Final impact

Kolhammer looked past his friend’s shoulder to the mass of flowers and medals heaped up around the Boy Scout Memorial. What would they have done? he wondered.

“Give him to the ’temps,” he said at last. “But not straightaway. If we can’t go to Sanction Five, we can at least get a little medieval on his sorry ass.”

“Okay,” Jones agreed. “I’ll countersign.”

D-DAY + 23. 26 MAY 1944. 2212 HOURS.

KO‘OLAU RANGE.

Hidaka had heard all about the barbarity of these people. It made sense. Their parent society was degenerate and so, having hailed from its future, they would naturally be even more thoroughly debauched than the gaijin of his time.

He sat on the edge of the wooden cot, his hands cuffed with some sort of light plastic tie that dug painfully into his wrists. He tried hard not to shiver from the damp chill of the cave, lest they imagine he was shaking from fear. Two of the soldiers-he knew now they were just marines, not assassins-kept their weapons trained on him. They wore combat goggles and never moved, except to strike him once when he attempted to stand up and go to the toilet. They had made him foul himself instead of allowing him that dignity.

They were animals. Much worse than the Sutanto’s Indonesians or the Frenchmen on the Dessaix.

He knew from having read the reports out of Australia what fate awaited him. These Emergence barbarians would not bother with a sham trial and formal execution. They would soon take him outside and shoot him in the back of the head. If he was lucky. Perhaps they would torture and disfigure him until he begged for mercy, as they had with Ono, forcing the man to shame himself in front of his comrades and his ancestors, indeed in front of the whole world. After all, in their eyes he was a “war criminal.” He almost laughed at the poisonous irony of it, except that would only have earned him another swipe across the face with the butt of a weapon. These animals thought nothing of burning entire cities, and yet they had the audacity to accuse him of “a crime against humanity.”

He had to wonder, though, why it was taking so long. Surely they couldn’t be planning to torture him? He had been cocooned up here in the mountains forever. What could he tell them about anything? All his plans to lead the resistance from this dank little fortress had come to nothing. He was worthless as a prisoner.

And, he thought, as a man.

The blanket he’d hung as a blackout curtain twitched aside, and three figures entered. He couldn’t help himself. Before he could control his reaction his eyes widened in shock. It was the giant black barbarian-the marine called Jones. And the famous Kolhammer right behind him! What could this mean? Did they intend to carry out the-what did they call it? — the “sanction” themselves? He’d heard that about those, too. Their death squads in Australia had been made up of all ranks, even the highest. He assumed the same had been the case in Hawaii, but he’d had no way of confirming it, isolated from events as he was up here.

“Get up,” Kolhammer said.

The man’s voice was harsh and deep, reminding him of Grand Admiral Yamamoto. Hidaka climbed to his feet with difficulty, ashamed of his nakedness, his poor physical condition, and the running sores on his legs and feet. They would not allow him any clothes to cover himself.

“You are Jisaku Hidaka?”

He nodded, flinching from a cracking blow that never came. More shame heaped upon unutterable shame.

“You know who we are?”

He stood as straight as he could. “Admiral Kolhammer and Colonel Jones,” he said.

“General,” the black man corrected him.

“Congratulations,” he said with as much scorn as he could muster. “But I shall wager that you promoted yourself, Colonel. I doubt that your countrymen would be so generous to a nigger.”

He grinned, pleased with himself for the first time in many long months. They knew he spoke English, but they couldn’t have been prepared for his mastery of their colloquialism, or the unpleasant realities of their adopted society. His satisfaction lasted all of half a second, until Kolhammer stepped forward and drove a fist into his face. The blow was powerful, knocking him off his feet and through the air. He flew over the wooden cot and fell in a tangle among the beds lying next to it. White, scalding-hot pain filled his head, and he could no longer breathe through his nose.

“You will keep a civil tongue in your head, or I will have it cut out. Do you understand?”

One of his guards was already holding a dagger. Hidaka nodded, sending spikes of pain through his head and neck again. He crawled back to his feet. The knife disappeared back into its scabbard like a marvelous conjuring trick. He waited for them to do whatever it was they did before murdering their prisoners. But nothing happened.