“Five carriers or six?”
Hardegen thought for a moment. How marvelous that Berlin had even thought to look in Iceland for the Americans. And what were they doing there? Obviously there were big plans afoot, and his discovery would be a major part of upsetting them.
“Let discretion be our guide. Tell them six.”
At the secret codebreaking complex at Bletchley Park, England, the codebreakers exulted. Hardegen didn’t know it, but he was as safe as a baby in its crib. They had recorded both his orders sending him to Iceland and his brief report. He’d been allowed to exit Lorient without interference, and his return trip would likewise be uninterrupted; thus allowing him to amplify on the American armada he thought he’d seen off Iceland.
Lieutenant Commander Fargo knew the totality of overwhelming, shuddering fear. The ocean outside the thin hull of the Monkfish throbbed as immense, angry, and fearsome life vibrated through the water and resonated within the submarine.
Like his German counterpart half a world away, he was close to a massive fleet. In this case, the term close to meant feet and not miles.
“Jesus Christ,” Fargo muttered. “How many of the fuckers are there?”
He had spotted the approaching Japanese armada on a routine periscope sweep. Along with two of the largest battleships he’d ever imagined possible, he had noted a number of carriers before prudence told him to down periscope and lie on the floor of the harbor entrance and act like a piece of mud. Even though one of his men had tied debris to the periscope to make it less visible, he wasn’t going to chance it with the entire Japanese navy cruising past him.
Instead, he and his men tried to identify the type of ship by the sound of its screws as it rumbled by. Assuming that the first two were the battleships and the carriers had followed, they were comfortable in estimating that at least a dozen major warships, heavy cruisers or larger, had entered the confines of Pearl Harbor, with still more coming. The enemy fleet was at least as large as the entire U.S. naval force that had been assigned to Pearl Harbor on December 7.
But they’d had to enter through the channel single file, and they’d have to leave the same way. The channel was just too narrow to permit more than one of those leviathans to pass at a time. Fargo recalled that there had been real fear during the Pearl Harbor attack that one of the American ships would be sunk in the channel and plug it up. At one point, the entrance was only about a quarter mile wide, and the navigable portion much less than that.
Fargo smiled as the noise level finally abated. Smaller ships, destroyers or light cruisers, made a different, lighter sound as they too entered the anchorage in a stately parade.
“Where the hell they gonna park them all?” he heard one of his men whisper. The sailor didn’t know just how many ships there had been when the entire American fleet was in the harbor. He also had no idea how big the harbor was. It would require planning, but Pearl could handle a very large number of ships.
But there was still only one narrow entrance.
If, as Admiral Lockwood had explained, the Jap fleet might come out in a helluva rush, then they might not be looking for one small submarine right at the entrance to the harbor.
Maybe, Fargo thought and smiled, he would get a chance to do some real damage and still get away.
The sound of the ships finally ceased. He waited until he knew the wreck was in shadows and carefully raised the periscope. With it only a few inches above the water, he looked around. The entrance to the harbor was empty. The Japs had disappeared inside. He swung the scope and looked out onto the ocean. A picket line of destroyers was in view but several miles away. It was highly unlikely they were looking in his direction. They would be watching for an enemy that would come from the sea if it came at all. He was as safe again as he had been before the Japs had arrived. The Monkfish was inside the Japanese defense perimeter.
Hell, Fargo thought. He had indeed sailed right up their asses.
Akira Kaga was greeted as a long-lost brother by the pilots stationed at Wheeler Field. He wore his real Japanese uniform for the occasion, and the young men were suitably impressed by the decorations and the wound he had suffered for Nippon.
He had invited himself for a tour and an opportunity to talk to the men stationed in what had become an isolated outpost that still bore the scars of the battles earlier in the year.
Only a handful of buildings at the airfield had been repaired sufficiently to use, and a surprisingly small number of planes was lined up along one runway.
Schofield Barracks was in even worse shape, which was one reason why there were no Japanese soldiers in the area. There were only the pilots, their mechanics, and a handful of Japanese marines as guards. The prisoner of war pens were vacant and stood as haunting reminders of the American defeat. Akira wondered how many of those thousands who’d been imprisoned there were still alive. Judging by the emaciated condition of those he’d seen before they’d been shipped off, few would have survived the long voyage to Japan. It was something else that Japan would have to answer for.
As he looked around, it occurred to Akira that the place was even more poorly defended than it had been on December 7.
A Captain Masaka had greeted him warmly and introduced him to the other men, who appeared glad to have him there as an interruption to a boring existence.
After his talk to the troops, which was different from the one he gave to the civilians, Akira asked for a further tour of the facility, and Masaka was happy to oblige. Akira limped badly, but he was able to keep up with the captain. His determination in using the artificial leg was beginning to show dividends.
“Tell me,” Akira asked, “why are you stationed here and not at Hickam, Ford Island, or the other strips closer to Honolulu and Pearl?”
Masaka grinned. “I wish we were. But Admiral Iwabachi fears sabotage, so he had us put as far away from Hawaiian people as possible. That and the fact that the other fields are still unusable made this the logical choice.”
Masaka’s statement confirmed what Akira had heard and observed. As everywhere else, the damage done in the fighting here had not been repaired. Of course, the Japanese in Oahu didn’t need a lot of airfields with only a couple dozen planes at their disposal. But it did explain Novacek’s interest in Wheeler’s vulnerability.
“Are the planes always parked this close together?” Akira asked. The Zeros and scout planes were almost wingtip to wingtip.
Masaka shrugged. “Admiral’s orders, and admirals always know best, don’t they? We have only a squad of guards, and they can’t watch the planes if they’re scattered all over the place. I know it’s like how the Americans had theirs when we attacked them, but there are no American ships, and, besides, we’re in the middle of the island, where we’d get plenty of warning.”
“Of course, when Yamamoto’s fleet comes, any concerns will all become immaterial, won’t they?”
“Precisely.” Masaka beamed. “And perhaps I can get a billet in Honolulu, where I can have a little fun with the local women. We get some prostitutes bussed here every weekend for those who can’t get off duty, but they are usually quite ugly. It is a miserable existence here in the middle of paradise.”
Akira laughed sympathetically with the young man. He wondered how many combat missions Masaka had flown. Probably only a few, maybe none.
Akira walked around the area a little longer, taking note of the locations of the sandbagged guard bunkers. Mentally, he answered the question Jake hadn’t asked: He could take Wheeler and destroy the planes. But then what? A simple raid would result in some killings and destruction, but if it were an isolated instance, the attackers would be hunted down and killed. Admiral Iwabachi would be particularly furious when he learned that Japanese had done this, and his vengeance would be terrible.