Rising Sun

CHAPTER 6

THE MASSIVE PBY FLYING BOAT TOOK OFF FROM SAN DIEGO BAY with a crew of eight and Lieutenant Commander Tim Dane along as an observer. Built by Consolidated, the flying boat initially looked as if it would never leave the surface, but her powerful Pratt and Whitney engines soon lifted her off the bay’s protected and gentle waters.

Dane was along for what he hoped was a long but pleasant ride. The idea had been Merchant’s. Dane was along not just to see the ocean below, but also the large numbers of ships traveling the Pacific coast, and try to get some idea of the difficulty involved in tracking any vessel that might be carrying enemy soldiers or contraband for enemy subversives already in place. Merchant and Spruance also wanted him out of the office for a while. The report he’d written about Japanese-Americans not being threats to American security and the abuses they were suffering at the hands of cops and the army had ruffled some high-ranking feathers. General DeWitt had gotten a copy and he was furious, as was Governor Olson. Olson was a politician who was in deep trouble with the electorate, but John L. DeWitt was a three-star general in charge of the Fourth Army and the western states. Even though he was in the army, he had to be respected until he calmed down.

The PBY could fly at over ten thousand feet and her top speed was a hair under two hundred miles an hour. Her pilot was an ensign named Ronnie Tuller who appeared to be a teenager, although he insisted he was twenty-two.

“There’s a whole boatload of ships out there,” Tuller said, laughing at his own bad joke, “and we have to check them over visually. If we fly at a conservative speed, say one hundred and twenty-five miles an hour, we can stay out here for a very long time. We’d likely run out of food and toilet paper before we ran out of gas.”

Dane was seated in the co-pilot’s seat. “Could you fly this thing to Hawaii?”

“Stripped down, stuffed with fuel, and with a lot of luck, yes. Realistically, we’d probably get close, and then have to land in the ocean because we’d probably hit a headwind or have to detour around a storm. Why?”

“Just thinking of all the people trying to get off the islands,” he said. Thoughts of Amanda kept intruding. Where the hell was she?

“Understood,” Tuller said. “I have heard that the Japs have a seaplane that is even larger than this baby and can fly twice as far. Too bad we don’t have some of those. Maybe we could run a shuttle to Hawaii and back.” Too bad indeed, Dane thought.

Tuller banked the massive plane. A freighter was in view, heading north, and he skillfully turned toward it.

“Just so you know, Commander, the idea of using our seaplanes was kicked around, but it just wasn’t feasible. Filled with refugees, it would be too heavy to make it back. Getting there we’d doubtless have to land short and refuel, and that’d be a mess what with Jap ships and planes all around. That and the fact that there were so many people on Hawaii who’d want to leave, and so few planes, kinda nixed the idea.”

Dane nodded and reluctantly accepted the logic. The people on the Hawaiian Islands were trapped. But was Amanda?

Observers on the PBY checked out the freighter. It was flying an American flag and several of her crewmen waved at the plane. No one in the PBY was taking chances, however, and guns were trained on her. Memories of an innocuous-looking ship unloading Japanese troops at the Panama Canal were still too fresh.

Tuller waved back. “We’ll attempt to contact them by radio and try to determine that they are what they say they are and that no one’s being forced to do anything bad because there’s a gun to their heads. Odds are, everything’s okay, but you never know. Even if we do make radio contact, we can’t always believe what they’re telling us if we’re to do our job. They may not be saboteurs but they could be smugglers.”

Dane smiled tightly. “I suppose if they start shooting at us, we’ll know everything isn’t on the up and up.”

“Absolutely, Commander. If they do, we get to shoot back. It hasn’t happened yet, but we’re ready.”

The Catalina carried three .30-caliber machine guns and two fifties. She could also carry two tons of bombs, but had none on this flight. If the bombs weren’t dropped, landing with them still on their racks was dicey at best and could result in an explosion. The other alternative was to dump them into the ocean, which was a waste of good bombs.

