CHAPTER 12

LIEUTENANT STEVE FARRIS WAS HOT, TIRED, AND DIRTY. AS A result of the train crash, the army’s duties had expanded to patrolling roads and railroad tracks, along with keeping track of who was using the beaches of the area. Some of his men wondered why, since it was announced that the crash was merely a tragic accident, but Farris knew better and some of his men suspected the truth. His uncle had quietly and confidentially told him that it had indeed been sabotage, and that there had been several other minor incidents as well. Nobody’d been hurt and damage had been minimal in the other incidents, and it was not definite that it had been the same person or persons as those who’d derailed the freight train.

Both the navy and the army decided that the rail lines would be patrolled, and a several-mile stretch of tracks was now the responsibility of Lytle’s recon company, with Farris’s platoon having its own section to patrol.

Farris initially thought he’d exercise his prerogatives as an officer and ride in a jeep while others actually walked the tracks in the hot sun, but two things changed his mind. First, the tracks did not run parallel to most roads, which meant that he would at times be a long ways from his men and, second, it didn’t seem right that he would be in relative comfort while his men hiked. Sometimes he thought it was hell to have both a conscience and a sense of responsibility. But if he didn’t, then he’d be just like his prick of a company commander.

Stecher was back at camp with one squad, while the third patrolled the beaches. Another reason for taking a hands-on approach was the fact that this squad’s leader, Sergeant Adamski, was a tall raw-boned kid from Chicago who’d recently gotten his third stripe. Farris wanted to see how the young buck sergeant operated with a number of men, many of whom were older than he was. So far, so good, he thought. Nobody seemed to be taking advantage of the young sergeant.

Farris let Adamski take the lead while he brought up the rear. It was a pleasant though warm day and the scenery was pretty. As tail end, he could dawdle and enjoy the view as well as observe his men. The sun was shining brightly, so the mountains in the distance could be seen clearly. One of these days he thought he’d like to go hiking or camping up one of them. The only times he’d slept in a tent were while bivouacking during basic and OCS, and that hadn’t been fun at all. He’d only fished a couple of times in his life and thought he might like to try that as well. Then he thought that cleaning and cooking fish might be a little more than he wished to take on.

Farris also thought it would be nice to camp out with a real live girl and maybe both get naked in a sleeping bag. Maybe she would even clean and cook the fish he would catch. Damn, it had been a long time since he’d even talked to an attractive and single young woman. He thought it funny that the enlisted men were certain that young officers like him got all the women they could handle.

Sure. The army was sexless and monastic, and he was in command of forty horny young guys, including himself. He’d heard that there were whores in town and really cheap hookers down across the border in Tijuana, but there was no way he was going to take a chance on getting the clap and fucking up his life. He laughed at his pun and wondered if he’d be young enough to start a family when the war finally ended. If the pressure got too bad, he could always resort to Rosie Palm or Mother Five-fingers if he had to, but it hadn’t gotten that bad yet. Jesus, what if he ever got caught playing with himself? A couple kids had gotten caught and became objects of scorn and ridicule.

“Lieutenant! Come quick!”

Adamski was standing over the tracks and the rest of his men had scattered. Farris ran up and looked down on the tracks.

“Oh, shit,” Farris said. “Is that what I think it is?”

A small device sat over the rail and it was connected to a box underneath. If it wasn’t a bomb, it would do until a real one came along. He checked his watch. According to the schedule he’d gotten, a large freight train was due to pass by in less than an hour.

He sent the sergeant and a couple of men up the tracks to try and wave down the train if they had to. He radioed the captain and was told he was unavailable, which meant he was too drunk to answer the call.

“Damn it,” he muttered as he fumbled for a piece of paper he’d been given by his Uncle Tim. A phone number had been written on it, and Farris had one of his brighter troops climb a telephone pole and tap into a line. He called and an FBI agent named Harris responded and said he’d get the train stopped and would be there as quickly as possible.

