Ride of the Valkyries

by Stuart Slade

  Carlo Gambino had proposed John "Dapper John" Gotti as a new man, one who understood the new world that was growing around them, one whose decisions were not affected by the old, outworn traditions of the 1930s. A man who was known for his skill and intelligence in planning jobs and his daring in carrying them out. Gambino made his points and as he'd done so, the other Dons had nodded. Gotti was the man.

  Looking at him, Lansky could see where he'd got his name. The suit was silk; Italian styled and very expensive. Shirt and tie were the same, expensive but in perfect taste. Lansky was well aware that when wiseguys started to make money, their clothes were dictated more by obvious cost than good taste. Gotti had avoided that trap. Looking down, Lansky saw that his shoes were also Italian-made and perfectly shined to a mirror finish.

  "‘Welcome to Havana, John. I see you've patronized Fidel downstairs."

  Gotti's face was confused. "Fidel?"

  "The shoeshine guy in the reception area. The one with the beard?"

  "Right, yes, I was told he gave the best shoeshine in Havana. Who is he?"

  "Some old guy who used to run one of the revolutionary groups around here. You weren't around then but the middle 1950s were a mess here. Government that didn't know its ass from its elbow. A clutch of bandit groups who were worse, all killing each other as fast as they could. We've got a lot to thank them for. They destroyed this place as a functioning entity. We already had a few casinos and hotels in here so we imported our own security. The local goombahs tried to move in on them but the boys took their leader, some cluck named Guevara, out into the bay and dropped him off wearing a pair of concrete boots. So, when everything fell apart and the government finally disintegrated, we were the only stable area of Cuba and the only people with any real authority." Lansky shrugged. "You know all this of course, just allow an old man a few fond reminiscences. Fidel's one of the few survivors of those days so we keep him around as a souvenir. To business John, take a seat."

  "Thank you Meyer." If it had been Gambino or Pescati or Colombo or any of the other Dons, Gotti would have kissed Lansky's ring. Meyer Lansky wasn't a Don and, anyway, he preferred real authority to an outward show of it. "And thank you for inviting me to Havana."

  Lansky nodded. "You've heard about the attack in Washington?"

  "Can't help it, all over the news. That wasn't us was it?"

  "Of course not." Lansky's voice was irritated; for a moment he wondered if this young made man was as bright as supposed.

  "Just asking."

  "Right. No it wasn't us. And, thank God, the Feds know it. Or believe it. It's our job to prove their belief is right. That's where you come in. The Commission have decided that Cuba's too open. We don't have a police force, we don't have any armed forces, we don't have a security service. The families handle law and order in their own areas and that's it. If we got invaded, all we can do is send the boys to the beach with limousines and invite the invaders to go for a ride. Unfortunately, their mothers told most of them not to get into cars with strange men." Lansky and Gotti both erupted into laughter at the thought of wiseguys trying to take invading marines for the traditional mob ‘last ride.'

  "So, the Commission had decided we need some sort of island-wide investigating service. We talked it over and we decided that you were the guy best qualified to handle the job. You'll report directly to the Commission, you can recruit from the boys, your discretion who though I advise you balance the numbers out between the families. Ask you a question. John, you're a Gambino man, what happens if you find Carlo was involved?"

  "I'd warn him then tell the Commission. Give him a head start. Honor demands it."

  "It does, I wouldn't have believed any other answer." For a brief second Lansky's affable, friendly exterior vanished and the eyes were those of a hardened wiseguy who'd killed his first victim decades before. The question had been a trap and Gotti had escaped it. Perhaps Gambino had been right after all. Lansky hoped so.

  This situation was something neither he nor the Commission had foreseen; when the families had taken over in Cuba, they'd become the government of a country. That meant they had to behave like a country and they were exposed to the same risks as a country. Being a national entity wasn't the same as just being a very large family cutting up a bigger take. Now, ironies of ironies, they were being forced to form a police force.

