“Yeah.” Dillon watched a car roll south down Pacific Coast Highway. Idly, he wondered who had the clout to get gasoline. The highway was pretty quiet these days. He looked past it to the beach and the ocean. “How many times you figure we’re gonna invade this goddamn place?”
“Till we get it right,” his buddy answered, which drew a grunt and a laugh and a nod from Dillon. Wenzel added, “Thing is, when we do it for real, we only get the one chance.”
That wasn’t strictly true. If a U.S. landing on Oahu failed, the Americans could always lick their wounds and try again. The country could, yeah. But the Marines who got ashore in that failed effort would never try anything again afterwards. Les didn’t want to think such gloomy thoughts. To keep from thinking them, he said, “Let’s go over to the NCOs’ club and have a beer.”
“Twist my arm.” Dutch Wenzel held it out. Les gave it a yank. Dutch writhed in wrestling-ring agony.
“Son of a bitch-you talked me into it.”
All the buildings here had the sharp-edged look of brand new construction. Most of them still had the fresh, almost foresty smell of wood newly exposed to the air, too. Not the NCOs’ club, not any more. It smelled the way it was supposed to: of beer and whiskey and sweat and, mostly, of tobacco. Cigarette smoke predominated, but pipes and cigars had their places, too. The blue haze in the air was also comforting and infinitely familiar.
Noncoms sat at the bar and at tables and talked about the things that had been on noncoms’ minds since the days of Julius Caesar, if not since those of Sennacherib: how their families were doing, where they were going next and how tough it was likely to be, what idiots the brass were (those last two not entirely unrelated), and how new recruits were obviously the missing link between apes and men that Darwin had sought in vain.
A gunny whose fruit salad went all the way back to the blue, yellow, and green ribbon commemorating the Mexican campaign and the occupation of Veracruz was expatiating on the latter topic. “Sweet Jesus Christ, boots nowadays don’t know enough to grab their ass with both hands,” he said, gesturing with a highball glass in which ice cubes clinked. “I swear to God, the Army wouldn’t want some of these pissweeds. And we’re supposed to turn ’em into Marines?”
He didn’t bother keeping his voice low. Heads bobbed up and down all over the club, Les’ among them. Nobody except another gunnery sergeant of equally exalted status could have presumed to disagree with him. Dillon, who came close both in rank and in years, wouldn’t have thought of it for a moment. As far as he was concerned, the gunny was only speaking gospel truth.
But another veteran noncom said, “Gonna need to put a lot of Marines on the beach if we’re gonna do the job. Up to us to make these damnfool boots into the kind of Marines they need to be.”
“Some of them won’t make the grade, though,” said the gunny who’d been around since dirt. “Some of them can’t make the grade.”
“We’ll run them off. There won’t be that many,” the other man said. “The rest’ll do the job. Even as is, we’re gonna have the damn Army landing right behind us, or maybe even with us.”
Everyone bristled at that, though it was too likely to be true. From what Les had heard, the Japs had four or five divisions in Hawaii. Defenders needed fewer men than invaders. He’d seen that for himself when he bumped up against the krauts in the Great War. There just wouldn’t be enough Marines to go around.
“So much for Germany first,” he said.
“Yeah, well, I don’t care what FDR says-I think the Japs screwed that one the first time they bombed San Francisco.”
Les was inclined to agree with him. By the nods and the grim silence that followed, so was everybody else in the NCOs’ club. No matter what the President might want, it was personal now between the USA and Japan. Hitting Hawaii was one thing, and bad enough. But killing people on the mainland-no overseas enemy had done that since the War of 1812. Everybody was hot and bothered about it. Not even a President as powerful as Franklin Delano Roosevelt could afford to ignore 130,000,000 Americans screaming their heads off.
“If those Navy pukes can just get us to Hawaii this time, we’ll do the rest of the job,” Les said. “Put us on the beach, and we’ll take it from there.”
Nobody argued with him, either.
SAILBOARD UNDER HIS ARM, Oscar van der Kirk let himself back into his own apartment. He didn’t yell, “Honey, I’m home!” It was half past three in the afternoon; Susie would be at her secretarial job. The only question was whether she still lived here.
Oscar looked in the closet. Her clothes still hung there. He nodded to himself-that was good. But then he realized it wasn’t the only question after all. When she came back, would she bring anybody with her? She wouldn’t know he was here. That could prove… interesting.
“Hell with it,” Oscar said. If he’d been the sort to borrow trouble, he wouldn’t have spent most of his time since graduating from college as a beach bum. Whatever happened would happen, and he’d figure out what to do about it when it did, if it did.
Instead of borrowing trouble, he hopped in the shower. He had more salt on him than an order of cheap french fries. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d had an order of fries, cheap or not. They were growing potatoes-he knew that. Salt was not a problem-one of the few things that weren’t. But he didn’t want to think about what they might use for grease these days.
The water was cold. He didn’t care. He’d got used to that. It just meant he didn’t dawdle, the way he would have back when things were easy. He hopped in, sluiced himself off, and got out.
Putting on clothes he hadn’t worn too often lately felt good, too. He sat back on the edge of the bed to wait for Susie.
He didn’t remember going from sitting to lying. He didn’t hear her key in the lock. Next thing he knew, she was shaking him. “Hey,” she said. “Look what the cat dragged in. So you made it back, did you?”
“Yeah.” He yawned, then gave her a kiss. Her lips were red, and tasted of lipstick. Somehow, she kept getting her hands on the stuff.
“Did you and Charlie have a good time?” She sounded amused. She might have been a mother talking to an eight-year-old boy.
Oscar nodded anyway. After another yawn-he hadn’t realized how tired he was-he said, “Yeah,” again. This time, he added, “The best part was off the west coast, on the way back. We got to watch an American sub blow two Jap freighters to hell and gone.”
Susie’s eyes lit up. “That is good,” she said. “It didn’t make the papers here-why am I not surprised?” She wrinkled her nose and looked like a kid-a happy kid. “Hasn’t even made the rumor mill yet,” she went on, “and that’s a little more surprising.”
“How have you been?” Oscar asked. “It’s damn good to see you again.”
“I’m okay,” she answered. “I missed you.” She wrinkled her nose again, in a subtly different way this time, as if annoyed at herself. “I missed you more than I thought I would-and what kind of jerk am I for telling you something like that?”
“I missed you, too,” Oscar admitted. “Must be love.” He said the word lightly; he didn’t want to leave himself open for one of the snippy comebacks she was so good at. Lightly or not, it was the first time either one of them had said that word.
Susie looked. “Yeah,” she said softly. “Must be.” She leaned toward him. This time, the kiss went on and on.
Some time a good deal later, Oscar remarked, “This is how we said good-bye, and now it’s how we say hello. Good thing it doesn’t get boring.”
Susie poked him in the ribs. “It better not, Buster.” And, not too long after that, he showed her it hadn’t. EVEN THOUGH HAWAII WAS NOMINALLY an independent kingdom once more, General Tomoyuki Yamashita hadn’t given up his office in Iolani Palace. If King Stanley Laanui didn’t care for that-well, too bad. That was Yamashita’s attitude, anyhow.