They left the freighter behind and flew on to the next one, gave it a look-see and moved on. Dane was coming to the conclusion that this excursion was a waste of time. A steady stream of ships was flowing both north and south and generally staying fairly close to the coastline. Despite her long-range capabilities, the PBY wouldn’t fly too far out into the ocean this trip. Other long-range planes were doing that and trying to prevent the sort of sneak attack that had devastated the fleet at Pearl Harbor. Long-range radar installations were being constructed on the hills around major cities and would also provide warnings. Still, everyone knew that nothing would or could be foolproof. The coastline was just too long and the ocean too vast.

Many military personnel wished the Japanese would make an attack. While the American fleet was virtually nonexistent, just about every airfield, airstrip, or even flat piece of land around the major West Coast cities was lined with American fighters and bombers, all piloted by young men eager to take on the bastard sons of Nippon. Dane had seen figures saying that almost fifteen hundred U.S. planes were ready to be launched at the enemy, with more on the way. Types of fighters included a few of the older P39 and P40s, which were outclassed by the Japanese Zero. Planes lined up in growing numbers included the army’s P47, the navy’s F4F fighter, which was a carrier plane without carriers, and the army’s twin-tailed P38.

Tuller coaxed the plane to a higher altitude. “I know there are Jap subs out there. I think I might have spotted one a couple of days ago, but the damn thing dived before I could turn and attack it. Hell, maybe it was a whale. I just don’t understand why they don’t hit our shipping. Jeez, the ships down there are so vulnerable. They aren’t even sailing in convoys, which is stupid if you ask me.” He laughed. “Nobody does, of course.”

Dane looked at the distant ships with his binoculars. “The Japs have a different mentality,” he answered. “The Germans think it’s a great idea to attack our civilian ships, especially oil tankers, and they’re right. On the other hand, the Japs see attacking anything other than a warship as an insult to their manhood. ‘Warriors attack warriors’ is their philosophy according to their interpretation of bushido. I think some Jap skippers would actually disobey orders to attack a freighter or a tanker and save their torpedoes for warships instead.”

Tuller rolled his eyes. “That ain’t too smart. Those ships are our lifeblood.”

That’s right, Dane thought. And maybe they’ll regret that someday. He also realized that he’d been calling the Japanese by the derogatory term Japs. So much for absorbing the culture of Japan when he was a kid.

The great wall of water came on them like a giant black train in the middle of the night. One moment, Amanda was lightly holding the wheel and simply steering in the direction of California by keeping the boat aligned with the correct stars, and the next, the swiftly moving wave had blotted out the stars and the night. Before she could do anything more than scream, the wave crashed over the catamaran, inundating it and her under several feet of roaring water.

She lost her grip on the wheel and thought she was going to be swept overboard as the wave knocked her about. She swallowed what felt like gallons of salty, nauseating water. The lifeline Mack insisted everyone use, especially at night, caught and held her while her fingers tried to grab and claw at anything that would keep her on the cat. She was wearing a Mae West life jacket that might keep her afloat if she was swept overboard, but that was not what she wanted. If that happened, she’d be alone in the ocean and condemned to die a terrible death. She thought about that and desperately hung on to the deck and prayed that the line would hold.

The cat lurched upward and she thought it would flip over on its back like a turtle and kill her as it climbed the wave. A part of her mind recalled Mack saying that killer waves, rogues, sometimes appeared out of nowhere, squashing everything in their path. She also remembered him saying that a catamaran could go bow-down into the water and sink like a rock. She prayed for the boat to make it through the torrent.

After an eternity, the cat reached the wave’s peak, teetered, and lurched forward, skimming down the other side. It was a deadly and terrifying roller coaster ride.

It was over as quickly as it began. The rogue disappeared and continued on its journey. Amanda lay on the deck, gagging and vomiting the sea water she’d swallowed. She grabbed the lifeline and clawed her way back to the wheel, steadied it, and looped a rope around a spoke to keep it steady on course.

“Somebody!” she yelled. “Talk to me!”

