The Great Alone (102 page)

There were times when Wylie doubted that the War Department realized just how big Alaska was. It had thirty-four thousand miles of coastline, more than the entire United States. On most maps, the Aleutian Islands were never shown to scale. As a result, they usually ended up resembling the Florida Keys. There was a big difference, however. They stretched some twelve hundred miles westward from the tip of the Alaska Peninsula. From Anchorage to the westernmost island of Attu, it was almost two thousand miles.

It was a hell of a lot of territory to patrol, especially when the Army had only five combat squadrons in its air force and five thousand combat troops with twenty thousand support personnel and the Navy had only three cutters, maybe a dozen destroyers—more than half of them World War I class—five cruisers, six antique S-boat submarines, some PBY seaplanes and tenders, and a fleet of Yippee boats, mostly small fishing crafts purchased by the Navy to patrol the waters. And no one knew just where the Japanese might strike.

Wylie had never claimed to be a brilliant military strategist, but even he could look at a map and see that Alaska was a lot closer to Japan than Hawaii was. If the Japanese took Hawaii, they’d still have to cross twenty-five hundred miles of ocean to reach targets on the West Coast. But if they took Alaska, the Bremerton Navy Yard and the Boeing bomber plant in Seattle were only three hours flying time away. All of Canada and the United States would be exposed—and Russia would be at point-blank range. As close as Japan was, a supply line could easily be established.

But Wylie could talk about none of that. He had to act dumb and look like some stupid GI while Bogardus knowledgeably discussed how the military road from the U.S. to Alaska was to be built and how the workers, civilian and military, were to be deployed all along the route to begin construction at several points at once.

Dinner that night was the longest meal he’d ever had to sit through. But it finally ended. Although Lisa’s mother urged Bogardus to stay a while longer, he insisted he had some plans to study. Wylie watched silently while Lisa saw him to the door.

“I’ll pick you up Monday morning,” he heard Bogardus say.

“I’ll be ready.”

Wylie realized that she rode to work with him every morning—and probably home every night, too. And he wouldn’t be around to do anything about it. Spring was on its way. The winter storms that plagued the northern seas would be abating. He had a hunch that if the Japs were going to make a move against Alaska it would happen soon. If or when that happened, as a Scout he was destined for the front lines. They were a commando unit, trained to conduct raids and infiltrate enemy positions. He didn’t know when he’d have another chance to see Lisa again.

After Bogardus left, Lisa’s father discreetly shooed the boys from the room to give Wylie a chance to be alone with her. She walked over to him, nervously rubbing her palms together.

“Wylie, I’d like to explain about Mr. Bogardus—” she began.

He cut her off. “You don’t owe me any explanations, Lisa.”

“But—”

“Let’s just drop it, shall we?” He was angry, and he knew it showed.

“All right.” But she appeared confused and hurt by his attitude.

CHAPTER LV

Dutch Harbor, Unalaska Island

June 3, 1942

It was early morning, barely half past five. From the small encampment on the shoulder of Ballyhoo Mountain, Wylie surveyed the mountain-ringed bay below. There was a break in the storm that had plagued the island chain for nearly two weeks, hampering the efforts of the meager air and Navy patrols to locate the Japanese task force that, according to CINCPAC intelligence, was headed for the Aleutians. Heavy clouds lingered overhead, but the driving rain had stopped, and the powerful wind—the dreaded williwaw—no longer roared down the volcanic canyons around Dutch Harbor, flattening tents and anything else in its path, For a change, nothing obscured Wylie’s view of the harbor, its naval station, and Fort Mears.

The rising sun made a feeble attempt to penetrate the clouds as Wylie scanned the long fingerlike body of water that was Unalaska Bay, the same bay where Captain Cook had anchored during his search for the Northwest Passage, the same bay along which his ancestor Tasha had once lived at the time of the initial uprising against the Russians. Now here he was, part of a small detachment of Scouts sent to Unalaska to gather intelligence, while others were at Kodiak, the Pribilofs, Cold Bay, and Umnak.

