Days of Infamy (60 page)

Shindo had hoped for three, but feared the answer would be only one. “Not bad,” he said.

“Tell him the rest,” Fuchida put in.

Genda did: “They're
Shokaku
and
Zuikaku
.”

Those were the biggest, best, and newest carriers the Imperial Navy boasted. Shindo wanted to jump up and down and whoop, but showing delight would have been as uncalled-for, as
American
, as showing anger. “Well,” he said, “That
is
good news.”

“
Hai
,” Fuchida said. “If the Yankees want to make a big fight of it, let them. We'll deal with whatever carriers they send the same way as we dealt with the ones we caught off Hawaii when the Pacific War started.”

“Oh, yes. Oh, my, yes. I can't wait to start flying off a carrier deck again,” Shindo said. “After you've got used to doing them at sea, takeoffs and landings from an ordinary airstrip just aren't the same.” He made as if to yawn. Fuchida, also a carrier pilot of great experience, laughed out loud at that. Shindo went on, “And, as we said, the Americans won't take us by surprise again.”

“We will make very sure of that,” Commander Genda said. “Along with the picket boats, now we'll have the new H8Ks flying long-range patrols to the north and east.”

“They're really remarkable machines.” Having flown in one, Fuchida could hardly contain his enthusiasm. “Wonderful endurance, good protection, lots of guns, and they aren't even all that slow. Lieutenant Muto said he wasn't afraid of taking on American fighters, not even a little bit.”

“No, eh?” Shindo let it go at that. Pilots were supposed to be happy about the planes they flew. All the same, he thought this Muto, whom he didn't know, not just an optimist but a fool. No matter how fast a flying boat was, it couldn't outrun or outmaneuver a fighter. The fighter could pick an attack angle where most of the victim's guns didn't bear, and then. . . . Shindo's thumb twitched, as if on the firing button. American warplanes didn't measure up to Zeros, but they were plenty to deal with the likes of an H8K. He hoped Muto didn't discover the truth of that the hard way.

Still . . .
Shokaku
and
Zuikaku
coming to join the
Akagi
! He went back to Haleiwa a happy man.

O
SCAR VAN DER
K
IRK
met Charlie Kaapu on the beach at Waikiki. They both had their sailboards and everything else they needed for a fishing run. Oscar was proud of himself for his invention. Not for the first time, he thought he might have made a mint off it in ordinary days. The trouble with that was, in
ordinary days he wouldn't have thought of it. Amazing how hunger concentrated the mind.

And he'd found a real niche no one else was exploiting. The fishing was pretty good out in that area beyond the beach but closer than sampans usually came. He hoped it would stay that way now that more and more people were putting sails on their surfboards.

He didn't begrudge Charlie his sailboard. The two of them had been through too much together for that. The
hapa
-Hawaiian grinned at him, saying, “Here comes the smart
haole
.”

“Where?” Oscar looked back over his own shoulder. Charlie thought that was funnier than Oscar did himself. He made a hell of a good audience. The two of them walked down to the Pacific. As usual now, the men fishing at the edge of the surf made way for them.

As they paddled out past the breakers, Charlie said, “You really that smart?”

“What do you mean?” Oscar asked, though he had a good idea.

Sure enough, his buddy said, “You so smart, why you take up with that blond wahine from the mainland again?”

That had several possible answers, from the crudely anatomical to
None of your business
. Oscar chose a mild middle ground: “Susie's not so bad. A lot of people would've flipped, getting stuck in all this. Heck, a lot of people
did
flip. Susie's come through pretty well.”

“Yeah, but you fought like cats and dogs last time she was at your place,” Charlie said, which was true. “Why bang heads with a broad when it's so easy to find one that doesn't want to yell and throw stuff? Waste time.”

“We're getting along pretty good now.” Oscar wasn't about to claim any more than that. More would have let Charlie give him the horse laugh if things blew up in his face day after tomorrow.