She heard moans. Sandy had been on deck with her, and she was a few feet away, trying to get up. She was on her hands and knees, retching and shaking, but otherwise seemed unhurt. Okay, Amanda thought, now where were Mack and Grace? In the cabin, she recalled.

At first the cabin seemed okay, but then she saw that a wall had caved in. From inside came the ominous sound of silence. Reluctantly, she unclipped her lifeline and moved into the cabin. Grace lay on the floor. She was moaning softly and beginning to move. Her pulse was strong, so Amanda moved on to Mack. To her horror, she saw that his skull was distorted and he was drooling blood.

“Sandy, get in here.”

“I’m sick.”

“You’re a nurse and these people are hurt. Get your butt in here.”

Sandy came in a few seconds later. “Sorry,” she said sheepishly. “My mind wasn’t working.”

Grace was coming around. Her eyes were clear and she seemed more stunned than injured. Neither she nor Mack had been wearing their lifelines, nor anything else, Amanda noted. They checked Mack over and looked at each other in dismay. Grace crawled to them and confirmed their diagnosis—Mack had a depressed skull fracture along with several broken ribs, maybe a punctured lung, and God only knew what other internal injuries. Maybe he’d be able to tell them if he regained consciousness.

“I don’t think he’s going to recover,” Amanda said sadly. “He might stand a chance if we were first-class surgeons instead of nurses and if this was a great hospital instead of a dinky sailboat.”

“You’re right,” said Sandy while Grace sobbed. “All we can do is make him comfortable and hope for the best.”

There was one bunk and it was damaged. They repaired it as best they could and carefully laid Mack on it. He groaned but didn’t wake up. They tied him to it, tried to give him some water, and then went out on deck. A beautiful multihued Pacific dawn was rising but they didn’t see it. They were only dimly aware that the seas were as calm as an inland pond, with nothing to remind them of the horror of the night and the killer wave.

Amanda was aware that the others were looking at her for directions. Grace was the oldest, but leadership was never her strong suit.

She took a deep breath. “Okay, first of all we take inventory. What’s left in the way of food and water, is the sail damaged, and, oh yeah, is the radio working?”

It didn’t take long to confirm that the news was mostly bad. The radio was smashed, and some of the food had been swept overboard along with a couple of containers of precious water. They’d all thought their provisions had been secured, but obviously not well enough. Their sail had been slightly damaged, but it could be repaired and, besides, they had a spare. Fortunately, the mast was solid.

“We should all pray for rain,” Grace said.

“And for Mack,” Sandy added.

Amanda shook her head sadly. “He might die without us knowing much about him except that he was our friend.”

Grace smiled shyly. “His name is Maxwell Garver and he was an embezzler from Kansas City.”

“You’re joking,” Amanda said.

“Nope. He worked for a bank that doubled as a brokerage house and he was stealing from them for about five years. He took the money and put it into cash and securities because he thought opening an account, even in another bank, would attract attention. When the Crash came, both the bank and the brokerage disappeared before they caught on to the fact that they were short some money.”

“How much?” Sandy asked.

Grace shrugged. “Who knows? Mack said he wasn’t interested in going back and claiming it because he was perfectly fine with his current life. Right now, it is sitting in a safe-deposit box in San Francisco. He did, however, write up a will a few days ago leaving it all to the three of us to be divided equally. The Three Stooges was the way he put it. If he doesn’t live, it’s ours, whatever it is.”

Amanda laughed sardonically. “Are you telling me we could be filthy rich and dying of thirst in the middle of the world’s largest ocean?”

“He gave me the key to the box, but I couldn’t do anything with it unless I had something to prove it belonged to me, like the will. When we get there, I guess we’ll find out.”

“But first we have to get there,” Sandy said.

Mack died that night, never regaining consciousness. They waited until morning, said some prayers, and gently pushed him into the sea. They’d wrapped him in a sheet so they didn’t have to look at his face as his body bobbed up and down. Nor did they have anything to use as an anchor. Fortune was kind, and the catamaran soon outdistanced Mack’s body. Unspoken was the fear that they’d have to watch while he was devoured by sharks, but that didn’t happen either. In a few minutes, he was gone, out of sight but not out of their minds. He’d been the one who really understood the boat and the ocean.

