The Miko - 02 (17 page)

They all drank together. Nangi saw that there were tears in the corners of Gōtarō’s eyes. At the time he supposed they were because of either his Christianity or his ignorance. What Captain Noguchi had used for their fond farewell, masquerading as his own words, Nangi recognized as an excerpt from a letter famous in Chinese history. It had in fact been written in 98
B.C.
by Ssu-Ma Ch’ien.

Noguchi put down his cup. “You two are privileged to be the first to war test this new and devastating weapon against the Allies. You are the first two recruits in what will come to be known as
Shimpū Tokubetsu Kōgekitai:
the Divine Wind Special Attack Force.

“This is your opportunity to follow in Major Oda’s footsteps, to become a reincarnation of
shimpū,
the divine winds of 1274 and 1281 which drowned the invading Mongol hordes, rescuing Nippon from their destruction.”

Both Nangi and Gōtarō—indeed everyone in the Japanese Imperial Navy—had heard the story of the pilot Ōda who had taken his Ki-43 fighter into the side of an American B-17 bomber, tearing the larger airship in two, thus saving an entire Japanese convoy. He had been a sergeant then. In death he had been promoted twice.

“Major Sato,” Noguchi was saying now, “you have been selected to guide the first Ōka to its flaming destiny. Major Nangi, you will pilot the mother ship.” He glanced down at a sheaf of papers. “We have been informed of an Allied sighting: a battleship and a destroyer, the vanguard no doubt of a larger fleet, heading toward the Marianas. The destroyer is your target. The ships are now”—he consulted his dispatches again—“three hundred fifty miles southwest of the island of Guam. When you leave this cabin you will go directly abovedecks. Your flight gear will be waiting for you. You will take off at 05:30. I will be in the conning tower to observe you firsthand.”

He stood up. The briefing was over.

The predawn air was chill with a gusting inconstant wind quartering in from the northeast. Nangi and Gōtarō, clad in their flight suits, walked across the vast expanse of the carrier’s open deck. Before them loomed the hump-bellied shape of the twin aircraft, as disfigured as a leper.

“I have more flight time than you,” Nangi said. “They should have chosen me for the Ōka.”

Gōtarō smiled. “There are few like you left, Tanzan. Most of them coming up now are raw recruits with little or no training. With that in mind—with the war having so completely depleted us—do you think it a wise decision to test this flying bomb with a veteran pilot?” He shrugged his shoulders. “What possible good would it do when those who will follow, the true members of
Shimpū Tokubetsu Kōgekitai,
will know nothing.” He shook his head. “No, my friend, they have made the correct choice.”

He was upwind of Nangi; when he abruptly stopped and turned to face him, his body blocked the fierce bite of the wind from Nangi’s face.

Gōtarō produced a white square from a pocket, luminous in the werelight. “Here,” he said, “this is for you. A
hachimaki.”
He tied it around Nangi’s helmet. “There. With that ancient symbol of determination and derring-do you look just like the other meaning of
shimpū.
Do you know it?”

Nangi shook his head.

“In Tokyo these days I’ve heard the term is used in a humorous way to describe the daredevil taxi drivers.
Kamikaze.
” Gōtarō laughed. “I would have called you that in Noguchi’s cabin but it is surely too lighthearted a word for him. This is quite a solemn moment for him.”

Nangi squinted up at his friend. “And for you, Gōtarō-san, knowing what must be the end of this mission.”

“I have faith, my friend,” the big man said. “I have no thought but to serve my country.”

“They’re mad if they think this Ōka will frighten the Americans. More likely—knowing them as I do—they will laugh at it. They have no concept of
seppuku
, the warrior’s way of death.”

“So much the worse for them,” Gōtarō said, “for this has surely been a war of misunderstanding. I cannot think of what will happen to us or what may come after. I have my duty to perform. In all else, I put my trust in God.”

The wind was picking up as the high bowl of the heavens began to lighten, pitch black fading to a deep cerulean. Down low in the east, where the sea met the sky, there were already the first fugitive streaks of pink, rising.

Gōtarō reached out. “Listen, my friend, Captain Noguchi was right. We all love life; that, too, is our duty. But there are higher principles than self. That is one of the first teachings of Christianity.”

