by Daniel Wyatt
“Now?”
“What’s the matter, you not up to it? Hulk can’t take it in the morning anymore?”
As Les got up to shut the door, she quickly sat up on the bed and removed her nightgown.
* * * *
KYOTO, JAPAN
David leaned backwards in his upholstered chair and laced his hands behind his neck. He was already on his third cup of strong coffee this morning, inside his plush Kyoto International Hotel office.
David had found pleasure in the good life. While Les had the Navy, David was already a millionaire at thirty-two. A wise investor and businessman, he owned two hotels, several middle class and well-to-do apartment buildings, and two fine-dining restaurants, all in Kyoto, one of the most breathtaking cities in Japan. He was the fortune hunter of the family, having left the States in his twenties to take a business administration course at Tokyo University. Despite his mother’s good-natured pestering, he still remained unmarried, although he did practice a lot. He had had girlfriends. A few affairs. Now for the last two months, he had been dating a pretty Japanese girl. Things were getting serious. And they both knew it.
David stepped over to the attached washroom and stood before the mirror. He combed his thinning hair which was mostly dark, with a thin splash of gray around the temples. Shorter and heavier than his navy brother, David was handsome in his own right. The elder Shilling brother took pride in his appearance. Nothing but designer clothing. Suit, tie, shirt today.
Finishing his coffee, he turned to the window and looked down at the beautiful and historical Imperial Park fifteen stories below, where the imperial family had made their residence for centuries prior to Tokyo becoming the capital of Japan. His eyes scanned what he could see of Kyoto, a city surrounded by low hills. Off in the distance, miles away, he saw shiny Lake Biwa. The city of over one million people below was renowned for its hundreds of Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples. A good number of old buildings — the previous century and older — were still standing because Kyoto was a unique major Japanese city. It was completely untouched by American bombing raids during World War Two. Kyoto was a tourist attraction, which pleased David. That meant money. One unofficial tag for Kyoto was the Convention City. Visitors who came here had to stay in a hotel and had to eat at restaurants. And he had that ground covered. Furthermore, any students who attended university needed to reside somewhere and what would be better than one of his apartments near the campus.
David also liked the land, the climate, and the people of Japan. Grinning, he thought of his father and how he still hated the Japanese. The silly bugger. David shook his head and turned to his desk.
Chapter three
GUAM
“More eggs? One more helping left.”
Les sighed, glancing up at Gail. “Sure. I’ll take the rest.”
The central air unit was going full blast at a quarter to twelve in the morning in the comfortably furnished rented house. The young Shillings liked the spacious bungalow. More room than they needed. The kids — a six-year-old boy, Darrell, and an eight-year-old girl, Fran — were in the den, just off the kitchen, playing with their toys as their parents sat at the kitchen table. Saturday morning for Les and Gail was time for coffee, a bite to eat, and relaxing. What Gail appreciated most in these settings was conversation. She always found her husband more talkative after lovemaking, as if a tap had been turned on.
“So, your parents are coming.”
Les’s eyebrows went up. “It had to be a last minute thing for pop. He’s even going to Japan. If that don’t beat all. Mom probably had to get after him. But I still don’t know how she did.”
Gail sat and poured herself a second cup of coffee, then laced it with double cream. “I know he doesn’t have fond memories of the war, but I guess he wanted to see his buddies.”
“Yeah. You know something?”
“What?”
“I never knew that he had been with the 509th Composite until I was fifteen. Even then, mom was the one that told me and David. He hated the war. And he still hates the Japanese. I don’t know how visiting Japan is going to pan out.” Les sighed, and shook his head. “There was no glory in war for him. A lot of hard work. He wasn’t too crazy about war movies either. One time David and I were watching Tora, Tora, Tora with him. He was fine until he got to the Pearl Harbor attack scene. Then he got up and left. Went to cut the grass. He never said a word for at least a day after that. Geez, tough guy to figure.”
