Rising Sun (26 page)

The train was going so fast that the locomotive had almost made it across the detonator before it went off, separating the locomotive from the coal car. The locomotive miraculously stayed on the tracks, while all the cars behind flew down the embankment and landed in a screeching, dusty, smoking jumble. The sound of tearing metal and breaking wood was quickly punctuated by the screams of injured and dying passengers.

All of the cars had toppled on their sides and one had flown on top of another in a ghastly pileup. People were scrambling out of doors and windows. The unhurt dragged the injured and laid them on the ground. Some were attempting first aid.

A success, thought Braun. “Time to go.”

He and Krause ran to the Ford wagon. As they approached, they saw motion. “Damn,” snarled Krause. Both men drew their weapons.

Three men were hunched over the back of the car. One had a jack and another held a length of hose. They were going to steal the tires and siphon his gas, leaving them stranded by the scene of a train wreck that they had caused.

The three looked stunned when the two armed Germans approached them. “Police!” snapped Braun. “Get on the ground.” The men complied. They were very young, in their teens, scared, and looked like they were Mexicans. Braun recalled reading in the paper that there’d been a lot of problems with thieves from Mexico. The prisoners looked at their captors. They were nervous and confused and gauging their chances to make a break.

Krause took a deep breath. “We got here in time. They did nothing.” In the background, sirens could be heard. “We have to leave now.”

Braun winced. Krause had been speaking in German and the three Mexicans were puzzled by what they’d heard. He looked in the back seat of the car and the trunk that the crooks had pried open. A couple of sticks of dynamite were visible. He’d brought extras and now regretted it.

“Lie on your faces,” Braun said in the bad Spanish he’d learned in Mexico City. They did as they were told. Braun shot the first two men before they realized what was happening. The boy in the middle started to get up, but Braun killed him before he could get to his knees. Krause looked shocked, but quickly accepted the necessity of killing them.

“Damn, damn, damn,” muttered Braun.

Krause looked toward the wreck. “Do you think the shots will attract attention?”

The noise coming from the wreck and the sound of sirens was very loud, almost deafening. “No, but like I said, we have to leave immediately.”

“And them?” Krause asked, pointing at the three wide-eyed corpses.

“We have no choice but to leave them. It will be a present for the FBI.” He laughed harshly. “Perhaps it will drive them crazy trying to figure out what these three had to do with the train.”

CHAPTER 14

AMANDA AND TIM HEARD THE POLICE SIRENS AND THE SCREAMS as they left the little restaurant. As they turned the corner they saw a crowd of sailors and a bunch of Mexicans dressed in exaggerated outfits that were referred to as zoot suits. The two sides were brawling with fists, clubs, knives, and broken bottles. The zoot suits were a type of uniform worn by young Mexicans to show they were tough. With extremely wide lapels, stuffed shoulders, and baggy pants, they were a caricature of a man’s business suit and, in Tim’s opinion, looked ridiculous. Amanda agreed and had laughed when she’d first seen them lounging on street corners.

Dane was in uniform and had a .32 caliber revolver tucked in a shoulder holster under his jacket. The gun made the jacket bulge and the waiter at the restaurant had looked in surprise.

Before dinner they’d gone to a movie and watched John Wayne and Claire Trevor in
Stagecoach
. He’d seen it before, but Amanda hadn’t.

Tim and the others had taken to carrying a weapon after the several confirmed acts of sabotage that had culminated in the destruction of a passenger train a couple of days before. He’d made a quick trip to the site with Agent Harris and discovered nothing new in the saboteurs’ modus operandi, with the glaring exception of the three young men who’d been shot to death.

As they decided and as he told Amanda, he and Harris felt that the three young men had probably stumbled onto the saboteurs and paid with their lives for their bad luck. She’d earlier teased him about carrying a weapon, but now, as the rioters seemed headed toward them, it seemed like a good idea.

Dane shifted the pistol so that it was visible and he could take it out quickly. A couple of young and nervous-looking members of the Shore Patrol trotted by. Armed only with billy clubs, the Shore Patrol had a reputation for being poorly trained, and this pair looked it. Dane hurriedly grabbed the closest one, who looked angry until he saw Dane’s rank.

“What the hell’s going on, sailor?”

The young man stopped and swallowed. “Sir, a rumor’s going around that some Mexicans caused that train wreck the other day. A bunch of sailors were killed, and apparently some of these fucking zoot-suiters—sorry, ma’am—were bragging about how great it was that Americans got killed.”

The sailor turned and trotted toward the brawl, which now included more than a hundred fighters. A number of men were already on the ground, bleeding and cut. It looked like the relatively few Mexicans were getting the worst of it. Sirens were howling louder and more sailors from the Shore Patrol were arriving along with San Diego police.

Amanda grasped his arm. “I’m a nurse. I should be doing something.”

He squeezed her hand. “Wait until they stop killing each other. It looks bad, but it’s happened before and unless someone goes crazy with a knife and guts someone, or uses a gun, it’ll mainly be cuts and bruises. Most of them are probably drunk, which means you won’t be able to work with them until they are either unconscious, strapped down, or at least partly sober.”

Amanda recalled a number of frantic Saturday nights in the emergency ward of the hospital in Honolulu. She’d seen the results of bar brawls and small drunken riots, but never the fight itself. It was hypnotic to watch grown men behaving so foolishly and dangerously. And Tim was right, sometimes injured drunks had to be strapped down so they could be helped.

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.”

“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.”