“We’re all alone, now,” Sandy said.

“Think we’ll make it?” Grace muttered.

“I don’t think we have a choice,” Amanda whispered. She wondered what Tim was doing now and what he would do if he was in such a predicament.

Admiral Yamamoto was angry and frustrated. Once again the foolishness of the code of bushido was hampering operations. His submarine captains had reported numerous sightings of American merchant ships, but few had done anything about it. A score of long-range submarines lay in wait off the major American cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, and, farther north, off Portland, Tacoma, and the British base at Vancouver. They, however, were waiting for the American Navy to emerge, not contemptible merchant ships. Sinking the American merchant ships could help cripple the American economy, but that point was lost on the devotees of bushido. He recalled a phrase from his time spent in the United States—with friends like these, who needs enemies?

Their excuses had been piously clever. They reminded him that they only carried a limited number of torpedoes; therefore, the precious weapons should not be wasted against lowly merchant shipping. Once the torpedoes were gone, it meant that the submarines would have to return to Japan for resupply while American and British warships cruised unimpeded. The fact that major American warships did not cruise at all in the Pacific did not deter the devotees of bushido. The goal of the submarine was to kill other warships, and merchant shipping was beneath them.

Regarding the supply of torpedoes, the sub captains had a point, so the first step toward solving their torpedo problem was to seize the large island of Hawaii and utilize Hilo Bay as a base. The other islands, including Oahu and the city of Honolulu, they would continue to ignore. The reinforced American Army garrison was no threat. It was stranded on Oahu.

The distance from Tokyo to San Diego was just under fifty-six hundred miles and using Hilo would cut the trip more than in half. With the American garrison on Oahu helpless and under long-range siege, the attack on Hilo would be a walkover and would largely eliminate the excuse that there weren’t enough torpedoes.

An attack on the Alaskan city of Anchorage was planned. It would give the Japanese Army, now suddenly cooperating with the navy, a North American base and one only twenty-four hundred miles from San Diego. Army Colonel Yasuyo Yamasaki commanded the garrison on Attu. His would be the invasion force. His unit would be reinforced, removed from Attu for the invasion, and the northern flank of the Japanese Empire would be protected. He had spoken with Admirals Nagumo, Toyoda, Kurita and Koga and all were in agreement that submarines and other surface warships must attack merchant shipping. Even though Yamamoto was admiral of the Combined Fleet, and senior, the others would also use their considerable influence to get the more junior and more aggressive commanders to comply.

Another solution to the supply issue was the usage of Japanese civilian tankers and freighters to provide the subs with fuel, food, ammunition, and, of course, Type 94 torpedoes while submarines were on station off America’s West Coast. These were just getting into place and would be situated far enough in the central Pacific where it was hoped they wouldn’t be noticed by American patrols. Japan had begun the war with sixty-five submarines, although twenty-one of them were obsolete, with another thirty-seven under construction. They would never be able to keep up with America’s production capabilities.

Therefore, Yamamoto’s goal was to keep at least five subs on station at each of the major American ports where they could inflict maximum damage, while the others were resupplied or were repaired. There were scores of other cities on the coast, but he would need an infinite number of subs to cover them all.

Of course, the Americans were confronted with the same dilemma. They could not place warships all along the length of the American-Canadian coastline. Nor could they protect all their ports even with the many hundreds of airplanes intelligence reports said they were assembling. Nor could their radar cover everything as well. The coast was just too vast.

Even better for Japan, the Americans were condemned to fight from stationary positions while his ships, the subs in particular, could move stealthily and at will to any place and attack in strength before the Americans could respond. At least that was the theory, he thought. He had allowed the Americans far too much time to gather strength after their defeat at Midway. Yamamoto had to admit that he hadn’t expected such an overwhelming victory either and, therefore, had little in the way of concrete plans when it so suddenly occurred.