“Yeah,” she replied. “But he’s always good to me.”
He sighed. “That’s for damn sure.”
Gail was also from Phoenix, Arizona. She could have had her own career had she wanted. But she preferred to be a stay-at-home mom and the wife of US Navy fighter pilot Lieutenant Les Shilling, the man she met on a blind date. She had taken nurses’ training in Phoenix and completed the course. Once marriage and kids came along, she chose to take only part-time work in her field. On Guam she was filling in two mornings a week at the navy hospital, while her kids were in school. She enjoyed the service life and was happy that her husband was now land-based and not out to sea on a carrier some place where she wouldn’t see him for months on end.
The Shillings took advantage of what the tropical island had to offer. Along with the kids, they enjoyed swimming off the sandy beaches and windsurfing on the breezy warm waters. Les especially relished deep-sea fishing. Gail and Les usually kept to themselves, not making a habit of visiting a lot with the other couples. They still had close friends with whom they would double-date on occasion, but those times were kept to a minimum. Gail found some of the navy wives far too catty. In turn, some of the wives thought her a snob and her husband full of himself after coming back from Top Gun in May.
Piss on them, Les had said recently. He and Gail knew who their friends were.
* * * *
ALBANY, NEW YORK
“Class,” the attractive young teacher stood to address her Grade Eleven summer school history class. “As you know, we’ve been studying the Second World War. Today and tomorrow, we will concentrate on the atomic bombing missions on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. To gain a further insight into these events, we have with us today a resident of our city of Albany. The man who flew the world’s first atomic mission. Class, I would like to introduce retired United States Air Force pilot, Major-General Phillip K. Cameron.”
The teacher — Miss Hay — looked to the open door. Into the warm room walked a good-looking man in his early seventies. His shoes sounded heavy on the floor. He stopped in front of the teacher’s desk and eyed the classroom. He smiled and tipped his thick, horn-rimmed glasses at his grandson — who had made the necessary arrangements for his grandfather’s appearance today — near the back of the room.
Born and raised in New York State, Cameron was an international personality of note. Since piloting the bomber that dropped the first atomic weapon in history, Cameron continued in the service until his retirement in 1964, when he went into his own mail-order business, selling military memorabilia. Retired fully now, he was appreciating the time with his wife. Money was no problem. He was in hot demand for after-dinner speaking and TV and radio appearances, and would even fly the occasional vintage World War aircraft at an air show. Patriotic to the core so many years after the atomic mission, Cameron still maintained he had done the right thing in dropping the bomb, despite the left-wing, anti-nuclear element of society that had been gaining more and more converts since the war’s end. Besides, he was following orders. It brought a quick end to the war. No invasion. The bomb saved lives in the long run.
Today, Cameron had on a medium-gray business suit, with a light-gray tie. He stood straight and tall at six feet. When he dove into his brief introduction about his involvement in the atomic mission, he spoke fluently and coherently as if the mission occurred only yesterday and not 1945. After five minutes he stopped for some questions.
“General Cameron?” A chubby student in the first row held up her hand.
/> Smiling, Cameron looked down at her. “Yes?”
The girl stood. “Is it true that some members of your crew went crazy after the war?” Then she sat down.
“No, it’s not true,” Cameron replied, holding back a laugh. “That’s a popular misconception about us. Many years ago the left-wing press took a certain piece of information and blew it all out of proportion. It all started when one of the crewmembers who had bombed Nagasaki happened to have some emotional problems prior to joining the air force. As the commanding officer of the 509th, I knew about his problems. At the time, he was not considered a risk. However, after the war he found himself in constant trouble with the law — drunk driving and what have you — and he was in and out of jail. He even wrote out an apology to the Japanese government for his crew dropping the atomic bomb on Nagasaki.” He paused. “Getting back to the original question, I can assure you that all the living members of my crew are still in their right minds, and I hope to see them at a 509th reunion in two weeks.”
Another girl from the front asked how much the atomic bomb project cost.
