1942

There were no more Japanese, and silence was sudden. The Americans moved gingerly into the prison area. A handful of gaunt and bloody specters stared at them, disbelief on their faces. They were naked and chained to the bars, their bodies covered with burns and scabs.

Lani pushed her way through. She screamed when she saw her husband and brother. They had been horribly brutalized, but they were alive. Freed from their shackles, they were barely able to walk. Helping hands took them and the others out into the sunshine.

Jake looked around. In the distance, the damaged Japanese destroyer was disappearing over the horizon, black smoke pointing the way for more American planes to find and kill her.

Armed men pushed the civilians who’d been gathered around the Japanese HQ toward him. Lani had an ancient revolver in her hand and waved it. “They are collaborators. We are going to kill them.”

Jake limped up and calmly took the pistol from her hand. “No,” he said. “Enough. You told me the killing wasn’t over, but now it is.”

Lani glared at him, then softened. The fire went out of her eyes. “You’re right. It is enough.”

Jake continued. “First, we’re going to investigate, and then we’ll punish the truly guilty, and not just somebody who sold groceries to the Japs and would have been shot if they hadn’t.”

Lani nodded reluctantly and turned away. The suspected collaborators ran. It didn’t matter what they did. They had nowhere to go.

Jake shook his head. He was so sick and tired of the fighting and the killing. When Lani was truly calmed down, she could begin interrogating the so-called collaborators.

Hawkins hobbled over. “What now?” he asked.

Jake took a deep breath. Was it over? Was it all truly over? His ribs hurt, and he had a host of other bruises to contend with.

“Captain Hawk, we’re gonna wait up here for things to settle down. Then we get you and the other wounded taken care of by our new best friends down here in beautiful Hilo. After that, I’m going to radio Nimitz and tell him we’ve taken the town and I’ve declared myself the military governor of the island of Hawaii. Then we’ll see what we can do about driving out any other Japs running around in the countryside. Can’t be too many of them left, and they’re leaderless and probably scared shitless. I’ll bet I can get some planes to help root them out. Sound good?”

“Sounds great, Colonel. After that, can we go home?”

“Yeah,” Jake said. Only thing, he wondered just what and where home was, and what part of it included Alexa. Did she really want her life to include him?

With only one torpedo left, Lieutenant Commander Fargo had considered taking the Monkfish back to California. However, he decided to wait a couple of days in case a good target turned up. A good submarine never returned with unspent ammo.

But no target did show up, and he was about to head east when he picked up a distant shape through his periscope. He waited as it drew closer and identified it as a typical merchant ship, one of hundreds like her. But she was Japanese and heading away from Hawaii, toward Japan. She was fair game, and he had one torpedo left.

“The hell with it,” he said and ordered a firing plot. If the torpedo worked, they might sink her. If it didn’t, they’d head for home with nothing lost.

At just under a mile, he fired. At just the right time, the torpedo exploded against the hull of the transport. Not bad, Fargo thought. He chuckled as he realized he was getting blase. What fun was it to sink a transport in an open ocean after having braved the narrow channel of Pearl Harbor to sink a carrier?

Something strange was happening on the transport, though. She was belching people. What the hell? Fargo thought. She was definitely sinking, there were literally hundreds of people trying to get off her, and it quickly became apparent that there were nowhere near enough lifeboats or rafts. Shades of the Titanic, he thought, and fuck the Japs for not planning ahead.

But were these civilians or military personnel? When submarine warfare had started, a sub had been expected to give a ship a fair amount of time to disembark those aboard before torpedoing, or even to radio in the location of the sinking. Nobody did that anymore, of course. It was just too dangerous.

But he was curious. Still submerged, he eased the Monkfish to where he could see the dying transport better. Now most of her human cargo was in the water, and few would last more than a little while.

The ship was going down by the bow, with her stern high in the air. Fargo was able to read her name: the Wichita Maru. Hell, he thought. Why did the Japs name a ship after a town in Kansas? He noted it in the log and wondered just who was on the Wichita Maru.

CHAPTER 26

Jake Novacek sat in the high-back chair in the sparsely furnished anteroom and waited his turn to speak to the great man. Other colonels and even generals looked in at him and wondered just who Jake was and what he was doing in the partially completed Pentagon.