Or maybe not. Pete was ready to give it a try. He’d been in the Corps long enough to understand that you grabbed Z’s whenever you could, because you were bound to get screwed out of a lot of them.
Sure as hell, he slept till 0600. It was getting light out by then. A couple of smoke plumes rose into the air. The Japs must have hit something worthwhile, or those fires would have been out by now.
He got coffee and scrambled eggs and toast in the galley. The eggs were fresh, a shoreside luxury. He could eat the powdered ones-you’d starve if you couldn’t stomach them at all-but they weren’t the same.
A petty officer sitting across the table from him said, “We’ve got to find some kind of way to take back fuckin’ Midway. This air-raid shit gets old fast, y’know?” He punctuated his opinion with a yawn, then headed back to the Silex for more java.
When he came back, Pete said, “Sounds good. But how d’you aim to pull it off?”
“Can’t be that tough,” the Navy man said. “C’mon, man. How many carriers you figure the Japs keep in these waters?”
“Enough,” Pete answered. Since the Ranger was still the only American flattop in the Pacific, that didn’t have to be any enormous number.
He waited to see if he’d get an argument. He more than half expected one. Navy files reflexively disagreed with Marines. When that happened in a Honolulu bar, it usually led to a fight. Aboard ship, it had better not. He didn’t feel like wasting time in the brig on bread and water-piss and punk, in the pungent language swabbies and leathernecks used among themselves.
But the petty officer’s broad shoulders slumped as he sighed. “Yeah, I guess you’re right,” he said. Pete wanted to dig a finger into his ear to make sure he’d heard that right. The man in warm-weather whites went on, “We fucked this war six ways from Sunday, didn’t we?”
“Well, I’ll tell you,” Pete said. “I was in Peking. Then I was in Shanghai, on account of Peking’s way inland and they decided they couldn’t get us out if the balloon went up. Then I got blown up in Shanghai”-he scowled, remembering poor, dead Vera-“and they shipped me to a military hospital in Manila, ’cause they didn’t figure they could get us out of Shanghai, either.”
“They were right, too,” the petty officer said tactlessly.
“Yeah, I know.” Pete didn’t want to think about the buddies he’d had to leave behind in Shanghai. They’d be dead now, or prisoners of the Japs. From things that leaked out of China, it wasn’t obvious which fate was worse. Scowling some more, he went on, “I got out of Manila on the Boise, one jump ahead of the invasion. I’ll tell you, man, I’m goddamn sick of going east.”
The petty officer nodded. “I hear you. Oh, boy, do I ever! But when we went west against the Japs, a lot of good guys went west for good, if you know what I mean.”
“You bet I do. I was almost one of those guys myself,” Pete said. “When the Boise went down, you guys fished me out of the drink. Otherwise I’d be nothing but sharkshit by now.”
“Sharkshit.” The Navy man considered that. A slow smile delivered his verdict. “Way to go. I didn’t think anybody could come out with a dirty word I never heard before, but you just went and did it.”
Pete had never heard it before, either. It just came out of his mouth. He hadn’t thought about it before it did. He didn’t have much time to think about it now. He got to his feet and gave his tray and dishes to a Samoan steward in what looked like a skirt-only the guy was about six feet four and almost as wide as he was tall, so ribbing him about it wasn’t the smartest thing you could do.
They’d put out one of the fires by the time he got topside. The others went on burning. The Honolulu papers were sure to have rude things to say about that. Civilians here didn’t like getting bombed any more than civilians anywhere else in the world. Come to that, Pete hadn’t met a whole lot of men in uniform who enjoyed explosives dropping on their heads.
He didn’t see how Japan could hope to conquer the USA. But Japan didn’t have to. As long as she hung on to her conquests in China and the Pacific, she won. And Pete had no more brilliant plans to keep her from doing that than the petty officer did.
Vaclav Jezek didn’t know what a wrecked and rusty Citroen was doing out between the lines the Republicans and the Nationalists held. More than the rust said it had sat here for quite a while. Scavengers had stripped it of tires and inner tubes. Rubber was precious for both sides. They’d taken the battery from under the hood, too. The poor dead son of a bitch who’d been driving the car still lolled behind the wheel. He was dried out, half mummified, and hardly stank at all any more: another proof how long the Citroen had been there.
That the dead man didn’t stink much made the wreck all the better for Jezek’s purposes. He spent one night digging a hidey-hole under the car. He made sure to keep the dirt he dug out behind the chassis. He didn’t want the Nationalists to see anything had changed.
He slithered in under the Citroen. The day dawned gray and gloomy. Pretty soon, it might rain. He did some more digging. Rain would soften the ground and might make the car settle. If it settled on him, it would also settle his hash.
Once he was satisfied he didn’t need to worry about that any more, he scanned Marshal Sanjurjo’s positions with binoculars he’d taken from a German International who’d never need them again. The field glasses were from Zeiss, which made them as good as any in the world.
Men in yellowish khaki, some with field caps, others wearing almost-German helmets, went about their business. As long as they were out of rifle range of the Republicans, they didn’t bother concealing themselves. He could have potted one of them as easily as he pleased, but he didn’t put down the binoculars and set his shoulder against the antitank rifle’s stock. When he killed somebody, he wanted it to mean something.
A skylark sang sweetly overhead. The bird knew nothing of war, save the war it made on mosquitoes and butterflies and crickets. Vaclav wished he could say the same.
He traversed the Zeiss glasses as if they were a machine gun. Suddenly, they stopped and snapped back, almost as if they had a will of their own. What the devil was that? A moment later, he had his answer. That was a German in Feldgrau, no doubt a survivor from the Legion Kondor. And damned if the son of a bitch wasn’t carrying the long asbestos hose of a flamethrower, with the fuel tanks strapped on his back.
Vaclav hadn’t killed many Germans since he came to Spain. He would have gone after anybody who carried a flamethrower, no matter who the bastard was. He couldn’t imagine a filthier weapon. Cooking a man like a pot roast … He shook his head in disgust. He’d never yet heard of anyone who lugged one of those horrible things being able to surrender, and no surprise, either.
He shook his head again, this time to drive the hate and revulsion out of it. He needed to be steady to do his job. He needed to be, and he would be. He aimed his elephant gun at the German. The sight, of course, had crosshairs. He put them right where he wanted them. The German wasn’t going anywhere fast. He stood there talking with a Spaniard, and paused for a moment to get his pipe going.
The antitank rifle smashed against Vaclav’s shoulder. A split second later, the 13mm bullet smashed through the flamethrower’s fuel tanks. They weren’t armored; that would have added weight. The jellied gasoline caught. Then it exploded, covering the German-and, as a bonus, his Spanish friend-in unquenchable fire.
“There you go, cocksucker!” Vaclav muttered as he chambered another round. “See how you like getting it instead of giving it.”
Flame and smoke soared skyward from the enemies’ pyre. The Nationalists close by ran every which way, as if a small boy had brought his foot down hard on an anthill. But what could they do? The flamethrower man and his chum were nothing but charred meat now. Even if somebody managed to extinguish them before they died, the kindest thing to do would be to shoot them and take them out of their agony.