Rising Sun

CHAPTER 5

DANE WAS SICKENED BY THE RESULTS OF THE CARNAGE. A DOZEN ships in all had departed Hawaiian waters and all but two had been sunk by Japanese planes flying from an unexpected carrier.

Approximately ten thousand people, most of them civilians and the rest wounded military personnel, had been killed along with the crews of the escorting warships. Only a few hundred survivors, many of them badly wounded, had been picked up by fishing boats and other ships whose captains were brave enough to help. So far, news of the slaughter had been kept from the civilian population, which was still reeling from the litany of disasters since the initial attack on Pearl Harbor. That couldn’t last and soon the American public would find out about this latest round of bloodletting.

He couldn’t help but wonder if one of the dead was Amanda Mallard. She’d said that she would try to get out of Hawaii, hadn’t she? Worse, he might never know her fate. There were no accurate lists of those who’d been on the ships, so she and so many others might be listed as missing forever. Nobody should ever be “missing,” he thought angrily. Family and friends and lovers should know what happened to the ones they cared for. Even as he thought that, he knew there were thousands of such missing from previous wars, so many that nations had tombs dedicated to them. There was a tomb in Washington for an American unknown from the First World War, and there would certainly be one from this conflagration as well. He wondered if they’d put up a separate tomb or just add another body. What a hell of a happy thought, he concluded.

“Captain, when the devil are we going to start winning?” he asked Merchant as he passed by Dane’s desk.

“Possibly when we stop underestimating the damned Japs and realize that they are extremely smart and dedicated people. A number of senior officers still think that Nazi Germany both made their planes and are flying them because little yellow-skinned Japs can’t possibly be that good. The same people don’t think it’s possible that the Japs have giant battleships, either. Or even better torpedoes than we do. Christ, the stubbornness of some people in command is enough to make you want to punch someone, but you didn’t hear that from me, did you?”

Dane grinned. “Not a word.”

“Good. I submitted your paper regarding their suicidal tendencies, and the reaction around the fleet and the Marine Corps has been less than overwhelming. Some of those I talked to don’t believe humans would do that. One of our admirals actually said it wasn’t Christian. He got a little annoyed when I reminded him that very few Japanese were Christians. Well, fuck him. The Marines said they weren’t planning on taking prisoners anyway, which is good thinking.”

“So once again we’re doomed to learn the hard way.”

“Looks like it, Dane. You going to watch the Saratoga leave?”

The Pacific Fleet’s one remaining carrier, along with three of Admiral Pye’s old battleships and a handful of cruisers, would be departing San Diego that night. It had been determined that she was just too vulnerable in the narrow confines of the bay and, since there was a civilian population of more than a hundred thousand in the area, there was little possibility of keeping her presence a secret. Once upon a time, this particular incarnation of Task Force 16 would have been a powerful force. Now, her ships were going to run for their lives and hide from the overwhelmingly strong enemy. The battleships were there not because they were strong, but because they might delay or distract a Japanese assault, and possibly pay with their lives, permitting the carrier to get away. Dane wondered if their crews understood that.

How the hell did the United States Navy ever get itself into this position? Dane wondered. Where the Sara and her sisters would go, neither Dane nor Merchant knew. Perhaps Halsey, sick but still commanding America’s one remaining carrier force in the Pacific, didn’t know either. Maybe he’d make it up as he went along. With a touch of whimsy, Nimitz had told the staffers and newspaper reporters that the Sara was headed for Shangri-la, the mythical takeoff point for Doolittle’s raiders for their attack on Tokyo.

Later that day, as Dane and a number of others looked on the empty anchorage, he realized that Amanda must have felt much the same sense of loss when the three submarines left Pearl Harbor. At least he hoped she had, he thought, and wondered if he was being greedy. Sometimes the depth of his feelings for a woman he’d known for such a short time surprised him, but she had moved him and he thought he’d at least gotten a little bit to her too.

He laughed harshly. Maybe someday the gods of chance would smile on them and they’d be reunited only to find out that they didn’t care for each other at all. He realized that he desperately wanted to know one way or another.

Damn it to hell, he felt like a lost kid.

