

Sure, Truman thought bitterly, just as the atomic bomb was going to make them surrender. "After all that's occurred recently, do you really believe that?"

Marshall was not intimidated by the response. "Sir, our intelligence intercepts indicate that the Japs are massing virtually everything they have on Kyushu. If- I mean when- we beat them there, they won't have anything left to fight with. The battle for Japan will be won or lost on Kyushu."

"Then why," Truman asked, "don't we do an end run and drive straight for Tokyo if they have all their forces on Kyushu?"

King responded, "Because of the threat of their kamikazes and the fact that we absolutely need land-based air cover to protect our men and ships from those assaults, as well as to bomb Japanese strongpoints."

Truman sighed. The cold statistics were making him angry. These were people, flesh-and-blood people, and not abstract numbers. "I talked to Secretary of War Stimson, and he feels your figures are far too low. Churchill felt the same way, and that was before he was booted out of office by the ungrateful British people. What do you say about that?"

Again Marshall met his stare. "These are all estimates. God only knows what the reality will be. I will say that both of the gentlemen you mentioned are highly emotional and tend to overstate issues."

"All right," Truman said resignedly. "Run my other options by me."

"Yes, sir. Even before the atomic bomb, we felt we had only three alternatives, and that only one, invasion, was viable. The first of the other options was to carry on limited offenses against other Japanese-held lands, such as Formosa and Korea. This first idea was discarded almost immediately as we believed it would not cause the Japanese to give up and would only create needless American casualties."

"Agreed," said Truman.

"The second option was to continue the blockade and the bombing offensive. While we believe this would minimize our casualties, we are convinced that it would take an unacceptable length of time, perhaps years, to bring down the Japanese."

Truman tapped his fingers nervously. "Too long. The American public demands a quick victory and an end to the war's privation. We cannot have millions of our boys sitting on their duffs while we blockade the Japs and wait for them to give up. Good Lord, the public is after us to bring the boys home now. If we tell them there might be years of relative inaction while we wait for the Japs to quit, there'll be hell to pay."

Marshall nodded. "There are other reasons why a blockade wouldn't work. It would cause millions of civilian deaths among the Japanese from bombing and starvation, and it still wouldn't necessarily cause them to quit. After all, they are capable of providing for their own food needs, however meagerly. It is possible that, after enough deaths, they would arrive at a food-to-population equilibrium that would enable them to sustain themselves forever."

Truman shook his head in disbelief, but the basic idea seemed chillingly correct. There was no certainty that blockade would bring victory. Not ever. "We cannot wait an eternity to find out. Gentlemen, we cannot wait more than a year and there must be action. The American people demand it."

"Agreed," said Marshall, and the others murmured assent. "It goes without saying that our prisoners of war would continue to suffer terribly during this period of time, and that other casualties would still occur. There is ongoing scientific work on defoliants that would destroy the Japanese rice crop, but we will not have the herbicide in any quantities until next year at the earliest. If we do use defoliants, then the result will be tens of millions of Japanese men, women, and children dying of starvation along with our own prisoners, who would, of course, be the last to be fed."

"Which leads us back to an invasion," sighed Truman.

"Yes, sir, it does," Marshall almost whispered, and it struck Truman that the man was upset at the prospect.

"Thank you, General," Truman said. With undisguised distate, he picked up Operation Downfall's thick folder of information as well as the summary sheets. He hated reading long reports. He recalled that he'd had to be talked into reading an earlier report on the Manhattan Project shortly after taking office. "This, I presume, is current?"

"Yes," said Marshall. "At least as it has been developed to date. Changes are being made almost constantly."

"Do these changes include using atomic bombs?" Truman asked.

"Yes, but it is doubtful that we will have enough bombs or targets to make a difference," Marshall said. "The Japanese are scattering, hiding, and digging in their units to minimize the effect of both conventional and nuclear weapons."

"So we have to do it the old-fashioned way?" Truman asked bitterly.

"Yes, sir."

Truman glanced over the figures. It was an awesome enterprise. In scope it would dwarf the landings in Normandy on D-Day. No other Allied forces would land with MacArthur's army, although some Royal Navy ships were operating in the Pacific in conjunction with Nimitz. Discussions that might lead to the later inclusion of British, Australian, and Canadian troops were ongoing, but there were no plans to use them at this time.

"Well thought out. Should we attempt to deceive the Japanese into thinking we won't attack Kyushu?"

"Yes, sir," Marshall again responded. "And those efforts are called Operation Pastel. They involve feints at Korea and Formosa, as was discussed as our first option, along with a sham thrust toward the island of Shikoku, which is actually closer to Tokyo than Kyushu, but, again, out of land-based air coverage."

Truman understood what he was hearing. The inescapable conclusion was that Kyushu was the only logical target. If the American military minds could realize that, so could the Japanese. "Gentlemen, will any of our deceptions work?"

Marshall 's expression changed to one of sadness. "Probably not, sir, or at least not to any great extent, but they must be attempted."

"Then, General Marshall, what will the Japanese be doing on November first, 1945?"

Marshall found it difficult to look Truman square in the eyes. "Mr. President, they'll be waiting for us on Kyushu with everything they have."

Chapter 17

Religion amused Col. Tadashi Sakei. Once it had been important to him, but that was when he had been very young and before so many of those he loved had been incinerated by the Americans. Since then he had seen the uselessness in believing in any god or gods who cared nothing for him. Thus, he became a convert to the cause of Japan and believed in it with zeal and fervor. Japan did care for him. Japan had nurtured and strengthened him. Japan was his god. Now he would repay her faith in him by protecting her with his life.

On the other hand, he did nothing to discourage religious beliefs in others. It mattered nothing to him whether a person believed in the gentle Buddha, the ancient rites of Shinto, or even the confusing and ridiculed logic of Christianity. All that was important was that the believer dedicate his or her life to Japan.

Thus, placing Emperor Hirohito in protective custody in a Shinto shrine near Nagasaki was an act of opportunity and expedience, not sacrilege. The Americans rarely attacked anything that looked religious, and he had gone to great lengths to keep his five-hundred-man Imperial Guards battalion dug in and out of sight during the day. Lookouts scanned the skies in all directions to watch for the enemy, who could drop like hawks on unsuspecting prey.

Shinto stood for the "way of the gods" and was the oldest religion in Japan. Devotees worshipped many gods, called kami, which were the basic force present in trees, rocks, rivers, and other parts of nature. Japan was liberally sprinkled with shrines, and this was a fairly large one with several buildings, including a charming garden that had been well tended by the priests who had run the shrine.

Sakei had chased off the religious occupants and installed Hirohito in the quarters of their senior priest. It was hardly palatial, but it was safe and secure. The buildings also kept most of his men out of sight while the others camped in a nearby grove and, to the extent possible, limited their movements to nighttime, when even the American predators slept.

As he started to walk the dirt path to the nearby village, Sakei was confident that American planes would not notice one man walking along one of the miserable excuses for roads that were so typical of Kyushu. He looked to his right and was dismayed by the sight of a score or so of his soldiers running in a single line across a field. It was probably a work group, and he made a mental note to find out who was in charge of them. He would give that unfortunate soul a harsh lesson in the virtues of staying out of sight during the day. Their officer probably thought it was safe to cut across the field since none of their hand-cranked sirens had gone off in a while, as they did several times each day to warn of American planes prowling the sky.

Sakei ignored the virtually omnipresent and high-flying bombers as they were off to bomb the cities and other major targets, but the swooping and darting fighters and dive-bombers were another matter. They were the ones that sniffed out the smaller targets and went after them like birds of prey after rodents in a field.

Sakei looked down the road and saw the man he wished to meet, Captain Onichi, the senior kempei officer in the area. In deference to the fuel shortage, the overweight captain rode a bicycle, with some difficulty, and a rare smile crossed Sakei's face. He had no love for the kempei, but the secret police, or "thought police," had their purpose. He could only wonder, however, just why the fat kempei captain wished to meet him under these private and discreet circumstances.

Before he could go farther, a dark shadow crossed over Sakei, and he heard the shriek of engines as the gust of air swirled dust around him. It was an American plane and it had passed just a few feet over his head.

He watched in horror as the work party scattered in blind panic with many of them heading for the presumed safety of the shrine buildings. Perhaps the plane hadn't seen them as it swept by, but then he remembered- the Americans never flew alone.

The second plane roared overhead with its guns spitting at the prey the first one had flushed. Rows of dirt exploded in the field, sending soldiers tumbling and flying, landing in bloody heaps. Within seconds, the first plane returned and it strafed the shrine, while the second sliced bloody ribbons in the grove where so many of his men were bivouacked. Sakei could only hope that his men had made it to the protection of the numerous slit trenches dug in the area.

In the grove, a soldier with more bravery than sense fired on the Yanks with a machine gun and drew the attention of a fighter, which silenced it with one savage burst of gunfire.

Sakei lay by the road as the planes made repeated passes in an arrogantly leisurely and lethal manner. For long minutes there would be relative silence, with only the distant whine of the planes' engines and the cries of the wounded to be heard. Then the screech of the fighters and the cacophonous chatter of machine guns as they sought targets became deafening. At least there were no bombs or rockets. The racks under the planes were empty. They had been dropped on targets elsewhere.

