Rising Sun

CHAPTER 15

TIM ROLLED ON HIS SIDE AND LOOKED AT AMANDA, WHO WAS lying on her own beach blanket and looking contentedly at the full, billowing clouds. He thought they were cumulus but wasn’t sure. She knew he was staring at her and smiled slightly. She hoped he liked how she looked in her new two-piece bathing suit. Both Sandy and Grace insisted that it accentuated her very slender figure, while the light blue color went well with her lightly colored hair.

“Honey,” Grace had said, “if I had a flat belly and perky little breasts like that, I’d wear one of those suits too.”

However, Grace added, she didn’t. Her figure was more on the voluptuous side and she really needed something to help tuck in her tummy. Like most women, she wore a girdle when out in public. Amanda generally did, too, although she didn’t think she needed one. Not wearing a girdle was liberating but it scandalized older women, which she sometimes found amusing. Where was it written in law that women, especially slender ones, had to wear a heavy and constricting girdle that made a woman sweat and itch? Grace said it made it so much harder for a man to undress her if she wasn’t willing, so maybe that was a selling point.

Sandy sat a few yards away from them with Steve Farris. They seemed to be hitting it off. After some initial shyness, there was now a lot of laughter coming from their blanket. Grace and Merchant were somewhere off on their own. The difference in rank was too much for them all to be comfortable, especially Steve, who was still only a first lieutenant, and Merchant, the Army’s equivalent of a full colonel. Amanda thought that the military’s fixation with rank was silly, but it was something they had to live with.

Amanda rolled onto her side so she could face Tim. “Like what you see?”

“Immensely. You’re beautiful.”

“I’ll bet you say that to all the women who lie half naked on a beach with you.”

“I’d even say it if you were totally naked.”

She giggled. Sandy and Steve turned to see if they were missing something, decided they weren’t, and went back to their own conversation. Amanda liked what she saw of Tim in a bathing suit, even though it was baggy and too large for him and admittedly borrowed from a friend. He was muscular and had told her that he worked out at one of the base gyms to relieve stress. She thought that lying on a California beach was a much better way of alleviating stress. The only mildly disturbing factor was the presence of several destroyers and patrol craft at the opening to San Diego Bay. She rationalized their presence by thinking that they would have been there in peacetime as well.

“Tim, every now and then you have a good idea and this is a wonderful one. Your nephew seems like a nice man and it looks like he and Sandy are hitting it off.”

The four of them were on a beach a mile south of San Diego and it was a Sunday afternoon. A number of other couples had similar ideas, which meant there was little real privacy. Steve’s unit was through packing, and his battalion had been given the weekend off, which was why they were near San Diego and not Steve’s small base. On Monday they’d be heading north and on to the vast wilderness of Alaska to confront the Japanese army that was slowly approaching Fairbanks. Steve was less than thrilled and Tim shared his worry. After all, the woods up north were filled with angry, hungry, and fanatic Japs.

“Will you ever go back to Hawaii?” Tim asked.

“No,” she said softly. “That part of my life is over. I wanted to spend a year or so there on a kind of lark that turned into a tragedy. From what I’ve heard about the horrors of living on the Islands, especially Oahu, I wonder if anyone will ever want to go there on vacation again. I’ll continue nursing here until I get the chance to go back east and then on to med school. Do you think I can make it and become a doctor?”

“Easily,” he responded.

Nor would she have much trouble getting into any med school. Not only was she very bright and well educated, but her nursing experience would help her immensely. And it would not hurt at all that her father was a senior surgeon on the staff at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. But would she like it as a woman doctor in what was a man’s world?

She sat up and brushed sand off her pale skin. “Let’s go in the water. I can’t stand too much sun.”

She’d earlier explained that her badly sunburned body was pretty well healed, but that her new skin was still very tender. The doctors explained that she might be susceptible to sunburn for quite some time, perhaps forever. Therefore, her time on the sun-drenched beach would be limited and infrequent, unless she wanted to wear clothing, which struck her as silly. Why go to the shore if you had to stay dressed? Today was just too nice to spend indoors and, besides, even southern California weather couldn’t be wonderful all the time, especially with winter on the horizon. She would take a few chances and enjoy life.

