It was time to go. If the carrier survived five hits and the fire, she deserved to live. He ordered the Monkfish out into the open sea. Still at periscope depth, he searched for Japanese destroyers and saw a pair of them several miles to his port side. Incredibly, they were cruising away from him! He had no idea what had distracted them from the channel, but he didn’t care.
Swiveling the periscope back to the channel, Fargo saw a sight that stunned him. The carrier, torn apart by the five hits and other explosions, had taken on a definite and fatal list to port. Burning debris had begun to fall off the flight deck and into the sea as the ship slowly capsized.
“We got us a carrier,” he announced to his cheering crew. “And, if we’re damned lucky and the creek don’t rise, we got us a chance of getting the hell out of here.”
And maybe, he thought, just maybe, they had blocked the fucking channel.
CHAPTER 24
Jake Novacek carefully and quietly aimed his Springfield. The Japanese scout was barely visible in the tree about two hundred yards away. Jake had a dilemma. To fire and shoot the scout would alert the other Japanese soldiers in the area, but it was highly likely that the soldier would see Hawkins and his companions as they moved to a new firing position. Damned if I do and damned if I don’t, Jake thought.
The Japanese response to the American attack on Pearl Harbor had been so immediate and so savage that the Americans had been thrown off balance. The Japanese at Hilo had become a whirlwind of brutal activity.
Jake estimated that three of the four companies of marine infantry stationed at Hilo had exploded out toward where they thought the Americans were hiding. He cursed himself for not anticipating the savagery of their response; as a result of his failure, his small force was reeling and disintegrating.
The Japanese had extracted information regarding the Americans from a civilian population that surrendered the knowledge as an alternative to seeing their loved ones raped, burned, mutilated, and chopped to living pieces before their eyes by Lieutenant Goto. In very short order, trucks full of Japanese soldiers had closed in on Jake’s sanctuary. The Japanese weren’t very good soldiers, which made it fairly easy for Lieutenant Brooks and his marines to ambush them and inflict a disproportionate number of casualties.
But the marines were only a handful, and the Japanese learned quickly. Brooks was dead and the other marines either dead or scattered after their last known position had been overrun. Brooks had bought them a little time, however. It had enabled Jake to dismantle the facilities and move Gustafson and some of the others by fishing boat to Maui, where Ernie Magruder and two of his companions had managed to land. A fourth plane was rumored to have landed on Molokai.
Alexa had gone with Gustafson, which took a big load off of Jake’s mind. Their parting embrace had been tearful, with her not wanting to leave, but Jake had been adamant. On Maui, she might just survive, while he would not have been able to think had she remained on Hawaii. On Hawaii, she and the others would have been hunted down like dogs. Survival, he reminded her, was their primary goal. If everyone couldn’t make it, that was too bad. Once again, she should do everything she had to in order to live.
In the long term, Jake thought that time was on his and Alexa’s side. Only thing, the Japanese soldiers were just a few hundred yards away. If the radio reports were to be believed, the Japanese at Pearl Harbor had been clobbered and were continuing to be pounded. This meant that liberation was imminent, possibly in only a few weeks.
But, he thought grimly, first I have to live through this day.
The Hawaiians and others in his contingent had been dispersed, to return to their families and try to blend into the surroundings. Again, he felt they would make it long enough for help to come. So that left him and the Japanese scout in his sights. He didn’t think the Jap saw him, but Hawkins and the others were impossible for the Jap to miss. Either way, he thought, the Jap was going to send for his little yellow brothers to help him.
“Fuck it,” Jake snarled and pulled the trigger. A second later, the scout tumbled from the tree.
There was pandemonium in Admiral Nimitz’s San Diego command center for the Pacific Ocean Area. Just when they had written off the entire operation as a noble failure, Doolittle had radioed the word that a carrier had been sunk in the channel.
This, coupled with overheard Japanese messages, confirmed that a degree of victory had just been snatched from disaster. Doolittle had mentioned something about the American pilot intentionally crashing his plane on the carrier, which he identified as the Akagi. If that were true, it was agreed that the still unnamed pilot was due one helluva medal. Sadly, it looked like it would be posthumous.
Only one question now remained-what to do about Spruance?
While there was a strong consensus that he should be unleashed on the trapped Japanese, a vocal minority led by Vice Admiral Robert Ghormley felt there should be more assurances that the channel was actually blocked.
“It’s too big a risk,” Ghormley said. “It may look blocked, but we won’t know until the Japs try to get out. Give it a day, maybe two, and let’s verify it.”
The vice admiral’s voice carried weight. He had been responsible for planning the operation and knew more about its details than anyone else. However, Ghormley had a reputation for caution. Hardly a sin, Nimitz thought, but was it time to be reckless or time to go for the jugular?
Nimitz decided. “Send Spruance. The longer we wait and it is blocked, the more time the Japs’ll have to solve their problem.”
Jamie Priest was the runner who relayed the information to the radio center. Moments later, he was back in Nimitz’s conference room, exhilarated and fascinated by what was happening.
“Spruance acknowledged?” Nimitz asked.
“Yes, sir. No doubt about it.”
Nimitz nodded, then looked at Jamie with a curious smile. “Tell me, did the radio people note anything unusual with the transmission of his confirmation?”
Jamie was puzzled. “Sir?”
“Commander, did the signal come from where it was expected, or elsewhere?”
It was impossible to tell distance, but a good operator could get a feel for the direction of a signal. “Admiral, the operator said it came from a good deal farther north than he expected it to.”
Nimitz shook his head, then he grinned. “I’ll be damned. Ray Spruance left early,” he said, thinking of his admonition to Spruance to be careful. Then he laughed. “He’ll be there before the Japs can do a thing.” And, Nimitz thought, here’s to everyone who thought Spruance was too scholarly and indecisive for the command thrust upon him because of Halsey’s illness.
More than a dozen officers crowded into the office that overlooked Pearl Harbor. Admiral Yamamoto was the only one seated, while the others clustered around him. He saw no point in returning to the flagship Yamato. Neither it nor the remainder of the Japanese fleet was going anywhere for a while.
Yamamoto’s mouth was a grim slash, and he looked ashen. What had been an aggravating pinprick operation by the Americans had become a disaster. No matter how he tried to rationalize what had happened, he could not escape the fact that Japan had suffered its first significant naval loss in almost a century. The question of who had won or lost the battle in the Coral Sea had just become moot. Japan had definitely lost the second battle of Pearl Harbor with the sinking of the Akagi.
How the Americans had come up with such a resourceful and daring plan was almost irrelevant. Japan had lost a battle and, even more humiliating, had done so in front of many thousands of civilians. It would be Yamamoto’s responsibility to apologize to the emperor for his failure. He would do it and offer to retire.