After a while, the planes bored of the game and flew off, or perhaps they were out of ammo. Sakei got to his feet and ran toward the priest's quarters. If Hirohito was dead, Sakei would have failed in his duty and the missing Crown Prince Akihito would be emperor. It could not be!

It wasn't. Sakei found Hirohito in the doorway to his quarters. He was covered with dirt and his glasses were askew, but he seemed unharmed, although obviously shaken. He heard from a noncom that the emperor, on hearing the attacking planes, had virtually flown into a trench to save himself. Sakei was pleased. Let the Son of Heaven know a soldier's fear.

Hirohito dusted himself off and acknowledged Sakei's existence. "Ah, Colonel, another Japanese victory, is it not? Very soon the Yanks will run out of bullets and surrender, won't they? After all, that is Anami's plan, isn't it?"

Sakei bowed respectfully and ignored the sarcasm. This time Hirohito was right. Japan had no roof to deflect the rain of American bombs and bullets. "I am glad you are unharmed."

Hirohito straightened his glasses. "As you should be. What went wrong with your precautions, Colonel?"

Good question, Sakei thought. The obvious culprit was the ass who'd sent that group of soldiers across the field. If he wasn't already killed by the fighters, Sakei would have him shot. He felt only slightly shamed that the men in the field had broken and run. He wondered what he would have done had he seen a plane aiming its guns directly at him.

But the American planes had taken them all by surprise. "It appears, Your Majesty, that the Americans have adopted flying extremely low as a surprise tactic. We shall have to be even more vigilant on your behalf."

Hirohito made a small noise that might have been either a snort or a derisive laugh and disappeared inside his quarters.

"Colonel?"

Sakei turned quickly. He had forgotten the kempei officer who'd been cycling down the road to meet him. The man was disheveled and wide-eyed with scarcely controlled fear.

"Captain, I see you too survived our little adventure."

"Happily, yes, Colonel. Do you have a moment to talk now? I did tell you it was a matter of urgency and importance regarding your honored guest."

Sakei had informed the local kempei commander that the emperor was under guard at the shrine. It was only logical since the kempei would wonder what was going on and expend a lot of effort finding out anyhow. Besides, the kempei were allies, however unsavory they sometimes were.

The captain looked around where the numerous dead were being stacked and the wounded were being treated. Blood was everywhere and the sounds of pain filled the air. Sakei looked around as well and grimaced. His battalion had been cruelly punished for one man's mistake.

"What I have to tell you, Colonel, may cause you to wonder whether this raid on the shrine was an opportunistic accident or an attempt by the Americans to assassinate our emperor."

Sakei almost staggered. "What?"

The captain bowed slightly. "Last night we managed to confirm the existence of either a spy or a traitor in this area. I think we should consider the possibility that the emperor's location was given away to our enemies."

Sakei's hand went instinctively to the handle of his sword. Murder the emperor? Why not? The Americans had been guilty of such criminal acts in the past. After all, hadn't they assassinated the revered Admiral Yamamoto by ambushing his plane with their fighters while he was on an inspection mission?

The more he thought of it, the more likely it became. "How?" Sakei demanded.

"We have intercepted what we strongly believe are signals to the Americans that emanate from a clandestine radio in this area. While we were never able to pick up all the transmission, we did record parts and have had them decoded. It was a simple code so it didn't take long to break. They are in English and tell of conditions here on Kyushu."

Sakei nodded grimly. "We must catch that spy and stop him." And I must make other plans for Hirohito, he added to himself. He must become even more stealthy in his actions. The Americans were too strong to confront with strength. He would keep Hirohito alive with cunning.

Chapter 18

"Welcome back to Okinawa, General Monck. We all trust you had a fruitful journey."

"Up yours, Colonel Parker," General Monck said in a low voice that could not be heard by others. Parker's promotion to lieutenant colonel had come through shortly before Monck's officially taking over the regiment. This made Parker the second-in-command.

Parker ignored him. "And how were things on Mount Olympus this time, and aren't you just a little late getting back?"

Monck threw his bag of spare clothing on a table. With the exception of a couple of NCOs who were monitoring radios and pretending not to listen, he was alone with Parker in the regiment's command tent.

"We had to take a detour around a pretty big storm that's out there. In case you hadn't noticed, it's getting cloudy and might just rain."

Monck marveled at the changes only a few days away had wrought. The entire island of Okinawa looked as if it were nothing less than one giant staging and training base for American military might. Here, where his regiment was bivouacked, was a giant tent city, and scores of them were elsewhere on the island. A couple of miles away, an enormous air base was being built near the ruined city of Kadena, with other, similar fields under construction elsewhere. It was incredible and Monck was proud to be a part of it. Even though he had his own share of misgivings, sights such as this made him confident that the United States would prevail against Japan.

"For your information, Parker, not all the gods were at Olympus, otherwise known as Guam. MacArthur deigned not to come. Instead he sent Eichelberger and Krueger, and they met with Nimitz and his staff. When I looked around, I realized that I was one of the lowest-ranking men invited to that conference."

"Did you meet Nimitz?"

Monck smiled. "Yeah, and he's really a pleasant, gentlemanly sort of man. Very easygoing. I even got in a game of horseshoes with him. His staff makes him play each day to keep him relaxed and healthy. Spruance was there too, and he's sort of the same way. Halsey's out blasting the Jap shoreline. Nimitz's staff reflects his attitude. Very friendly and helpful. Not at all like MacArthur's, although Eichelberger and Krueger tried hard to be cooperative, and, in the main, they succeeded." Monck shrugged. "Maybe it was better that MacArthur didn't come. Along with his ego, he would have brought Sutherland and Willoughby, and those two have caused trouble in the past."

Parker pulled out a cigarette and offered one to Monck. They lit up and Monck drew a deep breath. "The invasion is still on for November first. We are designated I Corps reserve. I Corps consists of the 25th, 41st, and 53rd divisions, and we'll be going in on X plus one or two depending on the circumstances. I Corps will be attacking north of Ariake Bay and near a town called Miyazaki. XI Corps will be on I Corps' left and will consist of the First Cav, the Americal Division, and the 43rd Infantry."

"And the marines?" Parker asked.

"They will land to the west of Kagoshima Bay on a spit of land called the Satsuma Peninsula. The V Amphibious Corps consists of the 2nd, 3rd, and 5th Marine divisions. All of this is the Sixth Army and General Krueger commands it, with MacArthur working his magic from the Philippines."

Parker had known some of it as rumors had been rampant for weeks. "Incredible" was all he could think to say as he considered the scope of the coming operation.

Monck chuckled. "Oh, there's more. IX Corps will stage a two-division diversionary thrust towards the island of Shikoku just before X-Day. They have the 81st and 98th divisions. Follow-up forces are the 11th Airborne and the 77th Infantry, and, oh, yes, let's not forget the 158th Regiment, which will land on a couple of small islands off Kyushu just prior to X-Day."

"Are we still part of the 41st?"

They stepped outside and walked a little ways away from the tent. The fresh air smelled good. Monck blew a fairly decent smoke ring that the wind quickly took away. "Who the hell knows. For administrative purposes, I guess so, but General Swift- he's I Corps commander- made it plain that we could be plugged in anywhere. By the way, with X-Day only three weeks away, we've got to step up training even more than we have."

Parker nodded, although privately wondering just how the men could work harder than they were. "Don't you think we should give them some rest before we go in?"

"Hell no!" Monck responded vehemently. "I want these people worked. The last thing I want is for someone to die because we didn't prepare them well enough when we had the time. I don't think I could live with myself with that knowledge. And I don't want them to have too much time on their hands to think about what's going to happen when they hit Kyushu. They get time off to go to church on Sunday and they get to see any USO shows that happen by. Oh, yeah, I heard that Bob Hope will be out here in a week or so."

Parker whistled. "Wow, I guess we really are important."

Monck couldn't keep from grinning. "Are you being sarcastic?"

"Just a little, General. Did you find out anything else that we should know about our role and the invasion?"

A gust of rain-tipped wind threatened to take General Monck's cap, and he had to grab it with his hand to keep it from flying off. "I found out some more about Kyushu, and none of it is good. Like we've been told, the island itself is volcanic and rugged, with mountains in the center, and steep hills and deep valleys running all the way to the coast."

"Mountains?"

"Nothing like the Alps or even the Rockies, but they go up quite sharply to maybe two thousand feet in the invasion area. We won't even be landing on a beach per se because there aren't any. There's a small one in Ariake Bay, but it's not for us. When we get out of our landing craft, we start climbing over that hilly volcanic soil almost right away. Kyushu's so desolate that only about ten percent is under cultivation, and that in a land desperate for food. That fact kind of surprised me. I always thought Japan was one great big rice paddy once you got out of the cities."

Parker shook his head sadly. "Steep hills and valleys means no armor."

"We'll have tank support, but there'll be no massed armor attacks. The difficult terrain also means that many of our units will be cut off from each other while they advance, and coordination will be extremely difficult. We'll be lucky to function in battalion-sized units, much less division or corps."

"Then not working with the 41st is no great loss," Parker mused, and Monck agreed.

