1942

Howell had worked day and night to install and then modify the bomb chutes, and those efforts had caused Doolittle’s and the other pilots’ impression of him to increase immeasurably. So what if he sometimes was a pompous jerk; the pompous jerk knew what he was doing.

“This is the right altitude, isn’t it?” Howell asked.

“Yeah,” muttered Doolittle, “five hundred feet.” There had been a number of attempts at altitudes that were higher and safer, but the only consistent hits came from flying low. It was almost treetop level, only there wouldn’t be any trees on the ocean. Five hundred feet was almost tantamount to suicide unless something happened to distract the fighters. With surprise on their side, they might just be able to make it through the antiaircraft storm, but the Zeros would follow them and swat them into the sea. “God help us all,” said Doolittle.

Sergeant Charley Finch thought that he might just have outsmarted himself. Local Hawaiians had been very helpful in getting him in touch with someone who got him in contact with others who finally took him to the American camp. No one was suspicious of him until he actually made it to the American base and realized that the commanders were people he knew personally or had heard of.

Somehow, Captain Jake Novacek had gotten promoted to light colonel, and Sergeant Will Hawkins was, even more incredibly, a captain in this ragtag army. Neither event boded well in Finch’s opinion. Novacek had been in intelligence, G-2, which probably accounted for his suspicious nature, and Hawkins had been one of the straight shooters who’d always looked down on Finch’s schemes. It was unfortunate, but there was little he could do about it right now.

What Novacek had done was very impressive. The camp was well organized and the people well armed and disciplined. Finch was afraid it would be a little tougher nut to crack than had been anticipated. The presence of marines and army personnel meant that he could be in grave danger should the Japanese find the place and attack. These weren’t the confused and lost souls he’d led to destruction on Lanai.

Finch was pleased that Novacek had assigned him to work with the storage of supplies. Other than being a natural fit because of his background, the task enabled him to figure out how the American force was organized. It also surprised him just a little to realize that he now thought of the Americans as “them” and not “we.”

Finch hoped his position would give him a chance to feed himself a little better than the rations that were provided. Despite the fact that Hawaii was fertile and grew just about anything, food was a chronic problem. The guerrillas did grow crops in a manner intended to make the fields look wild, and they did get other supplies from sympathetic and supportive locals, but they seemed to be always on the edge of scarcity.

In one regard, Finch gave Novacek grudging respect. The group he was with was the central command, but there were satellite enterprises that were very important, and about which he could find out very little. The problem was that only a handful of people knew what they did and where they were, and he wasn’t yet one of them.

He’d figured out that there was a radio station somewhere nearby. Hell, that had been common knowledge way back with Omori. But something else was going on that required a lot of material, and he didn’t know what it was. There were some disturbing references to airplanes that couldn’t possibly be true. Novacek did not have an air force, so what were they talking about?

Or could they? He had to find out. If Novacek’s force was planning something big, Finch had to find out so he could tell Goto and Omori. If he could do that, then he could count on an even bigger reward.

It occurred to him that the fact that the Americans were dispersed would likely mean there would be survivors when the Japanese finally acted on his information and attacked. That would be yet another good reason for his not ever returning to the United States. He laughed. As if he needed another one.

The only other disturbing thing about the camp was the virtual lack of women. What few there were either native Hawaiian or Chinese, and he’d had his fill of those. The only white woman was the widow of some navy guy, and she spent as much time as possible around Novacek, who was very possessive about her. That meant she was very much off-limits. Novacek was a burly guy who’d rip the arms off anyone who touched her.

Besides, Finch knew who she was. Alexa Sanderson was the bitch Omori had been fucking back on Oahu. She was okay as far as looks went but definitely not his type. She was too tall and too elegant, as well as too strong willed for him. He grinned. Omori had done all right by Charley Finch after the Lanai job-he’d seen to it that he’d had the services of one very classy American blonde.