  "Have we any clues where to look?" Gotti was thoughtful, his mind chewing over the problem. Somebody wanted to take out the present government of Cuba and didn't have the overt power to do it. So they'd tried to provoke the Americans into doing it for them. That had to be it. But who?

  "Not much. You know we have a drugs problem here?" Gotti's eyebrows went skywards. Drugs were simply not mentioned in Cuba's brief official code of laws or its more extensive ‘customs.' Like most things, the guiding principles were that something should not cause trouble and not annoy the tourists. If somebody wanted to sell drugs, fine, as long as he kicked back part of the take to the family controlling his patch. If he caused trouble, say by attacking somebody else on the same patch or annoying tourists with over-enthusiastic sales pitches - especially to children - then he vanished.

  "The South Americans. They don't like selling though us or us keeping the drug problem low key. And prices aren't good because we don't get in the way of sales. Plentiful supply, price goes down. They want their own distribution that doesn't have us skimming the take and they want restricted supply, probably illegal, to send the price up. If the Feds in Washington take over here, they get both those. So, that's a good place to start looking."

  Desert on the Mexico-Arizona border.

  The truck was grinding along a poor-quality dirt road. It was a standard windowless van-body truck, the type used by most businesses for local deliveries. Two wheel drive put it at an instant disadvantage on the dreadful road surface. It would have been struggling anyway but the situation was made worse by two other factors. One was that neither the driver nor his assistant really knew what they were doing. Competent drivers would have slowed down and avoided the worst bumps and potholes. These men were coyotes, smugglers of illegal immigrants to America, and they did neither.

  The other was that the truck was badly overloaded. The van body at the rear was packed tight with illegal immigrants. The driver could hear them in the back, groaning with the bumps and lurches but that didn't worry him. The van body was separate from the driving cab and there was only one way out of the back. Through the double doors at the rear of the truck.

  His assistant offered him a cigarette and the driver leaned over to take it, his eyes leaving the road as he did so. He simply didn't see the boulder sticking through the road surface or the pit the other side. The first he knew was when the truck rode the boulder up, swing dangerously far over, almost toppling with the motion. Then, as the driver swung the wheel to try and correct it, the front went into the pit and the boulder made violent contact with the underbelly of the truck. It dipped and stopped, the truck nose in the sand.

  The two coyotes got out and looked at the damage. The old truck was finished, there was no doubt about that. One wheel was almost parallel with the ground, the other scarcely any better. The front axle and steering had obviously been broken beyond redemption. There was a spreading pool of black oil and engine coolant as well, the sump had cracked wide open. This truck wouldn't be going any further. Without a word, the two coyotes got their hats and their supply of water from the cab. It was at least 20 kilometers back to the nearest Mexico-side habitation and that was a long, long walk in the heat of the day. But, they had water and they had the track to follow. They'd make it. They started their walk past the truck.

  "What about them?" The driver's assistant gestured at the back of the truck and the voices coming from within the metal box. The driver looked at it. The rear doors were secured by a standard door lock, enough to hold them closed under normal circumstances but if desperate people started a determined effort to get out, the lock would burst. He took
a crowbar form the tool kit and rammed it through the door handles, sealing the doors firmly and irrevocably closed.

  "That's their problem."

  Pilot's Briefing Room, HIJMS Nisshin, Kagoshima Bay

  "Idiots." Lieutenant Commander Toda Endo looked around the briefing room. The seaplane fighter squadrons had an unusual structure, one unique to them and dictated by their unconventional operations. The Kokutai had 48 aircraft and two tenders, 24 fighters based on each. Those 24 fighters, divided into eight sections of three aircraft each, formed the two squadrons of the Kokutai. He commanded the second, the junior, of those two squadrons. Including himself, there should be 24 pilots in the room. This morning, there were 23. One was represented by an empty seat, the deceased pilot's hat and gloves placed respectfully on it. Endo looked around again and decided to reinforce the point. "Bloody fools."