They waded in and then swam out beyond a large seaweed encrusted raft that shielded them from being seen by anyone on the beach. No other swimmers were in the area so they were deliciously alone. The water came just up to their chests and they stood comfortably, letting this day’s fairly gentle waves splash around them. If the sea had been any rougher, they wouldn’t have been able to stand out there. They would have had to climb onto the raft.

Pleased by the privacy, they slipped into each others’ arms and kissed tenderly, then passionately. Tim was aroused and didn’t care if Amanda knew it.

She nuzzled under his chin. “I guess you really do like me.”

Tim kissed the top of her head. He slid his hands down and lifted her up, squeezing her bottom. So far she’d permitted him very few liberties and he wondered what would happen today, out of view and already half undressed.

She read his mind. “You’re a very good man, Tim. Someday you and I will make love, just not right now.”

“I understand.”

“No, you don’t. I was hurt once, betrayed by someone I loved very much, and I thought he loved me.”

The light dawned. “Is that why you came to Hawaii? Not just for the sailing and not just on a lark?”

“Partly,” she said and wiggled against him, arousing him even more. “The young man in question, and I will never tell you his name because you might want to challenge him to a duel, said he wanted to marry me and when I wouldn’t go to bed with him, told everyone I had. Then he spread it around that I had done some strange things with him. Look, there are a lot of people who do and that’s their business, but they keep it quiet. When he broadcast such lies, I felt like my reputation and trust had been destroyed.”

“People don’t want to believe the truth, do they?”

“Not when salacious tales are so much more fun. And there’s no way I could deny it. I tried, but people preferred to believe the more interesting lies. Tim, I’m no saint. A long ways from it in fact, but I do consider myself a private and discreet person.”

“Is that why we’re hiding behind a raft in the middle of the Pacific Ocean?”

“Absolutely,” she said and kissed him hungrily, teasing him with her tongue.

She pulled back and smiled. She slipped out of her top and guided his hands across her small and firm breasts. He hoisted her farther up, thankful for the ocean’s buoyancy, so he could kiss and nibble them. Her breasts were beautiful and delicious, tasting like salt water. She groaned with pleasure and let him shift the bottom of her suit so he could caress her even more intimately. After a few moments she groaned and shuddered, almost clawing at his shoulders.

She smiled tenderly and pulled his swim trunks town to midthigh. It was her turn to caress him, and she did until he climaxed.

“Who taught you to do that?” he asked.

She laughed softly and licked the inside of his ear. “You did. Just now.”

“I love you,” he said softly.

“I know, Tim, and I love you too. Now let’s get dressed and go back in.”

“Can we come back?”

She grinned wickedly. “Perhaps later if I get hot.”

This trip with his men was much different from the earlier trip to California, thought Farris. Way back then, he’d been a total rookie with a cast of misfits under his command, along with an NCO who held him in contempt and a pair of drunks as company and battalion commanders.

Since then, he’d been promoted, given an understrength company to command, seen combat and felt that he’d grown immensely. That did not, however, make him pleased as the long column of trucks rattled north. Taking on the Japanese army in the woods of Alaska was quite frankly frightening. Since receiving word that they’d be heading north, both he and the new battalion commander had been driving the men hard. They’d worked on their marksmanship, their conditioning, and their ability to operate in dense woods as a unit.

They’d also watched with a mixture of sadness and relief as a fresh and innocent-looking unit took over what Stecher referred to as their beachfront property. Leaving was a little bittersweet for Farris. After all the time watching for enemy ships and complaining about being lonely, he’d finally met someone. He and Sandy Watson had hit it off. They’d promised to write and he wondered if he could finagle some telephone calls from up near the Arctic Circle. She’d let him kiss her a few times, but stopped him when he tried to go a little farther. “When you come back,” she’d told him.

