by Murray Pura
“What’s that? What’s that?” Batman’s voice.
“The Vals hit a destroyer,” Lockjaw said. “The fires must have ignited one of her magazines.”
Spider trails of smoke and flame arched over the stricken ship.
Radio crackle, and then, “Who’s out there? Batman? Whistler? Lockjaw? Bird? Who’s out there? This is Wheeler Air Base.”
“Lockjaw’s here. All the others are accounted for as well.”
“What’s your position?”
“We’re over Pearl.”
“Vals are hitting us from altitude. Can you make it back to Wheeler and help us out?”
“Will do. What about Wiz and Juggler and Shooter?”
“Confirm another P-40 and another P-36 got up. The P-36 was shot down.”
“Who’s down?” Batman’s voice. “Who’s down?”
“Taking a lot of bombs. Request you return to base.”
“On our way.” Lockjaw banked his plane to the north. “You guys with me?”
“We’re with you,” responded Raven. “Go.”
They passed over Peterson’s on their way back. At first Raven refused to look. But he couldn’t help himself. Becky’s Piper was burning and a plume of smoke reached up to his wingtips. The office was burning too. Both jeeps were gone. No one stood on the runway. There was no sign of life.
“You still with me, Thunderbird?” asked Lockjaw.
“Roger. I’m with you.”
“Let’s get some altitude and go after those Vals.”
Raven didn’t respond. He still felt locked away in a room watching the day’s events unfold through a narrow window. Why was there no rage? Why didn’t he cry? Why couldn’t he speak her name?
Dear God. What kind of man am I? My world has blown apart and I feel nothing.
“Time check,” announced Lockjaw. “I’m at oh-nine-forty-five hours.”
“Time is oh-nine-forty-five hours, yes, sir,” replied Batman.
“Prepare to attack. Get some more height.”
“Gaining more height,” Batman said. “Whistler? Bird?”
“Gaining height,” responded Whistler.
“Bird?”
Raven checked his watch. “At altitude. Oh-nine-forty-six hours. Val bomber off my starboard wing. Attacking now.”
“Bird,” Batman cautioned. “Hold up until the rest of us are in position.”
Raven threw his fighter into a dive. “Confirm I am in position. Val bomber in my sights. Attacking now.”
THIRTY-ONE
Cease fire! Cease fire!” Gunny waved his arms at both machine gunners. “You’re firing at American planes! Can’t you see the stars?”
The guns went silent.
He checked his watch. “Ten-ten hours. Maybe there won’t be another wave.”
“Or they’re fueling up and rearming.” A sailor squinted at the sky. “Getting ready to provide air cover for their army when it hits Waikiki.”
“In that case we’ll be in the thick of it here in Honolulu Harbor. So let’s preserve ammo.”
Harrison stepped out of the radio room behind the bridge.
Gunny looked up at him. “What’s up?”
“No more attacks. Not yet. They’re asking for help from all ships. Trying to pick up survivors.”
“That’s Pearl’s job.”
“Half their ships are burning or sunk, Gunny.”
Gunny looked at the smoke roiling up from Pearl Harbor. “Yeah. We could use the launch. But I don’t give the orders.”
Harrison went to the bridge. “Sir. I’d like permission to take the launch over to Pearl and help out.”
The second-in-command stared at him. “Help? Help with what?”
“Survivors, sir. There are still all kinds of men in the water.”
“It’s not that far to shore in a harbor, Harrison.”
“Some of them can’t swim, sir. They’re injured. They’re trapped in wreckage.”
“That’s the navy’s problem, Harrison.”
“We’re the Coast Guard, sir. We rescue people from the sea. It’s our duty.”
The second-in-command turned away and waved a hand. “Carry on, Harrison. If you want to get yourself killed, go ahead.”
“May I use the launch, sir?”
The officer hesitated. “All right. All right. You’ll probably want to take a couple of men.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Volunteers only. And no more than three.”
“Aye, aye, sir.” Harrison saluted.