Monck looked at the sky. It was getting darker by the moment and the rain was beginning to come down heavier. The two men turned and walked toward the command tent. "You've seen the maps," Monck said. "There aren't very many roads on Kyushu, and those that do exist tend to be sunken, which makes them readymade ambush sites and strongpoints. Just like here on Okinawa, there'll be a lot of caves and bunkers for the Japs to hide in and for us to root them out of. The valleys that run inland all tend to end in sharp inclines, which will make vehicular traffic almost impossible."

"Marvelous," Parker murmured. "And they've had all these months to prepare for us. Did you get a feel for Jap numbers, or does MacArthur still think it'll be a walkover?"

Monck chuckled grimly. "Without MacArthur gracing us with his presence on Guam, there was a fairly frank exchange of opinions, and it does look like Eichelberger and Krueger have pretty well convinced Mac that his estimates are way too low. A couple of months ago, the guess was maybe one hundred and twenty-five thousand Japs on Kyushu; now the intelligence boys are estimating maybe half a million, with more coming each and every day. The only good news is that most of them are still in the northern portion of the island and having the devil's own time getting to the southern part because of our air superiority. Oh, yeah, they know that we're coming, and it looks like they've figured out exactly where we'll be landing."

"Jesus," Parker gasped. "We're the attacking force and we'll probably be outnumbered."

"That's why we need control of the air and a lot of firepower on the ground. Our troopships will be prime targets for the kamikazes, so we'll be moving out of the transports and onto the landing craft as soon as possible, and before that, we won't get on the transports that'll take us to Japan until the last minute."

"Makes sense, sir. Smaller targets are harder for their planes to hit."

"Agreed, but don't forget that the term kamikaze means a helluva lot more than just suicide planes. Nimitz's boys say there'll be a lot of midget-submarine activity, along with manned suicide torpedoes and rockets, and there are at least a dozen Jap destroyers unaccounted for. Hell, they've even got suicide divers who'll be waiting to attach mines to our ships. We've got to figure that all of them will be making suicide attacks against us."

"General, those Jap people are fucking crazy."

They had just reached the tent flap when one of the NCOs burst out, almost running into General Monck. "Jesus, General, we got real bad news."

"What now?"

"Sir," the sergeant almost stammered, "this ain't no rainstorm. Just got word from the navy that it's a full-fledged typhoon and it's even got a name now- Louise. It's gonna hit Okinawa dead on."

Monck and Parker looked at each other, aghast. The 528th was scattered all over Okinawa, engaged in various types of training. They would have to communicate the news as quickly as possible to the disparate units. Thousands of men would have to hide and ride out Typhoon Louise as best they could.

Monck then looked at their frail tent and thought of all the other temporary structures that housed his regiment and its equipment. Tens of thousands of other, similar facilities covered Okinawa. Typhoon Louise had the potential to wipe out much of the American presence on Okinawa.

As if on cue, the wind picked up and shrieked. "All right," said Monck, speaking loudly to be heard over it. "Tell everyone to grab shovels and literally dig in. The hell with the tents and supplies. They can be replaced. Everyone is to save their asses and start right now!"

Chapter 19

First Sergeant Mackensen told the more than two hundred assembled men of A Company in Okinawa that he had just found the dead Jap in a nearby fold of the earth where the man had died.

At Captain Ruger's orders, the company gathered in a large circle around the cadaver. The Japanese soldier had a strangely withered, mummy-like look. Quite some time ago, he'd been burned to death, probably by a flamethrower. His bones were only partly covered by charred flesh, and most of his left leg was missing. A helmet covered the top of his head, and the corpse smiled at them through a half dozen teeth.

They were near what the Japs had called the Shuri Defense Line. When the Americans had invaded, the Japanese had retreated to the hilly southern third of the island to make their defensive stand, and the Shuri Line, anchored on what were now the ruins of Shuri Castle, had cost both sides dearly.

Captain Ruger strode up to Mackensen, who nodded and stepped away. Ruger glanced up at the darkening sky. Shit, Ruger thought, his men were all going to get wet. Paul Morrell caught the glance as well and shivered slightly. He was exhausted.

"All right," said Ruger. "Did everybody get a good look at the little son of a bitch? That's a Jap lying there, and one of the best kind- a dead one. Somebody toasted his ass good, didn't they? But look at him. You know they've got shitty rifles and bad tactics, but this joker wouldn't give up, would he? No, he fought with that shitty rifle of his and died with it. I wonder how many Americans he killed before somebody saw where he was shooting from and got him."

Paul watched in fascination. The lesson was ghastly, but it had the company's complete attention. Only a few months before, that Japanese soldier had been trying to kill Americans, and dead or not, that man was one of the enemy.

In the weeks of training since they'd arrived on Okinawa, Paul's platoon, the company, the entire regiment, had worked hard to replace skills lost over months of inactivity, and to acquire those they never really had. They'd exercised and marched early each day, then spent the afternoons and evenings in weapons training and small-unit tactics. They'd gotten better, and Ruger had managed to get rid of those who were unable to cope with the demands of training.

But that's what it had been, training. At least until now. The presence of a real dead Jap changed everything. Before them lay the enemy as well as the brutal reality of death.

Ruger's eyes swept the assemblage. "And just because he's dead, don't think he's forgotten how to kill. The Japs have a nasty habit of booby-trapping their dead comrades in hope that some stupid GI will come along to take a souvenir, like that helmet for instance. Look good on a wall, wouldn't it? Or maybe something nice for the missus like a gold filling, or maybe a dried ear, or maybe one of those shitty rifles or a real good pistol. Well, if they've booby-trapped the corpse, and they likely have, you've got to be real careful." He turned to his first sergeant. "Sergeant Mackensen, show us what to do."

"First," said Mackensen, "all you people step farther away." There was a shuffling as two hundred plus men complied. "Now you'll notice that I very carefully tied a rope around his one remaining leg. I'm gonna step back and pull on it real hard. If he's trapped, it'll trigger whatever he's hiding."

With that, Mackensen walked a couple of paces away from the cadaver, lay flat on the ground, and yanked the rope. There was a split second of stillness, then a flash of light and the crash of a grenade exploding, sending bones and pieces of dead Jap into the air. Several of the men got parts of Jap on them, and a couple of them started to gag.

Mackensen got to his feet and saluted Ruger. "Captain, the fucking Jap is now well and truly dead."

Ruger nodded. "Very good, First Sergeant. Carry on with training."

As he said that, it began to rain, and the already strong wind started to pick up in power. They had no real rain gear with them, so Paul started to form them up for more work. If it rained, they were going to get wet and that was that. After all, how often did they call off a war because of rain? He wondered how their tents were holding up in what was rapidly becoming a downpour. Captain Ruger, who was only a few feet away, seemed unperturbed.

A PFC handed a walkie-talkie to Ruger, who listened attentively and then appeared stunned by what he'd heard. "Everybody take cover," he yelled. "This is a typhoon." Ruger then sent runners out to the other platoons and ran out himself, saying that he didn't trust their radios to get through in the rapidly growing storm.

Typhoon? What the hell does one do when caught on an Okinawan hill in a typhoon? Paul wondered. "Dig in," he yelled to the men, who were as puzzled as he was. "Get to just below the crest of this hill and start digging in for protection against the wind. Push the dirt up the hill and form a bunker in front of you."

"Why?" asked a soldier, and Paul debated letting him drown.

"Because, Private Haines, a typhoon is just like a hurricane. That means a ton of rainwater is going to land on us and whatever we dig in is going to be full pretty quick. Push the dirt up front so you don't get washed away. Now shut up and dig!"

Paul checked on his men as they dug frantically into dirt that quickly turned into mud. The wind had picked up and was slashing at them. "Keep your helmets on. There's gonna be stuff flying around and you don't want to get hit."

"Like the stuff we left where we bivouacked, Lieutenant?" one of his men yelled, and a couple of others chuckled at the thought.

"That's right!" Already Paul had to cup his hands and holler to be heard. "So keep your heads down." He then grabbed a couple of men who were earnestly digging too far down the hill. When they protested, he told them they had to watch out for flash floods as well as wind. Chastened, they moved farther up the slope and began anew.

Paul helped two of his men dig a hole in the ground and push an earthen berm before them. To his surprise it worked fairly well, although the torrential rain quickly filled their shelter and made life miserable for them. Miserable, he kept reminding them, but safe.

"Look at that," one of them yelled. Paul looked up and saw a piece of canvas fly overhead.

"One of our tents." Paul grinned. "Probably mine with all my dirty laundry in it. We're not in Kansas anymore," he said in reference to the movie The Wizard of Oz, "but our gear will soon be."

The wind threatened to rip their helmets off and they had to hold them down. Sand and spray whipped around their heads, and as they cowered, they lost track of time. All they knew was that it had gotten even darker than before and that it was probably night. The wind developed a keening, shrieking sound like that of a tormented animal.

During a brief lull, Paul slithered out of his foxhole and crawled around to see if his men were okay. Except for a couple of cuts and bruises, no one was hurt. Bellying his way back to his shelter, he almost ran into First Sergeant Mackensen, who was also crawling about in the mud.