Tonight they would leave. To Amanda and the other two women it was both exhilarating and frightening. It was a long way from Hawaii to California, and so much could go wrong on a journey that was dangerous to begin with and could easily prove fatal. Granted, they had all learned a lot about sailing and each other in the last few weeks, but did they know enough to make it across the Pacific? There was only one way to find out.

Every spare inch of the catamaran was packed with food and water. Each person was allowed one small suitcase, which meant that a lot of personal treasures would be left behind. Amanda was fortunate in that all her really important possessions were still at her parents’ house back in Maryland.

Mack had decided to leave this night because of still more rumors of Japanese ships in the area, coupled with the fact that their preparations were beginning to attract attention. He said he was afraid that a panicky mob might storm the boat and either steal it or destroy it while trying to get away. They had guns, but shooting other islanders was not part of the plan, at least not yet. Mack said he’d chased away a couple of scrawny local would-be tough guys who seemed far too interested in the Bitch. Their names were Ace and Mickey and they seemed interested in the three women as well as the cat.

Amanda was back at the car, which was parked a good hundred yards from the boat. She’d gone there for one last check to see if she’d left anything important behind. She hadn’t. On a whim, she decided to leave the keys on the front seat. She sure as hell wasn’t going to be driving it any longer. Let some islander enjoy it and the half tank of precious gas, along with tires that still had some tread life on them.

Screams and shouts pierced the air, paralyzing her for an instant. She got control of herself and moved slowly and stealthily toward where the catamaran was anchored in shallow water. It was just off the beach and in water that was barely knee deep. As she got closer, she saw two men whom she quickly identified as Ace and Mickey. They were struggling with Sandy and Grace, while Mack was down on his hands and knees and apparently unable to get up.

Ace and Mickey were obviously hellbent on hurting her friends and stealing the Bitch. It was what Mack had feared. People were so afraid of what might happen that they would take desperate measures to get off the island. Amanda and the others were ready to leave; however, it looked as if they might have waited too long.

The attackers had their backs to the water and the sailboat, which presented Amanda with an opportunity, however slim. The two men had knives, but apparently no guns. Mack looked badly hurt, but there was nothing she could do for him right now. The men were wrestling with Sandy and Grace and pulling at their clothes. They would be raped before the men departed, and possibly killed. They knew it and were fighting back desperately, clawing and screaming, despite the unlikelihood of anyone hearing them.

Keep up the noise, Amanda prayed as she slipped into the shallow, warm water. She crawled silently to the cat and hauled herself on deck. She slid on her belly to the cabin where Mack had stored the weapons. Of the three, she liked the Winchester the best and quietly took it from the container. She checked and found it loaded.

She couldn’t see Mack, but Ace and Mickey were still ripping the clothes off Sandy and Grace, who were screaming and wrestling while their attackers yelled and laughed. She couldn’t shoot at them because they were all twisted up together. Amanda took a deep breath and fired one shot in the air. The noise stunned everyone.

“Drop them!” she yelled, wondering if that was quite the thing to say.

“Bullshit,” yelled Ace, the one holding Sandy. She was already naked from the waist down and one of his hands was between her legs. Grace was totally nude and being held by Mickey. He threw her aside and pulled out a knife.

Amanda fired and hit him in the leg. He fell screaming as blood began to gush from his wound. Ace twisted Sandy to use her as a human shield.

“Drop the gun or I’ll kill her.”

Amanda wavered. Once again, she didn’t have a clear shot. The man she’d shot had stopped moving and was glaring at her. His blood-covered hands clutched his wound and it didn’t look like she’d hit an artery.

“Don’t believe me?” Ace snarled. “Watch.”

Before Sandy’s attacker could move his knife into position, he flinched and a look of disbelief crossed his face. He staggered and reached behind him only to find Mack was pulling his own knife out of the man’s back. Mack quickly sliced it across Ace’s throat. Ace fell forward as blood pumped out. His arms and legs flopped for a moment and then he stopped moving.

Mack walked across to Mickey, the man Amanda had shot. He was whimpering and trying to crawl away. Mack reversed the knife and hit him hard on the back of the head. Mickey quivered and lay still. His leg wound continued to bleed.