Steve was delighted that Uncle Tim had found someone as nice as Amanda, although both he and Sandy had been amused by the fact that they’d gone behind that raft thinking no one would notice. Sandy insisted they really weren’t going to go all the way because Amanda had said they wouldn’t. They’d made jokes about all the splashing and waves coming from behind the raft. Amanda and Tim had gone out there three times during the afternoon. What the hell, let them all be happy, Steve thought. Let everyone be happy. There’s a war on and tomorrow everybody could be dead.

There had been other casualties before they set off. One company commander and three lieutenants had been shipped off either for being utterly incompetent, for toadying too much to the previous regime, or both. No loss was the consensus. They were going into combat and nobody wanted jerks commanding men.

They’d been issued cold-weather gear including flannel shirts, field jackets, and fur caps that, in Farris’s opinion, made them look like Cossacks. Stecher said that barbarians in training was more like it.

Even though it was still fall according to the calendar, the weather was noticeably colder the farther north they went and there was wet snow on the ground. Steve wondered how the Japs liked freezing. He felt they’d gotten their reputation as jungle fighters, not winter fighters. The major reminded them that the Japs had been fighting in China for years and north China was far from tropical. No matter. He hoped they all froze their little yellow asses off before the column got to Fairbanks.

This, Farris was told, was the road that was supposed to ultimately link the U.S. with Fairbanks. Instead of building a proper highway, the engineers were now concerned only with hurriedly blasting and bulldozing a way to get troops and equipment to where the fighting would soon be.

The muddy dirt road was so narrow that pine boughs slapped against the canvas-sided trucks and they could see down valleys and ravines that could kill them if the drivers lost control and sent them tumbling over the edge. Some of the bridges over rivers and bogs were well constructed, while others looked like they’d been slapped together. Worse, they creaked and swayed when the trucks crossed over them. It didn’t help their morale to be told that construction on the road would soon shut down. The miserable weather would require it.

When they paused for periodic breaks to stretch and relieve themselves, Farris saw that the scenery was both magnificent and frightening. It looked as if they were surrounded by mountains. He no longer had any thoughts of camping and fishing.

Farris was not happy to be told that the Japanese were reported to be within fifty miles of Fairbanks. He had no idea how many of the enemy there were, but one would be too many.

After what seemed like an eternity, the trucks stopped and they all piled out, looking around in confusion. They’d run out of road and would have to hoof it.

“How much farther to Fairbanks?” Farris asked a civilian engineer who was lounging against a bulldozer. A handful of Negro soldiers clustered around him. They all looked amused at the new arrivals.

The man stopped and thought for a moment. “I reckon maybe seven hundred miles.”

Farris gasped. “What?”

The engineer roared with laughter. “Gotcha, Lieutenant. It’s ten miles or so. Unless you guys are really out of shape, you’ll make it before nightfall.”

They did, even marching into camp in decent order. The commander, Colonel Gavin, greeted them, clearly delighted to see reinforcements. He shook Major Baylor’s hand and went around encouraging the men and shaking still more hands, including Steve’s. Farris was impressed by Gavin. Maybe they did stand a chance against the Jap army.

Masao Ikeda stood on the flight deck of the Kaga. He did not walk to the edge like others did. He was not afraid of heights when flying twenty thousand feet or more in his Zero, but there was something about hanging over the ocean that unsettled him. Being afraid of anything was unmanly, and admitting to something as simple as fear of heights would subject him to merciless teasing from his fellow pilots if they ever discovered it. Anytime he had to be near the edge, he always made sure that an antiaircraft battery was beneath him, providing an illusion of stabililty.

The wind was cold and refreshing as the Kaga, her smaller sister, the Shinyu, and the rest of their task force headed north. Masao was tired. In the last few days, he’d spent long hours cooped up in the cockpit of his fighter practicing the skills that would enable them to kill Americans and return safely. He sensed rather than saw that his friend Toki was standing behind him.

“How was your day?” Toki asked. “How well did your new pilots perform?”

Masao laughed harshly. “Like clowns in a circus. I cry for them when I think of them going up against the Americans. Of course, I know my commanders felt the same way when I first started out and look at me now.”

“Are you saying there’s hope for them?”