"Don't bother saluting," Paul said.

Mackensen, who rarely deviated from a stern expression, looked at him funny for a minute then smiled slightly. "Wasn't planning on it, Lieutenant. Captain wants to know how you're doing."

Captain Ruger was probably out on his belly checking on his other platoons. "We're fine, top. We'll be all right. How's everybody else?"

"So far so good."

"Great. By the way, that was a damn good dog-and-pony show you and the captain put on."

Mackensen had started to crawl back but stopped. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that it was an impressive display, blowing up that Jap and all that. But I think it was more than a coincidence that you just happened to find that body and that it just happened to be booby-trapped at just the right time for our men to get shocked and serious about war."

Mackensen put on a look of mock hurt. Then he actually chuckled. "Captain said you'd figure it out. Buddy of mine found the Jap a while back and was driving around the island with it on the front fender of his jeep like it was a dead deer. I took it from him and we've had it hidden until the right time. The real bitch was fixing the hand grenade to that fucker. He kept falling apart and we had to tape him back together."

The wind roared again, Mackensen nodded and departed for the dubious comfort of his own hole in the ground, while Paul crawled to his. By the time he got there, the wind was raging harder than it ever had, and the two others had to drag him into the hole, which caused his head to go under the muddy water.

"You okay, Lieutenant?" Both men were laughing as Paul emerged from his ducking, and he joined in even though he was cold, wet, miserable, and scared.

"Did either of you two volunteer for this shit?" he asked.

"Nah"- they grinned- "we all got drafted too, sir."

A good-sized piece of debris tumbled by. It looked like a piece of wood from a house. Had he been standing, it could have impaled him. Paul wondered just what the hell the rest of the island looked like.

After what seemed like an eternity, the wind abated to where it was simply savage, and the rain became merely a torrent. Considering themselves safe, the men crawled out of their water-filled burrows and stood up. It was getting lighter, and a check of his watch told Paul that it was almost dawn. Again a nose count was taken and he was more than gratified to find that everyone was safe and, except for cuts and bumps, no one was seriously hurt.

Paul waved his sergeants over. They all looked so sodden and despondent he had to chuckle.

After a moment's hesitation, they joined him in a spate of nervous laughter. They had passed the test. They were alive. They had handled that bitch, Typhoon Louise.

The passing of the storm brought General Monck and his staff from their trenches. This time it was appallingly easy to look around and see for a great distance as the typhoon had swept the area clean of anything but bare ground. Where once there had been a great city of tents and an army preparing to attack Japan, there was nothing more than a barren plain on which large numbers of men were emerging. Everything they owned was gone, and they were reduced to standing and looking about in confusion.

"Parker," Monck said hoarsely. "Where the hell is my regiment?"

Parker's left eye was swollen nearly shut. He'd been struck across the head by a pot from someone's field kitchen. "Sir, if we're safe, then there's a real good chance they are too."

"We've got to reach them, get in contact with them. Jesus, they're sure to have injured and we've got to get them medical help."

Parker took a look at where there had once been a first-class radio operation. Nothing. There was no way of contacting their separated units, and sending runners wasn't a good idea because the runners wouldn't know where to find the scattered regiment.

"We'll do our best, General."

Monck gave Parker's shoulder a reassuring squeeze. "I know you will. I'll go and throw some general-like weight around and see if I can scrounge up some fresh radio gear from someone. You organize what men we have here and start salvage and cleanup."

Parker snorted. "Salvage? Ain't nothing to salvage, sir."

Monck agreed with that observation. "Well then, gather what flammable debris you can and see if you can get some fires going. It's not all that warm and we don't want these men coming down with pneumonia. Get them dried out and under some kind of cover. If you can," he added softly.

Lt. Col. Don Parker threw him a salute and took off to gather heads. Brig. Gen. John Monck looked again at the moonscape that had been an impressive military facility only a few hours earlier.

It was October 9, 1945, and in only three weeks the U.S. forces on Okinawa were to commence attacking and land on the Japanese island of Kyushu. With what? Monck thought harshly.

Chapter 20

Tonight was the night, Dennis Chambers decided. He could no longer live with the thought of two Jap planes and four Jap airmen being so close to him. He would have to do something about it. He knew he wasn't being terribly logical, but he was also driven to distraction by the bags of rice that the four men had stashed in their tent. If he could only get ahold ofthat food, he stood a chance of lasting for months, and perhaps the war would be over by then.

While the weather was still mild, the night air had a definite chill, and he could visualize his source of vegetation and insects literally drying up. If that happened and he had nothing to fall back on, he'd starve.

Desperately trying to be quiet, he crawled over the crest of the hill and down through the grasses and small evergreens to within a few yards of where the two pilots and the two mechanics sat facing each other. They had not lit a fire. The glow of fires might attract unwelcome visitors from the sky, but the Japanese had cooked and eaten during the day, and the scent of the cooked food was almost overwhelming to Dennis.

The four Japanese were jabbering on about something that Dennis couldn't understand. At first he thought it was a dialect that his limited knowledge of Japanese didn't allow him to comprehend. But then it dawned on him and he thought that his foray might not be as risky as he had first thought. The four Japs weren't speaking an unknown tongue; they were shit-faced drunk.

He crawled to a point that was almost insolently close to them. They had several bottles of what looked like American whiskey that they passed around and swallowed with abandon. Obviously they felt they would not be called upon to fly this night. He chuckled as he realized he could stand up and they wouldn't even notice him in their alcoholic stupor. Dennis's only fear was that one of them would fall over him on his way to relieve himself. He grasped the sharpened piece of metal that was his only weapon and waited.

After a couple of hours, the drinking bout ended and the four men staggered to sleeping mats that had been laid on the ground. As they snored loudly and occasionally belched or made other noises in their sleep, Dennis crawled up to the closest of the four. Cautiously, he took the piece of metal from his belt and, grasping it as firmly as he could, leaned over the sleeping enemy. Then, with strength and quickness he'd forgotten he had, he slashed across the Jap's throat. The man's eyes opened and he convulsed, but made no sound other than a gurgle as his blood spouted out all over the two of them. The first Jap was dead.

Dennis looked at the others and saw no sign of their awakening. Then he checked his victim. The dead man's eyes were wide-open and looked to the sky in disbelief. The Jap had bled profusely on Dennis, and the sticky feel of the liquid sickened him.

He steeled himself to his task and crawled to the next mat. Again, the makeshift knife slashed and blood poured out. This time, however, the second victim's death throes included a wild swing of his arm that hit Dennis across the face and knocked him back. Dennis tried to get up, but the world began to swim and he realized he was hurt and at the end of his strength. He tried to will himself to stay conscious but it was futile and he sagged to his knees.

As darkness enveloped him, he saw the silhouette of another Japanese soldier standing over him and he groaned. Somehow he had miscounted. There were five, not four. Where the hell had the fifth man been hiding? He could only hope they would kill him quickly and not torture him to death as he knew he deserved from them.

Shit, thought Joe Nomura as he looked over the prone body of an emaciated white man wearing the ragged remains of an air force uniform. He had to be either a downed pilot or a captured crewman. What a helluva fool to try something like this. The guy was obviously too weak to have finished the task even if he hadn't gotten bashed in the head by the man he'd just killed.

Joe had also been stalking the little Jap air base when he'd caught sight of someone else trying to skulk through the trees. When he'd figured out what the other man was up to, he'd been aghast. Not until he'd gotten much closer did he realize that the assassin was an American.

And, Joe thought grimly, one who was in bad shape as well as a whole lot of trouble.

Joe moved toward the two remaining Japanese, who still slept deeply and drunkenly. He drew his knife and, far more expertly than Dennis, killed the third Jap. The fourth was lying with his throat covered, so Joe sheathed his knife and brought the heel of his hand down on the back of the man's neck in a vicious chop. He waited a few seconds before checking for a pulse and found none. The money he'd spent for karate lessons as a kid had finally paid off.

Now what? This slaughter hadn't been in Joe's plans, but it was done and he'd better cover his ass or the kempei would be all over the area once it was discovered. He thought for a moment and then smiled.

First, he dragged the unconscious Dennis Chambers away from the area and well into the trees. Then he placed the four corpses around the planes and then pulled off much of the camouflage. It mainly consisted of evergreen boughs and moved easily even for a man with one arm. Within minutes, the planes were open to view from the sky.

Good, he thought. The next task was to take those precious bags of rice. He carried them in his one arm up over the hill and to presumed safety. Then he returned and scouted around a little and found what he was looking for- cans of gasoline. After all, didn't a plane need gas to fly? He set the containers under the planes and rigged a fuse out of cloth.

By the time he was done, he could see the hint of false dawn off in the east. Soon the sky would be filled with searching hunters. Well, he'd give them something to find.

Joe made certain that the still unconscious Chambers- he had checked his dog tags in the growing light and now knew his name- was still safe and even pulled him farther back along with the food sacks. One last look at the Japanese camp brought a new discovery- several unopened bottles of Johnnie Walker Red. How the hell did four dumb Japs get good Scotch on a hillside in Kyushu? Who cared? he answered, but there was no need for the liquor to go to waste. He lit the fuse. It would take a couple of minutes for the flames to reach the gas. He tucked the bottles under his arm and ran up the hill.