Harris said that Steve should not touch the device. “Don’t you worry,” Farris said.

The soldier up the telephone pole called out and pointed. A dark-colored Ford station wagon was pulling into a dirt road a mile or so away, and it looked like one of those with wooden paneling.

An hour later, Harris drove up in a civilian car and showed his credentials. A few moments later, a navy sedan arrived and Dane emerged.

“Glad you called me right away instead of trying to get through channels,” Harris said.

Farris smiled. “Channels were sort of interrupted.”

Harris nodded. “I understand. Your CO’s an asshole. Your uncle said you were smart and he was right. You did the correct thing.”

“We’ll take care of Lytle later,” Dane said, acknowledging that it was touchy for a navy officer to complain about an army equivalent.

A couple of army trucks arrived and half a dozen men climbed down. Harris explained that they were ordnance experts who were skilled in demolitions. Hopefully, they could disarm the bomb, if it was a bomb.

“On the off chance they can’t and something bad happens,” Harris said, “let’s say we get a few hundred yards away where we can’t be hurt if it goes off. Of course, the bomb disposal guys would be fucked, but that’s life.”

When the three of them were at a safe distance, Harris asked if anybody had seen anything and was told about the dark-colored Ford wagon. Harris nodded. “One of the witnesses at the first explosion said he thought he saw a black Ford station wagon along with a small group of other vehicles, but that doesn’t prove a damn thing. One sighting means nothing, two could be a coincidence, but three or more is a pattern. I just hope we end this before there are many more sightings.”

“All clear,” yelled one of the ordnance men, who put an object down and stepped away. He’d been told to leave any evidence as close as possible to where it had originally been.

Another car with two more FBI agents arrived and began interviewing Farris’s soldiers. Farris, Dane, and Harris walked over to the dismembered bomb.

“Nothing much at all,” Harris said on examining the device. “A couple of sticks of TNT and an impact detonator. It’s just like the last time. We’ll check for prints, but I’ll bet you a dollar, gentlemen, that we won’t find a thing. Even if we did it’s a snowball’s chance in hell that we’d be able to connect them with anyone.”

“Can we trace the dynamite?” Dane asked. “At least this time the sticks are intact.”

Harris shook his head. “No unique markings on the sticks, and there’s got to be a couple of hundred construction companies, mining enterprises and such around here who are supplied by a score of businesses legitimately selling explosives. They could have been bought anywhere, or even stolen.”

“At least he didn’t cause any damage,” Farris said hopefully.

Dane laughed. “Didn’t he? This is a single line track, which means trains come and go both ways all according to an elaborate dance so nobody runs into someone else. Now that schedule is all fucked up and it’ll be some time before it gets straightened out. Yeah, you’re right in that nobody got killed or injured, but the saboteur is still messing with the war effort. And who knows what might happen the next time. We got lucky that your man spotted it. If the saboteur had put it down at night, who knows what might have happened.”

“Worse,” Harris added, “there’s no way we can keep this quiet. Just too many people know about it now. We can and will try to keep it out of the newspapers, but rumors will be all over Southern California and people are going to think twice before they go on a train or drive over a bridge.”

“What do we do now?” Farris asked.

Dane smiled and slapped his nephew on the shoulder. “Well, you get to keep walking up and down train tracks while Agent Harris and I get a bite to eat.”

* * *

Wilhelm Braun was even more frustrated than usual. Another attempt to derail a train had gone awry. Even with the help of the skilled and physically powerful Gunther Krause he was accomplishing nothing. He’d tried to blow up a couple of vehicle bridges and underestimated the amount of dynamite it would take. He had a goodly supply of explosives, but it would not last forever. Braun was not confident he would be able to buy any more locally. Logic told him that merchants had been warned to be on the lookout for anyone buying dynamite, especially someone with an accent, and to report it to the police or FBI. He would live with what he had.