Mack looked around coldly. “Good job, Amanda. Always knew you were the strong one. Now, the two of you get dressed and get all your shit onto the Bitch. We’re leaving right this minute, and anything we don’t have we don’t need. I don’t know if that shot and all the other noise is gonna scare anybody up or not, but I really don’t feel like explaining any of this to the police or the army.”

Grace had put on her torn blouse and panties and pointed to the unconscious attacker. “You’re not going to kill him?”

“You want me to?”

“He wanted to rape me, so yeah, I do.”

Mack nodded. “What about you?” he asked Sandy, who had managed to put on her shorts.

“I don’t want you to kill anybody on my behalf.”

Grace sagged. “I don’t either, I guess. Why don’t we just get the hell out of here?”

“I’ve got the gun and I don’t want any more killing, either,” said Amanda.

Mack laughed. “You got all the votes, then.” He walked over and checked the wounded man’s pulse. “Not that it matters, Amanda, but you didn’t kill him.”

In the distance they heard sirens. Someone had heard the shooting and the screams and called the cops. “Now it’s really time to go,” Mack said, “unless you want to spend the next several days or longer explaining what we’re up to, and maybe having all our stuff confiscated because we might be hoarding.”

“But we’ve done nothing wrong,” Amanda said.

Mack laughed harshly. “Maybe you haven’t, but let’s just say that maybe I’m not a virgin and my past might not stand up to a serious investigation. They do a little digging and find out what I used to do and we’ll all be in jail while they sort things out.”

Shit, thought Amanda. Why hadn’t they realized that Mack really was a crook? Too late now. “Then let’s get going,” she said.

Headlights were visible on the road leading to the shore. They climbed aboard, hauled up the anchor, pushed off, and set the sail. The catamaran moved slowly at first and they tried to help out by paddling. She soon picked up speed as her large square sail filled with the wind. The surf was wondrously calm and they made deep water quickly. Amanda looked back and saw several people walking around where they’d just left. She wondered if the police could even see the cat as they sailed away.

“Don’t worry about the cops,” Mack said. “They’ll probably think those two jerks hurt each other fighting, and the living one won’t disagree. He’ll claim it was self-defense and maybe even get away with it. Can you even imagine him telling the cops they were trying to steal the cat and were going to rape you ladies as an explanation for getting shot and stabbed? Not a chance.”

Amanda had to agree with Mack’s logic. But what had he done in the past that made him afraid to talk to cops?

Mack laughed. “Ladies, we are on our way. California, here we come!”

Farris thought his little command was shaping up fairly well, especially with Stecher around to yell at his platoon of rank amateurs. While one squad patrolled the beach and the dirt road leading to it, the others worked on being soldiers and that included plenty of marching and running. The men were losing a lot of fat and getting into shape. Stecher had set up a firing range and they’d used a few clips of ammo each until they could at least get close to hitting the target. Nor did Captain Lytle seem to mind when Farris asked for more ammunition. Just as long as Farris’s military exercises kept him away, the captain was happy.

The men had bitched, but they really couldn’t complain too much since Farris made a point of leading them on all their endeavors. Steve found he could march and run and keep up with the best of them, which pleased him no end. At the end of a long march, Farris generally called for a race to the finish with about a quarter mile to go. To his amazement, the men jumped at the chance to beat their lieutenant who, to their mock dismay and his total astonishment, generally won. He even beat Stecher, who loudly proclaimed that every good NCO always let his officers win. This was met with even more good-natured laughter.

After a while, it was clear that no one missed being with Captain Lytle even if it meant being farther away from the pleasures of San Diego.

Farris had found a nice spot for their new camp two miles north of Lytle’s base, which was itself north of La Jolla, and positioned the platoon behind a low hill. Lookouts could see in all directions, and their tents were concealed from the sea and from the land. Borrowing a small boat, Farris had confirmed that the camp wasn’t visible until you were almost onto it.

And no rocks were painted white.