Joe had just crossed over the crest when he heard the whump of an explosion quickly followed by a second. He turned and saw the flickering glow of flames over the hill. It was time to really put some distance between himself and that fire.

A familiar growling noise stopped him in his tracks and he looked up with a grin on his face.

The first plane merely flew low over the fire to see what was causing it. A moment later, three more swept over the flames with their machine guns blazing. This caused more fires and explosions as the ammunition for the planes, along with other gasoline stores, went up. Now Joe felt much safer. With only a little luck, everyone would think that the four Japanese were victims of either their own stupidity or the dumb luck of the Americans.

Jesus Christ, Joe Nomura thought in admiration, if only the police at home could arrive as quickly as the planes had. He chuckled and wondered just how his new companion would react to having his life saved by a one-armed Jap. Then he realized something else. He, a Japanese American, had just killed two of his brethren. What he found most interesting was that he felt no remorse. They weren't his cousins; they were the enemy. Fuck 'em.

Chapter 21

Col. Tadashi Sakei forced himself to wait outside the local police station near Nagasaki while the local representatives of the kempei carried out their interrogations.

Normally, kempei questionings were carried out with some delicacy and subtlety, and over time, acknowledging that fear of pain and the dark unknown was often a greater motivator to confess than pain itself.

However, time was of the essence, and any recalcitrance on the part of those being questioned was being met with blows from fists, boots, and clubs. He noted that one enterprising young officer was getting some results by using lit cigarettes and burning matches jammed into sensitive parts of the suspect's anatomy, while another was carving chunks of skin off living flesh. As the interrogations went on, the kempei were becoming even more creative in their endeavors.

It was incredible that so much had gone wrong so quickly.

From all that had happened, it was simple to conclude that someone had betrayed Japan and that the bombing of the shrine where Hirohito was hidden was no random act.

The first thing they had to do was to find the traitor. Thus the kempei had arrested almost a score of men and women who were suspected of having pacifist tendencies. Sakei was relieved to note that most of them were Korean, and, therefore, neither Japanese nor trustworthy. He fervently hoped that the traitor would prove to be a Korean. He would be shamed if any true Japanese turned out to be the traitor.

The lieutenant in charge of the questioning came out of the small building they were using and walked up to Sakei. The lieutenant's arms were covered with blood, along with pieces of flesh and clumps of hair.

"What progress, Lieutenant? We must get on with this."

The lieutenant wiped his sticky hands with a rag. "Two more have confessed to being the traitor, but neither can tell me where the radio is. That means that they and the others were lying in their confessions to avoid the pain. We are continuing our efforts to extract the truth, but I am not confident that any of these people know anything at all. The traitor could have been one of those who already died under questioning, but I doubt that."

"Dammit." Sakei and the lieutenant returned to the building. This meant the traitor was still on the loose.

Sakei entered the building and was immediately assailed by the stench of blood and other body fluids. He looked about him and saw that half a dozen men and women had their hands tied behind them and were hung by their wrists from the roof beams with their feet just tantalizing inches off the floor. This dislocated their shoulders and made every part of their bodies vulnerable to assault.

They were naked and rivers of blood ran down their bodies from bruises, burns, and other open wounds. In a couple of cases Sakei could see where broken bones had split the surface of their skin. He could easily understand where people might confess to the most heinous of crimes if only to stop the agonies being inflicted on them, even if it brought on a swifter death.

Dead bodies were heaped in a corner. These looked at him through vacant eyes, at least the ones whose eyes hadn't been gouged out, and screamed soundlessly at him through gaping mouths where teeth had all been beaten out with hammers. One woman's breasts were bloody stumps, and severed fingers and toes were on the floor.

"You're right, Lieutenant, if they cannot give us the location of the radio, then they are nothing."

The kempei lieutenant bowed. "I will find more suspects, Colonel. We will find the traitor."

"Do that. Keep up the good work. In the meantime I will make other arrangements for the safety of our emperor."

The lieutenant beamed at the compliment. "Yes, Colonel. Do you have any special wishes for these people?" He gestured to the remaining prisoners.

"When you are done, kill them and dispose of the bodies where people can see what happens to those who are even suspected of treason."

The lieutenant grinned and saluted. Colonel Sakei left the building and walked the half mile down the dirt road to the compound where Hirohito was quartered.

He found the Son of Heaven well guarded in a cell. He was sitting quietly on the edge of his cot and reading a book. When he saw Sakei, Hirohito put down the book and stared at him.

"What now, Colonel, have you come to play chess with me?"

"No, Your Majesty."

"Why not? Are you afraid you will lose? You will lose, you know, just as you always have. You will lose everything, even Japan, through your foolishness."

Sakei held his temper in check. "Because of us, Majesty, Japan will live."

Hirohito smiled innocently. "Ah, yes. We will live, won't we? Just like when the bombs came and killed so many of your men. And you so foolishly believe a traitor has given away this location when you've got an entire battalion prancing around and making this little place look important to the American pilots. Yes, you are doing a marvelous job of keeping us alive. Very soon, you and all those with you will have succeeded so well that we will all be dead."

Sakei had to acknowledge that part of what Hirohito was saying was correct. It did not take five hundred men to guard the nearsighted and inoffensive Hirohito. It was one of several points that would immediately be corrected. "I will keep you alive, Majesty. We are moving you to a place of much greater safety. One that even the Americans will not dare to bomb."

Hirohito laughed tonelessly. "I doubt such a place exists on this planet, and certainly not in Japan."

Now it was Sakei's turn to smile. "It does, sir. Thanks to the Americans' strange sense of honor, we will find safety in a hospital that is closer to Nagasaki. The Americans will never bomb a hospital that boldly carries the sign of the Red Cross on its roof."

Sakei stood and called for a guard to assist the emperor in gathering his meager possessions.

Chapter 22

Debbie had an open invitation to work in the furniture store and help Mr. Ginsberg with his bookkeeping. She did so during the fall whenever she had the time or needed the money. Thus, she didn't really particularly notice when no one called out to her and said hello as she entered the building that Saturday morning. She wasn't expected and Mr. G. and his sales staff of two were probably having a meeting, which, on a slow Saturday, frequently meant analyzing the weekend's football games. With soldiers returning to athletics, no one knew who had good teams or bad, but the consensus was that the collegiate reign of West Point and the Naval Academy was just about over.

She entered the back offices and hung up her coat. Then she heard a strange sound coming from Mr. G.'s personal office. The door was closed, which was unusual. Mr. G. had a thing about keeping it open so he could see what was happening. Curious, she tapped lightly before opening it. Mr. G. was seated behind his desk. He was slumped over and held his head in his hands. The normal disarray she teased him about was all over the floor, as if it had been swept there from his desk, which, for once, was almost bare.

Mr. G. looked up and she could see that he had been crying. For once she wished she had called before coming in. "Mr. G.? Are you okay?" God, what a dumb thing to say, she thought; of course he wasn't okay.

He looked at her for a moment. His eyes were pools of deepest sadness and, to her surprise, seemed to be tinged with rage. "Nothing is okay. Tell me, were the others afraid to enter, or were you not aware?"

Debbie took a seat in the wooden chair across from him. Aware of what? she wondered. "I just came in to do a little work. There was no one outside so I just walked in."

Ginsberg nodded. To her he looked as if he had aged a decade since she had last seen him only a few days earlier. "My faithful staff is doubtless across the street drinking coffee and waiting for me to calm down. A few minutes ago I was quite emotional. Do you wish to know why?"

"Yes," Debbie said timidly.

Mr. G. held a batch of papers in his hand. "I finally got these this morning. They came from a friend of mine in the International Red Cross in France. He's been trying to track down the family my wife and I had in Europe. You will notice, dear Debbie, that I used the past tense."

Debbie cringed. "I heard you."

"Twenty-one of our relatives were alive in Germany and Poland as of a few years ago. Some on the German side, my side, were imprisoned before the war, while those on my wife's side, in Poland, we had hoped were refugees who maybe had fled to Russia. Do you know how many are left?"

"No, sir."

"Four," he said in a rasping voice. "Four out of twenty-one. The ones who went to Buchenwald died a long time ago, only we were never informed. Notifying next of kin of dead Jews was not a Nazi priority. As near as my friend can tell, the people in camps like Buchenwald were worked very hard, fed very little, and finally died of malnutrition or any of the hundreds of diseases that will strike down a weakened body. If they were unable to work for their keep, they were beaten, sometimes beaten to death.

"My wife's people who lived in Poland were swept up by the Germans after the invasion and taken to a place in Poland the Germans called Auschwitz. Do you know what went on there?"

Debbie could only repeat herself. "No, sir."

She'd heard the stories, but, like most people, she'd found them too terrible to be true.

"My friend referred to it as a death factory that may have swallowed millions of victims, mainly Jews, and spat out only their ashes. When the inmates first entered the camp, the healthy were separated from the weak- like the proverbial wheat from the chaff- by some Nazi who had appointed himself God. The weak were stripped of their clothing and valuables and sent into what they were told were showers. When they were all together, they were gassed from the showers and died. Do you know what the healthy Jews had to do?"