So far, the best that had happened after destroying that first freight train was that he’d caused some traffic tie-ups and delayed a few other trains.

It was not what he or Berlin had in mind. To complicate matters, he had just received a coded message that he was to concentrate on finding out the location of the American naval squadron that included the carrier Saratoga. He snorted and took a swallow of his beer. The Americans made miserable beer. The only thing this bottle of something brewed in California had going for it was the fact that it was cold. Mexican beer was even worse. A friend in the Mexico City embassy had described it as cold horse piss and, even though he had never tried horse piss, he thought the description was likely apt. To make matters even worse, the alcohol content was low.

“What now?” asked Krause.

“Where would you look for an aircraft carrier?”

“Why, in the ocean, sir,” he said cheekily, forgetting the fact that they were to use first names.

“Krause, when we get back to Germany I will have you broken to the rank of private.”

The sergeant took his own beer from the old refrigerator, popped the bottle top, and took a swallow. He shook his head and grimaced. “At least it’s cold,” he said, and Braun chuckled.

“Seriously,” Krause continued, “do you think we will ever get back to the Reich? There’s a huge ocean between us and Europe and a number of belligerent nations who’d like nothing better than to kill us. And what the devil are we doing playing at helping the fucking slanty-eyed Japs? They should be waiting on tables for us at best, or even going to camps like we are sending the fucking Jews.”

Braun couldn’t argue with him. He’d tried so many times to rationalize the point that helping the Japs helped Germany, but he had done so little to help the Japs it was sad.

“What are you suggesting?” Braun asked.

“I suggest we lie low for a while, unless some target of opportunity pops up and is irresistibly tempting. The Americans are doubtless checking mail and monitoring phone calls, so that leaves our radio, which, if we use it too often, will enable the enemy to triangulate and find us.”

“We could, of course, move the radio,” Braun said thoughtfully.

“Excellent to a point, but every time we’d dismantle it we’d be running the risk of damaging it, or, worse, being stopped by the police for any reason. A simple speeding ticket or a small accident and we would be found out. How would we explain the existence of a shortwave radio in our truck?”

Krause was right, of course. He was smart and more than a thug, which was why Braun had wanted him as the second man on his two-man team. Despite the disparity in their ranks, their long relationship went beyond simple respect.

“Krause, have you heard anything about the Saratoga in your wanderings through San Diego’s bars?”

Krause laughed. “I wouldn’t dream of bringing up the topic, but every now and then somebody wonders where she is and when she’ll be coming back, but nobody seems to know.”

In his own wanderings and listenings, Braun had picked up pretty much the same thing. One rumor that kept repeating itself was that the top brass had told the admiral in charge of the Saratoga and her escorts to get lost and not tell anyone in the Pacific Fleet where they were or what their plans were. That, of course, killed any idea of ferreting out the carrier’s location.

Nor could he and Krause get any help locally. They were swimming alone in a hostile sea. They had to maintain the facade of Swenson Engineering, which meant they periodically had to drive the truck or station wagon to fictitious work sites, lest the neighbors get suspicious and call the police.

Braun took a long swallow of the cold horse piss and weak beer. “What we will do is quite simple. We will continue to send reports saying how hard we are working and what difficulties we are encountering. In the meantime, we will continue to look for targets to destroy, along with anything new that comes up. I am not quite ready to write this off as a useless venture, no matter how frustrating it might be.”

* * *

Ruby Oliver thought that Colonel James Gavin was the handsomest man she’d ever seen. The rugged-looking thirty-five-year-old commander of the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment had arrived at Fairbanks a couple of days earlier along with the leading elements of his regiment and immediately made his presence known.

The first units of the 505th had parachuted in, which was dramatic and joyous to the Americans in Fairbanks. They’d waved and cheered as the paratroops floated down from the sky. Ruby and her group had arrived the day before by truck. She would not admit that they’d stolen it from an abandoned farm.

