“I do?” Joe yelped. Was he in trouble for not making that radio call? He didn’t think he ought to be in enough trouble for the Bunker Hill’s commander of air operations to ream him out in person. “What for, sir?”
“He’d better be the one to tell you that,” the debriefing officer answered.
Apprehensively, Joe went up to the carrier’s island. He found the door to Commander McCaskill’s office open. McCaskill, a craggy, gray-haired man in his early forties, looked up from his desk. “Ensign Crosetti reporting, sir,” Joe said, fighting not to show the nerves he felt.
“Come in, Crosetti,” the air operations commander said. “I’ve got something for you.” Joe couldn’t read anything in his voice or on his face; he would have made-probably did make-a formidable poker player.
“Sir?” Joe approached as reluctantly as a kid about to get a swat from the principal.
McCaskill reached into a desk drawer and pulled out two small boxes. He shoved them at Joe. “Here. These are yours now.” Joe opened them. One held two silver bars, the other two thin strips of gold cloth. McCaskill’s face had more room for a smile than Joe would have guessed. “Congratulations, Lieutenant Crosetti!” he said.
“My God, I made j.g.!” Joe blurted. It almost came out, Holy shit! Now that would have been something. He wondered if anybody ever had said something like that. He wouldn’t have been surprised.
Still smiling, the older man nodded. “You earned it, son. You’ve done well.”
“I wish Orson hadn’t bought the farm,” Joe said, suddenly sobered. “He would’ve got these way before I did.”
“Oh.” Commander McCaskill also sobered. After a moment’s thought, he said, “I don’t think you’ll find anyone on this ship without absent friends.” Now Joe nodded; that was bound to be true. McCaskill went on, “If it makes you feel any better, Mr. Sharp did win his promotion-posthumously.”
“Maybe a little, sir.” Joe knew he had to be polite. Yelling, Not fucking much! would have landed him in the brig. He wondered how much consolation that promotion was for Sharp’s folks back in Salt Lake. They would sooner have had their son back. Joe would sooner have had his buddy back. “Absent friends,” he muttered, and then, “This is a nasty business.”
“It is indeed,” Commander McCaskill said. “But I will tell you the only thing worse than fighting a war: fighting a war and losing it. We’re here to make sure the USA doesn’t do that.” Joe nodded again, not happily but with great determination.
OSCAR VAN DER KIRK CROUCHED IN THE RUBBLE of what had been his apartment building. He had one arm around Susie and the other around Charlie Kaapu. They all huddled together to take up as little space as they could. Oscar had a cut on his leg. Charlie was missing the top half-inch of his left little finger. Susie, as far as Oscar could tell, didn’t have anything worse than a few bruises. She’d always been lucky.
They were all lucky. Oscar knew it. They were alive, and they weren’t maimed. After everything that had hit the apartment, that was real luck. Not far away, somebody else who’d stuck it out was alternating moans and shrieks. The cries were getting weaker. Whoever it was, Oscar didn’t think he’d make it.
No way to get up and see, or to help the poor bastard. You could almost walk on the bullets flying by overhead. The Marines storming up Waikiki Beach were giving it everything they had. The more lead they put in the air, the less damage the last Japanese pocket in the Honolulu neighborhood could do to them.
And the Japs were fighting back with everything they had left. That meant rifles and machine guns and knee mortars. If one of those little bombs came down on top of Oscar and Susie and Charlie… That would be that. Or a U.S. shell could do the job just as well, or maybe even better.
“Now we know what’s worse that everything we ran into when we were surfing at Waimea!” Oscar yelled into Charlie’s ear.
“Oh, boy!” Charlie yelled back.
Back in college, Oscar had read Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus. He hadn’t understood it then. Now he had understanding rammed down his throat. You really could pay too much for some kinds of knowledge. If he lived, that would be worth remembering.
The Marines were only a block or so away. Oscar could hear them shouting at one another getting a new attack ready. With luck, this one would carry them past what was left of the apartment building. With even more luck, it wouldn’t kill his girl or his buddy-or him.
But he could also hear the Japs shouting a block or so to the north. It couldn’t mean… “They sound like they’re getting ready to charge, too,” Susie said.
And they did. “That’s crazy,” Oscar said. “They’d just be killing themselves.”
No sooner were the words out of his mouth than the Japanese soldiers or naval landing forces or whatever they were charged the Marines. They were screaming like banshees and shooting from the hip. It was so spectacular, and so spectacularly mad, that Oscar stuck his head up for a moment to watch. Heading the charge was a senior Japanese Navy officer in dress whites: bald and bespectacled and waving a sword. Oscar had to blink to make sure he wasn’t seeing things.
Half a dozen bullets seemed to hit the officer at the same time. His body twisted horribly, as if it didn’t know which way to fall. His sword went flying. And Susie grabbed Oscar and dragged him down.
“Getting shot’s not how you’re gonna get out of proposing to me!” she yelled.
“Okay, babe. That’s a deal.” Oscar stayed down from then on.
By the noises, some of the Japs actually got in among the Marines. They didn’t have a hope in hell of driving them back; they just died a little sooner than they would have otherwise. They probably also killed some Marines who might have lived if things went a little differently.
After that mad charge got smashed, the Marines surged forward. Only spatters of gunfire answered them. The Japs had shot their last bolt. An American in a green uniform flopped down almost on top of Oscar and Susie and Charlie. His rifle swung toward them with terrifying speed. “Don’t shoot!” Oscar said. “We’re on your side!”
As soon as the leatherneck got a look at Susie, the rifle stopped moving. His grin showed white teeth amidst brown stubble. “I don’t care about you, pal, but I hope like hell she is,” he said. “Here. Enjoy.” He tossed them a pack of cigarettes and some crackers and cheese wrapped in cellophane. Then he fired a couple of rounds and ran on.
“My God!” Oscar said dizzily-and he hadn’t even opened the Luckies yet. “We made it!” Susie kissed him. Charlie pounded him on the back. Nobody stuck anything up where a bullet might find it. Oscar didn’t want to turn himself into a liar now, especially after Susie kissed him again.
THE JEEP THAT ROLLED SOUTH FROM HALEIWA down the twice wrecked and now restored Kamehameha Highway carried a pintle-mounted.50-caliber machine gun. The driver glanced over to Fletch Armitage. “You handle that thing if you have to, sir? Still Jap snipers around every now and then.”
“I’ll handle it,” Fletch promised. “You think I’m skinny now, you should’ve seen me a month ago.” He felt like a new man. If the new man tired easily and looked as if he’d blow away in a strong breeze, he still marked one hell of an improvement over the old one.
Fletch looked like a new man, too, in the olive-drab uniform that had replaced khaki while he was on the sidelines. The jeep was new, too, or new to him; none of the handy little utility vehicles had got to Oahu before the war started. The machine gun, by contrast, felt like an old friend. He could have stripped it and reassembled it blindfolded. He’d had to do that at West Point. If the instructors felt nasty, they’d remove a key part before you put it back together, and make you figure out what was wrong.