Drone Command

His dad pulled off his apron and dashed out of the kitchen through the mud room, Troy hot on his heels. His dad flung the front door open.

A state trooper’s car was parked next to his dad’s old truck. A grim-faced trooper trudged toward them through the crunching snow. His shoulder mic crackled with radio traffic.

“Excuse me, sir. Is this the Pearce residence?”

Troy’s dad shifted uncomfortably. “Yes, sir. Can I help you?”

“Is your wife named Helen?”

His dad’s face paled.

Troy’s head swam. Barely heard the trooper’s words.

Two hours ago.

Eighteen-wheeler.

No survivors.

ELEVEN

THE PEACE PARK

NAGASAKI, JAPAN

5 MAY 2017

You wonder why Dr. Ikeda and Admiral Hara were so resistant to your presentation?” Tanaka asked. “This is why.”

Pearce, Myers, and Tanaka stood at the foot of the stone obelisk marking the hypocenter, the ground location of the atomic blast fifteen hundred feet above that devastated the city on August 9, 1945. A series of concentric circles emanated from the spot that also contained a cenotaph memorializing Nagasaki’s dead.

Pearce stared into the grim afternoon sky. Imagined the blinding blast and the mushrooming cloud directly above his head, the pressure waves crushing the city, and walls of fire incinerating the bowl-shaped valley. Felt his skin tingle as if he could feel the deadly radiation still lingering in the air.

Tanaka had already shown them several of the other statues and monuments in the Peace Park, but the severe austerity of the hypocenter memorial was the image that most impacted Pearce. He found himself speaking more quietly than usual, if at all, while he walked the grounds. He’d felt the same way at Pearl Harbor and Arlington National Cemetery, too. Only then, he felt both reverence for the dead and their sacrifices, and a profound sense of patriotism. Here, he felt only sadness for the civilian victims of an apocalyptic war.

Myers, too, resisted the temptation to succumb to the solemnity of the place, though she was clearly moved by it. That so many people died in a blinding, momentary flash was almost too much to comprehend.

Tanaka sensed the Americans’ resistance.

“My seat in the Diet represents this city. My family traces its history back more than three hundred years here.” Tanaka pointed at a fragment of brick wall on the radius of the far circle. “That’s a remnant of the Urakami Cathedral, the largest Catholic church in Asia before it was destroyed by the Fat Man. Nagasaki was the center of the Christian faith in this country when it was obliterated.”

Pearce wanted to ask, And whose fault is that? But he bit his tongue. He was a soldier on a diplomatic mission, not the captain of a debate squad.

“My maternal grandmother was praying in that crowded cathedral on the morning that Fat Man exploded, killing everyone inside. I’m sure you know the statistics for the rest of the city, the tens of thousands who died instantly, and the tens of thousands more who died of radiation, burns and disease over the next months and years. What happened here so many years ago isn’t a theory for me or my colleagues, or even a historical fact. It’s a deeply personal event that changed all of our lives.”

“War is terrible,” Myers offered, not wanting to offend Tanaka. But she felt much the same way as Pearce did. You started it, we ended it.

“Yes, it is terrible. That’s exactly the point of this monument. Unlike some of my colleagues on the right, I don’t blame America for this tragedy. Of course, many historians now agree that the atomic strikes weren’t necessary to end the war, but at the time, perhaps, it was not so obvious.”

“There are other ways to kill,” Pearce said, instantly regretting the comment. He was referring to the Rape of Nanking when Japanese soldiers killed perhaps as many as three hundred thousand Chinese — many of them innocent civilians — with just bayonets, rifle butts, and bullets. Unlike the Germans, too many Japanese not only glossed over their many war crimes, they also sometimes even denied them.

“Yes. Humans are terribly creative when it comes to destruction. You Americans have always been brilliant in your application of technology to war. I didn’t bring you here to evoke any kind of sympathy for my people. But I don’t think you Americans appreciate the true destructiveness of that war on my nation.”

“I’ve seen war up close and personal,” Pearce said. “You don’t need to tell me how shitty it is.”

“Yes, of course. President Myers told me about your battlefield bravery. I admire that more than you know. But what do your people know about total war? Your cities have never been burned, your civilian populations decimated. That is something altogether different.”

“We don’t fight wars to expand our territory. We fight wars to protect our freedoms and the freedoms of our allies,” Myers said.

“Yes, you do. And you fight those wars with the latest technologies, whether drones or nuclear weapons.”