On first meeting her, Gavin had laughed and stripped her of her own little detachment of soldiers, but not until commending all of them for jobs well done. They had been interrogated by both Gavin and other officers. They told all they knew about the Japanese force that even now might be heading toward them. Ruby was able to confirm that the Japanese had no armor, little artillery, and few vehicles. They were not going to come up the road at thirty miles an hour like she had. Ten miles a day was more like it and she assured Gavin that the weather would begin to get truly shitty before long.

Now she was part of a volunteer group led by a big professional hunter and trapper named Bear Foley. Bear was well named. Although he was only a little over six feet tall, he weighed more than two hundred and forty pounds and he was indeed hairy. Foley now had close to four hundred men and fifty women in his volunteer brigade that Gavin chose to use as scouts. They’d already picked up on the fact that the Japanese were beginning to probe up the road to Fairbanks, which was why Gavin was there with his new command.

The lead elements of the 505th quickly improved the small and primitive airstrip to where C47s could land with their cargo of either twenty-plus troops or three tons of supplies. Both men and supplies were kept below maximum load weight because of the need to conserve fuel. Ruby and her cohorts noted with amusement that many of the military planes were painted over civilian DC-3s, and some still had passenger seating.

What was maddening was the time it took to develop a base so far away from the forty-eight states. The first planes unloaded fuel, much of which they promptly consumed for the trip back. After that, planes alternated between men, fuel, and supplies. Now, after a couple of hectic days and nights, more than two thousand men of the 505th were on the ground along with several hundred support personnel and a working supply of fuel and food. Talking to the troops, Ruby found that the regiment was someday going to be part of the newly forming 82nd Airborne Division and be entirely made up of paratroops.

Gavin was openly concerned about their lack of ammunition and artillery. The Alaskan Volunteer Scouts and other sources estimated the Japanese force at close to six thousand men now that it had been “reinforced” by the few survivors of the naval force the battleships had sunk.

Ruby sat on her sleeping bag in the tent she shared with Foley. He was a couple of years older than she and they’d hit it off immediately. He was a skilled hunter, something she admired since she thought she was pretty good herself. She was dressed in bra and panties and was intent on sewing a tear in her blouse.

“Looking good, Ruby,” Bear said with a grin as he stepped in.

She returned the smile. She’d lost twenty pounds and firmed up dramatically since the first Japanese attack. One thing good about war—it kept the weight down. Her dyed red hair was returning to its normal reddish-brown with disconcerting hints of gray that Bear didn’t seem to mind.

War also heightened the senses. She hadn’t slept with a man in more than a year, but now the urge was imperative.

“Join me,” she said. He laughed again and stripped down to his shorts after first closing the tent flap. He reached for her and she held up her hand.

“First tell me what Jim said.”

Bear laughed. “Jim? Damn it to hell, Ruby, he makes me call him Colonel. Anyhow, he said that the Japs will be heading for us because they have no place else to go. He says they’re starving since their support ships were sunk and they see Fairbanks as a way of staying alive. He says they’ll attack us with unbelievable ferocity because getting our supplies is their only hope of not starving to death. He says they would rather die in a suicide attack, not starve, which they feel would be cowardly. Gavin said he was stationed in the Philippines and helped them prepare for war with the Japs, so he’s studied them extensively. So, yeah, he sees a suicide attack by the Nips if things get real bad for them.”

Wonderful, she thought. She slipped out of her bra and panties and he got out of his shorts. She smiled when she saw he was more than ready. We could all be dead very, very shortly. Live and love while we can.

* * *

Beer runs qualified as emergencies, or so Stecher happily thought. Using rank for the privilege, he commandeered a jeep and drove the few miles to the hamlet of Bridger. Neither he nor Lieutenant Farris thought much of anything was likely to happen at nine o’clock this sunny Tuesday morning. As to their beloved company commander, it was highly improbable that Lytle was even awake, much less likely to stop by on an unannounced inspection. And who gave a shit if he did, he thought happily.