The dirt road led inland to a village that was little more than a settlement. The locals called it Bridger, maybe after the frontiersman, Jim Bridger, or maybe not. Nobody was certain. Farris was of the opinion that it didn’t matter because it would be swallowed up as San Diego inevitably grew and sprawled. Bridger had a loose population of just over a hundred and was centered on a combination store and gas station owned by an old-timer named Sullivan. The store carried food that supplemented their rations and, even better, a decent selection of beer, which Sullivan made sure never ran out. Thousands of soldiers and Marines were stationed nearby, but their presence hadn’t yet made it felt this far from San Diego. It was like living in another world.

They had a shortwave radio and there was a phone line in Bridger that one of Farris’s men had managed to extend to their camp. The phone company would probably pitch a fit if they found out, but who cared? Hey, there’s a war on. The area was scenic, with sandy beaches and rocky hills, and even Stecher had begun to come around to the idea that not going anyplace wasn’t all that bad, although he still wanted to kill every Jap who’d ever been born. His grief was becoming manageable and he definitely looked on Steve with a growing measure of respect.

Their first patrols along the shore had produced shock. There were many footprints and they wondered if they were from Japs sneaking ashore during the night. One night they’d waited in ambush and found only the local people fishing for pleasure, or drinking and watching the surf, or drinking and making love and watching the surf. To their dismay, the majority of people having sex in the sand were older, and they made a conscious effort to not look. Some of them reminded Farris too much of his parents.

“I gotta get my uncle up here,” Farris said to Stecher. He’d gotten mail from home saying that Uncle Tim Dane had been promoted and was now at San Diego. Farris bet he’d enjoy some time on the beach, and maybe he knew some women he could bring along. All the women in Bridger were old, at least in their thirties, and some of the seals and otters cavorting in the waves were beginning to look really good. It was rumored that Sullivan had a family, but no one had seen them. If true, Farris wondered why.

Tim Dane considered himself far from stupid, so when he was told to be on the alert for saboteurs, he wondered if anybody knew for certain or if it was someone’s wildass guess. If they did know for certain, then how did they know? He was in Intelligence, which meant everyone was paranoid, and why not? Overconfidence had led to Pearl Harbor, hadn’t it? However, nobody in the office knew anything specific; therefore, it must be more fear of the Japanese bogeyman, which was on the increase since Midway and the slaughter of the refugee ships.

Of course there was another reason for paranoia. German saboteurs had landed on America’s Atlantic coast and, even though they’d been either rounded up or killed, everyone had to wonder if all of them were accounted for, or if there were others hiding and waiting for the opportunity to attack America at home. Thus, there was real concern that the Japanese would try the same thing.

Dane was relatively alone in thinking that such attacks would not come from what remained of the local Japanese community in California. On the other hand, Governor Olson and Lieutenant General James L. DeWitt, commander of the Fourth Army and the Western Defense Command, were adamant that all Japanese were potential subversives. They would be rounded up and held until further notice. When it was brought to their attention that most of those being rounded up and interned were American citizens, including many native born, DeWitt’s response was quite simple, “a Jap is a Jap.”

Sadly, he had a point. The Tokyo government had decreed that all who’d immigrated to the U.S. were still considered Japanese citizens whether they’d become U.S. citizens or not. Tokyo further said that this also applied to their children, who were native-born American citizens. This had caused a great deal of confusion and even more distrust because of the disasters at Pearl Harbor, the Philippines, and Midway. Intelligence was an inexact science, and neither Dane nor anyone else could say with certainty what the native Japanese population in California was thinking or what they would do. Being able to speak and read the language was some advantage for Dane, but he could say nothing with confidence. He could not read people’s minds or peer into their souls.

Nor did it help that Yamamoto himself had been quoted as saying that it might be necessary to invade the West Coast and even Washington, D.C., to bring the United States to the peace table. Dane thought the Japanese admiral had been engaging in hyperbole, since such was clearly far more than the Japanese could accomplish, but many people thought otherwise.

The Japanese internees were sent to a camp at Manzanar in the Owens Valley, east toward the mountains. A number of local Japanese had been rounded up and were being held in a warehouse near the San Diego waterfront and were waiting for transportation. Dane was ordered to see them and interview them, a task that he found totally odious.