  That got a reaction at last. The pilots, stunned by the incident the night before were goaded to anger by the insult. They were kept in control by one thing only; a small thing but one that had implications far outside its size. It was a small ribbon on Toda's uniform, one placed above all the others. A white bar of silk with the Rising Sun in its middle. And in the middle of the Rising Sun was a small gold cherry blossom. It was the insignia awarded to those who flew the Ohka attack missiles, the pilots who, if the American bombers came to destroy Japan, would fly against American cities to exact their last, posthumous, revenge.

  There were thousands of volunteers for the Ohka units, both the ones based on the Navy's Fugaku-Kai intercontinental bombers and on the missile-carrying submarines that cruised off America's coast. Thousands of volunteers and only a few were accepted. The selection process was rigorous, even brutal; all but the best pilots were quickly weeded out.

  There was more required of an Ohka pilot than mere technical excellence in flying. The Ohka pilots had to represent the true spirit of the Samurai, the ultimate expression of the warrior spirit. They were being asked to fly alone, against enormous odds facing certain, inevitable death to deliver Japan's ultimate weapon. They were selected for their moral strength as well as their skills. In words that had become old-fashioned in the days of nuclear weapons and missiles, they were selected for nobility of character as well as flying ability.

  That was why there was such suppressed rage in the briefing room. Every man there knew that Toda had been accepted as an Ohka pilot, had flown at least one operational tour as a Ohka pilot. How many tours he had flown didn't matter; once a man was accepted into the Ohka community, he never had anything else to prove.

  The pilots knew the measure of the man standing in front of them, knew he was judging them by his own, exalted standards; knew that he believed they had failed to meet those standards and condemned them for it. Worse, they knew they deserved condemnation; that knowledge fed their guilt and anger at being exposed. Even worse, they knew their guilt was deserved; the events of the previous night had shown it.

  Observation Platform. Bridge, HIJMS Nisshin, Kagoshima Bay. Six hours earlier.

  There was something critically wrong with the Second Section of the Tainan Kokutai. Toda had got a hint of that earlier in the day. The Tainan Kokutai was equipped with the N5M4 version of the Ohtori. Four of the N5Ms six Tanto-Kai missiles were carried in a pair of internal bays. The lower doors were pneumatically sealed against water ingress so the bays were loaded through access hatches in the top of the fuselage. Somebody had realized that the same bays could also hold 100 kilogram bombs, the dimensions of bomb and missile were almost identical. That had been introduced with the N5M4, giving the aircraft a limited strike capability. Toda hadn't seen the M4 version of the Ohtori before so, when he'd first arrived on Nisshin, he'd stood on the deck aft, looking at the four aircraft on the catapults, more on the deck and in the hangar being maintained while the rest floated alongside.

  "Good aircraft these." The maintenance chief had remarked when asked. "Only a few hours on them." The gulf between enlisted ranks and officers in the Japanese forces was wide but when experienced NCOs spoke, wise officers listened. And there was much to listen to in those six simple words.

  He'd scheduled a day flight for one element of the section and a night mission for the second. The day mission had been disappointing, station keeping was sloppy and the aircraft were flown clumsily. Both betrayed a lack of practice that stood ill against the Tainan Kokutai's reputation and the records of training missions flown. A slack commander, one who didn't push his crews to improve themselves, could easily explain that. What was happening as the night mission was landing had no such charitable explanation.

  The first fighter came in too fast; instead of skipping across the waves to settle elegantly at the end of its run, it had hit the first, bounced high and then dropped bodily on to the water in a shroud of spray. It had, eventually, finished its run and been towed in but the aircraft would need a major inspection for structural damage caused by the heavy landing.

  The second aircraft had less spectacular but potentially even more serious problems . The pilot had completely misjudged his docking and nearly put his Ohtori into Nisshin ‘s unyielding steel side. Only the quick and deft attention of the boat crews had stopped the accident. Even worse, the pilot showed no sign that he knew how close his aircraft had come to disaster.