There had been a euchre tournament last night, and the men off duty had managed to wipe out their supply of suds; thus, the beer run to Sullivan’s small store in Bridger. Usually the lieutenant did it, but he was off someplace.

Stecher thought that life was not bad at all. He’d begun to get control over his fury regarding the loss of his brother. He recognized the helplessness of his situation. Until and if something changed dramatically, he would continue to spend World War II in southern California. And after talking to some navy pilots, he’d grudgingly come to accept the fact that soldiers on the ground were fair targets for pilots in planes. The enemy you spared today could come back and kill you tomorrow. What had happened to his brother was war, not murder.

He’d talked with a number of others who’d lost loved ones in the all too numerous defeats suffered by the United States. They’d commiserated, had a beer or six, and told how they controlled their anguish and sealed off their hate. If they didn’t it would consume them. Stecher would never get over the loss of his brother and would never want to, but he was beginning to understand what older people had said about life moving on after the death of someone dear. Someday, though, he would like his chance to personally kill at least one fucking Jap.

He pulled up in front of the single-story white frame store owned by Sullivan. He’d recently found out that Sullivan’s first name was Patrick. What else, he thought.

Stecher entered the store. No one was behind the counter, which was unusual. There was no way he could have sneaked up on Sullivan. There wasn’t that much else around in Bridger and anyone in the store had a clear view down the road, so somebody should have been there to greet him. Maybe Sullivan was in the can? He waited a few moments but heard nothing. He tapped on the wall by the door to announce himself, but still no one came. Should he help himself? Sullivan’s was an old-fashioned store where you told the clerk what you wanted and he got it for you. None of that supermarket stuff where you wandered around with a cart and filled it. Sullivan said there was too much opportunity to steal in such a situation.

So where was everybody? What the hell’s going on, Stecher thought. He heard the sound of something scurrying in the storage room in the back of the building. An animal? His rifle was in jeep only a few feet away. Should he get it? Hell, would he need it?

He heard a groan. He stepped around the counter and pushed open the door to the back room. There were no windows and it was illuminated only by the shaft of light from the open door. He heard more sounds.

Stecher fumbled by the doorway until he found a light switch and flipped it on. Two women were on the floor. They were bound hand and foot and there were rags stuffed in their mouths. They were Japanese.

One was older and her face was bruised. There was blood on her torn blouse. The younger one stared at him in primal fear. She did not appear be hurt and she looked very young, maybe fourteen.

Japs or not, they were suffering. He took the gags out of their mouths and gave them some water. He was not quite ready to untie them before he found out why they had been bound in the first place, although he didn’t think they were spies or saboteurs.

Stecher heard a metallic click behind him. “Stand and turn slowly.”

He did as told and found himself looking down the barrels of a shotgun held by Patrick Sullivan, the store owner.

The older woman jabbered something in what Stecher presumed was Japanese and Sullivan lowered his weapon. “Miko just told me you had nothing to do with this and were freeing them.”

Sullivan pulled a knife and deftly slashed the ropes holding them. Both women hugged each other and then Sullivan. The older woman, Miko, managed a smile for Stecher, while the younger one looked away. She seemed more embarrassed than hurt.

“It was two very young men who looked like Mexicans,” Miko said in unaccented English. “They came in and overpowered us before we could do anything. Thank you for helping,” she added to Stecher, who nodded.

She turned to Sullivan. “And just so you know, they did nothing other than take the few dollars in the register.”

Miko gathered up the younger woman. “Sergeant, this is my daughter, Nancy. Until the war started, she was a sophomore in college in San Francisco. We decided she was safer here.”

So much for being only fourteen, Stecher thought. Maybe Asian women matured differently. She also didn’t look totally Japanese. With a jolt, he realized that Sullivan was her father.

