“Then what about our victory at the Panama Canal and the fighting for Alaska? We destroyed the canal and our army is advancing toward Fairbanks.”
Toki started to laugh, but stopped when he saw how serious and angry Masao was becoming. “My friend,” he said gently, “the canal is open again. We damaged it, but that’s all. As to Alaska, the army advancing toward the capital is only five or six thousand starving and poorly equipped men. Theirs is a suicide mission.”
Masao was aghast. “That cannot be. What about the supplies and troops we landed when our ships outdueled the Americans and won a great victory over a larger fleet?”
Toki shook his head sadly. “Perhaps not even the emperor knows the extent of that disaster. All the ships sent to help the army were sunk and no supplies reached the soldiers. We lost nine warships and six transports and all for nothing. It is like the recently finished series of raids along the California coast. We shelled a few towns, set a few fires that were quickly put out, scared a few thousand civilians into running for the mountains, and in return we lost four destroyers, a light cruiser, and three submarines, all ships that we cannot replace.”
Masao flipped his empty bottle into the bushes. “Are you certain that things are so bleak? If it is true, what is Admiral Yamamoto going to do?”
“He will redouble his efforts to find the Saratoga task force and destroy it. Perhaps then the Americans will be humiliated and ask to negotiate. However, I doubt it. I’ve listened to their broadcasts and their hatred of us is strong.”
“I didn’t know you spoke English.”
Toki chuckled. “One of my many skills, or faults if you prefer. One other point. Have you gotten laid since coming here?”
Masao grinned happily. Another type of virginity had been eliminated in a navy-run whorehouse in Hilo. “Several times, with maybe more to come. Why?”
“Tell me, when you fucked those Hawaiian women, did they squeal with delight? Did they writhe like snakes and wrap their legs around you and happily pull your manhood into them? Were they proud to be mounted by an Imperial Japanese eagle, or did they just lie there like a slab of meat while you pumped away? Were their eyes open? Or maybe they were open but looking aside and not into your face.”
Instead of answering, Masao found another couple of bottles of sake. He opened them and passed one to his friend. “Well, I did notice a definite lack of enthusiasm on their part, but, after all, they are whores.”
“They’re not whores, Masao, they are slaves.”
Masao nearly dropped his bottle. “What?”
“When we first set up this base, we searched for local prostitutes, but there weren’t enough of them and the few we did find ran off. Either we weren’t paying enough or they didn’t want to be identified as collaborators. So we sent out recruiting parties to kidnap young women, preferably virgins, who were then raped and made to comply. They were told that if they didn’t fuck for the emperor, their families would be killed. Even that hasn’t stopped a number of them from either running away or committing suicide.”
“I didn’t know that,” Masao said softly, wishing he’d never sat down with his old friend. Ignorance is such bliss. Nor was there any reason to doubt Toki’s version of things. He had access to so much inside information.
Toki belched. The beer was beginning to get to him. “I hope you noticed that the base is surrounded by barbed wire and watch towers. If you step outside, you would very likely be killed by angry Hawaiians. You would be chopped to pieces by their machetes, even though we would exact a terrible vengeance. You have a fifteen-year-old sister and someday I’m going to marry her. What would you do if the Americans kidnapped her and made her spread her legs for them?”
Masao felt fury growing. “I would kill and kill again until someone killed me.”
“As would I,” Toki said. “And this is what our empire has come to. We lie about battles and we rape young women. We are losing this war in more ways than one and someday the Americans will have their turn at vengeance. Yamamoto himself said we would run wild for only a while. He also said it might be necessary to take Washington in order to bring the Americans to the conference table and that is clearly impossible.”
“Toki, what do you suggest?”
His friend took a long swallow of sake and belched again. “Learn English.”
Bear Foley lay on the floor of the forest on a bed of pine needles. His large body was covered by a brown woolen army blanket with an overlay of moist leaves and twigs. As long as he didn’t move, it made him damn near invisible. It amused him that so many doubted that a man as large as he was could move like a whisper through the woods.
Well, he could. And he could lie like he was and not even quiver for as long as it took to complete his stalk. Bear had been a hunter since he could walk and quickly learned to kill game both for his own food and to satisfy wide-eyed hunters from the States down below. A number of times he’d made the big game kill and the so-called hunters from down south took home a trophy and a bunch of lies. He’d made a good living and had a great life until the damned Japs came, tearing up the land and killing his friends. Now he stalked and killed them.
Since Germany was as much an enemy as Japan, it was slightly ironic that his weapon of choice was an 1898 model German Mauser that his father had smuggled over from his stint in World War I. His daddy had told him it was one of several thousand Mausers that had been adapted by the krauts for use as a sniper rifle. Bear had practiced with it for so long it was like an extension of his arm and eye. Dad had died of the Spanish Influenza in 1918 and left the weapon to his large son who cared for it lovingly. It was his only real connection with his dead father.
In fact, he laughed, the only thing he caressed more tenderly was Ruby Oliver’s luscious body.
He told himself to get back to reality. A handful of Japanese stood in plain sight only a couple of hundred yards away from where he was lying in the woods. He was on a knoll looking down through the trees to a clearing. Peering through the rifle’s scope, he could see that they were like the other Japanese soldiers he’d been observing. They were dirty, thin, and, with the exception of their officer, looked very hungry and dispirited. In the distance he heard gunfire. The first time it had happened, he’d been convinced that other scouts had been discovered, or maybe someone was shooting at him from long range. It took a while before he realized that the Japs were shooting up Alaska’s forests in search of game they could kill and eat. He thought their incessant and undisciplined firing was scaring off more potential food than they were going to kill.
In Bear’s opinion, the Japanese soldier was a major disappointment. From what he’d read in the news and heard from other people, they were supposed to be great at operating in the jungle, which meant they should be able to do well in Alaska’s forests. Since it was generally agreed that the average Jap was less than human, they should have had no problem moving like cats through rough terrain. Not the Japs he’d seen. They did not move through the forests with anywhere near that level of skill. Instead, they were downright clumsy and noisy, always talking and sometimes yelling to maintain contact with their comrades. Worse, their gear rattled. Not the thing to have happen while you are stalking big game that walked upright. He’d been told that their shooting wasn’t very accurate, though he was not going to take a chance. In his opinion the Japs would never make anything of high quality. He’d concluded that their ferocity in battle was what made them so damned dangerous, not their technology.