A rioter in a torn zoot suit emerged from the pile and staggered toward them. There was blood pouring down his face from a cut above his eye. He lurched toward them. The smell of alcohol was heavy, he was clearly drunk, and there was fury in his eyes.
Dane pulled his weapon and pointed it at the Mexican’s head. “Stop right there.”
The drunk blinked and said something in rapid Spanish. He stepped closer, lurching unsteadily.
Amanda gasped. “You’re not going to shoot him, are you?”
Dane swore. He had made a big mistake. They could have run and easily outdistanced the staggering drunk, but now it was too late and he had a gun in his hand. Shit.
The drunk took another step closer and howled in fury. A couple of his teeth were broken. Dane reversed the weapon and smashed it down on the drunk’s nose, crushing it and sending blood gushing. The zoot-suiter staggered and fell on to his hands and knees. A pair of sailors raced over, ready to finish off the drunk.
“Get back to your quarters,” Dane snapped. The two sailors saw the gun and that he was an officer. They ran off as quickly as they could.
Dane looked around and quickly holstered the pistol after wiping it off on a handkerchief.
A police officer approached and took control of the drunk, handcuffing him. “Nice job, Commander, and I didn’t see that gun. Obviously, this clown fell and hurt himself. You were leaving now anyway, weren’t you?”
Dane thought it was a great idea and led Amanda away from the scene.
“Well done,” Amanda said with an exaggerated sigh, “my hero.”
“Yeah, now let’s get far away from here.”
As they walked down the street, a score of police and shore patrol ran by them. The rioters were now outnumbered by the cops, which, they thought, was the way it should be.
“The Mexicans didn’t do it, did they?” she asked.
“Nope. Somebody must’ve picked up on the police finding the three dead bodies and the story got turned around to where they were Mexicans shot by the cops for sabotaging the train. We’re trying to get the papers to run a retraction, but it’ll be on page twenty if at all.”
Sometimes he thought he told Amanda too much of what was going on, but their relationship was deepening and he felt no reason to keep secrets from her. It was almost as if they were already married. Screw the navy. He wondered what his boss, Captain Merchant, was saying to the other nurse, Grace. They were spending a lot of time together as well.
Amanda took a deep breath. “So this is what passes for normal in Southern California. Take me someplace nice and buy me a drink, Tim. After that we’ll find a place near my luxurious barracks and you can kiss me goodnight eight or ten times.”
He laughed. The thought of making out like a couple of teenagers had marvelous appeal.
Shore leave on the clean white beaches of Hawaii by the small city of Hilo was something that Masao Ikeda had only dreamed of in the past. To the average educated Japanese, Hawaii was a beautiful and exotic place that was held by the American imperialists and far out of reach. Before the war, Hilo had a population of just below twenty thousand, but most of them had departed when the Japanese arrived. Their absence didn’t matter to the Japanese conquerors. Hawaii was indeed a paradise. That a boy from a small village north of Tokyo could be in such a place was a wonder. It was marvelous to watch the waves and even better to swim in them and try to surf through them on his belly, all the while giggling and laughing like a child while his fellow pilots did the same thing.
He could see the volcano called Mauna Loa rising majestically in the distance. It wasn’t the beautiful and symmetrical sacred Mount Fuji, but it would do for today.
Even better, he was a full-fledged member of Japan’s military elite. Military intelligence had reviewed his data and the testimony of witnesses and concluded that he had shot down seven American fighters. He was truly an ace. No more teasing from his comrades. He was a warrior and his comrades accepted him as such, while the replacement pilots looked on him with awe.
Another pleasant surprise came when his squadron was assigned to the carrier Kaga, one of Japan’s largest. On it was his old friend, Tokimasa Hirota. He and Toki came from the same village and had been friends in school. Only terrible nearsightedness kept the energetic and athletic Toki from becoming a pilot like Masao Ikeda.
Toki was not jealous. That was not in his nature, and over numerous bottles of sake, they discussed families and the village. After a number of good laughs about life in the Imperial Japanese Navy, Toki grew serious.
“Masao, just how do you think the war is coming?”
Ikeda was surprised. “We are winning, of course. The Americans are everywhere on the run and will soon sue for peace. Why?”
Toki shook his head. “Do you know what I do? I am on Admiral Kurita’s staff and work as a communications expert. I see top-secret messages that no one else does. They leave me very disturbed when I read them. I code and decode them for Kurita and his staff. Sometimes I think they believe I’m either invisible or a mute and incapable of understanding what the messages say. If the Americans could decode our messages they would be gaining in confidence. Thank God they can’t.”
Masao did not like this sudden turn in their conversation. “Should you be telling me this?”
“I have to. I don’t want to, but I must. I must tell someone and you are my friend. It preys on me. I know the truth, and the truth is we are losing badly to the Americans and soon it will become apparent to all. If something dramatic doesn’t happen, Japan as we know it is doomed.”
Masao gasped in astonishment. “You’re joking. We’ve won victory after victory.”
“The battle for Midway was the last one. We are trading them carrier for carrier either sunk or too badly damaged to continue. We have sunk four of theirs, and, while only one of ours has been sunk, three are so badly damaged we may not see them for years, if ever. We have only a couple under construction while the Americans may have dozens. By the end of next year they will have far more carriers and battleships then we will.”
“Ours will be better.”
“No, the ships will be equal. They are all made of inanimate steel and we all know that the American ships will be well built and designed. Also, ships are only as good as their crews. Have you seen the replacement pilots they’ve sent out for the men we’ve lost over San Francisco and elsewhere?”
Masao grimaced. “Children, practically babies in diapers. It will take a long while to make them good pilots like me.” He laughed. “I didn’t mean that to sound so conceited, but they really aren’t good pilots yet.”
“And maybe they never will become good pilots, and that’s one of my points. The Americans are turning out pilots and planes by the hundreds, by the thousands, and we are struggling to make good the losses we took in the abortive attack on Mare Island. Or haven’t you noticed that we don’t have a full complement of either planes or pilots?”
“But we burned San Francisco.”
Toki shook his head angrily. “A handful of small fires that were put out quickly.”
The sake was making Masao even more stubborn than usual. “We destroyed ten of their planes to one of ours.”
“That data has been reviewed and it is somewhat less than three to one. Those are further losses we cannot sustain since airplane construction is very low in comparison with the Americans. And did you notice that the Americans came at us with newer and better planes? You sent shells into a P47 and it laughed them off because it is a flying tank compared with the Zero. They have that fork-tailed demon and another new carrier fighter as well. Soon the kill ratio will be one to one and that will destroy us.”