“So what are you going to do now?” Sullivan asked. “You going to turn them in and send them to a concentration camp?”

“I don’t know what the hell do to, Mr. Sullivan. Hey, they are your family, aren’t they? If so, they won’t be sent to a camp. Isn’t that the rule?”

Sullivan shrugged. “Nancy is my daughter and Miko is my wife. One problem, though, we never managed to get married formally. This is California, you know, and some of the traditional rules don’t always apply here. Both of these ladies were born here in California, which makes them citizens, and Nancy is only half-Japanese, so I guess only half of her will go to a camp.”

Stecher was at a loss. Technically, maybe the mother should be interned since she was hiding, which was against the law, and Sullivan was doing the hiding, which was also illegal. Damn. He hated the Japanese, but the rational part of him said that neither this woman nor her skinny daughter posed a threat to the United States. And would turning them in to the authorities do anything to help America win the war?

“So what are you going to do, Sergeant?” asked Sullivan. Stecher noted that the shotgun was still in the crook of his arm.

“Mr. Sullivan, I’m going to do what I set out to do in the first place and that’s get me a couple of cases of beer. What you do with your life is your own problem.”

* * *

Emotions were running high. Everyone in Nimitz’s offices was sickened, angered, and disgusted by the photos and films that had finally made it down to them from the brave men in Alaska who’d taken them. Men cursed and pounded their fists and a few men cried in frustration as they saw American soldiers and airmen being shot, drowned, and beheaded.

Dane had a hard time not being nauseated when the surviving crewmen of the PBY were chopped with the sword swung by the Jap officer. He’d known a couple of those guys. Granted, he had just met them before the takeoff and only shook their hands and wished them well, but he was part of the reason they were being murdered before his eyes. It had been his lamebrained idea to launch an attack by relatively defenseless flying boats in the first place that had led to their being shot down and captured. But for him, they’d still be flying long, dull, safe patrols over the endless Pacific.

Spruance, still functioning as Nimitz’s chief of staff, might have been reading Dane’s mind. “What happened to those men is nobody’s fault but the Japanese and, to a lesser extent, mine. I see Commander Dane looking miserable because he thinks he’s responsible, but he isn’t. I totally and enthusiastically supported the idea of the PBY raid, and I thought we would take even more casualties than we did. What I didn’t expect was that the Japs would kill those men in contravention of the Geneva Convention.”

The admiral took a sip of coffee. “Admittedly, the Japs never signed it and neither did we, but that does not permit them, or us, to behave like barbarians. When the war is over, or if they are captured, the men responsible will be brought to trial.”

“Can we behead them?” snarled Merchant.

“A lovely thought,” Spruance responded with a grim smile. “However, I don’t think that’ll be allowed under our rules. Hanging or a firing squad are our traditions. First, of course, we have to capture those people. We have been reasonably assured that none of the actual killings were done by their commander, this Colonel Yamasaki. That doesn’t absolve him. He’s responsible for the conduct of his men, just like General Homma is responsible for the Bataan Death March in the Philippines, and Hirohito’s responsible for the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. When the time comes, those men will pay.”

“I don’t think they would have done it without Yamasaki’s approval, sir,” said Dane. “He might not have given direct orders, but I’m certain his men knew that he approved, at least tacitly.”

Merchant was still angry. “May I register my disapproval with the decision to withhold the photos from publication?”

“Duly noted,” Spruance said. “However, nothing’s going to change. The public is inflamed enough right now. The pictures will be saved for the proper time, and that may be a long ways off in the future. Word is, the president is concerned that families will recognize their loved ones being murdered and, even though they are aware that they were killed in action, it would serve no purpose to show them in the act of being slaughtered.”

Dane silently agreed. How would his father and mother feel if they went to the movies and the newsreels showed their only son being sliced to bloody pieces by a crazy Jap with a sword? The military had been quite strict so far—no pictures of American dead had been released, except for a couple taken at Pearl Harbor. Of course, everyone knew that the ships at Pearl, especially the Arizona, were tombs containing many dead.