Only a score of Japanese waited for him, older people, a few small children, and a handful of youngsters in their early teens. They were sitting on the cement floor of the warehouse and looking confused. A couple of the young teenagers appeared angry.

“I was born here,” one of them said. He was no older than fourteen. “And so was my mother. So why the hell are we being sent away?” It didn’t go unnoticed that the boy spoke perfect, unaccented English.

Major Cullen was from the 32nd Division and in charge of the ragtag group. He turned and snarled at the boy. “Because you’re Japs, that’s why, and the only good Jap is a dead Jap.”

When the kid looked like he was going to say something more, Dane told him not to lest he get his skull cracked. He said it in Japanese, which surprised the boy and stunned Cullen.

“You speak Jap?” asked Cullen.

“Looks like it, doesn’t it?”

“No matter, they all speak English.”

Dane shook his head. “I find it very hard to think that any of these people are saboteurs. Did you find any weapons, any radios?”

Cullen shrugged, “A couple of hunting rifles, but no shortwave radios. You’re probably right, Dane, none of this group is any threat whatsoever. However, until we sort them out they stay locked up, and I don’t care what the bleeding hearts say. You know what they’re doing to our people in the Philippines and Hawaii, don’t you?”

Dane knew all too well. American prisoners of war were being brutalized, while many American civilians in the Philippines had been jammed into a concentration-camp-like place called Santo Tomas in Manila, where they were being poorly fed and probably abused. Americans in Hawaii were slowly starving while the Japanese Navy blockaded the islands and prohibited food from going in. He couldn’t help but think of Amanda and whether she’d made it out or was dying in Hawaii. She had been fairly thin in the first place. How would she survive? He had a nightmare vision of someday returning to Hawaii and finding a skull with a twisted front tooth and realizing it was her.

Or had she survived at all? Or, damn it to hell, was her body rotting at the bottom of the Pacific as a result of the attack on the doomed convoy? For a second the cluster of Japanese civilians didn’t look all that harmless. He shook his head and put things back in perspective.

Cullen softened. “Look, I’m not a total goddamn monster. I know these old ladies and little kids are no more a threat to the country than are one of Orson Welles’s little green men from Mars,” he said, alluding to Welles’s War of the Worlds broadcast that had terrorized so many people a few years earlier. “But I do have my orders and I’m going to obey them.”

“I understand,” Dane said, and he did. Japanese were not the only ones being interned. Some Germans and Italians had also been rounded up, although selectively and in much smaller numbers. FDR had signed Executive Order 9066 authorizing just such actions, and Dane could do nothing to prevent the roundup unless he wanted to risk court-martial.

And what did he really want to do? Prior to Pearl Harbor, numbers of Japanese-Americans had been proud of the advances Japan had made in less than a hundred years, emerging from a medieval period to become a technological and military power of the first rank, and that included their military advances in China. Japanese-language newspapers had praised their homeland with bold headlines and pro-Imperial articles. So too had millions of German-Americans and Italian-Americans when Hitler and Mussolini led their respective homelands to victory after victory. Did that make them all suspect as traitors? War with the United States had quieted them and made many choose between their new country and their old homeland. The overwhelming majority had chosen the United States. But had it changed their hearts? And what about the minority who felt more strongly for their origins than for their new homes?

And what would happen to this pitiful handful of people staring at him if they were released back into the population? Many Japanese ran small farms or owned little shops. A number of their businesses had been burned and looted by angry white Californians in an orgy of violence that had gotten worse after the disaster at Midway. Censored reports said that more than a hundred Japanese men had been lynched, and an unknown number of women raped by angry whites in California. For the most part, the police had done an admirable job of enforcing the law, but they couldn’t be everywhere; thus, there was some logic to the thought that interning the Japanese was for their own protection.

Some of General DeWitt’s staff had read Dane’s report on Japanese fanaticism and, to his dismay, it was being used as another excuse to round up the unreasonable Japs as opposed to more reasonable Germans and Italians.

“What are you thinking, Commander?” asked Cullen.

“That I should go back to base, write a little report about how I spent my day, and then go get a drink.”

“My thoughts exactly,” said Cullen.

