Above the East China Sea: A Novel (26 page)

Then they began talking about the enemy. “The
ketō
are even worse than we’d been told,” a man with a soiled, bloody bandage wrapped around his torso said. “They’re grotesquely large and covered in hair, furry as an animal’s pelt. We even saw some of the black ones. True ogres. Terrifying.”

“And many of their bodies are tattooed,” a patient whose foot had been blown off put in. “Like pirates.”

The first man added, “The worst, though, is that their weapons are as massive as they are. They have tanks that come at you with the force of a mountain moving. They crush everything in their path. They ran over a wounded man and I heard his bones crunching like match-sticks.”

“But we’re still winning the war, aren’t we,” I said, more statement than question.

“Of course, of course,” they all rushed to reassure me.

The man who’d lost his foot declared, “Japan’s never fought a war she couldn’t win. The Americans and their weapons’ bloated size just make them easier targets for us!”

The injured men answered that plucky declaration with a
banzai
cheer for our emperor. Because of their debilitated condition, however, it sounded feeble and uninspiring, and we all fell into silence.

Certain that I knew what would cheer them up, I announced heartily, “It will all be over soon anyway once the emperor unleashes Operation Shō and crushes the American fleet just floating out there like sitting ducks. Wait until the mighty guns of the
Yamato
are turned on them!” I finished with a flourish, proud to know the name of Japan’s indomitable warship. I waited for the patients to join me in a cheer.

It never came. Instead an uncomfortable silence greeted my pronouncement. The men’s gazes flickered away, refusing to meet mine. After several long moments, a patient crammed into the back of the cave, beyond the glow of the kerosene lamp, let out a dry, bitter laugh.

“Shut up, Nishihara!” another patient barked at him. “Don’t say anything in front of Miss Mighty Guns.”

“You shut up, Aoki!” Nishihara growled from the darkness. “Why should our little Okinawan princess here be the only one who doesn’t know that Japan has no fleet. And that her precious
Yamato
was sent to the bottom of the East China Sea five days ago.”

I searched the faces of the other men for proof that he was lying or delusional. That he had been driven mad from the pain of his wounds. And though a couple of the men did mutter, “He’s crazy,” and, “Pay no attention to Nishihara,” the truth was plain on their downcast faces: The
Yamato had
been sunk. No invincible warship was coming to save us. There was no Operation Sho. No help was on its way. Okinawa was all alone.

NAKANUHI
THE MIDDLE DAY

TWENTY-FOUR

Yuta.
The word jangles in my head as I step out of the stifling house.

I gulp down deep breaths of cool, sweet night air, trying to calm myself enough that I can make it home. Kirby and the others are sauntering across the parking lot. The instant a pair of headlights tilts down the hill toward them, however, they run for the Dumpster next to the USO and scurry behind it.

Jacey hangs back with me and, tipping her head to look into my face, asks gently, “Luz?” She takes my hand. “Girl, what’s wrong? You’re freezing. Luz? Say something.”

I’m so rattled that I can’t stop the words from slipping out, “I … I think … I’m probably losing my mind.”

She takes my other hand and squeezes them both between hers. “Did you see something in there?”

I nod.

“Her? The girl who was killed?”

“No, nothing like that.”

“Your sister?”

“Not exactly. I have to go.”

“I’m coming with you.”

“I actually really need to be alone.”

“No, you don’t. Whether you know it or not, you actually really need to have someone watching out for you. You’re not as tough as you think you are.”

“I don’t think I’m tough. I’m a mess.”

“You aren’t. It’s stress. Stress and drugs and not sleeping. That will screw with your head.”

“Yeah, my head is pretty screwed with.”

“I’m coming home with you. Period. End of story.”

I’m desperate to be alone and start edging away. “Thanks, Jace, seriously, but I think you’re right. I need to sleep. So I’m just going to go home and sleep.”

“Luz, you don’t look good. Are you sure?”

“Yes, I just really need to be alone.”

“Okay, but call me. If you need anything. Anything at all. You want my address? You could come over, in case you change your mind and want some company.”

“No, I’ll be fine. Really.”

I follow the ravine back to my neighborhood and crawl out right behind our apartment. I’m halfway across the backyard when I get hit in the face with the high beam from a passing patrol car. Knowing that most of the base cops are fat fucks who get winded tying their boots, I decide to make a break for it; no base cop would venture into the
habu
-infested ravine.

I’m just starting to crawl back down into the ravine when the patrolman yells out, “Luz? Luz James, that you?”

I shield my eyes from the glare of his high beam and catch a glimpse of the patrolman from under my hand. “Oh, hey, Boone, hi.”