The mechanics took over as they came up on the half-tarpaulined planes. They took them through a brief but explicit tour of the tandem units. There wasn’t much to see, actually. The twin-engined Mitsubishi had been stripped down to accommodate the intrusive hump of the stubby Oka. It had also been converted so that one man—the pilot—could fly it satisfactorily.

Beneath was the
Cherry Blossom.
When Nangi poked his head inside, he was inwardly appalled. It appeared to be nothing more than a flying coffin with almost no equipment. Only a steering mechanism and a speaking tube to allow communication with the pilot of the Mitsubishi.

The mechanics explained that Gōtarō would sit in the larger craft with Nangi until their target was sighted. Then he would slide down through the modified bomb bay doors into the tiny cockpit of the Ōka. All phases of the mission were gone over in detail, and then the two majors were asked to repeat the drill. By that time it was 05:19.

They climbed into the Mitsubishi.

The sea was a sheet of flame, reflecting along its vast, rippling skin the rising of the bloodred sun. For a time all blue was banished from the sky as the lurid tendrils of light floated higher.

For Nangi and Gōtarō there was only the monotonous thrumming of the twin engines, the steady vibration. Now Nangi began to understand the desperation of his country. This was a plane he was quite used to, and the differences in flight were considerable. It had been stripped down in more ways than the mechanics had cared to mention. Of course there was no armament—that had been apparent on the ground at first inspection. But a great deal of the inner insulation of the plane was also gone. Nangi supposed that some of this was essential in order to offset the fully loaded weight—4,700 pounds—of the Ōka; there were over 2,500 pounds of high explosive in its nose.

And yet the farther he flew this “new” plane the more he became convinced that even more than was strictly necessary had been taken out. He thought of what Gōtarō had said about the sad state of Japan’s military manpower. Didn’t it follow then that the same might hold true for materiel. Were they already down to cannibalizing planes? Would that mean that by year’s end untrained teenagers would have rifles shoved into their soft fists and be cast off from the Japanese shore in rowboats to meet the advancing enemy? Nangi shuddered at the thought and made a minor course correction.

Just behind him Gōtarō, acting as navigator for the moment, studied the aerial map of the North Pacific. He glanced at his watch and, leaning forward to make certain Nangi could hear him over the ferocious din of the aircraft engines, said, “We should be sighting them in just under ten minutes, approximately two hundred fifty miles southwest of Guam.” He looked at his map again. “That will put them and us almost directly over the Marianas Trench. That is supposed to be the deepest depression on earth.”

“I know.” Nangi had to yell to be heard. “I’m trying not to think about it. I read somewhere that scientists have guessed it might be more than forty thousand feet deep.” He shuddered.

“Don’t worry,” Gōtarō said lightly, “neither you nor I will touch water on this mission.”

Just over six minutes later, Gōtarō touched Nangi’s shoulder, pointed south. The unbroken skin of the Pacific seemed placid and so flat it might have been a sheet of gunmetal, solid and unyielding. Then, following the other’s finger, Nangi saw the two tiny specks. He made another minor course adjustment.

“Time,” Gōtarō said in his ear.

Nangi was trimming airspeed. “Wait!” he called. But when he turned his head, his friend was already gone. Nangi could picture him slithering down the makeshift tunnel into the dark, cramped, coffinlike cockpit.

“Here I am.”

Nangi heard Gōtarō’s voice emerging through the top end of the speaking tube. He lowered the flaps, and they began their descent. He kept Gōtarō informed every step of the way.

“We’re at thirty-five thousand feet. I can just make out some definition in the target.”

“I’ve got the destroyer,” Gōtarō said. “Just get me there on time. I’ll do the rest.”

Nangi’s skilled hands were busy bringing the plane down on course. He felt keenly the
hachimaki
wound tightly around his helmet and he said, “Sato-san.”

“Yes, my friend.”

What was there to say? “Twenty-nine thousand feet and closing. We’re right on target.” He put his hand up to touch the white cloth fluttering slightly in the chill air.

The sky was enormous. Off to the left, dark cumulus clouds were building along the horizon, and Nangi was mindful of the first abrupt shift in wind direction. Still rich sunlight splattered the target area. The sea stretched away, limitless.

“Twenty-eight thousand,” Nangi said and put his hand on the Ōka release lever. “I’ll give you a second-by-second countdown.”