Perhaps a drink would help him to not wonder what might be happening to Amanda. Maybe he would phone his nephew and take him up on the invitation to see how the other half lived just a few miles up the coast.

Their first day sailing out of Oahu, they’d sighted a number of small craft like theirs, but nobody made any attempt at contact. Were these others trying to flee, or were they fishermen busy at work, or perhaps they were smugglers? Neither Amanda nor the others cared—they just kept their distance, and the other vessels did as well. Leave me alone, and I’ll leave you alone, was the clear message.

A few hours later, just before nightfall and what they hoped would be the safety of darkness, they saw a Japanese cruiser on the horizon. They quickly dropped their sail in hopes that they wouldn’t be spotted. They were, and the cruiser headed their way, even firing a shell that landed a few hundred yards away when they wouldn’t follow the order to heave to. Mack handed them each a gun and the message was clear—use it on yourself. Don’t become toys for the Japanese Navy to play with, torment, and then throw overboard to the sharks. They took the guns and looked at each other, was this the way their lives were going to end?

To their astonishment and relief, the enemy ship suddenly turned and raced away. “I guess they found something more important than us,” Mack said as he collected the weapons. The cruiser fired a second shell, apparently just for spite, and it raised a giant splash a ways away from them. There was no third shell and Amanda imagined the Japanese officers on the bridge of the ship laughing at the silly sailboat whose occupants they’d just terrified.

Late in the second day, they were practically alone in the vast sea. The other small boats had scattered and were out of sight, although a few were doubtless attempting the same trip to California. The food riots and the menace of the Japanese Navy were too much, as it had been for them.

The weather remained warm and good, with largely clear skies. The seas were calm and the catamaran clipped along, eating up miles and easily climbing over the gentle swells. If it wasn’t so deadly serious and their journey just beginning, it would be pleasant.

“Don’t get used to this happy little vacation,” Mack warned. “The ocean can turn into a monster in a heartbeat.”

Amanda agreed. It was noted that this was the first time that the catamaran with the girls sailing it had ever been out of sight of land. It was a profound and disconcerting feeling and one that was not at all pleasant.

Seasickness was not that much of a problem, although Grace had spent a little time sending her meals into the briny deep before managing to shake it off. They were just too busy sailing the catamaran to indulge in the luxury of being sick. Even though the weather was calm, at least two of them were alert at all times.

When there was time, Amanda couldn’t help but wonder whether she’d actually killed Mickey, the man she’d shot. If so, what did she truly think about it? He and the other one had been trying to rape her friends and steal the boat, leaving them stranded in Hawaii. Desperate times called for desperate measures, didn’t they? And what she had done was self-defense, wasn’t it?

Despite the fact that Mickey was a sleazy and violent criminal, she found herself hoping she hadn’t killed him, although she concluded that she’d likely never know unless Mack confessed that he’d lied and that the man was dead when he’d checked on him. That she was coping so well with the possibility that she’d killed was another surprise. The fact that Ace and Mickey were out to rob and possibly kill them made it a justifiable killing, which must be what went through the minds of men in combat when they had time to think about it. Her father had been a corpsman in the Argonne in the first war and never talked about it, politely but firmly refusing to be drawn into any discussions. Now she had a small idea why.

But what about Mack? He’d stabbed the other man without hesitation and then didn’t want to get involved with the cops. If and when the time was right, she’d ask him. There must be a very dark side to his past. She had a thought and almost laughed. Maybe the catamaran wasn’t his and an investigation would prove it. Maybe he’d stolen if from the rightful owners and murdered them. If so, Mack was a thief as well as a killer. Despite belated misgivings, she had to accept the fact that she was on a small sailboat with a man who killed, even though it was in self-defense and on behalf of herself and her friends. Of course, she realized, she had done much the same thing. She hadn’t been aiming for Mickey’s leg. No, she’d shot at his chest and simply missed. So much for her being the next Annie Oakley, she laughed softly.