“Two billion is what I’ve heard estimated,” Cameron saw eyebrows go up, “which is small in comparison to what the US government were spending in a month to finance the entire war against Japan and Germany, which was seven billion.”
More eyebrows went up.
“General Cameron?” A boy from the back stood.
“Yes.”
“What were some of the dangers involved in your atomic flight to Hiroshima and were you scared?”
“Yes, indeed,” the retired air force vet replied, choosing to answer the second question first. “I was scared. But more scared that the mission would fail than I was scared for my life. First off, we were facing the danger of just getting the bomber off the ground with such a large bomb aboard. I had to use up every bit of the eight-thousand-foot-plus runway to take to the air. Then there was the concern of arming the bomb in mid-flight. Once armed, it was live and anything could happen.” Cameron noticed the class was listening to his every word. “Then the biggest danger of all was what would happen once we dropped the bomb. Would the shock waves destroy our aircraft? Luckily, they didn’t. But we still felt the wave when it hit us seven miles away from ground zero.”
The teacher had a question. “General Cameron, would you mind telling the class how important you felt the bomb was? Did it have to be used?”
“That’s a good question, Miss Hay.” Cameron turned to her. “And I was expecting that question from someone today.” He paused to gather his thoughts, then faced the class again. “In the early part of 1945, the United States were drawing up plans for the invasion of Japan. It was code-named Olympic. Eight hundred thousand troops were to land on the southern part of Kyushu in early November 1945. By April 1946, a second amphibious landing, called Coronet, would be deployed on the island of Honshu, near Tokyo. As a result of these two pending invasion forces, the planners were expecting American casualties to number anywhere between a half million to a million men, and the Japanese casualties to reach well over a million. Up to that time, over 300,000 Americans on all the war fronts gave their lives for their country. The Japanese were a fanatical nation. We had no choice but to crush them. To this day, I still believe we did the right thing in dropping the bombs. We ended the war in a hurry, saved lives on both sides in the long run, and brought our boys home.”
For several seconds, a period of silence engulfed the room, until a long-haired boy spoke from the middle of the room. “General Cameron, why were the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki chosen as targets, and not, say, a larger city like Kyoto?”
Cameron didn’t hesitate. “Nagasaki and Hiroshima were considered military targets because of their war factories. Hiroshima, in particular, had many waterways and was easily spotted from the air, which made it ideal for picking out aiming points on which to drop our bomb. Kyoto, although much bigger than the other two cities, was eventually rejected because of the city’s many shrines and temples that were revered by the Japanese. It was and still is a very historical city. And a very beautiful city too, I might add. For centuries it was Japan’s capital. It was of very little, if any, military importance. Today, the Allied nations, Britain and the United States in particular, still face heavy criticism from bleeding hearts for the 1945 bombing of the beautiful city of Dresden, Germany, which supposedly had no military prominence. I guess the powers-that-be didn’t wish to face the music again had they hit Kyoto.” Cameron smiled, thinking how close Kyoto had actually come to being on the receiving end of an atomic bomb.
“Sir,” asked another girl, “were there any more bombs in the atomic arsenal? What if the Japanese had refused to surrender after Nagasaki? Then what?”
Cameron smiled broadly. “Of course, we didn’t let the Japanese government know, but we wouldn’t have had another bomb ready for many more months. It was a good thing for us and them that they surrendered a few days following Nagasaki, otherwise we might have had to invade after all in the fall or wait till the atomic scientists had the next bomb ready.”
The same girl then asked, “What do you say, sir, to the people who think we should apologize to the Japanese for dropping the bomb on them?”
Cameron wasn’t smiling now. He waited several seconds before he answered. “I don’t remember the Japanese ever apologizing for Pearl Harbor.”
Chapter four
GUAM
Captain George MacDonald studied a large map of the Mariana Islands that his adjutant had placed many days before on the wall to the left of his desk. For the past week, the captain had been poking colored pins into certain spots on the map, an area north of Guam. Today, he punched two more pins into the paper.