Masao lit a cigarette and drew deeply. He felt that smoking made him look more mature. He grinned genially. “Yes, just not much.” One new pilot had crashed after aborting a landing and was in sick bay with a broken leg and a ruined career. “Now tell me, Toki, is it confirmed that we are heading to Alaska to rescue our men?”

“Yes, but it is not a rescue mission. The men on the ground are doomed. Our goal is to prolong their lives a little longer. Of course we’re not telling them that. We’re saying this attack is to enable them to take Fairbanks and spend the winter there until there’s either peace or they are rescued by the navy next summer. They will die before either happens.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“But it’s bushido. We are going to help them take more Americans with them when they die. Tell me, do you wish to die? Do you have a death wish?”

“Of course not. I have to get home to prevent you from marrying my sister. If you live a hundred years you will never be worthy of her even if she is a snotty, argumentative little brat. However,” he said, turning serious, “I will gladly forfeit my life for Japan if I have to. Well, maybe not gladly, but I will anyhow.”

“Would you be willing to die if the situation was hopeless and surrender was an option?”

“Surrender is shameful.”

Toki smiled. His friend had not answered the question. “Do you think the soldiers in Alaska should surrender rather than face death for no reason? They cannot be rescued and their deaths will not bring victory to Japan.”

“I don’t know,” Masao reluctantly admitted. “Tell me, do you have any good news to cheer me up?”

“Not really. The Akagi was sunk.”

Masao gasped. “Your information is wrong. The mighty Akagi was damaged, but was sent to Japan for repairs. She will soon return to the fleet.”

Toki shook his head. His expression was grim. “American submarines found her and finished her off. There were few survivors.”

Masao felt like he’d been punched in the gut. At thirty-seven thousand tons, the Akagi had been one of the largest carriers in the Japanese fleet, which meant that almost all the remaining Japanese carriers were of the smaller classes. Only his current ship, the Kaga, was anywhere near the Akagi’s size. Yes, the Japanese Navy had a number of carriers, but they were smaller than the American fleet carriers, and did not carry the number of planes the larger Japanese ships could.

Far more important, so many of the lost carrier’s crew had been his friends. He’d never experienced anything like this painful and personal sense of loss before.

“She was sunk in Tokyo Bay,” Toki added. “Our navy thinks they got the sub, but they aren’t certain and it really doesn’t matter at all. The Americans will trade a sub for a carrier every day. Who wouldn’t? A few more disastrous trades and the war will be over.”

Masao sagged. The implications were obvious. If American subs could enter the hitherto safe waters off Tokyo and sink Japan’s ships, then his beloved nation truly was in dire straits. But were they actually losing the war or was this just a temporary setback? He wished he could talk to Yamamoto, but that was clearly impossible. The admiral was almost a god.

Toki lit his cigarette and offered one to Masao, who had finished his. Masao took it if only to give himself a chance to think.

Toki took a deep drag and exhaled. “There is extreme pressure on Yamamoto to end the war by winning a great victory, which is one of the reasons for this foray to Alaska. When we attack, it is hoped that the Americans will come out and chase us. When they do we will ambush them again.”

“Do you think that’s possible?” Masao said hopefully. He realized that he was fully acknowledging the accuracy of what Toki was telling him, however depressing it was.

“I think it is no more likely than that we will win a great victory in China.”

Masao stifled a groan, drew deeply on his cigarette and choked. The Japanese army had been fighting the corrupt, disreputable, but enormous Chinese army for what seemed an eternity. It had been a source of jokes for the pilots and others in the navy. The army had started the war and now weren’t competent enough to finish off poorly armed and even more poorly trained and led Chinese hordes.

“Masao, I will now speak treason. If given half a chance, I will surrender rather than die for no good reason, and I hope our leaders will as well. Admiral Kurita has talked with Yamamoto and others and is hopeful that negotiations will bring an end to this war, even if it means that we will have to give back much of what we have conquered. In short, we might have to admit defeat in order to preserve Japan.”

Masao said quietly, “I have a better idea. The situation means that we must create a victory so that talks can begin.”