Mack gathered them for yet another class in navigation. “Remember, ladies, we’ve got to go north as well as east in order to hit California. Hawaii’s just south of the Tropic of Cancer and San Diego is about eight hundred miles north of that, with San Francisco another several hundred miles beyond. It we make a mistake and go too far north, we’ll hit stretches of coast that are as wild and rugged and dangerous as you can believe, and filled with really large bears who like to eat little girls like you. White meat is their favorite, I’ve heard.

“Too far south, and we’ll land in Mexico, where the land is equally crappy, and I’m not too sure whose side they’re on right now. Therefore, we’ve got to hit somewhere between San Diego and San Francisco or we could be in shit as deep as if we’d stayed in Hawaii.”

A couple of days later, their luck with the weather continued and it rained. They happily refilled their water containers and anything else they could, and let the cool but comfortable fresh water wash the salt out of their clothes and off their skin. Amanda was mildly shocked when Mack stripped naked and soaped himself before letting the rain rinse him.

Grace laughed. “What the hell.” She undressed as well and, a moment later, so did Amanda and Sandy. Mack was surprised and grinned happily, but said nothing. After that, neither nudity nor lack of privacy while performing body functions was ever an issue, and lack of clothes not only felt liberating but sometimes enabled them to work better. Mack, however, did at least usually put on an athletic supporter.

“Got to protect my most prized possession,” he laughed.

That night, Grace and Mack commenced having noisy and exuberant sex in the cabin while the other two sat outside and grinned.

When Grace emerged after the first time, her comments were succinct. “What’s the point of taking a Pacific cruise if you’re not going to get laid by the captain?”

Mack made no effort to get Amanda and Sandy into his bunk. He was content with Grace, and the others were fine with that. “He’s so withered,” Sandy giggled. “Even his wrinkles have wrinkles.”

And he’s a killer and likely a thief, Amanda thought.

They had a radio and they listened but did not transmit. The war was still raging, although Hawaii hadn’t been invaded. They caught broadcasts from the islands beginning to beg for food, and they knew they’d made the right decision. Now all they had to do was find California.

Wilhelm Braun looked admiringly at the U.S. passport that gave his name as William Brown. Braun had been the assistant military attache at the German embassy in Mexico City until Mexico declared war on Germany. Braun was a distant cousin of the cowlike blonde woman who, if rumors were correct, was Hitler’s mistress. Some were shocked at the thought that the beloved Fuehrer was anything but celibate in his total dedication to the Reich, but Braun didn’t care. If Hitler wanted to screw Wilhelm’s dumb and plump cousin, then let him. Apparently, she had been the Fuehrer’s mistress for six or seven years and, while the relationship was unknown to the average German, it was common knowledge to those in the Nazi hierarchy as well as the diplomatic corps, and, of course, the Braun family.

Braun had another passport that proclaimed his Swedish identity and gave his name as Olaf Swenson, and a third that said he was from Denmark and named Oosterbeck. Since Sweden was neutral and likely to remain so, it and the others were aces in the hole. Denmark had been conquered by the Germans and the world was sympathetic to her plight.

He shook his head. If he was going to pass muster north of the border, he’d damned well better get used to being either Swenson, Oosterbeck, or Brown. In either case he’d be a fifty-year-old mining engineer from Wisconsin who’d been working for the Mexican government. Claiming to be from Wisconsin was safe since he’d lived there for several years with an elderly aunt and uncle who’d died a few years earlier.

But first he had to get across the border with a truck full of very special and dangerous material.

He’d been in San Francisco doing nothing more sinister than taking a vacation and doing some shopping when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and war unexpectedly broke out. He’d quickly checked out of his hotel and driven to the border, where he crossed easily, and only a day before Germany declared war on the United States. The Americans were suddenly watching out for those entering their country, but blithely unconcerned about who left. Americans, he concluded, were stupid and had no concept of security.

Once back in the embassy, he’d tried to figure out ways to help Germany in her increasingly desperate struggle against England and Russia, and now the United States. Braun was neither a fool nor suicidal. He knew he now had little chance of getting back to Germany, and, if he stayed in Mexico, might even be interned for the duration of the war, or at best, forced to wait many months until exchange arrangements could be made. That he considered intolerable.

