A scraping noise. A leatherneck across from Pete twitched. “What’s that?” He’d already started brooding.
“That’s your crabs playing hopscotch,” Pete said. The other Marine gave him the finger. Chuckling, Pete went on, “Nah, that’s just the netting coming off. They’ll fire up the motors soon-you wait.”
They did. First the starboard engine roared itself awake, then the port. The thunderous roar filled Pete from the soles of his boots to his helmet pressing against his hair. It seemed to come from inside as much as from without. If you had a loose filling or something, that roar would shake it right out of your tooth.
Before long, the C-47 taxied down the new runway. It bumped a few times, but what did you want-egg in your beer? One last bump and it was airborne. More noises from below meant the landing gear was retracting up into the wings. Pete unslung his rifle and cleaned it. No jams today, he thought. Better not be.
He wondered if they would have done better to take off in the middle of the night, so they got to Midway around daybreak. He shrugged. He was only a sergeant. He didn’t make choices like that. Hell, he didn’t even get asked about choices like that. They told him to get into the airplane, jump out of it, and start killing Japs as soon as he hit the ground.
He’d do it, too. All he wanted was to kill as many Japs as he could before they killed him. He figured they would, sooner or later. He just wanted it to be later. He was still paying them back for Vera, killed in Shanghai before the USA and Japan were even officially at war. He was paying them back for his own smashed shoulder and leg, too, but those were details.
The Marine next to him pulled his canteen from its pouch and took a swig. Then he offered it to Pete. The way he’d drunk told Pete it probably didn’t hold water. He took his own cautious swallow. Sure as hell, that was vodka or raw corn or torpedo juice or something else that would pour clear and look harmless but would get you crocked in nothing flat.
“Thanks, man,” he said as he gave back the canteen.
“Sure. All part of room service, y’know?” The other leatherneck grinned.
“Yeah, well, I wish I was in a room in some crib on Hotel Street with somebody prettier’n you,” Pete answered.
“This ain’t exactly the Ritz, is it?” the other Marine said.
“Only compared to where we’re going,” Pete said. That held enough truth to have sobered them if they’d drunk a lot more than the small knocks they’d poured down.
Somebody sitting up near the front bulkhead liberated a harmonica from a pocket and started blowing on it. A civilian DC-3 would have had enough soundproofing to let Pete listen to whatever he was trying to play. A military C-47 didn’t bother with such frills, except maybe in the cockpit. Anybody back here was strictly cargo. Pete wasn’t going to complain. If he had to choose between engine noise and harmonica music, he’d take engine noise any time.
On and on they went. The plan was for high-altitude bombers to plaster Midway before the C-47s got there. That way, the Japs would already be groggy by the time the Marine started falling out of the sky on top of them. It sounded good. Whether it would actually work … Well, they’d all find out pretty damn quick.
After what seemed like either ten minutes or three years, depending, the pilot spoke over the intercom: “Midway comin’ up. Jumpmaster, open the door. Marines, good luck to y’all.” His drawl said he was from somewhere between South Carolina and Mississippi.
Wind howled into the plane when the jumpmaster undogged the door. Pete got his first look outside since takeoff. The Pacific wasn’t nearly far enough below. He got a glimpse of a real gooney bird-an albatross-gliding along looking for fish.
Then the jumpmaster yelled, “There’s Midway, dead ahead!” He could see it. Pete couldn’t, not from where he was sitting. He just watched the light over the door. Red meant they were still out to sea. When it went green … That was when the picture show started.
Green! The first Marine went out before the jumpmaster could scream at him. Red. Then green again, much sooner that it would have come on a practice run. Another leatherneck out. Red. Green. Another. Everybody slid toward the door at each jump. Red. Green. Red.
Green. Pete stepped forward and stepped out. Sand and scraggly grass not far below. A bullet snarled past him. Not all the slanties were dead or stunned, then, dammit. Wham! The chute opened. Down he went. He was a sitting duck, but he wouldn’t hang up here for long. That was why the C-47s came in so low.
His boots thumped on the sand. He cut himself out of the parachute-no saving for a rainy day now. He just missed cutting off the top of his left thumb as he slashed through the tough webbing. He was looking around for his fellow paratroops when there was a tremendous explosion overhead. One of the Gooney Birds had taken a direct hit from a flak gun. It tumbled out of the sky in burning chunks. He hoped the Marines had already got out, but he had no way of knowing.
He had to worry about staying alive himself. Midway was full of broad, shallow bomb craters-the sand didn’t lend itself to deep ones. Marines sheltered in some of them. Others held Japs. The small-caliber Arisakas they carried sounded different from the Marines’ Springfields. The Japs didn’t seem to have any Tommy guns, though a couple of Nambu machine guns and their pale blue tracers added to the chaos.
There! That bastard was wearing the Japs’ faded khaki. Pete brought his rifle to his shoulder. It bucked as he pulled the trigger. The Jap folded up on himself. Then something tugged at Pete’s sleeve. When he looked down, he saw a bullet had torn his tunic without tearing up his arm. Sometimes you’d rather be lucky than good.
Most of the enemy fire seemed to be coming from the east. That was where the main American base had been. Hirohito’s boys must have taken it over when they seized the island. Now they’d die here.
“Come on!” Pete called, and waved his men forward. Before long, his bayonet had blood on it. All that training he’d done with the damn thing, and here he’d finally used it. But the revenge still didn’t feel like enough.
When the air-raid sirens began to howl in the middle of the morning, Hideki Fujita laughed and swore at the same time. The officers had their heads up their back passages. Who would take a drill seriously when it came at a time when American bombers were most of the way back to Oahu?
Only it turned out not to be a drill. The antiaircraft guns pounded away. Bombs began bursting on Oahu and in the ocean around it. The Yankees had lousy aim. When enough came down, though, how much did it matter?
All Fujita could do was huddle in a trench and hope none of those badly aimed bombs came down on top of him. None of them had yet, or he wouldn’t be here huddling. He dared hope he’d stay lucky one more time.
One of the bombers got hit and plunged toward the Pacific. That was what they got for having the nerve to come over in broad daylight! Fujita wasn’t the only Japanese fighting man to raise a cheer.
Another bomber got hit, and then another one. The Americans weren’t buying anything cheaply today. But the bombs kept raining down, too. A near miss knocked Fujita over onto his back, half buried him in sand, and left his ears too abused to hear anything much below a shout.
Air raids always seemed to last forever. Digging a finger into one ringing ear, Fujita scrambled out of the trench when the American planes finally flew off to the southeast. Unless an officer grabbed him and told him to do something else, he intended to go over to the lagoon and fill his belly with fresh-killed fish. Even bombs brought some good with them.
He saw that the airstrips had taken another beating. It would be a while before the G4Ms on Midway could even try to repay the Yankees for what they’d done here today. If you didn’t count the potency of germs, it was an uneven fight. Japan was at the very end of her reach here, while American strength in Hawaii kept growing and growing.