At least Japanese torpedoes worked, he thought. It didn’t matter how many submarines the Americans had if they couldn’t sink anything with their flawed weapons. There had been so many reports by Japanese captains of American torpedoes going under Japanese ships, or bouncing off their hulls, that he didn’t doubt there was a major issue that must be driving the Americans insane.

When Dane arrived at his nephew’s camp, Steve Farris immediately and facetiously asked whether he should salute, shake hands, or kiss his uncle on both cheeks. After telling him to go screw himself, Tim laughed and hugged his nephew. It felt good to laugh. It took his mind off Amanda and the litany of defeats the country was enduring.

“Where the hell’s my car?” Dane asked with mock anger.

“Sitting on blocks back home and quietly rusting away. I took the tires off and put them in the basement.”

“Good thinking.” Tires were as valuable as gold. While there was a sufficient amount of gas available if everyone paid attention to the rules of rationing, rubber for civilian uses had virtually disappeared.

Dane had brought enough steaks and beer to feed the platoon, and distributed them, keeping two of the best pieces of sirloin and half a case of beer for the two of them. He assured his nephew that he’d paid for it, and that nobody was going to jail. Steve assured him that he didn’t much care. A third of the platoon was on duty and enough was saved for them. Even though it was Sunday, they would be on duty with their eyes open. It would not be like what happened at Pearl Harbor, that never-to-be-forgotten Sunday in December.

After agreeing, however, that the Japanese were not likely to invade California this particular day, they changed into swimsuits and traipsed down to the water’s edge. The sea was fairly calm and the temperature warm. A pair of seals stared curiously at them from perches on rocks, decided that the two men with pale white skin were insignificant, and went to sleep.

“Rough duty,” Dane said, and Farris only grinned.

“If it wasn’t for my CO, Lytle, it’d be pretty good.”

“I met him on the way in. I decided a courtesy call was in order. He was clearly drunk and didn’t much care what I did. I was going to leave him a steak just to show what a good guy I am, but screw him.”

“And leaving him some beer would be like taking coals to Newcastle,” Steve laughed. “I’ll probably hear about my not telling him you were coming. I’ll just lie and say you surprised me as well, but now you know what I’m dealing with. I keep him informed about everything I see, including ships that I identify thanks to a copy of Jane’s that I had to buy out of my own money. He’s as much as told me to quit bothering him.”

“How does he get away with it?” Dane asked.

“Easy. Major Harmer is the battalion CO and he’s totally dominated by Lytle. Rumor has it he’s as big a lush as Lytle. A lot of us wish the Japs would swoop in some dark and stormy night and carry them away. Of course, with our luck they’d be returned.”

Dane smiled. “Give me some time and maybe I can arrange for somebody in the army’s chain of command to make a surprise visit.”

“That’d be nice. I admit there’s likely only one chance in a million that the Japs will show up here, but I think it pays to be at least a little vigilant. Now, what are you up to with the navy?”

Dane told his nephew about his ordeals on the Enterprise and his rescue of Spruance. He didn’t spare the details, including Spruance’s wish to be killed rather than captured. He knew his nephew would keep his mouth shut. Farris’s eyes widened as he took in the gruesome firsthand story of the U.S. Navy’s second major defeat in the still-young war.

“That landed me in intelligence, which would better be named lack of intelligence, but not because people are stupid, far from it. Some of the brightest people I’ve ever known are trying to figure out what the Japs will do next. Some people say that military intelligence is an oxymoron and, to some extent, they’re right. However, we’re like kids trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle but are never given all the pieces. Generally we’ve only got a few. From them we have to extrapolate what the whole picture is, and a lot of times it later turns out to be a picture of a cow instead of a tree. We do the best we can with what we have.”

“Like Kimmel and Short in Pearl Harbor?” Farris asked.

“Yes. They did what they thought best with the information on hand. They guessed wrong and paid for it with their reputations and thousands of American lives.”

“So they’re scapegoats?”