The intercom buzzed.
“Yes,” the CO answered quickly.
“Sir, it’s Commodore Prentice. The connection isn’t the greatest.”
“Put him on.”
“Aye, aye, sir. Line two.”
MacDonald lifted his desk receiver. A moment later, a voice crackled, “George, can you hear me?”
“I can, Will. Bad reception.”
“Tell me about it.” Commodore William Prentice was the commanding officer of the carrier USS Midway, at that moment on naval exercises approximately 400 miles to the north of Guam. Although Prentice had recently risen one step in rank above MacDonald, the two were friends and had been since their early navy days in the States. “What’s up, George?”
“Just thought I’d let you know that the two F-18 pilots will be coming up to see you in the next couple of hours.”
“Affirmative. I’m too busy to worry about what appears to be some innocent target, anyway. I’m like Pontius Pilate. I wash my hands of the incident.”
MacDonald grunted. He had a feeling they weren’t so innocent. “Thanks for tracking down and recording the signals for me.”
“I owe you one. Besides, we’re in this together. At least as far as I can go with it. I’ll make your boys feel right at home. Who are they, by the way? Anyone I know?”
“Lieutenants Runsted and Shilling.”
“Shilling, huh? The Top Gun graduate.” Prentice sounded impressed. “I’ll be glad to take him back. I’ll give them both the best treatment. And together we’ll get to the bottom of this. Keep in touch.”
“You bet. Thanks, Will. Let’s keep this to ourselves.”
“My lips are sealed.”
“Good hunting.”
MacDonald hung onto the receiver for a long time after the conversation, then finally laid it in place. Good ol’ Will had come through. Thanks to him, Midway’s radar had been tracking the same targets once they were outside Agana’s scan of 200 miles. MacDonald wondered what he would have done had Midway not been on naval exercises in the area. And what if he hadn’t known Prentice? MacDonald felt a driving need to find the source of these strange signals that were now moving away from his base and were still suddenly disappearing without a trace before the navy fighters could get an ID or
a visual.
A knock at the door made the captain look up. “Come in.”
Jack Runsted and Les Shilling walked up, draped in their flying gear. Both gave the CO a firm salute.
“At ease. Come on over to the map, gentlemen. I want you to see something.”
At the wall map, the pilots to either side of him, the CO stroked his chin and studied the map once again. Then he shut the venetian blinds to his right, to keep the setting sun out.
“On the map are six pins,” he began, “placed on the exact positions that the mysterious targets were first recorded on radar. As you can see, there is a definite pattern unfolding. Two close together, a space, two not as close, a space, and two even further apart. They all form a perfect line.” The CO’s finger slid across the positions. “The northern point is almost 400 miles from Guam. The very first sighting occurred at oh-one-hundred July twenty-fifth, the second at oh-one-ten three days later, and the third at oh-one-fifteen two days after that. And so on. Six sightings at five or ten-minute intervals, but either two or three days apart.”
MacDonald leaned against his desk and rubbed his neck. “Six sightings,” he continued, “and we haven’t made a visual. We have the hottest, most sophisticated fighters anywhere in the world with the most advanced avionics, and we can’t even make a visual of an aircraft that’s flying at a thousand or so feet and 200 knots!”
“Sir?” Les asked. “What about the possibility of flying saucers?”
MacDonald folded his arms and looked into the eyes of the two lieutenants. “It’s something we’ll have to keep in mind. Anyway, off the island of Agrihan is the carrier USS Midway. I want you two to take off at–” he checked his watch “–twenty-two hundred hours, and go straight for Midway and stay there until further notice. I want you both on alert, ready to be launched on a moment’s notice. You each have a photo-recon pod aboard. Of course, you know what that means. I want pictures. No other action taken. The lab on Midway will do the developing for you. Then I want you right back here. This is just between us three. I want a lid on this. Got it?”
