Mitsuo Fuchida was less sure of that than his comrades. They didn’t know about the interrogations of the U.S. soldiers from the strange installation near Opana. The USA had a way to track planes through the air electronically. Fuchida gathered his own country was also working on such devices, but Japan didn’t have them up and running yet. If one was operating anywhere near San Francisco, it might guide fighters after the flying boats.
He shrugged. If that happened, it happened. Even if it did, fighters wouldn’t have an easy time finding the H8Ks in the darkness. And the Japanese planes, though slower and less maneuverable than U.S. fighters, were armed well enough to give a good account of themselves.
The danger of pursuit shrank with each passing minute. Fighters had only limited range. If they wanted to get home again, they couldn’t go too far out to sea. The flying boats, on the other hand…
Muto leaned back in his seat. “Copilot, would you like to hold this course for a few hours and let me grab a little sleep?”
“Of course. My pleasure.” Fuchida admired the smooth way Muto gave orders to a superior officer.
“Good. Domo arigato,” Muto said. “Wake me at once if there’s any trouble, of course, or when the radioman picks up the signal from the I-25.”
“I’ll do that,” Fuchida promised, most sincerely. Yes, indeed, trying to land the flying boat on the Pacific was the last thing he wanted to do. Muto closed his eyes. He started snoring inside a few minutes. Fuchida admired him again, this time for his coolness.
Fuchida kept an eye on the compass and the airspeed indicator and the altimeter. He held the course Muto had given him. Every minute put San Francisco five and a half kilometers farther behind the flying boat, Honolulu five and a half kilometers closer. Too bad so many kilometers lay between them.
He was proud that their navigation to the U.S. mainland had worked out so well. The flight wouldn’t have been easy by daylight, let alone with most of it at night. Fuchida laughed. Three Japanese flying boats would have got a rather warmer reception if they’d appeared over San Francisco with the sun still in the sky.
In any case, the round trip between Honolulu and San Francisco was about twenty hours. Without a layover-again, unlikely! — much of it had to be by night.
After about three and a half hours, Lieutenant Muto yawned and stretched and opened his eyes. He looked over at Fuchida and asked, “How is everything?”
“Fine,” Fuchida answered. “We were going on to the Panama Canal from San Francisco, weren’t we?”
“The Panama Canal?” Muto’s eyes flashed to the compass. Only after he made sure of the course did he laugh. “You know how to wake a fellow up in a hurry, don’t you, Commander?”
“I try,” Fuchida said. Lieutenant Muto clucked in mock reproach and shook his head. Though Fuchida had been joking, he couldn’t help looking back toward the southeast. The Panama Canal lay in that direction. If Japan could put it out of action, that would be a tremendous blow to the USA. If the Americans had to ship everything around South America…
Regretfully, he shook his head. The Panama Canal was more than twice as far from Honolulu as San Francisco was: out of range even for an H8K. The Canal would be well defended, too, and the Americans would move heaven and earth to repair whatever damage it suffered. Attacking it was nice to think about. So was making love to a beautiful movie actress. In real life, neither was likely to be practical.
Little by little, the sky began to grow light. They were flying away from the sunrise, which slowed it, but it came anyway. Even when dawn did arrive, though, there was nothing to see but sky above and an endless expanse of ocean below. Fuchida checked the fuel gauge. They’d filled every tank to overflowing before takeoff. Even so, they didn’t have enough left to get back to Honolulu.
Half an hour later, the radioman’s voice sounded in Muto’s earphones, and in Fuchida’s: “I have the signal from the I-25! ”
“Ichi-ban! ” Muto exclaimed. The relief in his voice said he must have been watching the needle drop toward empty, too. “What is the bearing?”
“Sir, we’re going to need to swing south about five degrees,” the radioman replied. “We’ll all keep our eyes peeled after that. By the strength of the signal, I don’t think we’re very far away.”
“Pass the word to the other planes on the low-power circuit,” Muto said. “No one’s likely to pick it up here, and no one’s likely to be able to do anything about it even if he does.”
“Hai,” the radioman said.
A crewman on one of the other flying boats first spotted the surfaced submarine. His radioman passed the word to Fuchida’s H8K and the third one. Then Fuchida and Muto both pointed out the window at the same time. Muto brought the flying boat down to the water. Spray kicked up from the hull as it landed. Suddenly, its motion took on a new character. For a plane, it had an excellent hull. For a boat… Fuchida gulped. I am a good sailor, he told himself sternly.
Muto taxied up alongside the I-25. Sailors on the sub’s deck waved to the flying boat. “How did it go?” somebody shouted. Muto and Fuchida waved and grinned. The sailors clapped their hands. They yelled, “Banzai! ”
Then they got down to business. The I-25 carried fuel for the last leg of the flying boats’ return to Honolulu. Two sailors in a boat ran a hose from the submarine to the H8K. Fuchida listened to fuel flowing into the tanks. When the plane had enough to get back to Honolulu, the sailors disconnected the hose.
Muto taxied out of the way. The other two flying boats refueled in turn. When all three had got what they needed, the submarine sailed away. Fuchida breathed a silent sigh of relief when the H8Ks got airborne once more after long takeoff runs that put him in mind of geese sprinting along the surface of a lake before they could get airborne. The flying boats had been hideously vulnerable as they bobbed on the surface of the Pacific. Now they were in their proper element again, and could take care of themselves.
They came back to the Pan American Clipper base about four in the afternoon. Japanese officers waited for them as if they really were tourists coming to Hawaii from the West Coast of the USA. Applause and shouts of, “Banzai! ” greeted them as they got out of the planes.
“Radio in the United States is going mad!” a signals officer yelled. “The Yankees are saying this was as big an embarrassment as Pearl Harbor!”
Fuchida and Muto bowed to each other. Then they both yawned. Together, they started to laugh.
COMPASSIONATE LEAVE WAS the last thing Joe Crosetti wanted. But here he was, tearing across the country on the fastest trains he could get. Most of the bombs the Japs had dropped on San Francisco came down on the harbor or near it. As they were leaving, though, they’d emptied their racks-and one of those afterthoughts had landed on the house where Uncle Tony and Aunt Maria and their four kids lived. One of the kids was still alive, though he’d lost a leg. He’d been blown into a tree across the street, which doubtless saved his life. The rest of the family? Gone.
In the harbor, the Japs had damaged a cruiser, a destroyer, and two freighters, and they’d sent another freighter to the bottom. Nobody’d laid a glove on them, not so far as anyone could tell. They’d come out of the night, done their dirty work, and then disappeared again.
To Joe, the ships mattered much less than his family. Had his aunt and uncle’s house not been hit, he might have given the enemy grudging credit for a nice piece of work. Not now. Now the war was personal. He did want to string up the San Francisco civil-defense authorities, who must have been asleep at the switch when the Japs came in. Had they had their radar on? Had they watched it if they had? Not likely, not by what had happened.