Jake looked around. In the distance, the damaged Japanese destroyer was disappearing over the horizon, black smoke pointing the way for more American planes to find and kill her.
Armed men pushed the civilians who’d been gathered around the Japanese HQ toward him. Lani had an ancient revolver in her hand and waved it. “They are collaborators. We are going to kill them.”
Jake limped up and calmly took the pistol from her hand. “No,” he said. “Enough. You told me the killing wasn’t over, but now it is.”
Lani glared at him, then softened. The fire went out of her eyes. “You’re right. It is enough.”
Jake continued. “First, we’re going to investigate, and then we’ll punish the truly guilty, and not just somebody who sold groceries to the Japs and would have been shot if they hadn’t.”
Lani nodded reluctantly and turned away. The suspected collaborators ran. It didn’t matter what they did. They had nowhere to go.
Jake shook his head. He was so sick and tired of the fighting and the killing. When Lani was truly calmed down, she could begin interrogating the so-called collaborators.
Hawkins hobbled over. “What now?” he asked.
Jake took a deep breath. Was it over? Was it all truly over? His ribs hurt, and he had a host of other bruises to contend with.
“Captain Hawk, we’re gonna wait up here for things to settle down. Then we get you and the other wounded taken care of by our new best friends down here in beautiful Hilo. After that, I’m going to radio Nimitz and tell him we’ve taken the town and I’ve declared myself the military governor of the island of Hawaii. Then we’ll see what we can do about driving out any other Japs running around in the countryside. Can’t be too many of them left, and they’re leaderless and probably scared shitless. I’ll bet I can get some planes to help root them out. Sound good?”
“Sounds great, Colonel. After that, can we go home?”
“Yeah,” Jake said. Only thing, he wondered just what and where home was, and what part of it included Alexa. Did she really want her life to include him?
With only one torpedo left, Lieutenant Commander Fargo had considered taking the Monkfish back to California. However, he decided to wait a couple of days in case a good target turned up. A good submarine never returned with unspent ammo.
But no target did show up, and he was about to head east when he picked up a distant shape through his periscope. He waited as it drew closer and identified it as a typical merchant ship, one of hundreds like her. But she was Japanese and heading away from Hawaii, toward Japan. She was fair game, and he had one torpedo left.
“The hell with it,” he said and ordered a firing plot. If the torpedo worked, they might sink her. If it didn’t, they’d head for home with nothing lost.
At just under a mile, he fired. At just the right time, the torpedo exploded against the hull of the transport. Not bad, Fargo thought. He chuckled as he realized he was getting blasé. What fun was it to sink a transport in an open ocean after having braved the narrow channel of Pearl Harbor to sink a carrier?
Something strange was happening on the transport, though. She was belching people. What the hell? Fargo thought. She was definitely sinking, there were literally hundreds of people trying to get off her, and it quickly became apparent that there were nowhere near enough lifeboats or rafts. Shades of the Titanic, he thought, and fuck the Japs for not planning ahead.
But were these civilians or military personnel? When submarine warfare had started, a sub had been expected to give a ship a fair amount of time to disembark those aboard before torpedoing, or even to radio in the location of the sinking. Nobody did that anymore, of course. It was just too dangerous.
But he was curious. Still submerged, he eased the Monkfish to where he could see the dying transport better. Now most of her human cargo was in the water, and few would last more than a little while.
The ship was going down by the bow, with her stern high in the air. Fargo was able to read her name: the Wichita Maru. Hell, he thought. Why did the Japs name a ship after a town in Kansas? He noted it in the log and wondered just who was on the Wichita Maru.
CHAPTER 26
Jake Novacek sat in the high-back chair in the sparsely furnished anteroom and waited his turn to speak to the great man. Other colonels and even generals looked in at him and wondered just who Jake was and what he was doing in the partially completed Pentagon.
It had been more than four months since the battle on the hill and the liberation of Hilo, and so many things had happened.
The agony of Hawaii had been far from over. Even though abandoned, Admiral Iwabachi had gathered several thousand Imperial marines and other naval personnel and then unleashed a reign of terror over Oahu and Honolulu. In a spasm of fury, he’d slaughtered thousands of civilians, even continuing when the American 24th Infantry Division landed under the command of Major General Joe Collins. Iwabachi had retreated to Honolulu and forced the 24th to take the city street by street and house by house. The admiral and the remnants of his army had finally taken refuge in the brick building and dock where the Lurline liner had once brought smiling tourists from California to the islands.
It had been a mistake. Naval guns had flattened the dock at point-blank range. No survivors had been pulled from the rubble. However, Honolulu was virtually destroyed.
While the fighting had raged, Toyoza Kaga had been executed by Iwabachi for what the Japanese said was treason. Akira Kaga had survived and begun to pick up the pieces of his father’s commercial empire.
No trace had been found of Melissa Wilson, but her son had been located in the care of a Japanese family who were very glad to give him back to the Americans.
Will Hawkins was in a hospital in San Francisco, while Ernie Magruder and Karl Gustafson had returned to other duties.
Jake and Alexa had been reunited quickly and flown to San Diego as soon as conditions permitted. While they waited, they found a place to stay, made love, and tried not to think about the future.
In San Diego, Jake had been greeted warmly by Admiral Nimitz, and both he and Alexa had been pleasantly surprised to see Jamie Priest. Their presence solved a small problem for Jamie; both Jake and Alexa stood up for him and Suzy Dunnigan at their wedding. Suzy was pregnant as a house and had been discharged from the WAVES, who, according to her, didn’t have a sense of humor about pregnant sailors. She said that, while she had wanted to honor her dead father by serving in the navy, perhaps it was a greater honor to give him a grandchild.
Since Jake was privy to the existence of Magic, Jamie got Nimitz’s permission to give him an update. Admiral Yamamoto had made it by sub to Japan, where he was calling for a negotiated end to a war that Japan could not win. This call had split Japan’s government down the middle, with hawks and doves fighting for supremacy. In short, there was chaos in Tokyo.
Colonel Omori’s whereabouts were unknown. Feeding the fishes was Jake’s thought. At least Lieutenant Goto was dead. The Hawaiians who’d captured him had finally put him out of his misery a week after taking him.
But then Jamie had dropped the bombshell. “The Japs have been screaming on their radio about the whereabouts of a ship called the Wichita Maru. Jackass name for a ship, but it is or was a freighter that left Honolulu at night just before the Japanese attempted their breakout and hasn’t been heard from.
“We all wondered just what the hell was so important about the Wichita Maru, and then we found out what her cargo was. She was carrying all the remaining Japanese pilots from the sunken carriers. We’ve checked submarine reports, and we’re reasonably certain she was sunk with all hands by one of our boats. Jake, the Jap pilots are even more important to them than the carriers. Ships you can replace, but the Japs do not have a system for replacing their pilots. Jake, they’re fucked.”