1942

The Wildcat carried six machine guns but only two one-hundred-pound bombs. It had a range of just over seven hundred miles, which meant they would not have all that much time over Pearl during the raid. In and out, drop and run, shoot and scoot were his instructions. Even so, there probably wouldn’t be enough fuel to take them back to the Big Island if they had to do much fighting or high-speed maneuvering, so they were to land on abandoned strips on Molokai. From there, they were to run like hell and hide. Ironically, these now-abandoned fields were the ones that had first been used by the Japanese earlier in the year. Locals had helped repair them after the Japanese left.

The Wildcat was considered overmatched by the Zero, which was faster and more maneuverable. But Magruder knew that his plane could still cause a great deal of damage to the Zero, which had a wonderful propensity to blow up when hit, while his tough little plane could absorb punishment and get away.

His job wasn’t to take on the Zeros. His task was the carriers, if any, and the fuel. He had been told that his appearance over Pearl would be a complete surprise to the Japanese. Magruder sincerely hoped so. It was the Japs who had a death wish, not Ernie Magruder of Montgomery, Alabama.

Of course, that presumed he and his trusty planes got airborne in the first place.

“What’s the problem?” asked Captain Gustafson. “You take off from a little ship in the middle of an ocean, don’t you? So what’s wrong with jumping off a cliff?”

Magruder laughed nervously and conceded that the jut-jawed captain had a point. Launching from Hawaii was planned to be simplicity itself. Three abreast, planes were to taxi as fast as they could downhill toward the cliff, then launch themselves into space. According to Gustafson’s calculations, the planes would drop but a few feet before becoming stable flying machines. Magruder had his doubts and could visualize himself plummeting a thousand feet into the ocean. “Captain, I just want you to know that, if this doesn’t work, my last words will be ‘You fucked up, sir!’ “

Gustafson laughed hugely. “What’s the saying? If you can’t take a joke, you shouldn’t have enlisted? Well, son, you’ve enlisted and here you are. Now, if you know a better way of getting your planes in the air without building an airfield that the Japs would spot, you tell me.”

Magruder didn’t. “Now that I think of it, getting in the air might just be the least of my problems,” he said. “I have to find Pearl Harbor at dawn and without attracting attention, blow up the place, and then get safely out of there. Jumping off a cliff is a piece of cake in comparison.”

Gustafson nodded sympathetically. Magruder was only half his age and had his whole life before him. In the short while they’d been together, he’d begun to think of Magruder as the son he and his wife never had.

Gustafson was an immigrant from Sweden who’d arrived as a teenager. Before coming, he’d been told that the United States was a land of soft and spineless people who would never fight and couldn’t bear to be uncomfortable. Novacek, Magruder, and so many others had shown that assessment to be a lie. He put his hand on the younger man’s shoulder. “You can do it, Ernest.”

Magruder laughed. Nobody called him Ernest. “Thanks, Pop.”

“Now,” Gustafson said, “let’s see if that still we rigged up is working all right. We have a couple of days to prepare for your mission, and I think we could all use a drink.”

After what seemed an eternity, Jamie Priest had finally gotten a letter from WAVE-in-training Suzy Dunnigan. She said that she was doing well in the classroom portion of her training, and that the physical part was a breeze. Recalling her taut and lean body as they swam, ran, and made love, he had no doubt that she could march or hike circles around her peers.

Her only negative was that she had just come down with the flu and was puking her guts out. She said it was the navy’s fault for sending her from sunny California to Chicago. Jamie laughed at the joke. It was July, and the Great Lakes Naval Training Center was probably hotter than San Diego, so maybe it wasn’t the flu. Maybe it was something she’d eaten, like navy food, for instance.

Every day he had his security clearance brought him new discoveries and revelations. He now understood that Great Britain had been fully informed of the navy’s masquerade off Iceland. Thanks to some clever carpentry, the smaller vessels had been made over to look like their bigger brethren. Viewing from a distance, the German sub had been fooled and Berlin had passed the erroneous information on to the Japanese.

The British had intercepted both the message from U-123 and the subsequent signal from Berlin to Tokyo. They had forwarded the information to Admiral King in Washington, where it had been relayed to both Nimitz in San Diego and Spruance in the Pacific. Jamie wondered if King’s noted antipathy toward Britain had moderated. He doubted it.