Gōtarō must have heard something in his voice because he said, “Take it easy now, my friend. Don’t worry.”

“Unlike you, I have no faith to believe in.” Nangi shored up his emotions. The altimeter was hovering near the cutoff point. Soon the Ōka would be but a swiftly falling blossom, dropping toward the bosom of the Pacific. “It is time we said our goodbyes.”

The droning of the wind and then, drifting up to him from the speaking tube, came Gōtarō’s voice, “Today in flower, Tomorrow scattered by the wind—Such is our blossom life. How can we think its fragrance lasts forever?”

There were tears in Nangi’s eyes as he pulled the lever. “Goodbye,” he whispered.

A moment later the rockets came on. Abruptly, the Mitsubishi canted over horribly. At first Nangi thought they had been hit by enemy foe. But they were still too far away from their target for the ships’ guns, and the sky had been clear of enemy aircraft.

Then, with one wingtip pointing toward the roof of the heavens, the nose went almost straight down, and he knew with a sudden chilling certainty what had occurred. The wind was moaning through the stripped down fuselage as he leaned forward, screaming into the speaking tube. “Gōtarō! Gōtarō!”

“I’m stuck in here, still plastered to your underbelly.”

“The rockets are misfiring! I can’t bring the nose up!” Frantically, he worked at the controls, but it was useless, he knew that. They were not meant to correct for 1,764 pounds of thrust.

They were hurtling out of control, heading toward the flat bed of the sea at a heartstopping six hundred miles an hour. Still Nangi did not give up hope and he did what he could to slow their terrific rate of descent. The rockets cut off after nine seconds, but their tremendous initial thrust had done their damage.

“Get back up here!” Nangi cried as he tried to regain control of the aircraft. “I don’t want you in the belly when we hit the water.”

There was no answer but Nangi was too busy at the controls to repeat his urgent message. Now that the rockets were off, some semblance of control returned to the plane. But they were dangerously close to the sea and Nangi realized there was no hope of pulling out of the spin. The Mitsubishi’s twin engines just could not cope with the powerful thrust of the rockets’ misdirected fire.

The airframe was juddering dangerously, and because of the acute horizontal angle with which they were dropping he was afraid a wing would crack off. If that happened, he knew, there would be no chance for them at all. The ungainly craft would plunge like a stone into the wall of the ocean, crushing them instantaneously.

So Nangi abandoned the impossible task of pulling them out of the dive and instead redirected his attention to rectifying the angle. If he could level them off somewhat they would have a chance of survival. The Ōka would be sheared off as they hit, but as long as Gōtarō was out of there that would be all right—the stubby plane would take the brunt of the force.

Out of the windscreen the sky was pin wheeling, merging with the sea, back and forth like a funhouse ride. The fuselage was screaming as the force of gravity applied pressure to the riveted joints. The sea was clear of the enemy and there was nothing on the horizon but the storm piling up, purple and yellow like a bruise.

They were very close to the water now, and Nangi began to hear a high, thin wailing above the rest of the sounds inundating him, and he began to sweat. The top wing had still not come down far enough and now the stress on it was horrendous.

There were only seconds left before he knew it would shear off, plunging them to their death. He did not want to be crushed inside this steel coffin and he worked even more frantically at the controls.

He felt a pressure on his back, then Gōtarō’s big hand gripping his shoulder and he thought, It took him long enough. He was angry with himself and with Gōtarō because of the added anxiety it had caused him.

The sea was coming up fast and now he thought, It doesn’t matter. If the angle doesn’t kill us, the explosives in the nose of the Ōka surely will. But still he worked on, and the upper wing grudgingly began to level off.

They were now no more than five hundred feet off the water and Nangi wondered if he had left it too late because they were falling, falling like a leaf in a storm, the sea coming off its two-dimensional plane, breaking up into light peaks and dark troughs, the dark blue almost black and the last thought whirling around his brain, We’re over the Marianas Trench and if we sink we just might go on forever.

Then the Pacific came up and slammed them so hard all the breath went out of Nangi’s lungs like a balloon bursting. He heard the shriek of ten thousand demons then a quick searing flash of heat and his tiny world collapsed in on him, bolts of pain imploding, nailing him to a cross of agony.