He was strapped into the rear seat of the Spad, and one glance ahead at the swirling midnight dark hair twisting wildly from around the leather headgear of the pilot told him the situation.
She banked into a sharp dive, the engine whine climbing in decibels, rocking him roughly in the shoulder harness.
An awful pulsation spasmed him into full awareness. A machine gun from behind opened up and he felt the bullets hitting the old plane.
He thought of Mischkie.
He thought of Hanklin.
He forced himself to lift the chin strap radio mike to his mouth. Fighter planes honed in close behind them for a twin angle fire that would blow them apart in the sky. Pain tried to smother his voice but he forced it out.
“Yankee Clipper. Yankee Clipper. Repeat, Yankee Clipper.”
The pain was almost too much, grinding away at his strength. He fought off the urge to give in to merciful unconsciousness.
There was something to live for now, damnit, and no, they would not take it from him. He would not die. He would … not … die …
The fighters on their trail pulled back a notch.
“Repeat,” a voice commanded.
“You heard me,” Ballard rasped, gathering up all his strength, “I said, Yankee Clipper, damnit. We were … after that plane.”
“What can we do to assist you, Sergeant Ballard?” a deep, friendly Texas drawl asked, reminding Ballard of Hanklin. “Did I just hear a gal’s voice up there with you?”
Keiko broke in.
“I am flying this plane. Sergeant Ballard is badly injured. He needs immediate medical attention.”
“The airfield at Yokosuka is closest.” The Texan became strictly business. “We’ll escort you.”
“There is an insurrection in progress at Tateyama Air Base,” she told them. “We have just escaped from there. American soldiers have died.”
“We’ll radio it in,” said the first pilot. “And we’ll radio ahead to Yokosuka. They’ll be ready and waiting, Yankee Clipper.”
“One question.” Ballard’s voice sounded strained, growing weaker. “Is it … over?”
“As of two-and-a-half minutes ago.” The Texan drawl grinned across the air. “We’re at peace with Japan.”
The Hellcats tore off ahead to guide them.
Keiko felt something touch her right shoulder lightly from behind. She reached her left hand across and over to grasp Ballard’s strong hand.
“Can you make it?” she asked.
Ballard released her hand, sank back.
“I … can make it. I’m looking forward to making it. Just don’t take too long getting us there.”
The plane canted sharply as she swung in a long bank to port, after the American fighter planes.
At 0930 hours precisely, the Japanese delegation aboard the Missouri filed down the ladder for the trip back to Tokyo. The signing ceremony had taken less than twenty minutes.
MacArthur left the ceremony deck and went to another microphone which would broadcast his message to America.
“Today the guns are silent,” he said. “A great tragedy has ended. A great victory has been won. The skies no longer rain death, the seas bear only commerce, men everywhere walk upright in the sunlight. The entire world is quietly at peace. The holy mission has been completed. A new era is upon us.
“Even the lesson of victory itself brings with it profound concern, both for our future security and the survival of civilization. Military alliances, balances of power, leagues of nations, all in turn failed, leaving the only path the crucible of war. The utter destructiveness of war now blots out this alternative.
“We have had our last chance. If we do not devise some greater and more equitable system, Armageddon will be at our door …”
Epilogue
Shafts of sunlight pouring through the window intensified the stark whiteness of the room and its furnishings.
Ballard sat propped up in bed against the headboard. A bed sheet covered the lower half of his body. He relaxed when the American doctor replaced the shoulder of the hospital gown back into place across the freshly dressed wound.
With U.S. troops spreading across Japan at an ever increasing rate, American medical personnel were already in place at a string of Japanese military hospitals like this one at Yokosuka Air Base where Ballard was recuperating. One wing of the hospital at Yokosuka became a fully operational American medical unit at the precise moment of the official surrender aboard the Missouri.
Ballard had hardly been off the operating table and had been fading fast from the pain killers they’d pumped into him, when he was visited, very privately, by a harassed-looking junior officer from General Headquarters.
He could not recall the officer’s rank or name because the conversation was the last thing he remembered before sinking into the drug-induced sleep. Strangely, he did remember the conversation itself with perfect clarity.
It had been mutually agreed upon between the American and Japanese authorities that all matters pertaining to the activities of Baron Tamura and his circle of conspirators would be kept secret and off the record. It was felt that to do otherwise would only serve to embarrass the Emperor and the people of Japan and make more difficult the looming task of postwar reconstruction.