The officer returned the salute. “Good luck, Harrison. I admire your spirit.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Harrison came down the stairs to the deck. “I’m heading out. Anyone with me?”
Gunny grunted. “It’s a mess over there. If the Zeros and dive bombers come back you’ll be a sitting duck.”
“The navy has been a sitting duck all morning, Gunny.”
“So—”
Harrison’ temper flared. “So we’re the Coast Guard. We go into messes and pull people out of the messes. If they can’t swim we do their swimming for them. If they need a rope we make sure they get a rope and then we haul them on board. If they’re drowning we keep them from drowning. We save lives, Gunny. We’re the Coast Guard. That’s one of the ways we protect our country.”
Gunny looked at him and blew out a stream of air. “Maybe you should be running for president. Okay, I’m with you. Get the flags out of storage and rig one up. A big one. As big as we’ve got. I don’t want anyone wondering who we are as we come around Hospital Point.” He glanced around him. “Who else?”
A tall sailor with massive arms and huge shoulders stood up. “I’ll rig the flag, Gunny. And make sure we got all the fuel we need.”
“Yeah, I’ll join y’all. Gunny, Harrison.”
“Me too. I’m in.”
“I can only take three,” Harrison said. “Orders.”
Gunny smiled. “My ears are still ringing from the explosions. Did you say three or four? Four’ll do nicely.”
In ten minutes the launch was motoring out of Honolulu Harbor and heading west toward the black smoke and fires. They kept close to the coastline at starboard and went past a civilian airfield that had been strafed and bombed. Then they swung north and headed up the inlet into Pearl Harbor, the Stars and Stripes prominent on their stern.
“Now you’ll see something you’ve never seen before,” Gunny told them. “The dead and the dying. Men who have been shot and burned and drowned. Bear up. We’ll all lend a hand.” As they came into Pearl and the extent of the destruction hit them—ships blazing, ships listing crookedly, ships that had capsized, their hulls wet and naked to the sun—Gunny glanced around at the others. “A prayer for us all would be a good thing right now, Mr. Harrison.”
THIRTY-TWO
Nate and Jude carried Flapjack into the Petersons’ home and placed him on the bed. Shirley arranged his hands so they were folded in his lap, smoothed back his hair, and kissed him on the cheek. Then she sat in a chair beside him, wiping her eyes with a Kleenex, gazing at his face. Lyyndaya knelt by her chair and hugged her.
“We loved him, Shirley.”
“I know. Twenty years…You knew him longer than I did.”
Ruth and Becky came in with a blanket and draped it over his body, covering the bullet wounds in his chest but leaving his face uncovered.
“Thank you.” Shirley looked up at Becky, her eyes coming back to the present. “You’ve been through a terrible ordeal too. Please feel free to clean yourself up while you’re here.”
“Maybe later.” Becky’s flight jacket was still on, the blood was still clotted at the cut on her arm, grease and oil still streaked and spattered her face. “I never saw what happened. One of the ground crew told me—told us—after Dad and Nate hauled me clear of the Piper. Flapjack was out on the runway helping with a plane when the Zeros came in. They sprayed the field with bullets. I was still trying to get back from the Ko’olau Range.”<
br />
Shirley squeezed her hand. “Ram thought a lot of you. You were like a daughter.” She dabbed absently at a patch of grease under Becky’s right eye. “How many…how many others were killed?”
“Two or three on the ground. I’m not sure. I…uh…”
“Students and instructors?”
Becky bit her lip. “Quite a few.”
Ruth turned and left the room.
Shirley’s eyes followed her. “Wasn’t your aunt close to one of the instructors?”
“Yes.”
“Did he make it?”
Becky shook her head. “She knows. I told her after they pulled me out of the plane.”
“How’s she doing?”
“I think it’s just starting to sink in.”
Shirley nodded and blew her nose. “Like it is with me…Go to her. Your family’s here with me but she’s all alone.”
Becky found her aunt outside on the patio, which was ringed by tall palm trees. She had one hand against a trunk and was leaning toward it. Becky wrapped her arms around her from behind.