When the Nazis came to power, one of the first things they did was strongly encourage those of the minor nobility in Germany to stop using “von” in front of their last names. It was an attempt at egalitarianism that annoyed the erstwhile Johann von Klaas and it was one of the first things he reinstated when he defected to the Americans. Of course, important people in the Nazi hierarchy, such as von Runstedt and von Ribbentrop and von Papen, were powerful enough to simply ignore Hitler’s pressure. Klaas’s usage of the title seemed to amuse the Americans. More important, they had accepted him as well as his minor title.

FBI Special Agent Harris looked up from his desk. “Found them, Herr von Klaas?”

Von Klaas almost bowed before forgetting that Americans didn’t do that. At least he hadn’t started to give the Hitler salute. It was something he’d avoided as much as possible in Mexico and would have been more embarrassing than bowing.

“Sorry, but no. The messages were in English, not German, which makes sense. Anything in German would have attracted undue attention.”

Harris smiled. “It also means I don’t need you to translate, Herr von Klaas.”

“Then send me to Brazil, Agent Harris.”

“Soon,” Harris replied. “Now, what was in the messages?”

“First, let me say that Braun and his comrades are very clever. Like I said, they transmitted in English, which would not have attracted any attention unless we were looking, and the messages were not coded. They are hiding in plain sight. The messages are extremely short and we’ve been unable to track them to any specific location.”

“No surprise.”

“The messages contained symbols and vague terms like objectives and resources, which would mean nothing to somebody not looking. If we weren’t looking at that frequency and those times, the verbiage would be totally innocuous and appear to be conversations between the representatives of a couple of businesses. However, we are looking and I believe Braun and whoever might be with him north of the border are beginning to run out of money.”

Harris laughed. “Bloody marvelous. Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of Nazi swine.”

“Although Braun is clever, I think that the men Braun left behind in Monterrey and Mexico City may have pretty well spent all they were given, which was about fifty thousand dollars. Perhaps it was too much money and too much temptation for them to resist. Braun was lamenting that things were getting tight where he was, and that they should send him more of what he referred to as resources. Their response was that things were tight for them as well and reminded him that he had not fulfilled his end of the contract, whatever that was, and that he shouldn’t expect more until he does.”

Harris nodded thoughtfully. “Either more sabotage or, more likely, he’s to provide information on the location of the Saratoga’s task force. Do you really think they’ve run out of money?”

Von Klaas shrugged. “Braun is a very smart man and I believe he took at least one other man, likely Krause, with him. Krause is not stupid and he would not be profligate. As to the ones he likely left behind in Mexico, as I said, they are idiots and could easily have gone through the money I gave them.”

“Then what will they do to get more?” Harris enquired.

“Agent Harris, I haven’t the foggiest idea.”

The five sailors were engrossed in their game, high-stakes poker. The pot was at several hundred dollars and might go higher, which fixated them. A couple of them had never seen that much money all at one time.

What they were doing was illegal and might get them court-martialed if caught, but the chance at heavy action was worth more than what they considered the remote risk of punishment. If the police or shore patrol burst in on their basement room, they could expect time in jail or the brig, and be busted in rank, but that was a chance they were willing to take. It was also why they’d posted a guard outside the door.

Thus, they were stunned when two masked and armed men burst in, guns pointed at them.

“Put your hands on your heads and stand up.”

It was awkward, but they complied, almost too shocked to speak. One, a sailor whose cousin had been standing guard, was worried and asked about him.

“Your friend at the door is taking a nap. Whether he wakes up or not is largely up to you. Now, turn and face the wall and disrobe completely.”

“What?” one of the gamblers exclaimed.

“Shut up and do as you’re told. We could kill you all here and leave you and no one would notice for days, but we won’t unless you force us to.”

Sullenly, the men stripped down. They were told to stand naked and facing the wall with their hands stretched up as high as they could. While one robber held a gun on them, the other scooped up the money and stuffed it into a cloth laundry bag. The second man then rifled through their clothing and found a little more money along with a small cache of weapons.

“I guess you don’t trust anybody,” the first man cackled. “Can’t say as I blame you.”

“We’ll get you, you prick,” snarled one of the gamblers.