So had spoken the junior officer from GHQ.
The doctor stood back from his examination. His name was Captain Fields. His spotless smock and pale complexion blended in with the stark whiteness of the room. His pinched face was pockmarked, his mouth a narrow gash.
He stepped to the foot of the bed and jotted some scratchy lines across a sheet attached to a clipboard.
“You’re making a remarkable recovery, Sergeant. I wouldn’t have given you better than twenty-eighty odds for survival when they dragged you in here five days ago.”
“I’ve got something to live for, Doc. I feel human again for the first time in a long time.”
Fields started toward the door on his way out. “Is there anything else I can do for you?” It was an exit line, purely professional, the words clipped of any personal warmth.
“You know what you can do to make my life a whole lot easier, Doc. As ranking officer of this American facility, you’re the commanding officer, and regulations say I need my C.O.‘s permission to marry a Japanese civilian.”
The doctor paused with a hand on the door handle.
“We’ve been through this for the past three days, Sergeant, and the answer is still no. I refuse to grant permission for you to marry that Tamura woman.”
“You’re not much for romance, are you, Captain?”
“I don’t understand you, Ballard. I’ve seen too many good men and boys bleed their lives out on operating tables in field hospitals for me to have anything but hatred in my heart for those people. You’ve been in the thick of the fighting since this war began, and during the past week alone you’ve lost men of your unit, friends, and how many others have you seen die at the hands of these Emperor-worshiping scum? You took a bullet that almost cost you your life and now you want to marry one of them. Frankly, Sergeant, it’s beyond my comprehension.”
“Yeah, I guess maybe it is. But here’s something you must comprehend, Doc. The war’s over. You’ve read the papers, I’ve read the papers.
“They had their internal troubles, but the Japs that are left are welcoming us more like liberators than conquerors. The average Jap Joe on the street has been indoctrinated to feel the way he does about his Emperor, but they’ve got nothing but hatred in their hearts for the militarists who sent a generation of their men and boys to be slaughtered. As for Keiko, she risked her life to help end the killing. She saved my life, flying me here so you sawbones could go to work on me. That and a whole lot more make her okay with me.”
“You’ve got pull in this man’s army, and I’m not going to be the one to say you haven’t earned it. I’ve seen your combat record, and I’ve seen the pull you have in the way you got permission for that young woman to come visit yo
u every day and stay for as long as she pleases.” Disapproval dripped from Fields’ every word. “You may get your request for permission to marry approved in time but I doubt it. Anyway, I’ll be damned if I’ll approve it, and that’s my final say on the matter.”
Before he could open the door to step out, the door opened for him, and Keiko breezed in, beaming freshness and looking summery in a white cotton dress.
She held a piece of paper.
She had spent all the time she could at Ballard’s bedside since he’d emerged from that drugged sleep after first being brought here.
They had not spoken of her uncle. He knew this was not because she did not think about what had happened, but because her immediate concern was for the living, for the survivors.
He had asked her to marry him three days ago. She had accepted with a kiss as soft and tender as the yes she whispered close to his ear.
Ever since Fields had denied granting them permission to marry, she had spent long hours each day knocking on doors throughout the less than organized U.S. command structure which was in the process of situating itself in Tokyo.
“How’d it go today, kid?” Ballard asked her. “Another day of doors slamming in your face?”
She handed the piece of paper to Fields as she passed him in the doorway. She crossed directly to sit next to Ballard on the bed.
“Doors slammed in my face until I knocked on the right door. Your name opened that door, darling. A very important man knew all about you.”
Ballard’s good arm went out to receive her, drawing her to him. She kissed him then, and he barely noticed the snort from Fields. The medical officer crumpled up the piece of paper and flung it angrily upon the bed. He left them in a clinch which Ballard chose not to break.
Ballard finally uncrumpled the piece of paper and read it along the length of his wounded arm, which he could barely move. He was aware of Keiko’s happy brown eyes on him, waiting for him to share the joy of what she already knew, of whatever had so irritated Fields.
He read the order, cut at General Headquarters, granting permission for Sergeant John Ballard to marry Keiko Tamura, Japanese national.
The order was personally signed by the Supreme Allied Commander.
Beneath the typed official notice across the page in a bold, sweeping hand that matched the MacArthur signature, were scrawled the words:
Thanks, soldier! Good Luck to both of you!
Blood Red Sun Page 25