Debbie shook her head.

"They had to get rid of the bodies. But first they plundered them for eyeglasses, gold fillings, nice hair, and anything else that might help Hitler. The clothing the dead left behind, even though much was just rags, was sent to German families who had lost possessions because of the bombing."

The thought of it sickened her. Paul had written to her of some of it. He'd seen a couple of the smaller camps and had told of emaciated Jewish refugees wandering Europe. She'd read other accounts in Time and elsewhere, but they were as if she were reading fiction. It couldn't happen to her or to someone she knew. Now she knew she'd been horribly wrong.

"But," Mr. Ginsberg sighed, "six survived."

"I thought you said four?"

"Six, and that is the cruelest irony. There were two others who made it through the hells of Auschwitz. They were Polish Jews, a brother and sister in their early twenties. When they returned to the village they'd lived in, the nice Catholic Poles beat them to death for having the temerity to try to reclaim the property that was once theirs. The Russians are in control in Poland, and they have no wish to prosecute anyone for the harmless act of killing Jews. Now that almost all the Jews in Europe are dead, no one cares."

Debbie sagged. She was both Catholic and Polish, and Mr. G. knew that. "I'm sorry. Do you want me to leave?"

He ignored her comment. "What frightens me, Debbie, is that I'm learning to hate after all these years of trying to be a good Jew and not make waves. The war is over but the killing goes on. Now I am convinced that it will never stop for Jews so long as we have to live with non-Jews." He caught the hurt look on her face but did not back off. "I know what others say about me, and the fact of your working here. They say I'm not a bad man even though I'm a Jew, don't they?"

Debbie recalled some of her parents' comments about Jews. Some of their comments were quite harsh. Jews had killed Christ. Jews cheated. Jews were kikes with funny noses. "What about the four?" she asked.

"Three young men and one young woman. The two men are from my wife's side, and the others, a brother and a sister, from mine. The two from my wife's side have already made it to Palestine, while the others are in internment camps in France. The young woman, by the way, was forced to be a prostitute for the German soldiers, even though sexual relations between Jews and non-Jews was forbidden according to Nazi law. Tell me, what is the difference between a concentration camp and an internment camp? Nothing. If you are inside, surrounded by barbed wire, and you don't have the freedom to leave, there is no difference at all."

"What are you going to do?"

"Do?" He glared at her and she realized she had never seen Mr. Ginsberg so angry. "Do? I'm going to get the two in France out of those goddamned camps and over here if they wish. They can't get to Palestine because the British are afraid of offending the Arabs so they won't let any more Jews in, and they certainly won't be safe if they try to return to their homes. No, I will try to bring them here. Then I'm going to work for a separate state for my people, and the hell with the gentiles and the Arabs and anyone who stands in our way."

Debbie stood as well. "Do you want me to leave?" she repeated.

Mr. G. nodded sadly. "I think it would be best." She put on her coat and was headed for the door when he interrupted her. "Debbie, please give me a little time to get over the worst of this."

She smiled slightly. "Of course."

"Good," he sighed. "I will call you, and very soon. I am very fond of you and would not wish to lose your friendship. I also think I will need your help with the paperwork to bring my people over here. And I will continue to pray for your Paul's safe return. Now, on your way out, would you please get those two fools from across the street and tell them to start selling furniture. They are Jews too, thereby proving that even a Jew can be a fool, and I will wish to talk with them about my plans."

Chapter 23

Bound hand and foot and blindfolded, Chambers woke up, helpless and immobile. His worst fears had come true; he had been recaptured by the Japanese. He moaned in fear and he heard a slight rustling.

"Listen to me and be quiet," a low, deep voice said, speaking almost into his ear. "You're wrapped up like this for your own protection. There are Jap soldiers only a couple of hundred yards from here, and neither of us wants to draw their attention, do we? Stay still. Do you understand that?"

Dennis nodded and tried to grunt a yes through the gag. Then he realized that the voice had spoken English. Hell, was he hallucinating? Or was he a prisoner and this was all part of some devious Japanese trick? His mind whirled in confusion.

After a period of further silence, he heard, perhaps felt, the presence of the other man. "Okay, Mr. Chambers, nothing has changed. You are still in very great danger and I will not hesitate to leave you here if you are so stupid as to do anything to draw attention to yourself.

For that matter, I will leave you if we are discovered even if it isn't your fault. Is that clearly understood?"

"Umph," Dennis grunted, and nodded vigorously. He was delighted at the sound of the other man's voice. The accent was clearly American. That meant that his captor was another escaped prisoner and not a Japanese.

"You are dumber than shit, you know," the other man said as he removed the gag. "You should never have taken on those four Japs in your weakened condition, no matter how drunk they were and no matter how desperate your situation might have been. If I hadn't been right nearby and wondering what the hell was going on, you'd be dead by now. They'd have found you and chopped you into little bits of living flesh for killing those two guys."

"Water," Dennis rasped. When a canteen was held to his lips, he gurgled and swallowed. After a moment, his voice returned enough to speak. "What about the blindfold?"

"It comes off when I think you're ready for it to come off."

That didn't make sense to Dennis. "Ready for what? You're an American, aren't you? Take the damn thing off me."

That brought a chuckle. "Yeah, I'm American, but maybe not what you expected in the way of a fellow American. It's not exactly like I'm mom and apple pie."

"When did you escape?"

There was a pause and Dennis heard the other man take a deep breath. He was making a decision. "I didn't escape, Mr. Chambers. I came here by submarine. And I'm not in the military in the strictest sense, I'm with the OSS."

The man was a spy and didn't want his face to be seen. That made sense. If Dennis was discovered, he couldn't possibly describe the other man if he hadn't seen him. Of course he wondered just how a white man could be an effective spy in the land of people whose skin was yellow.

Then the answer hit Dennis like a blow to the stomach, and it was his turn to take a deep breath. "Where're you from?" he asked, switching to his brand of halting Japanese.

"Honolulu" came the answer. The other man sounded amused.

"Were you in the army?"

"Yep. For a while, anyhow."

Dennis smiled. "Bet it was the 442nd, wasn't it?"

"Very good, Mr. Chambers. Now do you understand why I didn't want you to see me right away? It would have scared the hell out of you to wake up and find a real live Jap staring you in the face. You might have started screaming and brought us some unwanted company."

With that Joe removed the blindfold. Dennis blinked and realized it was evening. He wondered how long he'd been out. Then he looked at the one-armed man in the Japanese army uniform who sat across from him. "Jesus Christ."

"Actually, the name is Joe Nomura, although many people do make that mistake. It's my Christlike demeanor."

"You rescued me, didn't you?"

"Right again."

"What did you do with the other two men?"

Nomura paused. "Thanks to you, I had to kill them, Mr. Chambers. I finished what you so foolishly started." He took out a knife and sliced through Dennis's bonds. Dennis wondered if Nomura had killed them with the same knife he was so casually using to free him.

"One man I stabbed and the other I hit on the neck with the side of my hand. If you're not aware of it, it's an ancient Japanese art called karate. Then I stole their food and weapons, which is what you probably had in mind, and then set fire to the planes. A few minutes later, a couple of our navy hotshots flew overhead and strafed the site and probably took credit for my kills." Joe looked at Dennis and saw the other man looking at him curiously. "Oh, how could I kill my fellow Japs? Is that what's bothering you?"

"Something like that."

"Easy. I'm not a Jap. I'm an American. I crossed that bridge a long time ago. Even though I've lived here in Japan for a while, I was born in the U.S. It wasn't an easy decision and it was a long time coming, but I think I've made it correctly. These people here are just too fucking weird for my taste. Tell me, you got any German ancestors?"

"A couple," Dennis replied. "Yeah. You're right, flick 'em."

Joe Nomura said he had an errand to run. He had to learn some more about a bunch of Japanese soldiers who were down in the valley. Before he disappeared into the deepening night, he offered Dennis a bowl of rice, which he ate voraciously.

Joe left Dennis with a pistol, a 7mm Japanese Nambu, which looked curiously like a German Luger. Joe explained that it was an officer's gun and it was not for protection. Dennis was to stay hidden in the trees and shrubs and wait for Joe's return. On the off chance that he was discovered, or that a Japanese patrol was about to stumble on him, Joe was to try to disappear into the woods. If he did not get away, he was to stick the gun in his mouth and blow his brains out.

"I think," Joe said, "you would find that preferable to what they would do if they captured you. And the gun jams, so don't even think of wasting shots shooting at them. One other thing. I trusted you with the knowledge of my existence. Believe me when I say I did that very reluctantly. I am much more important alive than you are, is that clearly understood?"

"Yes."

How could Dennis argue with any of that logic? He fondled the pistol and wondered if he had the willpower to kill himself. Yet, even with the fear of death far from removed, he felt a lot better. He was no longer alone.

It didn't even bother Dennis that Nomura had made it clear that he, and not Dennis, was in total charge of this two-man operation. For the first time in a while, Dennis Chambers began to think it really possible that he would survive this ordeal.

Chapter 24

Harry Truman sat on a plain wooden chair and looked about. "Tell me, General Marshall, did you know this room existed?"