They put up their sails and let the offshore breeze waft them out into the Pacific.
Lousy name for this ocean
, Oscar thought, remembering that the word meant
peaceful
. The brief taste of oceanic war he'd got up by Waimea was plenty to sour him on it forever.

After a while, the two of them separated. Charlie swung east, toward Diamond Head, while Oscar went west, toward Pearl Harbor. He thought the fishing outside the Navy base was better than it was farther east. That stretch
of ocean had been restricted before the war; sampans hadn't gone through it as they had everywhere else near Honolulu.

The Japs weren't enforcing the restricted zone. Maybe nobody'd told them about it. If they did decide to crack down, Oscar had every intention of staying away from then on out. Falling foul of U.S. authorities would have meant a fine and maybe a little time in the cooler. If a Jap patrol caught somebody where he wasn't supposed to be . . . They'd shoot first and wouldn't bother asking questions.

But as long as there was no rule against being here, Oscar intended to make the most of it. He was well out to sea as he scattered grains of rice and dropped his line in the water. He wanted a good catch, enough to keep him and Susie eating for a while, enough to let him trade some so they wouldn't have to eat nothing but fish till they wondered if they'd grow fins. Whether what he wanted was anything like what he'd get was another question. He'd find out pretty soon.

It
was
going to be a good day. He had
ahi
and
aku
and even a small
mahimahi
on the line as he drew it back onto the sailboard. He gutted the fish as fast as he could. Some of the offal would make more bait. The rest he kicked back into the Pacific. He'd put some distance between this spot and his next one. He hadn't had any trouble from big sharks yet, and he didn't want to start now.

Something splashed behind him. He turned, careful not to upset the sailboard. His jaw dropped. His eyes bugged out of his head. That was no shark, no pod of dolphins, no breaching whale. That was a goddamn submarine, its deck almost awash, its conning tower painted an oceanic blue.

I've had it
, was the first thought that went through his head. He almost jumped into the water and tried to swim for it. Only the sure knowledge that that was hopeless kept him where he was. If they were Japs, maybe they were just intrigued with his contraption. Maybe they wouldn't do him in for the fun of it.

A grubby sailor stuck his head and shoulders out of the top of the conning tower. In purest Brooklynese, he asked, “Hey, Mac, you speak English?”

Better than you do, buddy
. Somehow, Oscar didn't burst into hysterical laughter. That proved he owned more strength of character than he'd suspected. He made himself nod. “Yes,” he said, adding, “I grew up in California.”

“Oh, yeah? Says you.” The sailor sounded deeply skeptical. Oscar knew why: he was almost naked and very, very brown. Plenty of tourists figured him for at least
hapa
-Hawaiian, too; they were too dumb to know a blond Hawaiian was a lot less likely than a swarthy Swede. This guy was evidently somewhere on the same level of dumbness. “Don't go away,” he said, and disappeared.

A minute later, another man took his place. This fellow looked just as unkempt, but wore an officer's cap with a large grease spot on it. “I'm Woodrow Kelley,” he said. “They call me Woody. This is the
Amberjack
, and they were rash enough to put me in charge of her. Who are you, pal? Vinnie says you say you're from California.” He didn't sound as if he believed it, either.

“My name is Oscar van der Kirk, and yeah, I'm from California. I graduated from Stanford, matter of fact.”

“What are you doing
here
, then?” Kelley asked.

“I like it here,” Oscar answered simply. “I liked it a hell of a lot better before the Japs came, but I still like it.” He pointed at the sub—the
Amberjack
, Kelley had called it. “What are
you
doing here?”

“Who, me? I'm not here at all. You're talking to a waddayacallit—a figment of your imagination.” The submarine's skipper had a wryly engaging grin. “If I were here, I'd just be looking around, seeing what I can find out. What the hell's that thing you're riding on, for instance?”

“I call it a sailboard,” Oscar said. “It lets me fish farther from shore than a regular surfboard would.”