It’s Airman Dwyce Boone, a short, squirrely guy barely older than me who works for my mom. He kills the spotlight and I walk over to the car. Boone jumps out, holds the back door open like he’s my prom date. I get in and he hops in the front.

“Well, good evening, Miss Luz.” Boone is a little too gleeful about busting the boss’s daughter and makes a big show of picking up the clipboard with his incident reports attached. He takes out the pen and circles it in big loops above the clipboard, like he’s warming up to write.

“Boone, come on, don’t log it.”

“Rules is rules, Miss Luz. Are you asking me to bend them?”

“I’m asking you just not to be a jerk.”

“It’s almost midnight. You’re out way after curfew. That’s an automatic citation with a copy to the SOFA member’s CO.”

He’s especially pleased that my mom’s boss, the Duke of Douche-baggery,
Colonel Manness, whom Mom nicknamed Manliness because he’s so not, would have to be notified. Manness is a by-the-book, old-school stickler who is threatened by everyone, but especially by women like my mom who could kick his ass three ways into next Sunday. The citation would give him the chance to ask her, “If you can’t command your own family, how can you command a unit?” And that would land hard on her, then a whole lot harder on me.

“Let it slide, okay? Look, our apartment is right there. I could say I was just playing in my backyard.”

“And everyone else could say that if I don’t cite you, I was just sucking up to the boss.”

“Boone. Dude.”

He laughs, puts the clipboard down. “I was just messing with you.”

“Very funny.”

He twists around in his seat, gets comfortable. “So what do you hear from your mom? Can’t believe they pulled her off when we’re already so shorthanded.”

I act like I’d read even one of her texts. “Sounds like it’s going fine.”

“No shit, I’d give my left nut to be out in the Sandbox doing what I actually trained for.”

The Sandbox? Afghanistan?

“I heard they’re transporting some high-values.”

High-value enemy combatants. I scrub the scared quaver from my voice and say, all casual, “Yeah, she mentioned that.”

“Really? Damn it.
That’s
what I trained for. Not babysitting brats and keeping guys from beating on their wives. I mean ‘Security Forces’? Come on. What strings did your mom pull to get to go?”

Get to go?

I see my mom again, packing, filling her duffel with ABUs in the new blue-gray camo pattern. When she’d thrown in her tan boots, I’d asked, “Aren’t those only authorized in theater operations?”

In answer, she popped her eyes at me, said, “Listen to you, all ‘theater operations,’ ” zipped up her bag, hauled it out to sit by the front door, ready for her 0500 departure time, and left to meet her buddies at the Rocker Club.

Now I want a real answer and say the one thing I’m certain will open Boone up like a can of tomatoes. “Probably because she’s a woman.”

“I didn’t say it, but it sure ain’t like she could have volunteered any quicker than me.”

She volunteered to go?
I open my mouth and take shallow breaths, so that Boone won’t see or hear that my heart has accelerated so much I’m panting at the thought that my mother volunteered to go to a war zone. Where her daughter was killed. I thought I’d made myself invulnerable to my mom’s behavior, but this evidence that I mean so little to her that she’d risk leaving me entirely alone in the world, that I really, truly, in fact, don’t have anyone, panics me.

“But,” Boone adds, “on the real, you got a high-value female, it’s a whole cultural deal. No males allowed. You need a female on the transport. I get that. The pool of females with the right training just ain’t that big. So they pretend like it’s open to all us humps stuck here on the Rock, but basically? They already tapped who they wanted. So your mom, I get her. But Wheeler? Vinger? Maldonado?” He names the guys chosen to go with her. “Why’d those guys get to go? I smoked Maldonado in Counterinsurgency. And Urban Terrain. I was like, ‘Dude, did you never play “Counter Strike”?’ ”

“Yeah, sucks for you.”

She chose to leave.

Boone’s radio crackles. He takes the call—barking dog—starts the engine. “Duty calls. Luz, who you staying with?”

“Here. This is our place.”

I start to open the door; Boone catches my eye in the rearview, holds it, asks again with lots of added emphasis, “No, Luz, for real, who are you staying with, because I
know
that your mom knows the base housing reg that states that ‘In the event of leave or an extended TDY in which the service member is absent from her quarters for five days or more, dependents under the age of eighteen will not be left unsupervised.’ ”

Of course my mom knows the reg. And of course she knows I know and expected me to be smart enough not to get caught breaking it.

“I
maybe
can let the curfew thing slide, but not this. So let me ask again, Luz: Who are you staying with? Because I cannot allow you to remain in base housing without supervision.”