Even if he did somehow make it back to the Reich, he didn’t much feel like getting killed in the steppes of Russia as the initially dramatic and far-reaching German advances into the Soviet Union had become more like a bloody brawl between two equally matched titans. His age and the leg wound he’d endured in the last war and which caused him to limp in bad weather were no guarantee he wouldn’t be sent to an SS line division.

Although no one would say it out loud, there were those who thought that Germany had been badly bloodied and needed to focus on destroying Russia before the United States got over its lethargy and stupidity and began to fight for real. Braun had traveled extensively throughout America and seen firsthand her potential warmaking capabilities. He wondered if the leaders in Berlin had any concept of that, or had they recalled the fact that the United States had a population much larger than Germany’s, which was already dwarfed by that of the Soviet Union and the British Empire?

Yes, the Americans were decadent, corrupt, incompetent, and ruled by Jews, but they could cause great damage to the Nazi cause. He despised the Americans, but he did not underestimate them. Curiously, he understood that the Japanese admiral, Yamamoto, had also lived in the U.S.

German advances toward Moscow, Leningrad, and now Stalingrad had slowed. Russian winter had proven to be a shock and Braun was delighted to be in the warmth of Mexico instead of frozen Russia even though it was now summer outside of Moscow. Another terrible and murderous winter would come soon enough to Germany’s Eastern Front.

When it first became apparent that Mexico was going to declare war on Germany, Braun and a couple of others simply disappeared from the embassy and, using their several aliases, set up a bogus import-export business north of Mexico City in the industrial city of Monterrey.

While official Mexico declared war on Germany, the average Mexican cared little about a European conflict and many totally despised the United States for being the greedy gringos who’d stolen her northern provinces.

In the First World War, the Kaiser had tried to take advantage of those hatreds by inducing the Mexicans to invade the United States. A shame nothing had come of it, Braun thought, although it had been a primary cause of America’s declaration of war on Imperial Germany and had led to the shameful Treaty of Versailles. Even though the Mexicans were squat and ugly, nearly subhuman as the Jews, their hatred of the United States could be channeled to Germany’s advantage.

Braun held the SS rank of Obersturmbannfuehrer, which was equivalent to a colonel in the American army. When word came that a landing on the American east coast was planned by German saboteurs, he thought it was insane and was quickly proven right. The would-be saboteurs had all been captured or killed. He was sadly confident that the ones captured would be hanged. Thus, when the request came down for Germany to take the war to America’s west coast in support of Japan, he was delighted to volunteer. He knew he could do far better than the buffoons who’d been landed by sub on the east coast. Anything that aided Japan would help keep America’s growing military forces from aiding Britain or Russia in their war with the Third Reich.

He recognized the irony that he would be helping apelike little yellow subhumans defeat the Jewish-dominated United States. Well, he thought, one can’t always choose one’s enemies any more than one can choose their own relatives, like his fat cousin Eva. Sooner or later, the Jewish-controlled United States would fall into the gutter of history, and he would be a part of that glorious effort, whether he did it directly for Germany or indirectly in behalf of Japan. He would do anything to destroy America and the Jews. While he wanted no part of Russian weather, he did envy others in the SS who were wreaking bloody havoc among the Jews as they advanced.

A handful of other staffers were fluent enough in English to function in the U.S., but he rejected them for the time being, instead keeping them in Monterrey and Mexico City, literally watching the store and prepared to relay reports. Braun was concerned that their accents would cause suspicion at the border, while his very slight accent could be explained away as Midwestern, or Swedish, or Danish. He would go alone, at least initially. He liked that idea. The Americans at the border would not suspect a middle-aged and slightly overweight man who walked with a little limp and drove a truck filled with junk. If he later decided he needed more help, he would send for it. If he decided he needed help, he would send for Gunther Krause. Although not an SS man like him, Krause had combat experience and possessed good English speaking skills and had been a loyal Nazi party member for some time.

He bought a decrepit junk-hauling truck, and, instead of junk, loaded it with weapons, ammunition, and dynamite bought with money provided by the German embassy before it was closed. In a couple of weeks at the most, he would cross the border even though he had no clear idea what he would do then. He did not think there would be a shortage of targets, however.