A canvas flap rustled behind him. Wylie turned as Big Jim Dawson stepped out of his tent and paused to yawn and stretch, looking like some big burly bear just emerging from a winter’s hibernation. Before the war, he had been a mining engineer turned prospector from up around Circle. A thickset man of average height, he had a beard the color of dirty snow and hair black as coal. He had joined the Alaska Scouts at the same time that Wylie had. They’d gone through the arduous training together—made the long, grueling marches through the woods in the snow, endlessly sketched and made maps, and practiced day after day shooting every kind of weapon that a man could carry either over his shoulder or on his back. They’d gone through hell together and had come out hardened and tough—and good buddies, their friendship cemented by all they’d endured side by side.

“I’m hungry.” Big Jim rubbed his stomach as he walked over to stand beside Wylie. “I sure could go for a big stack of those sourdough flapjacks of yours. It’s your turn to do the cookin’ this morning. Remember?”

“I remember.” For the most part, all the Scouts shunned the tasteless C-rations. Instead, they carried along their own hip-pocket stove and side meat for frying grease and the precious sourdough starter. They supplemented their diet with whatever game or fish they could catch.

“Anything going on down there?” Big Jim gazed down at the six ships anchored in the harbor.

“It’s quiet. They’re probably all still in the sack after that air-raid drill they had just before dawn.” Then Wylie stopped and frowned, pausing to listen to the bugling alarm he heard drifting up from the bay. “Hear that? Sounds like one of those ships is sounding general quarters.”

Before Big Jim could reply, the wail of air-raid sirens echoed across the bay, mingling with deep-throated whistles of the ships at anchor as they summoned their crews to battle stations.

“Somehow, I don’t think this is one of their goddamned drills,” Big Jim muttered.

Wylie lifted the binoculars he wore slung around his neck while Big Jim dived back into his tent to get his own pair. In the harbor below, all the ships were getting up steam to flee the port. At the naval station and Fort Mears, men were scrambling to man the anti-aircraft and machine-gun positions. Dutch Harbor had no airfield because of its extremely mountainous terrain. The only aircraft stationed there were a few PBY’s tied in some nearby coves.

As he swept the points of the compass, Wylie spotted the Jap Zeros breaking out of the clouds, coming at them out of the south. Big Jim joined him, but Wylie didn’t take his glasses off the enemy planes, following them as they peeled off to attack.

“I make it fifteen Zeros.”

“That was my count, too,” Big Jim confirmed.

The first bursts of flak exploded in the sky over the harbor, but the black puffs of smoke were quickly followed by more as the rest of the shore batteries joined in to lay a screen of flak over the harbor. On the bay, the lumbering mail plane was desperately attempting a takeoff run, but it was strafed by two diving Zeros before it could get airborne. On fire, the mail plane careened toward the beach.

“They’re after the PBY’s.”

Their initial targets did appear to be the seaplanes moored in the secluded coves. “At Pearl Harbor, nothing got in the air against them either.”

“Well, one’s gonna make it.” Big Jim pointed to a Catalina climbing up to meet the Japanese attack.

Spotting it, an enemy plane made a pass at the PBY. As the Zero flew over it, the waist guns opened up on its exposed belly. At the same instant, the Zero was hit by flak. It wheeled over, spewing black smoke and yellow fire, and twisted downward like a corkscrew, crashing into the bay.

Wylie’s ears vibrated with the steady boom of the heavy guns, the spitting rattle of machine guns and tracers, and the powerful explosions of bombs—all combining to make a deafening thunder that shook the ground beneath his feet. All the endless training had taught him to observe what was going on, the enemy targets, their strategy, their objectives, but part of him couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Those Jap planes were real; so were their bombs.

Four of the enemy bombers swung away from the harbor and headed for the Army fort. Over their targets, they dropped their thousand-pound bombs, reducing the tank farm to flames and blowing up a barracks. As the smoke cleared, the wounded started crawling out of the blackened rubble. Wylie swung his binoculars away from the site, his eyes blurring, his anger impotent.

