Jasper stared, a feeling of horror going through him.
“Those aren’t dummy bombs,” he said, pointing to the white trail of wakes that the torpedoes were leaving in the water.
Nearby, the petty officer hadn’t shown much interest in the planes at first. But now he, too, had spotted the torpedoes in the harbor.
“Holy hell,” he said, his voice stricken.
The torpedoes were headed right toward the hull of the Arizona and other ships in the harbor. There wasn’t time for anyone to do a damn thing about it.
Moments later, a huge explosion rocked the ship. The sailors were all thrown from their feet, scattered like bowling pins across the deck. The massive deck itself heaved into the air and rippled like a sheet snapped over a bed. The beautifully oiled teak shattered and splintered.
Dazed, Jasper looked up as a plane passed overhead. He could clearly see the red circles on the wings — the rising sun symbol of the Japanese empire.
“Those are Japs!” he shouted, as if anyone could still hear, or if anyone hadn’t figured that out by now.
He couldn’t believe it. They were being attacked by the Japanese. It seemed such a strange thing, considering that they weren’t even at war with Japan. Sure, people had talked about it, but now it was actually happening. He stared in disbelief at the carnage all around him. The petty officer lay nearby, impaled through the belly by a teak board. Jasper thought that maybe he would wake up, and all of this would be a bad dream.
But like they used to say back home in the mountains, wishing don’t make it any less so.
More planes came in, dropping bombs and torpedoes. A few sailors had managed to get on the antiaircraft guns and were firing back.
“Get to your stations!” someone yelled, although to Jasper, it seemed too late for that.
He ran to join a gun crew. Like most sailors, he had been cross-trained to serve in many positions.
The gun was firing up at the sky, unleashing a frenzied line of tracers that barely showed against the bright sky. However, the nimble Japanese Zero planes were almost impossible to hit, so small and fast as they zipped overhead after decimating the fleet. Their single Mitsubishi engines propelled them at more than three hundred miles per hour — three times the speed of a fastball pitch. By the time anybody got a Zero in his sights, it was almost instantly out of range.
Another explosion ripped through the ship, and Jasper found himself hurled away from the gun, clawing for a grip as the deck tilted at a precarious angle.
Where was Butler?
Gone.
Everything seemed to be on fire. Nearby, he saw a badly burned man who looked like meat that had been left on the grill too long. Jasper wrinkled his nose at the smell of burned flesh.
He fought down the urge to vomit. He had more important things to do, like get off this burning ship, but it was easier said than done. The smooth teak-covered deck was gone. In its place was a wreckage of splinters and gaping holes through which flames leaped. Jasper wouldn’t have thought it was possible for anything to penetrate the armored steel. His eyes were seeing it, but his mind still couldn’t register that this was real.
The whole ship was on fire. The sight was terrifying. At this point there was no more thought of fighting the Japanese, only of surviving. His sole hope was to get off the ship and into the water as quickly as he could.
Crawling and sliding on the tilted deck, he made his way down to the gunwales and stared at the water below, weighing his chances.
Other survivors were doing the same, then leaping into the water.
He looked below and his heart sank.
The still, blue waters of the harbor were gone. Instead, a sea of flaming oil surrounded the ship. He heard screams as the men who had jumped into the harbor were consumed alive by the flames.
Did he really need to jump? The deck tilted yet more, and it was clear that the mortally wounded ship was threatening to “turn turtle” and capsize. If he didn’t get clear, he would be sucked down as the ship sank.
His only option would be to dive down through that mess of burning oil and try to swim beneath it to safety.
He looked in the direction of where the burning oil ended and there was clear water again. It seemed an awfully long way to swim underwater, but he didn’t know what else to do.
He had to at least try.
Taking a massive deep breath, Jasper slid off the deck feet first, pinning his arms to his side, and spiked into the fiery water below. He felt the heat of the burning oil. He let the momentum of his dive carry him as deep as possible. Even so, some of the flaming oil was not extinguished right away and followed him down in a trail of fire.
Jasper did not panic. That was not how he had been raised or trained by the navy. As unreal as this all seemed, he forced himself to stay in the moment. Rather than clawing for the surface, he fought against every instinct and swam deeper into the darker waters of the harbor. Only when he was far enough down did he begin to swim laterally, trying to get out from underneath the flaming waters above him, but there was nothing easy about it.
Swim, boy, swim.
His lungs began to ache for air. His legs hurt too. He realized that he had been torn open and wounded on the deck above. In fact, one of his legs wasn’t working right at all, which slowed him down. When he tried to kick, it hurt him painfully.
He had no choice but to keep going, because to rise to the surface would mean certain death in the flames. He kept swimming, but it was too far, too much distance to cover underwater. He became disoriented and had no idea where the flames above ended. He couldn’t even remember which way to swim. He realized that he had been swimming in circles under the flames rather than escaping the burning oil above.
He was still in disbelief that just twenty minutes ago he had been enjoying a beautiful Hawaiian Sunday morning.
And now he was staring into the depths of hell, burning sea above him and darkness below.
The Japanese, he thought, a sudden burst of hate and anger running through him. They did this to me. They killed me.
They didn’t just want to kill him. They wanted him to burn alive. They wanted him to suffer.
Jasper was having none of it.
He was almost out of air. His lungs ached to inhale, and in the end he knew from his navy training that no matter how hard he tried, he would eventually open his mouth to let in the sea, and that would be that.
Instead of swimming up into the flames, desperate for air, he pivoted and swam deeper into the harbor, down into the depths of the black water. It was his way of denying the enemy their victory. He would die on his own terms. After all, there never had been a Cole who wasn’t stubborn by nature.
The depths of the harbor were cold and dark, but oddly peaceful, far removed from the carnage of war above.
His last thoughts were of home. He remembered a spring morning in the mountains, the soft, fresh air. It smelled of a new rain, the morning sunlight warm on the new leaves.
Jasper let himself sigh, and then his world went eternally black.
CHAPTER TWO
Lieutenant Commander Tom O’Connell looked out at the Pacific, enjoying the fresh sea breeze that cleared the morning fog from his head. Far out at sea, the USS Northampton was on maneuvers, part of the USS Enterprise carrier task force commanded by Admiral William “Bull” Halsey Jr.
O’Connell watched the sharp bow of the cruiser cutting through the blue waters. The bow wave rolled out across the otherwise calm surface of the sea. The ship and its crew were far enough away from the rest of the task force that they felt all alone out here, which was a feeling that the young officer enjoyed, but that was also a little daunting. The United States mainland was at least two thousand miles away. Tokyo? Another four thousand miles.