“That’s an opinion question, and here’s mine. Yes, they are scapegoats but only to a point. They willfully and foolishly didn’t cooperate with each other, and neither realized they were the equivalent of a frontier outpost surrounded by potentially hostile Apaches or Comanches. Instead, they continued to run the base like it was a country club in Virginia. They didn’t send out enough scout planes and did nothing to coordinate their defenses. If they’d been prepared and we’d fought like bandits, and still lost, they’d be heroes, tragic heroes, but still heroes. Maybe they didn’t know how to prepare for a war? Hell, I didn’t. Still don’t.”

Dane took another beer. “Look, here’s the problem with intelligence and the Japs. Even if they send radio messages, which they didn’t before Pearl Harbor, the important messages will be in code, which we can’t read, although I presume we’re trying to. Most communications aren’t encoded because they are routine, mundane, and unimportant, but are still in Japanese, which only a precious few, like me, can understand.”

“Is that why you’re on Spruance’s staff?”

“No, it’s because of my good looks. Yes, it’s because I can understand Japanese. There are literally tens of thousands of Americans who understand German, probably a lot more, but maybe only a few score who can do the same with Japanese and who can be trusted because their ancestry’s not Japanese. Nobody’s quite ready yet to enlist the help of local Japanese, although necessity might force that to change. So, even if we do intercept a radio message and manage to translate it, we find that most of them are innocuous, like requests for rations, complaints about the weather, and other stuff. Even if we find something referencing a future action, it’s going to refer to something like Plan Jupiter and Objective Fred. Then we have to figure out what Jupiter and Fred are.”

“Sounds like great fun,” Steve laughed.

“It’s a royal pain in the ass, which is why I finagled a day off to come out here. There’s no way I can succeed and provide the higher-ups with a clear picture. I convinced them I needed a break. At least I got promoted and my group now reports more to Nimitz than Spruance.”

Dane changed the subject and told about his trips on a submarine and the girl he’d met in Honolulu.

“Wow,” said Farris. “You really think it’s possible she’s trying to sail from Honolulu to here?”

“Yep.”

“Jesus, I’d like to meet her.”

“And I’d like to see her again.”

They cooked their steaks over a fire made of driftwood, ate, drank beer, and swam in the warm water, always staying in the shallows. Neither was a strong swimmer and they were concerned about tides and, of course, sharks. They talked about families and home, topics that seemed like they were from another galaxy. They only touched on their futures, since they would be in the military for the foreseeable future. Soldiers and sailors everywhere joked that they’d be discharged in just time to collect Social Security.

“I wonder when the war really will end,” Farris said.

“You think we should negotiate with the Japs?”

“Someday, we’ll have to,” Steve said. “I don’t think we should cave in to them, especially not after Pearl Harbor and all the other crap they’ve done to us, but yeah, sooner or later there’ll have to be some talks unless this is really going to be a second Hundred Years War.”

“They’ve kicked our asses up and down the street,” Dane said. “What should we give up in order to stop the killing and get our people back?”

His nephew jabbed the opener into the can of Budweiser and took a swallow. “I don’t know. Do we need the Philippines? Hell, we were going to turn them loose anyhow. Does it really matter who gets them next?”

“But we promised them independence, not brutality and slavery.”

“But, Tim, how many Americans will have to die to get those islands returned, just so we can give them away? Certainly we want to keep Hawaii and get Midway, Wake, and Guam back, and they sure as hell are going to have to pay for Pearl Harbor and all the atrocities, but I guess I can’t totally rule out negotiating with the little yellow bastards. Just count your fingers when you shake their hands and cover your ass when you bow.”

Steve belched before continuing. It was his fourth beer and he was starting to feel it. There hadn’t been all that much opportunity for serious drinking lately. “First of all, we’ve got to start winning some battles so we can bring them to the table. When the hell is that going to start?”

Dane opened his own beer. “How the hell would I know? I’m a lieutenant commander, the equivalent of a major to you army types, and there’s a million of us wandering around thinking we know what’s going on, and none of us do.”

It was midafternoon when they heard Sergeant Stecher’s voice calling for them from up on the hill. They stood as Stecher ran down to them, upset and out of breath.