“Look out!” At the same instant that Big Jim shouted the warning, he slammed into Wylie’s shoulder, driving him to the ground.

Instinctively Wylie rolled the minute he hit. Tracers from the strafing Zero chewed up the ground where he’d been standing a second ago. He felt the sweat break out across his forehead, the dryness in his throat, and the tightening in his stomach. But already the rifle he always carried was in his hands, and his nerves stayed steady enough for him to squeeze off a couple of rounds at the streaking Zero as it peeled away to look for another, more important target.

“The sneaking bastards.” But Big Jim wisely made no attempt to get up and offer them a standing target. Neither did Wylie, choosing instead to watch the fast and furious action below from ground level.

The enemy attack lasted a full twenty minutes. With their bomb supply exhausted, they pulled away and flew back to the south. From Ballyhoo, Dutch Harbor appeared to be practically destroyed—a smoking mass of bombed rubble and debris. But the damage wasn’t as bad as it looked. The ships in the harbor were virtually unscathed; the radio shack and its equipment were intact; and the human casualties represented only one percent of the force. Nearly all of the fifty-two casualties occurred when the bomb blew up the Army barracks at Fort Mears.

The following afternoon the Japanese planes struck Dutch Harbor again, scoring two direct hits on an old beached ship, the
Northwestern,
and blowing up four large fuel storage tanks. American patrols still hadn’t located the Japanese task force operating in the Aleutian waters.

Far to the south, at Midway Island, a large naval battle was in progress. But it didn’t seem very important to the men at Dutch Harbor. The war in the Aleutians had begun. Less than a week later, it was known that the Japanese had captured the island of Attu.

CHAPTER LVI

Anchorage

June 20, 1942

As the twin-engine lockheed taxied toward the hangar bearing the faded sign ace flying service, Ace Cole rubbed the taut muscles in the back of his neck. It was the end of a long day for him. Flying wasn’t as much fun as it used to be, or maybe it was just that it was getting too tame. With all the instruments and radio beams there wasn’t much excitement left.

He taxied the plane to a halt in front of the hangar and automatically began shutting down the engines and switching off the electrical systems. When he glanced out the cockpit window, he noticed the stocky, gray-haired Billy Ray trotting toward the plane, carrying a set of wheel chocks in his hand. For a minute, Ace just stared, unable to remember the last time he’d seen Billy Ray move that fast.

“Something must be wrong,” he murmured to himself.

Just about that same instant, a handful of soldiers emerged from the shadows of the hangar. It felt like his heart took a sickening nosedive into his stomach. Wylie. They hadn’t heard a thing from him since the Japanese attack at Dutch Harbor and their subsequent capture and occupation of the islands of Kiska and Attu.

“Sweet Jesus, no.” He wrenched the seat belt loose and scrambled out of the plane faster than he ever had in his life.

But the minute his feet hit the tarmac, his legs seemed to turn to rubber. He was shaking inside, more scared than he had ever been in his life. He paused, trying to get a grip on his usually calm nerves, as the soldiers started walking toward the plane.

Billy Ray walked over to him and pulled a greasy rag out of his dirty overalls, then wiped his hands with it. Despite his age, he was still the best mechanic Ace had ever known. There wasn’t any engine he couldn’t fix; now it just took him a little longer.

“How long have they been here?” Ace nodded toward the Army lieutenant and his soldier escort.

“They showed up shortly after you called the tower for landing instructions.” He glanced uneasily at Ace.

He took a deep breath, then asked, “Did they say what they wanted?”

“Nope. But there’s somethin’ funny going on,” Billy Ray replied.

That remark wasn’t the kind Billy Ray would make if he thought Ace was about to receive some bad news about Wylie. Ace frowned and thrust his hands into his jacket pockets, tipping his head back a little to stare at the soldiers.