“Your idea?” Woodrow Kelley asked. Oscar nodded. Kelley eyed the hybrid craft. “Pretty neat, I'd say. How far could you go on it?”

“Beats me,” Oscar answered. “I never tried anything really fancy. All I wanted to do was get out where the fishing was better than it is by the beach.”

“Could you sail to another island?” Kelley persisted.

“I suppose so, if the wind didn't let me down,” Oscar said. Molokai was only about forty miles away, Lanai not much farther, and Maui a short hop from either one. Even so, he went on, “I'd sure rather do it in a real boat, though. Not much margin for error in this thing. How come?”

“Just thinking out loud,” the sub's skipper said. Oscar knew bullshit when he heard it, but he was in no position to call the other man. Kelley went on, “How are things in Honolulu?”

“You don't have spies to tell you stuff like that?” Oscar asked.

“How do things look to you?” Kelley said, another answer that wasn't an answer. That was probably fair enough. A Navy officer wouldn't talk about spies with a guy on a sailboard.

Oscar thought. “People are hungry, but they aren't quite starving. You try and keep your head down so the Japs don't notice you.”

“Okay.” Kelly nodded. “How about the local Japs?—the ones who were living here before the invasion, I mean.”

“Some of 'em—usually older ones, I'd say—like it with Japan in charge. The ones my age and younger are mostly as American as anybody else. But an awful lot of them just want to go on about their business, same as most folks. As long as they get left alone, they're happy.”

“Uh-
huh
.” Woody Kelley nodded again, this time as if telling himself not to forget that. “How much of the rest of the island have you seen?”

“Not much, not since the war started. There's no gas for ordinary people's cars.” Oscar pointed up toward the conning tower. “Hey! Can you do something for me?”

“I dunno. Try me.”

“Let my folks know I'm okay, please. Bill and Enid van der Kirk, in Visalia, California. And my brother Roger.” Oscar paused. In for a penny, in for a pound, he decided. “And a gal named Susie Higgins has family in Pittsburgh. They ought to know she's all right.”

“Visalia. Pittsburgh.” Kelley looked down. Oscar hoped that meant he was taking notes. When he looked up again, he said, “They'll get the word. It may take a while. We'll have to clean it up so they can't tell how it came from Hawaii to the mainland.”

“Gotcha,” Oscar said. “Thanks, pal.”

“Any time,” Kelley said. “You want some real chow—canned stuff—to go along with your fish there?”

Spit flooded into Oscar's mouth. Canned stuff was precious, not least because so much of it had already been eaten. But, regretfully, he shook his head. “I better not. Anybody sees me coming off the beach with it, he's gonna know damn well I didn't catch it on a hook.”

Woody Kelley chuckled. “Okay, van der Kirk. Makes sense. You're nobody's dummy, are you?”

Except for Charlie Kaapu, he was the first person who'd said anything like that in years. Most folks figured Oscar was a jerk for preferring surf-riding to
making something of himself. In his occasional gloomy moments, he'd had the same thought himself. So when he said, “Thanks,” he really sounded as if he meant it.

“Sure thing,” Kelley said. “Listen. One more time . . . You've never seen me. You've never heard of the
Amberjack
, right?”

“Who? What?” Oscar said, and the officer—who couldn't have been any older than he was—laughed again. He touched his index finger to the brim of his grimy cap in something halfway between a wave and a salute. Then he vanished into the conning tower. A hatch clanged shut behind him.

The submarine slipped below the surface. Oscar guffawed. He'd watched subs go underwater in the movies. One thing the movies didn't tell you, though, was that the bubbling submergence sounded like the world's biggest fart in a bathtub.

He gave his attention back to the fishing line. Whether American subs were prowling around Oahu or not, he still had to eat. Keeping a full belly was everybody's number-one worry these days. When he got back to shore, he wondered if he'd hear that the
Amberjack
had surfaced and plastered a Japanese barracks or gun position. Nobody said a word about anything like that, though. He supposed the sub was just on a snooping run.
Too bad
, he thought.