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Nine men aboard the boat, one who shot himself with a stolen Army .45 that night in Pearl when they were in drydock after that foolhardy attack on the Jap minesweep — what the hell was his name? He’d been a very thin man, a machinist’s mate second, Schroeder, Schneider, something like that. He’d gone ashore and into the head of a USO canteen and then put the barrel of the gun into his mouth and pulled the trigger. They’d found him with the back of his skull splattered all over the bathroom walls. One of the USO hostesses said to Jason when he went to identify the body — the face was still intact, it was only the back of the man’s head that was gone — she said to Jason, “I wish he’d picked someplace else to do it. That bathroom was freshly painted only last week.” Nine men to begin with, and then Schroeder or Schneider (which the hell was it?) killed himself in Pearl and the seaman, Phillips, asked for transfer to the U.S.S. Little, a destroyer that was later sunk by kamikazes off Okinawa. Jason often wondered if Phillips had been among the men killed that day in May of 1942. Two other men left the 832, a gunner’s mate third named Kuzinsky — who was wounded in the summer of 1944 during an air attack on the base, and who was sent home with a Purple Heart — and the replacement for Schneider or Schroeder, a man named Palucci who had two brothers killed in the battle for Cassino (where his mother was born) and who was shipped back to the States gratuitously. Five of the original crew members stayed with the 832 until the war ended, forming the fighting nucleus, providing the generating force and spirit that took all the others through the war alive. They were Jason Trench, Alex Witten, Arthur Hazlitt, Clay Prentiss, and Goody Moore.

There was nothing you couldn’t sell in Japan during the winter of 1945, and only several things you could buy. Jason Trench was an officer in the United States Navy — he had been promoted to full lieutenant by this time — and his occupation assignment was the inspection of Japanese warships for armament, radar, or other forbidden military contraband. He would go aboard each Japanese ship with a .45 strapped to his side, accompanied by Clay carrying the walkie-talkie and Goody carrying the camera. Alex would remain aboard the 832 with the rest of the crew, moving out and away from any ship they were inspecting, as a precaution against the defeated Japanese trying to capture the boat. Alex’s orders were to fire across the bow of any ship from which Clay did not radio at five-minute intervals. In all the while they were in Japan, and up to the time of the Tokyo incident, Alex never had to fire a single shot.

The 832’s home base was theoretically Sasebo, but her assignments carried her north and south throughout the Japanese islands. She ranged from Kagoshima to Tokyo, from Yokohama to Hakodate, from Fukuoka to Kushiro. Jason detested each and every port because he still considered the Japanese enemies of the United States and, consequently, personal enemies of Jason Trench. The only saving grace Japan possessed was that it didn’t cost anything to be there. Jason’s expenses ashore were usually taken care of by the cigarettes he smuggled off the boat and sold to the Japs for yen. There was something enormously satisfying about dickering with the Japanese over the price of a package of cigarettes. They were bringing the equivalent of a dollar and eighty-five cents a pack when the 832 first arrived in Sasebo, and Jason would not accept less, and often insisted on more. He enjoyed the bargaining, refusing to sell unless his price was met, knowing all the time that such transactions were illegal, but somehow feeling he was exacting a sort of tithe from the Japs by selling them cigarettes at exorbitant prices — almost as if he were continuing the war against them in this way.

He went ashore in the tiny northern town at about 2 P.M. that January day, planning only to pick up the mail at the local Army base, and not dressed for liberty, wearing gray trousers and a new foul-weather jacket upon which he had not yet stenciled his name. Technically he was out of uniform, but he found himself wandering into the town nonetheless and then found himself on a narrow side street and realized all at once that he was being followed. The man behind him was Japanese, and he stopped whenever Jason stopped and then began walking again whenever Jason did. At first Jason was alarmed. Then, as the game of pursuit continued, Jason found himself wondering if the Jap would attack him. He began looking forward to the attack. He knew unquestionably that he could kill the man without effort, and with the certain immunity of self-defense. Confidently, eagerly, he anticipated the man’s approach. When it came, Jason was so startled he burst into laughter.

“You sell coat?” the man said.

Jason’s laughter eventually subsided.

He sold the foul-weather jacket for the equivalent of a hundred and twelve dollars in American money.

By the time the thing in Tokyo happened

“Jase?”

He turned. Alex was at the wheel, his face illuminated by the binnacle light.

“Did you want to come left at Looe Key?” he asked. “We’re almost there now, Jase.”

“Left to two-zero-zero at the key,” Jason said.

“Left to two-zero-zero,” Alex repeated.

The men had come down out of the low foothills of the Sierra de los Organos range in the province of Pinar del Rio. They plodded through the same teeming rain that had inundated the island for the past four days, lashed now by a strong wind that moved the storm northward and eastward toward the Bahamas. The heavier boxes were strapped to the mules, but the men carried all the others on their backs and the rain was merciless, the wind whistled through the vegetation on either side of the muddy rutted road that led toward Cabo San Antonio and the extreme western end of the island.

There were fourteen men in all.

They were dressed protectively, most of them wearing rubberized ponchos, all of them wearing rubber boots, some of them wearing hats. They were all armed. One man carried an American burp gun, a leftover from the Bay of Pigs invasion. Occasionally one of them would slip in the treacherous mud and curse loudly in Spanish as he extricated himself from the slime. When an animal bogged down or simply refused to move, the men would patiently pull at his reins or shove at his backside, the rain beating around them, their hands working swiftly, their mouths moving with an ever-present Spanish curse.

It would be a twelve-mile hike to La Fé, where the boat was waiting.

The leader of the men was called El Feliz, which meant “The Lucky One” in Spanish. He was called El Feliz because once, back in 1958 when Batista was still in power, he had won a lottery for a hundred and twenty-five pesos on a ticket that had cost him twenty-five centavos. That was in the days when Batista was in power. El Feliz had spent part of his winnings to see a circus with a fellow named Superman who had the largest weapon on the island and who performed with two putas, mostly for the benefit of American tourists. That was in the days when Batista was in power.

El Feliz was a chunky man with powerful muscles on his back and arms and shoulders from cutting sugar cane, and with dark and wary eyes that seemed suspicious of every fluttering palm frond on either side of the road. He made no attempt to quiet his men, and yet he studied the road with darting eyes, the burp gun slung over one shoulder, his left arm stretched behind him as he tugged at the reins of one of the animals. Struggling in the mud beside him, his head ducked against the rain, was El Feliz’s friend and lieutenant, a man named Angel, who tugged at the same reins and then stopped abruptly as the mule sat in the mud. Angel turned to the mule, muttered, “Hijo de la chingada,” and then immediately walked behind it and delivered a sharp-pointed kick to the mule’s haunches. The mule changed its mind about sitting in the mud, and immediately struggled to its legs under the load of the heavy wooden box on its back. The box was covered with a tarpaulin, and the wind tore wildly at the covering. The mule almost lost its balance, and then found its footing and pushed through the mud as Angel whipped it from behind.