“Commander, you just got a call from a Captain Merchant.”

Dane shook his head. He didn’t want the war to intrude. Besides, what would happen if he ignored it for a few more minutes?

“And you didn’t salute me, Sergeant,” he said with a smile.

Stecher blinked in surprise and then laughed. “I wasn’t aware I had to salute an officer in a baggy bathing suit.”

“True enough. So what’s so important?”

“Damn Japs just invaded Alaska.”

Ruby Oliver’s small, shabby restaurant in the gray and undistinguished city of Anchorage specialized in large servings of mediocre food fried in bacon grease, or whatever she could get that was close to it. Anchorage itself was on the flat, low ground at the end of Cook Inlet. It was as far inland as decent-sized ships could go. On a clear day, the mountains to the east glowered down on the small city.

Seating a mere twenty people, the restaurant was in a small one-story frame building with a good view of the channel that led from the Cook Inlet to Anchorage itself. Of course it was named Ruby’s and it provided enough income for her to be comfortable. What people were calling the Great Depression had pretty well left Alaska alone since nobody’d had that much money in the first place. Can’t lose what you never had, went the joke.

Ruby was forty, divorced, had badly dyed red hair, and was at least twenty pounds overweight, the result of a tendency to eat the leftover food, a practice she referred to as profit sharing. Even though the Depression had largely missed Alaska, she’d been hungry enough in past years to know that you didn’t let food go to waste.

The restaurant rarely served beef as it was too expensive to import, but fish and venison were regular staples brought in by local fishermen and hunters. Fruits were almost unknown and a few vegetables were homegrown during the very short growing season. That or she’d occasionally buy foodstuffs, if they weren’t too expensive, from ships plying their trade from the south. Oranges, she’d discovered, were as rare as hen’s teeth and out of her price range.

She had a clientele that wasn’t too particular about what they ate, especially if it was cooked in that bacon grease. They liked Ruby, who was gregarious and friendly. A few of the boys had tried to get her drunk enough to get into her pants, but she’d outlasted all of them, sometimes to her regret. Her ex-husband, now living somewhere in Oregon, had been a complete jerk who’d slapped her around when drunk, but, when sober and aroused, was a helluva lover. Sometimes she missed that part of her life, but not enough to go back to him.

Ruby was beginning to have money worries. When war with Japan had first commenced, there was hope that the military would find Anchorage, one of Alaska’s major ports and a bustling town of two thousand, indispensable. Elmendorf Army Air Force Base had been built and Fort Richardson reinforced, and she’d dreamed of all the new customers frequenting her restaurant. But then came Midway and the Air Force had shuttled its planes out, and Fort Richardson’s garrison was reduced to only a couple of hundred men.

This morning, she had a slight hangover thanks to several drinks taken alone in the back of the restaurant, and was serving coffee to her one customer when she thought she heard thunder. She looked out the window and saw a nice bright summer morning and no reason for thunder, but hell, this was Alaska, wasn’t it? In five minutes they could be hit with a blizzard, even though it was summer. Some people said Alaska’s weather was God’s idea of a joke.

She was about to comment to her customer, when the lawyer’s office across the street disintegrated and shock waves blew through her window and hurled her across a table and into the wall. Her customer landed on top of her and she realized to her horror that he had borne the brunt of the explosion and was a bloody, dead mess. Large wood splinters and shards of glass protruded from his back and head like an obscene porcupine.

She screamed and clawed to get out from under him, finally succeeding as more explosions rocked the area and their concussions knocked her around. The front door wouldn’t open so she ran out the back. Anchorage was in flames. Many of the buildings were wood frame like hers, and they were burning furiously.

“Look down the channel!” someone yelled, and she did. She could see the gray shapes of large ships approaching. Smaller boats were alongside them, and these were heading directly for Anchorage and Ruby Oliver. She’d seen enough pictures and newsreels to know that the smaller boats were landing craft and that the larger ones were doubtless Japanese transports and warships. A dozen or so Japanese planes flew overhead and inland, seeking targets. It was common knowledge that the Japs had already landed farther out on the Aleutians on Kiska and Attu, and now they were headed directly for her.