“This house must be close to the harbor.” Ruth gripped one of Becky’s hands. “I can smell the smoke.”
“He was never in pain.”
“You told me that in the jeep.”
“He couldn’t have been, Ruth. It all happened too fast. In an instant.”
Ruth put her head against the palm tree. “I’ve had so little time to think since you told me. Part of me says I should never have left Pennsylvania. That I should never have followed the four of you to Hawaii.”
“Then you never would have met him.”
“Wouldn’t that have been best?”
“Do you really think so? Knowing none of his words? None of his affection for you? No flying? No dancing? No love?”
“Will you say that if they tell you Christian has been shot down?”
Ice seized Becky’s spine. “Is that what you’ve heard?”
Ruth turned around, her eyes dark and swollen. “Of course not. I would never keep something like that from you.”
“I know he’ll be up and flying. Flying as much as he can. Nate told me he saw two American fighters over the Peterson airfield when they arrived in the jeeps. One of them shot down the Japanese Zero that attacked me.”
“The phone lines are jammed,” Ruth said. “We have heard nothing from Billy Skipp. Jude has been trying all morning. He tried to get over there before we went looking for you, but the way in was blocked.” She dropped her eyes. “There was a lot of smoke. The smell of rubber burning.”
“I flew over the field. The Japanese destroyed most of the planes on the ground.”
Ruth rubbed a spot of oil off Becky’s cheek with her thumb. “If I hiked up there would I find him? By the Ko’olaus?”
“No, you won’t find him.”
“Or his plane? The one we flew in?”
“No.”
“Why not? Your plane made it down.”
“But I landed. Even if it was a bad landing. Manuku never had that chance. He was shot down. He was killed in his cockpit.”
Ruth wiped away another smudge. “Just shot down?”
“Yes.”
“Then there will be wreckage. I will find it.”
Becky held Ruth’s arms. “You can’t go up there. There could be Japanese soldiers on Oahu by nightfall. They’d do to you what they did to the women in China.”
“Right now, I wouldn’t mind being bayoneted. God forgive me for saying so. It would end my suffering quickly.”
“Aunt Ruth—”
She held up her hand. “I won’t do anything rash. But you must tell me the truth and not spare me any longer. What really happened up there? What happened to Manuku?”
Becky stalled. “It happened so fast, I told you. I was in one place, he was in another, both of us were trying to shake a Zero loose, I couldn’t keep my eyes on him the whole time.”
“You saw exactly what occurred. Be honest with me, Rebecca.”
Becky closed her eyes. “The plane exploded.”
“What?”
“It blew up and it was gone. Manuku and his student were gone…He couldn’t have felt a thing…He was there and then he wasn’t there.” She opened her eyes. “I’m sorry.”
Ruth face had lost its color. “I…I think I want to be alone for now.”
They hugged each other. Becky walked to the far side of the house. She hadn’t gone far before she heard Ruth’s sobs. She swiped at her cheeks with the back of her hand. A bench was tucked in among banana plants and she sat down on it, having no desire to take another step.
Could we have outrun them? No. Could we have outmaneuvered them? Outwitted them? Not a Piper Cub against a Zero.
Her mind spun and churned as she relived the morning and Kalino’s and Manuku’s deaths. Images of green mountains and blue sky clashed with breaking glass and streams of smoke and the hard flash of tracer bullets. She could smell the burning of her plane and taste the blood when she had bitten her tongue, and she could feel the shock when the Piper crash landed on the runway. She let her head sink into her hands.
Oh, Lord, I don’t have words. Help Ruth. Bring people who can help her better than I can. Help Kalino’s mother and father. And what about Lockjaw? What can I say to him? He acts like he is so strong but this will crush him inside like a fist crumpling paper.
An arm went around her shoulder.
She looked up. “Nate.”
“I came looking for you. How are you doing?”
“Not so good…Everything keeps coming back to me.”
“I know. Yes, I know. It always comes back and cuts you up. I’m sorry.”