As always, Marshall answered truthfully, no matter how much it discomfited the still new president. "Yes, sir. I've known about it since it was put in, even been here a few times, but most people, even those pretty high up, have no need to know about it."

They were in the White House map room on the ground level of the White House. It was directly across the hall from the elevator that went to the president's private quarters. The walls of the room were covered with maps, many of them from the National Geographic Society, and the windows had been covered with dark paper to provide its occupants with a degree of privacy. Normally it was staffed by officers whose job it was to keep up-to-date the symbols on the maps that showed the progress of the war. For the duration of this meeting between himself and Marshall, Truman had chased the staff out.

"It was almost two weeks after I'd become president that I learned of this place," Truman mused. "FDR would take the elevator to this level and wheel himself in almost daily and be able to keep track of things. Imagine, it was going on in the White House for almost four years and most people, myself included, were wholly unaware it existed. Makes sense that FDR would have something like this, though. I wonder how many other secrets I still don't know about."

"No more, I would hope. Certainly nothing major," Marshall said truthfully.

Truman swiveled in the chair. "Now, tell me about that damned typhoon."

"And about the atomic bomb, sir, and not much of the news I've got is good news."

Truman laughed, which startled Marshall. "It never is, General, it never is, and no one can accuse you of being a fair-weather sycophant- no pun intended. Well, give me the truth. I can stand it."

The typhoon had done extensive damage on Okinawa. The resulting injuries and loss of life were small, but a great deal of the equipment being gathered on and around Okinawa was destroyed or seriously damaged. Literally hundreds of aircraft were demolished and many others damaged. Large numbers of valuable landing craft were either sunk or damaged. The larger ships had been able to get to sea and ride out the storm without too much difficulty, although a large number of carrier planes were destroyed or damaged. Mother Nature had handed the navy a devastating defeat.

The men on Okinawa were without equipment, and many didn't even have a complete uniform to wear. Everything they owned was blown out to sea. Even though most of the staging for the invasion was in the Philippines and elsewhere, the need to refurbish and replace what was lost on Okinawa would definitely delay the invasion of Japan.

Supplies stockpiled to replace those lost in the invasion would have to be used to resupply the half-naked men on Okinawa. The invasion would be delayed, perhaps as long as a month.

"November fifteenth," Truman said. "Sooner if you can do it."

While the fighting would doubtless be raging during the Christmas season, the president didn't want an invasion too close to that date, Marshall knew. He would expedite the resupply of the forces on Okinawa even if it meant accepting the risk of running short at some time during the campaign.

"Now, do you have any other bad news for me?"

"Sir, it is highly unlikely that we will use atomic bombs during or after the invasion."

"What now?" This was too much. Were there any uses for that weapon?

"Sir, we no longer believe it is a viable tactical weapon for use against Japan in either Olympic or Coronet."

Truman looked at Marshall in disbelief. "Why?" he asked simply.

"Mr. President, the radiation threat is too great to be ignored. We had naively thought that we could use A-bombs to blast our way through Jap frontline defenses and push our men on into the interior of Kyushu and elsewhere. Now it turns out that our boys would not be able to go through those areas because of lingering radiation, which is still causing people in Japan to sicken and die. Further, the mushroom cloud itself is an uncontrollable variable that could easily sweep over our men and ships, causing great harm, even deaths. The prevailing winds over Kyushu blow from the north to the south in the winter. Therefore, any atomic cloud would be swept over the beaches and out to sea, and possibly over our fleet. Our men would be contaminated with falling radioactive dust, rain, and debris. The ships can simply be hosed down by properly dressed personnel, but the men on the beaches would have no such option.

"Sir, the scientists are going to detonate at least a couple of our bombs and make controlled experiments regarding radiation. We simply need to know more about it before we continue. On the other hand, if the Japanese are so foolish as to mass their forces inland, then we will bomb them, but those are the only circumstances I can foresee in which we would use an atomic bomb."

The comment about the drifting mushroom cloud brought Truman back to grim and nearly forgotten memories of gas warfare in World War I. Back then a sudden change in wind direction could sweep a lethal cloud of gas back to its senders, rather than on to the enemy, and with devastating and unintended consequences.

"I understand what you're saying, General, but are you certain of the danger? After all, wasn't it just a while ago that everyone was so certain that radiation would dissipate quickly?"

"Yes, sir, but now we have more and better information. Our sources are from additional analysis of the area around Alamogordo where the first bomb was exploded, continued intercepted pleas for medical help from Japanese dealing with the problem, messages from neutral diplomats confirming the continuing radiation-related casualties, and, I'm pleased to say, information from an OSS operative we've managed to land on Kyushu."

Truman was intrigued by the last point. "You don't say? I thought both MacArthur and Nimitz didn't want anything to do with the OSS?"

"When confronted with the reality that only the OSS had someone who could infiltrate Japan, Admiral Nimitz changed his mind. I'm not certain MacArthur's been informed."

Truman smiled. "Probably better that he not be."

"Yes, sir. The OSS got a radio response from their man a couple of days ago. They'd just about given him up for lost after the sub sent to deposit him never returned and was presumed lost. He ' s been wandering about the Nagasaki area and making solid observations."

"How the hell is he getting away with that?" Truman puzzled, then it dawned on him. "Hell, he's a Jap, isn't he?"

"He's an American," Marshall corrected stiffly.

Truman flushed. "That's what I meant. A Japanese American. Good for him."

"Mr. President, Admiral Leahy and others are not unhappy that we may have no further use for the atomic bomb. They've felt all along that it is an immoral weapon that should never have been used on a civilian target, and that Christian nations should never wage war on civilians, whether nuclear or conventional. They feel we should never intentionally allow ourselves to sink to the level of the barbarians lest we become ones ourselves. I believe Admiral Leahy even used the word 'unchivalrous' in connection with the bomb."

Truman privately wondered just what about modern war Leahy actually considered chivalrous.

"General Marshall, I respect the opinions of Leahy and others, and I personally deplore the carnage the bombs have wrought. But we will use any weapons we have that will help end this war, General. I will not concern myself with what might be construed as being chivalrous."

"I understand, sir."

"I want this war over as soon as possible and with as few American casualties as possible."

Truman excused himself. He had a splitting headache and wanted to lie down. Then he wanted to make himself a stiff drink.

Chapter 25

Paul Morrell's new fatigue uniform itched. After all the training he and the others had gone through before the typhoon, he was simply unused to the feel of something new. At least, he thought grimly, it stood a chance of not wearing out before the time came to actually land on Japan. He just hoped he'd last as long as the fatigues.

And that time, they were all convinced, was going to come soon, real soon. The army had made Herculean efforts to replace all their missing gear and had largely succeeded. Everywhere he looked, he could see nothing but new material- uniforms, vehicles, tents, and the miscellany of other supplies that an army needs. In a way, the typhoon had done them all a favor by forcing the army to replace worn gear. It had been astonishing how fast it had happened too. In only a couple of days, they were partially refitted and were completely reequipped within a week and a half. It made Paul wonder just how great were the warehouses and resources that could perform such a task so quickly and so efficiently.

Captain Ruger's company had gathered on a hill at the southernmost tip of Okinawa. It was becoming difficult to realize that a war had been fought there only a couple of short months before. Shell craters were being covered by grasses and young shrubs as nature sought to take back what was rightfully hers from the destructive interlopers. In a few years, visitors might have a hard time finding places where their sons had fought and died.

But not yet. Nature had not succeeded in entirely covering man's devastating tracks. In many places the walls of destroyed houses and flattened villages stood as stark reminders to the enormous conflict. Wrecked vehicles of all kinds, including a surprising number of tanks, lay about in disarray. This time, there were no Japanese bodies.

Captain Ruger stood on a rock to look over his now lean and grim-faced company. "Do you know where we are, men?"

The question was rhetorical and no one answered. For a moment, Paul was afraid of a smart-ass comment from one of his men, but none materialized. This was too obviously a place of agony, and the ground on which they stood had soaked up American blood as well as Japanese.

"This," Ruger continued, "is the spot where the last Japanese soldiers on Okinawa died. They were out of ammunition, starving, and many of them were sick or wounded, but they still fought on. They would not surrender."

The men understood. If the Japanese would let themselves be killed instead of surrendering on a crummy place like Okinawa, what the hell would they do on Kyushu? It was a sobering thought.

"Men, there are some who say the only reason the Japs all died is because they couldn't retreat any farther, and that, for them, this was the end of their world."

Paul looked down the hill where a deceptively calm Pacific sent low waves crashing against the rocks of the shore. The last Japs on Okinawa had died on a point of land that was directed south, and not even north toward Japan. Each agonizing moment and step had taken them farther away from their homeland. He wondered what their last thoughts were. Had they been proud and defiant at the end, or had they been too sick and scared even to think at all? What the hell would he think of under similar circumstances?

Ruger held up a Japanese rifle. It was the Arisaka Model 38. It had a bolt action, a permanent magazine, and a five-round clip. It was not considered equivalent to the Ml Garand or the Ml carbine. The Garand was a semiautomatic, while the new version of the carbine could fire full-automatic. The Garand had an eight-round clip and the carbine a fifteen. A number of Americans were still armed with Thompson submachine guns, which had twenty-round clips. The infamous "tommy gun" had been only slightly modified from the Al Capone days for use by the army. Each squad had at least one Browning automatic rifle in its arsenal, and the BAR was almost the equivalent of a machine gun. The Japanese were outgunned.