Ruby ran back into the restaurant, now also afire, grabbed her shotgun and a box of shells and began to run down the road toward Fort Richardson. As she did, a column of trucks roared by her, forcing her off the road. They were coming from the fort and were filled with grim-faced soldiers carrying their Springfield rifles and wearing the tin-pot helmets that were leftovers from the last war. She was surprised they’d responded so quickly, but realized that spotters farther up the channel must have radioed the information to the fort. She wondered why the hell the military hadn’t warned the city. At least some civilians could have fled before the shelling began and maybe saved some lives. Several bodies were visible, and other civilians were running away from the burning town.

As some of the trucks approached the town, Ruby found an undamaged two-story house with the door open. She entered and went upstairs so she could see. She soon wished she hadn’t. As the column entered Anchorage and approached the waterfront, shells from the Japanese ships exploded in and around the American soldiers who were trying to deploy. She watched in horror as some soldiers simply disintegrated from the explosions while others were sent hurling into the sky.

The Japanese landing craft disgorged scores of men. They raced down the street toward the stunned and confused remaining American soldiers. The fight was at short range and she cheered when some Japanese fell, but many more Americans lay still, and the remnants of the column were soon standing with their hands up. The battle for Anchorage had been lost in a matter of minutes.

The Japanese rounded up the survivors. Ruby estimated there were thirty all told, and a number of them were wounded. One, an officer, tried talking to a Japanese counterpart. The Japanese officer shouted something, and the American was rifle-butted to the ground and stabbed with bayonets by several soldiers while the Japanese officer looked on. The soldiers stopped stabbing him and he lay still in an enormous pool of blood. She thought she could hear the other prisoners moaning.

More landing craft unloaded several hundred Japanese; most of whom headed down the road to what was likely a now abandoned Fort Richardson. A number, however, surrounded the prisoners, shouting and pointing bayonets at them. Ruby had heard that the Japs treated their prisoners brutally and fearfully wondered just what they’d do. She knew most of them, if only by sight. Some had even eaten at her place.

An officer barked a command and a roar of laughter came from the Japanese surrounding the Americans. The Japanese pushed and prodded them with their bayonets toward the water and then into it. It might be late summer, but the water was very cold and Ruby could hear the screams coming from the prisoners as they were pushed into water that came up to their chests.

The Japanese soldiers fired in front of the prisoners and stabbed slow-moving Americans with their bayonets. The message was clear, swim or die.

Swimming only delayed the inevitable. Tears streamed down her face as a couple of GIs tried to return to shore and were shot. The wounded and nonswimmers had already disappeared under the waves, while others attempted to strike out for the opposite shore and the illusion of safety. When they were maybe a hundred yards out, the Japanese opened fire. It was little more than target practice. Splashes surrounded the dozen or so heads remaining, and soon there were none.

Ruby pulled herself to her feet. She was not going back to Anchorage. Doubtless there were civilians still there who would also become prisoners of the Japanese. She might not be killed because she was a civilian, but she’d also heard what they did to women.

Along with her sleeping quarters behind the kitchen of the restaurant, she had a cabin a couple of miles away and well into the woods. There, she’d get some decent gear, another weapon, and head farther into the forest. But where to go? South to Seward or Valdez was an easy choice, but were the Japs landing there as well? Maybe heading inland toward Fairbanks and the Canadian border was the best idea.

She left the house and walked into the nearby bushes where she heard strange noises. She stood with the shotgun ready. She lowered it when she looked into the frightened faces of a handful of very young and scared American soldiers who’d escaped the massacre.

“Where you boys headed?” she asked, her voice surprisingly calm.

They looked at each other. They hadn’t thought that far. They’d run like they were on fire when the shells cut their unit to pieces. One, a PFC, shrugged. “Don’t know. Sure as hell can’t go back to the barracks. The Japs’ll be sacked out in our bunks pretty damn soon.”

Ruby slung the shotgun over her shoulder. “Then you’d better come with me.”