“I’ve been worried about you, Nate. I…uh…I thought you would be in a panic—the Japanese bombings—just like China.”
“A lot of things are boiling up in me. But I’m not falling apart.”
“They could land troops any time, Nate.”
“I’m aware of that. I run it through my mind and the only thing I feel is that I want to do something. Just do something. So if they come, let them come. If we lose on the beaches we’ll make them fight us in the jungle and on the mountains.”
She couldn’t keep the small smile from coming to her lips. “You sound like Winston Churchill when you talk like that. How did you change so much? How did you get rid of all that fear?”
“It’s not all gone. There’s a good chunk of it still inside me. It’s like a cold, black rock. I know what war does, I know how ugly it is. But somehow I’ve reached a point where I can say to the fear, You don’t rule—you don’t decide who I am or what I do with my life.” He hugged her. “I’m going to enlist. Just so you know. I’ll be one of those people Bishop Zook spoke about in his letter. The ones God calls to fight and defend while he calls the Amish to pray and do no harm.”
“Enlist? Can you do that? What—”
“I don’t know how the day is going to end. But what’s happened today isn’t something like the sinking of the Lusitania. Washington tried to ignore that. This is like a hundred Lusitanias. Roosevelt will ask Congress to declare war on Japan. He’ll have to.”
“And you feel all right with this?”
“Being an army or navy pilot? Yes, I do.”
“What about Mom and Dad?”
He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “I told them when we drove over to Peterson’s to find you. They just nodded. I think they realized what I was going to say the moment we watched the smoke rolling up out of the harbor and the planes attacking. I’ll talk to Billy Skipp.”
“I can’t believe you feel up to this.”
Nate’s face became grim, his mouth tightening. “I was in the shadows long enough. For years I had so little to fight the bullies with. Now God has brought me back into the light. And I can fly, Becky. I can fly.”
Her eyes glimmering, she hugged him back.
He patted her on the shoulder. “And speaking of Billy Skipp, Dad got through to the folks at Wheeler. We�
�re heading out there. We’ll be cleared through any roadblocks.”
“Did Dad talk to him?”
“No. Skipp was up. It was someone else.”
Becky rubbed her hand over her eyes. “Did he…did he ask about Christian?”
“It was just a quick call.”
“Did he or didn’t he? It wouldn’t be like Dad not to ask.”
Nate let out his breath in a gust. “Okay—yeah, he did. The guy didn’t know where he was or wasn’t.”
“Is that all?”
Nate hesitated. “No, that’s not all. They’ve taken casualties. On the ground and in the air.”
“What kind of casualties?”
“Ground crew and pilots were strafed. Just like Flapjack. And they have a plane down.”
“What kind?”
“Look, we don’t know who was in it—”
“What kind?”
“Thunderbird’s kind. A P-36.”
“Oh.” Becky felt a sharp pain stab her deep in the stomach.
“Becky, any pilot could have been in it—how could this guy know what’s what? He’s been firefighting and ducking bombs and—”
Becky got to her feet. “We can go there now?”
“Yeah. Mom’s going to stay with Shirley and Aunt Ruth.”
“I’m not sure what to say to Lockjaw. About Kalino.”
“He’s an army pilot. Give it to him straight. He’ll thank you for that. Don’t beat around the bush.”
“All right.”
Nate stood. “Hey. The fighting’s over. There hasn’t been an attack on Wheeler for—” he checked his watch “—well over an hour and a half. If Raven’s alive he’s going to stay that way.”
Becky folded her arms over her chest, over the flight jacket whose oil spatters matched her face and hands. Her voice was quiet. “And if he’s not, he’s going to stay that way too, Nate. Just like Moses.”
THIRTY-THREE
Billy Skipp stood with hands on hips and counted the aircraft as they approached from the north. All four of them were there. The P-36 was trailing smoke but Thunderbird was keeping it rock-steady as he came in for a landing. The others followed. He watched them as they climbed out and walked in a group toward him. Whistler and Batman were wearing flight jackets over their pajamas. Smoke from the burning planes and hangars drifted over them.