  It was the third landing that topped off the disastrous mission. As Toda watched he knew what was happening. The pilot was flying by the seat of his pants, without watching his instruments. The nose-high attitude of the aircraft gave him wrong clues; the lack of an easily-discernible horizon prevented him checking on them. His instincts told him that the nose-high attitude meant he was climbing; in fact, he was already sinking slowly towards the sea surface. To correct the imaginary climb, the pilot was cutting back on power, causing his sink rate to increase still further.

  The situation was already past critical; Toda saw the pilot realize his error and ram the throttles forward to try and regain flying speed. It was too late, far too late. The Ohtori's delta wing bled off speed and energy too fast for any recovery and too fast for the added power of the jet to compensate. A few feet above the sea surface the Ohtori stalled, its nose snapped down so that the aircraft was dead level when it hit the sea. The front tip of the ski dug into a wave, flipping the aircraft over in a perfect cartwheel. At the end of the first somersault, the tail hit the surface of the sea; the impact breaking it clean off. Then, the aircraft disintegrated in a ball of spray and flying wreckage that quickly vanished inside the fireball explosion of the remaining fuel. For a brief second, Toda believed he saw the dark shape of the pilot being thrown out of the cockpit but then it was too late and all that was left was fire.

  Pilot's Briefing Room, HIJMS Nisshin, Kagoshima Bay

  "You think we will meet our lost comrade in Yasukuni? I tell you now we will not. Yasukuni is the shrine for our fallen dead, those who died in honorable combat. Not for a fool who made simple, elementary mistakes that even the youngest of cadets, with their pilot's wings still shining and new, knows how to avoid. You!" Endo pointed at the leader of one of the elements. He'd picked the man because his eyes were bulging with anger but there was also fear there. "How many night landings have you made since you came to this group?"

  It was a deadly question. The regulations said that each pilot should fly three missions per week; at least one had to be at night with total flight time not to exceed two hours. It was obvious from the previous day's performance that none of these pilots had even come close.

  The chosen victim flushed red and shuffled his feet. "One." He admitted the fact as if drawing it from him caused personal agony.

  Which it probably did. "One in the last year. And twenty in daytime."

  Toda nodded. The pilot's log said he'd flown the correct number of fifty training flights at night and one hundred in daytime. "Is there anybody in this room who has flown the number of missions indicated in your logs?" There was a dead silence. "I thought not. What will happen if you go up against t
he Tripehounds tomorrow? Will you even see the fighter that kills you? You know no more of combat flying than the rawest recruits. So that is how you will be treated.

  "I have ordered that your logs be taken to the incinerators and burned. They do not exist anymore. Today, you all joined this formation and your training will start again. We have little time. Already, the South China Sea Squadron is preparing to sortie to secure our hold on our possessions in the area. The Tainan Kokutai is to transfer to the area after that has been done. So we must accelerate our flying schedule, make up for all the time that has been lost. We will be flying every day while we have the time to do so."

  "Sir, what will we do for fuel Sir?"

  "Leave that to me."

  Captain ‘s Bridge, HIJMS Nisshin, Kagoshima Bay.

  "So what did happen to all the fuel?"

  "I have no idea. Your predecessor told me that the number of flying hours had been cut back due to the fuel shortage. I had no cause to disbelieve him and the amount of fuel being delivered was appropriate to the number of missions being flown." It was true enough, the whole Japanese Navy was suffering from a fuel shortage. The seaplane units were lucky, they were being issued enough fuel for 100 hours flying per aircraft per year. The carrier and land based squadrons got enough for fifty. "I should have checked with Mizuho down at Ehime but it never occurred to me that it was not as I had been told."

  Toda looked at the Captain. Technically, the captain commanded the ship and he commanded the airgroup; that meant the captain was his superior. Only, on aviation ships, it was much more a match of equals than theory said. The captain's words rang true; he had to run his ship, why should he assume his air group commander was lying to him. "There was no reason why you should Sir. But, fuel will be arriving soon, a lot of it. We will be burning it off fast but the storage might be a problem. You have good, strong seamen in your engine rooms?"