Merchant shook his head. “It just doesn’t seem fair, Admiral. Those guys risked their lives taking those pictures and we’re going to sit on them?”

“Life isn’t fair, Captain, and you know that.”

Dane interrupted. “Sir, how many know about these pictures?”

“Only a few have actually seen them and after we’re done, they get locked up, so let’s pass them back.” There was a shuffling of papers as the men complied. “Let the rumors flow, and don’t deny their existence, but they won’t be released without permission from Washington.”

Disgruntled and still dissatisfied, Dane and Merchant went back to their desks. Dane had gotten some uncoded Japanese radio broadcasts from the night before that had been recorded. He would listen to them and try to make an intelligent observation about the state of mind of the people in and around Tokyo. In his opinion, it was an exercise in futility, although it was intriguing the way the Japanese propagandists were still portraying the American attack on the Japanese squadron at Anchorage as a victory for their side. Also, they hadn’t admitted a thing regarding the two carriers that had been damaged after the attack on San Francisco, although a number of American pilots had confirmed that the ships been hit and were burning.

Well, Dane thought grimly, I don’t suppose we’d admit to losing any ships either, unless we had to. He wondered if there were photos of the Japanese carriers burning and if they would be released or locked up for a future date. He made a mental note to ask Merchant.

A young seaman first class came up to his desk. He didn’t salute or come to attention. There were far too many officers around for that kind of military formality. As Spruance had said with a smile, “Making an enlisted man salute every time he spoke to an officer in this place would mean the poor man would have no time for his work.”

“Commander, I don’t know how they got on post,” the sailor said, “but there are some civilian-type people outside the building asking for you.”

Dane was puzzled. Just about everyone he knew was within a few feet of him. “Any idea who?”

“No, sir, I was just asked to come and get you.”

Dane got up, told Merchant where he was going, and followed the sailor to the lobby of the building that had once belonged to a civilian contractor.

When he entered the lobby, two women approached him. One was a short-haired blonde in her mid-thirties with the kind of full figure that Captain Merchant always said he loved. The second was a short young brunette with equally short hair. He wondered if this was a new style. Both of them had terrible sunburns.

“Lieutenant Tim Dane?” asked the blonde.

“It’s lieutenant commander, but that’s not important, and yes, I am Tim Dane.”

“Well, I am Grace and this is Sandy, and we just wanted to check you out and make sure you were worth the trip. What do you think, Sandy?”

Sandy shrugged and walked around him, examining him quizzically. “He looks reasonably human, but I don’t know if he’s really the right person. Tell me, Lieutenant Commander But-that’s-not-important, are you a good guy?”

Dane had to laugh, even though he was puzzled. “I hope so.”

“You got yourself a girlfriend here?” asked Grace, who was clearly enjoying herself.

“Maybe. I got a letter from her a few days ago, but nothing since. I’m not even sure she’s my girlfriend although I’d sure as hell like her to be, and why am I telling you all of this since I don’t even know you?”

Then it hit him. Sandy and Grace were the women Amanda had mentioned in her letter. “Oh, Jesus, where’s Amanda?”

Grace smiled warmly and Sandy giggled. “Right outside that door,” Grace said.

Tim nearly knocked over two startled ensigns as he raced outside. She was standing a few feet away, just by the curb. She was wearing a short-sleeved white blouse and a flowered skirt that came to her knees. Her hair was as short as that of her friends and she was thinner than he remembered, but she was even lovelier. She smiled and he saw the two crooked teeth. Her skin was red and blotched, just like the other two women. They paused for a second and embraced. They didn’t kiss, just held each other tightly and swayed gently.

Grace and Sandy followed him outside. “I really think they do remember each other,” said Grace. Sandy, who was crying softly, silently agreed.

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