By comparison, the Japanese Arisaka was so poorly made that it even rattled when carried. In the right hands, however, it was deadly.

Ruger waved the rifle around so that all could see it clearly. Paul wondered whose souvenir it was. "Think of it," Ruger shouted. "They were even willing to die with only this piece of shit to protect them, but"- he paused for effect- "die they did." He gestured to a lanky buck sergeant who had been taking this in with bemused silence. The sergeant, a stranger to the company, had a large white bandage over his left ear and seemed to have a trembling in his left hand.

Ruger gestured the sergeant forward. "Men, this is Sergeant Gleason. He will tell you a few things about this place and the Japanese."

Sergeant Gleason shuffled his feet. He looked about twenty-two and was obviously uncomfortable addressing a large body of men. Finally, he grinned tentatively. "Your first sergeant talked me into coming out here and seeing if I could help you fellas. Actually, he said he'd rip my flicking other ear off if I didn't show up, and I kinda believed him since he was my drill sergeant in basic a few years ago."

The rumble of nervous laughter seemed to give Gleason some confidence. "Fellas, I spent a month fighting for this god-awful part of God's earth, and I lost a lot of friends. I also lost my ear, and I was kind of fond ofthat too. I'm going to go home in a little bit, but you guys are going to have to take over from people like me. Now, some of what I'm going to tell you already know, but don't be pissed off. I'm just trying to help.

"When I arrived here, my platoon had thirty-five men and I was a PFC. When we pulled out, there was just eight of us. I was a sergeant and was in charge of the platoon because everybody else was dead or badly wounded. The ear was infected and I was going to lose it and some of my hearing, but I didn't know that at the time. It doesn't matter anyhow. I'm just goddamn glad to be getting the hell off Okinawa.

"Guys, I just want to remind you how the Japs fight. They don't have any air cover to call in and help them like we do, and they really don't have any artillery, so by rights it shouldn't even be a fair fight. With all our firepower, we should be able to blast their asses right out of our way and walk into Tokyo. Only thing is, they don't know that and they won't cooperate. What they like to do is lay low, take whatever beating they have to from our guns and planes, and then when we're right up close, start fighting. What I'm saying is, they like to wait until we're too close to them to call in air or artillery for fear of hitting ourselves. Then they fight like motherfuckers."

Gleason mentally inventoried the weapons among the assembled men. "I sure as hell am glad that someone has some sense and has gotten you boys a lot more BARs and Thompsons than normal. You're gonna need a lot of short-range firepower when you fight them bastards up close. And don't forget to take all the ammo you can possibly carry because some of the little yellow flicks will stay hidden until you pass by and then try to pick off people carrying supplies up to the lines. When you fight the Japs, there ain't no safety in the rear, so don't close your eyes and don't take nothing for granted.

"And when you shoot them, don't just shoot them once. Do it a dozen times if you have to, 'cause they're like snakes and won't die. You cut off the head of a snake and it'll still try to bite you, and the Japs are just like fucking snakes." Gleason had turned pale and the trembling had spread to his other hand. "You can blow off their arms and legs and they'll still crawl up to you with a grenade in their mouth." His voice had become strident and it was chillingly apparent that he was recalling a specific incident.

Second Lieutenant Marcelli, a recent addition to the unit, was standing by Paul. "Jesus," Marcelli said, "I wonder what the poor son of a bitch dreams of at night."

Paul nodded silently. He wondered what his own dreams would be like if he ever made it back to Michigan.

Mackensen put his hand on Gleason's shoulder, whispered something to the young sergeant. Gleason nodded, paused, and regained some control of himself. "Like I said, I was here, so this place has some real memories. Over there"- he waved with his arm- "is what they're now calling the Cave of the Virgins. You know how it got its name?"

Some did. Paul had heard the rumor, but, as before, no one dared to answer.

Gleason wiped his forehead. He had begun sweating profusely and it was far from warm out. "There were maybe eighty Jap nurses in there, all young women, and a lot of them real pretty. They all killed themselves in that cave rather than be taken alive by Americans. The little fools were convinced we were going to rape and kill them, and then eat their dead bodies." Gleason shuddered. "I went into the cave and saw them. They were all lyin' there with their eyes wide-open and deader'n shit for no reason. Some of them weren't even sixteen."

For a moment it looked as if Sergeant Gleason wasn't going to say anything more. Then he pointed to a place on the hill where they were assembled. A large pile of rocks looked as if they had been freshly gathered and placed there.

"Behind them rocks," Gleason added, "was another cave. This one didn't have no virgins in it, just Jap soldiers. Maybe there was some civilians farther back, but I never saw them. The Japs fired at us from the mouth of the cave and we shot in. There used to be an overhang, so our artillery and planes couldn't get at it, although they tried like hell. When we got close enough, we used flamethrowers, but they just went farther back in the cave and came back out when we stopped to see if they were dead. After a while, we gave up shooting at them and dynamited the overhang so that it fell into the mouth of the cave and sealed it up. End of Japs, end of problem."

Paul gasped. The Japs had been buried alive! Everyone in the company with even the slightest hint of claustrophobia felt sickened at the prospect of being sealed in a cave with nothing to do but wait in the total darkness for the oxygen to run out. Paul wondered whether he would have killed himself or would have gone mad first if he had been sealed in a cave for all eternity.

Gleason stepped over to the pile and patted a large rock. "Who knows, maybe some of them are still alive in there. We don't know how deep those caves are, and how much air there might be. Maybe they can sorta hear us talking about them. Maybe they're digging their way out right now after living on the flesh of their dead comrades and drinking their blood for their thirst."

The men looked nervously at the ground as if expecting skeletal hands to emerge and grab them.

"Sergeant Gleason," Ruger asked, "how many would you say were in this cave?"

Gleason shrugged. "Couldn't tell at all. Only saw the ones who were shooting at us. Could've been a few, could've been hundreds."

"And were there other caves around here, Sergeant?"

Gleason nodded. "Lotsa caves, sir. Caves all over this flicking place and a lot of Japs now buried in them too, sir."

Captain Ruger dismissed Sergeant Gleason, who was gently led away by Mackensen. Once again, Ruger climbed on his rock.

"Men, I had Sergeant Gleason tell you his story for a reason. Our training is over, and we're now going back to camp and begin to pack and get organized to ship out. We've only a couple of days left before we're on a boat heading towards Japan. I want you to know I'm proud of you and the effort you've all put in. Let's get moving."

As the men trudged down the hill in a ragged column, Paul knew that he was more afraid of the unknown than he had ever been in his life. When he looked at the faces of his comrades, he could see that same fear reflected in theirs as well.

Chapter 26

Dennis Chambers reveled in the unaccustomed delight of eating C rations and ignored Joe Nomura's laughing at him.

"If you don't mind," Joe said, "I'll stick with rice. I've had enough of government food to last a while."

Dennis sighed and munched on a cracker. He'd already devoured the meat portion- whatever it was had been a vast improvement on insects and the occasional rodent- and was saving both the chocolate bar and hard candy for dessert. He'd had to drink the instant coffee cold, but it was still wonderful, as was the powdered lemonade, which contained vitamin C. Already he could feel his gums getting better as his mild case of scurvy was defeated.

After the food, maybe the best part of the C-ration package was the toilet paper, although the cigarettes came in a close second. He never was a heavy smoker, but being able to wipe his behind with something soft was an incredible delight.

After only a couple of days, Dennis felt his strength and health truly returning. Joe had helped make a proper shelter against the weather, which had now turned rainy. It wasn't the Waldorf-Astoria, but it was much drier and warmer than what he'd had either in the POW camp or on the hill where he'd first hidden.

Dennis now knew that Joe had no intention of telling him where he went when he disappeared on his patrols, and he'd also not shown Dennis where the radio and other supplies were cached. That was fine. If captured, he couldn't divulge what he didn't know. Dennis did wonder if the Japs would believe his tale, under torture, of a one-armed Japanese American spying on them. He knew that Nomura had laid a good deal of his own safety and future on the line for a man he didn't really know.

For the foreseeable future, Dennis was content to be able to survive. From what Nomura told him and from what he'd heard before being shot down, the invasion of Japan would happen real soon. He would wait for that day and grow strong. He would return to Barb and they would live happily ever after, he thought with a laugh.

"Enough," said Joe. He wiped scraps of food from his face with his hand.

"How 'bout a drink?" asked Dennis.

"When I come back, but you help yourself, okay? Just don't get drunk."

Joe was right. When Dennis had first had a couple of swallows of the Scotch they'd taken from the Jap pilots, it had nearly knocked him out. "I'll wait." He grinned. "I never did like drinking alone."

Dennis again settled into the shrubs to wait. Something was happening down in the nearby camps, and Joe was trying to confirm it. Joe was upset enough that he didn't even mention what it was he'd noticed, although, upon reflection, Dennis thought it likely that it was something else Joe didn't want him to know about. It was, Dennis realized, just another mystery he would have to deal with.