“Actually, you won’t. First, you have no idea who we are and where we’re going and, second, you were performing an illegal act. What are you going to do, run to the police and admit that you got robbed while committing a crime? What do you think they might say when you asked them to get you your money back? That would not be smart. No, you will write this off as a cost of doing business. You might want to get a better man as a guard. It was very easy to take him down, although I don’t think he’s badly hurt.”

The second man gave the money bag to the first and then scooped up the gamblers’ clothing. “This will ensure that you don’t leave for a while,” the first gunman continued. “We’ll leave your clothing just a ways down the alley.”

With that, Braun and Krause departed. They were laughing and almost exhilarated. They took off the bandannas that served as masks and turned the reversible jackets they’d been wearing inside out. They got on a San Diego bus and sat separately, even going past where they’d pulled off the holdup. No one was in sight. Braun thought the gamblers might still be looking for their clothes. It would be a while before they found them in a trash container, and they would not wander around naked for the same reason that they would not go to the cops.

Two hours later, they were in the apartment above Swenson Engineering. Braun laughed and held up a wad of cash. “A little over two thousand dollars. Well, along with the other heists we’ve pulled, this ought to keep us in money for at least a little while.”

The two men had spent time scouting out a number of such high-stakes games and in a two-night period following a payday, they’d hit four of them. They now had more than ten thousand dollars to keep them going.

“Yes,” said Krause, “but we can’t do it again. The next time they’ll have real guards on lookout and others watching the guards. They’ll catch us and we’ll have our asses kicked and then we’ll be thrown into the ocean as shark bait. The next time we’re short of cash, we’ll have to come up with something new.”

“Suggestions?”

Krause grinned. “I suppose we could always rob a small bank in a small town.”

“Those are Japs,” yelled Stecher. Farris took half a second to confirm that the planes screaming only a few feet overhead were indeed Zeros before throwing himself prone and beginning to crawl to a culvert.

Machine guns chattered and bullets ripped into the American camp at Fairbanks. Men ran in all directions, stunned by the suddenness of the attack. Some were chewed by bullets and left sprawling. Farris could hear screaming.

“What happened to our radar?” yelled Stecher. “And where the hell are our planes?”

Farris saw that the handful of American fighters and transports lined up along the still inadequate airstrip were being shot to pieces. So too were fuel dumps and other storage facilities. He didn’t bother telling Stecher that radar was inadequate and maybe pointed in the wrong direction, but he did wonder just why no American planes or spotters had caught sight of the oncoming Japanese horde.

Plane after plane swept over the base, strafing and bombing without much in the way of resistance. A few antiaircraft guns opened up, but they didn’t stop the Japanese. A couple of enemy planes were hit and one crashed into a warehouse, resulting in an explosion and fire that quickly consumed the entire building. Farris wondered if the Japanese pilot, his plane damaged, had directed his plane there.

A pair of American P47s did make it into the air and a couple more Zeros were shot down before the American planes went down in flames too.

It was over as quickly as it had begun. Farris checked his watch. He thought the raid had lasted no more than fifteen minutes. A grim-faced Colonel Gavin began shouting orders and yelling at a major who looked like wanted to be anyplace else on the planet. Perhaps it was the major’s fault that the Japs had gotten so close, although overall responsibility for the base was Gavin’s.

Ambulances had begun to pick up the wounded and the dead, while shocked but unhurt GIs crawled out from where they’d been hiding. Stecher grabbed Farris’s arm and pulled him.

“Come this way.”

Farris did as directed. In a little while they stood with a bunch of others around the wreckage of an airplane, a Japanese Zero. The tail was burning brightly. The gas tank had exploded and fires were consuming it.

“Look in the cockpit,” Stecher said, laughing. “That’s a fucking Jap.”

Indeed it was, Farris thought. The man had been burned to a crisp and was little more than a charred and blackened skeleton. His white teeth seemed to be laughing at them. Should I feel sympathy for him, Farris wondered. After all, didn’t the pilot have a family? Or friends? Where there people who would mourn for him when they received word that he’d gone on a final mission?

So, should I feel sorry for him? Farris asked himself.

Fuck no.