“Yes, sir,” Fuchida said. He and Kaku both hurried out of the wardroom. The skipper of the Akagi headed for the bridge. Fuchida made for the pilots’ briefing room on the hangar deck, right under the flight deck. Hardly knowing he was doing it, he rubbed at his belly as he hurried along. If he had a bellyache, he would just have to ignore it. More important things were going on. General quarters sounded before he was even halfway to the briefing room. He nodded to himself. This was why he’d gone to the Naval Academy at Eta Jima, to the naval aircraft training center at Kasumigaura, to war against the United States in the first place. One more strong blow…
Sailors and officers ran every which way, hurrying to their battle stations. Fuchida ducked into the briefing room as the mechanics and other members of the maintenance crew began making sure the level bombers, torpedo planes, dive bombers, and fighters were as ready for action as they could be.
One of the dive-bomber pilots made it to the briefing room less than fifteen seconds behind Fuchida. The man grinned and said, “I might have known you’d be here first, Commander-san.”
“I’m not that fast,” Fuchida said. “I happened to be in the wardroom with the captain when the news came in. I was on my way over here before the alert sounded.”
“News? What sort of news?” the pilot asked eagerly. “The sort we’ve been waiting for?”
“Patience. Patience,” Fuchida answered with a smile of his own. “That way I’ll only have to tell the story once.”
“Yes, sir.” The dive-bomber pilot didn’t sound patient. He sounded like a small boy reluctantly awaiting permission to open a present sitting there on a mat in front of him.
More pilots swarmed into the briefing room, along with radiomen and bombardiers for the Nakajimas and Aichis. They were all chattering excitedly; they knew what the call to general quarters was likely to mean. They kept flinging questions at Fuchida, too, as he stood there in front of the map.
When the room was full, he held up his hand. The fliers were in such a state, they needed a little while to realize he was calling for quiet. Slowly, a centimeter at a time, they gave it to him. “Thank you, gentlemen,” he said when he could make himself heard through the din. “Thank you. The news I have is the news we’ve all been waiting for. We have found the Americans.”
That started everyone talking at once again. He’d known it would. “Where are they?” “When do we take off?” The questions rained down on him.
“We don’t take off yet-they aren’t in range,” Fuchida answered. “They’re about-here.” He pointed on the map. “One of our H8Ks picked them up way out there.”
“Banzai! for the flying boats!” somebody shouted, and a cheer filled the briefing room. How can we lose with men like these? Fuchida thought proudly. Another pilot called, “What are we going to do about them, sir?”
“I don’t know yet, not officially,” Fuchida replied. “Admiral Yamamoto and Captain Kaku haven’t given the orders. But I’ll tell you this-we didn’t come out here to invite the Yankees to a cha-no-yu.”
The officers and ratings laughed. As if the round-eyed barbarians could appreciate a tea ceremony anyway! “We’ll make them drink salty tea!” a pilot yelled.
“That’s the spirit,” Fuchida said. “Be ready. I expect we’ll close with the enemy and attack. Banzai! for the Emperor!”
“Banzai! Banzai! ” The shout filled the briefing room.
OUT ON THE Pacific, Platoon Sergeant Les Dillon was playing poker with four other noncoms when the B. F. Irvine ’s engine fell silent, leaving the troopship bobbing in the water. “What the fuck?” He and two other sergeants said the same thing at the same time.
“It’s your bet, Les,” Dutch Wenzel said.
Dillon shoved money into the pot. “I’ll bump it up a couple of bucks,” he said. He had two pair, and nobody’d shown much strength. But the change in the background noise worried him. “What the hell are they doing? They break down? We’re sitting ducks for a goddamn Jap sub if we just park here.”
“Thank you, Admiral Nimitz,” said Vince Monahan, who sat to Les’ left. He tossed in folding money of his own. “Call.”
“I’m out.” Wenzel threw in his hand. So did the last two sergeants.
“Here’s mine.” Dillon laid down his queens and nines. Monahan said something unpleasant. He’d had jacks and fives. Dillon raked in the pot. “Whose deal is it?” he asked.
“Maybe we ought to find out what’s going on,” Monahan said. “We were steaming around in the North Pacific marking time, and then we started heading south like we were really going somewhere-”
“Yeah. Somewhere,” Dillon said drily. The other men in the poker game grunted. A couple of them chuckled. They’d been heading for Oahu and whatever happened when they hit the beach. Now… Now they weren’t going anywhere.
A few minutes later, the engines started up again. So did the poker game, which had stalled. The troopship swung through a turn. Dillon’s inner ear told him they were heading east now, more or less, not south. The game went on. The B. F. Irvine went through what felt like a one-eighty half an hour later, and then another one half an hour after that.
“Jesus Christ!” Wenzel said. “Why the fuck don’t they make up their minds? They send us all the way out here to march in place, for crying out loud?”
“I know what it could be,” Dillon said.
“Yeah?” Wenzel and Monahan and the other two men in the game all spoke together.
“Yeah,” he replied. “The Navy’s got to be up ahead of us somewhere. If they don’t clear the Japs out of this part of the Pacific, we aren’t gonna make it to Oahu to land. If they’ve bumped into ’em…”
After some thought, Dutch Wenzel nodded. “Makes sense,” he allowed. “They wouldn’t want us bumping into carrier air.” He made a horrible face. “That could ruin your whole day, matter of fact.” One more brief pause. “Whose deal is it?”
LIEUTENANT SABURO SHINDO prided himself on never getting too excited about anything. Tomorrow morning, battle would come: Japan’s most important fight since the opening blows of the war against the USA. Some people were jumping up and down about that-and making a devil of a racket doing it. Shindo ignored them. He sprawled dozing in a chair in the briefing room. He wore his flying togs. He could be inside his Zero and airborne in a matter of minutes.
Every so often, the noise around him got too loud to stand, and he’d wake up for a little while. When he did, he thought about what he would have to do. This would be no surprise attack. The Americans knew they’d been spotted. They’d sent up fighters to chase off or shoot down the first H8K that found their fleet. They’d done it, too, though the flying boat had taken out a Wildcat before going into the Pacific. By the time it went down, others were in the neighborhood.
The Yankees might try to get away under cover of darkness-try to scurry back to the West Coast of the United States. Some of the Japanese pilots thought they would. Saburo Shindo didn’t believe it. Running now would be cowardly. The Americans hadn’t fought very well on Oahu, but they’d fought bravely. They wouldn’t run away.
If they weren’t running, what would they be doing? Shindo fell asleep again after he asked himself the question and before he answered it. He realized as much only when his eyes came open some time later and he noticed half the people who had been around him were gone, replaced by others. He started chewing on things once more, just as if he hadn’t stopped. What would the Americans do?
Stay where they were and wait to be attacked? He wouldn’t do anything that foolish. He would storm forward, launch his own search planes as soon as it got light, and strike with everything he had the instant he found the Japanese fleet. If he could see that, wouldn’t the Yankees be able to see it, too? He expected they would.