Days of Infamy (71 page)

“Sir,
Zuikaku
is hit!” the signals officer reported to Yamamoto. “Two bombs through the flight deck—major damage.”

Before Yamamoto could answer, another American dive bomber stooped on
Akagi
. Captain Kaku was already swinging the carrier toward the last burst.

Maybe the American pilot guessed with him this time. Maybe his luck just ran out. Either way, the bomb hit the carrier a few meters ahead of the forwardmost elevator. Deck planking, jagged chunks of the steel beneath it, and flight-crew men all flew through the air.

Genda braced for yet another bomb, but no more came. A plane crashed into the sea not far from the wounded
Akagi
. Genda thought it was a dive bomber, but he couldn't be sure. Flight-crew men dragged hoses across the deck toward the hole in the ship. Down below, damage-control parties would be doing what they could to restore and repair.

“Can we land planes?” the signals officer asked. “Our strike force is coming home.”

“We can land them,” Genda said. “I wouldn't want to try to launch, but we can land—if we don't get hit again, that is.”

He cast a wary eye up to the heavens, but it seemed as if no more dive bombers would come roaring down on the
Akagi
. He dared hope not, anyhow. And then word came from the flight deck: the surviving American
planes were flying north. Genda wondered where they would land with two of their carriers destroyed and the third crippled. Maybe they would ditch in the Pacific, as the crews from the B-25s had done. That would save some of the fliers, even if the planes were lost.

He looked out at the flight-crew men and damage-control parties working on
Akagi
. He thought of the pounding
Zuikaku
had taken. And he thought of what the Japanese strike force had done to the American carriers. Turning to Admiral Yamamoto, he said, “Sir, this fight reminds me too much of a duel of submachine guns at three paces.”

Somber pride in his voice, Captain Kaku said, “Maybe so, but we had the better gunners today.”

“Today, yes,” Yamamoto said. But it wasn't quite agreement, for he went on, “What will the Americans throw at us the next time? What will we have to answer?”

S
ABURO
S
HINDO WASN
'
T
sure how many Wildcats he'd shot down. Three, he thought, but it might have been two or four or maybe, if he was very lucky, even five. All knew was, his Zero still flew, and some Americans didn't.

Quite a few Japanese didn't, either. Nothing had come cheap today. The Americans had fought ferociously. They'd fought ferociously—and they'd lost. What Japan had paid was worth the price. The invasion fleet behind the carriers, wherever it was, would come no farther. Shindo was sure of that. Without air superiority, trying a landing on Oahu was an invitation to suicide.

“Attention! Attention!” A radio alert blared in his earphones. “Planes from
Zuikaku
, divert to
Shokaku
or
Akagi
! Attention! Attention! Planes from
Zuikaku
, divert to
Shokaku
or
Akagi
!”

“
Zakennayo!
” he muttered. So the Yankees' strike force had done damage, too. That was . . . unfortunate. The Americans might be—were—clumsy and none too skillful, but they'd given it everything they had. Not enough, though. They had no carriers left that could land planes, while Japan still had two.

If all the Japanese planes from the strike force had come home safely,
Akagi
and
Shokaku
wouldn't have been able to accommodate them. As things were, that wouldn't be a problem.

And here came the survivors from the U.S. attack, heading north toward who could say what? They were scattered all over the sky. Shindo saw enemy
fighters and dive bombers—no torpedo planes. Had the defenders knocked down all of them? He wouldn't have been surprised; the Devastator couldn't get out of its own way.

Shindo dove on a dive bomber. He didn't think the Douglas Dauntless' pilot saw him till he opened fire, and maybe not even then. The American plane never tried to take evasive action. It heeled to the right and arced down into the sea.

One more small victory. Shindo flew on towards
Akagi
.

W
HILE
M
ITSUO
F
UCHIDA
was in combat, he'd—mostly—forgotten about the ache in the right side of his belly. He couldn't ignore it any more. It felt as if an angry dragon had sunk its teeth in there and didn't want to let go.

I have one thing left to do
, he told himself.
I have to get this plane down. My radioman and my bombardier are depending on me
. After that . . . After that, he intended to head for sick bay as fast as he could go.
Genda and me
, he thought.
We're two of a kind
. He wondered how his friend was doing.

His first glimpse of
Akagi
came as a shock. Because she was landing planes, he'd assumed she'd come through the American attack unscathed. Now he found out what such assumptions were worth. Had that bomb struck near the stern instead of at the bow, the whole strike force would have been trying to come down on
Shokaku
—and wouldn't that have been a lovely mess?

A Zero landed on
Akagi
. Fuchida circled, waiting his turn and watching the fuel gauge. He was low, but not too low. He could last long enough—he hoped. An Aichi dive bomber followed the fighter down. Men from the flight crew hustled to get each new arrival off to one side and clear the flight deck for the next. Another Zero landed. Was that Lieutenant Shindo's plane? Fuchida thought so, but he couldn't be sure. He couldn't be sure of anything except how much he hurt—and that his turn came next.

He lined up on
Akagi
's stern with extra-fussy care. He always hated to get waved off and have to go around again. Feeling the way he did right now, he hated the idea ten times as much. The landing officer signaled that he was a little high. Obediently, he brought the B5N1's nose down. No arguments today. Whatever the landing officer wanted, the landing officer would get.

Down came the bomber, straight and true. Fuchida checked once more—yes, he'd lowered his wheels. The landing officer signaled for him to land. He dove for the deck. A carrier landing was always a controlled crash. Most of
the time,
controlled
was the key word. Here, for Fuchida,
crash
counted for more. The impact made him groan. The world turned gray for a moment. The Nakajima's tailhook caught an arrester wire. The bomber jerked to a stop. As color returned to things, Fuchida remembered to kill the engine. He was proud of himself for that.

He slid back the canopy and, moving like an old man, got down from the plane. One of the flight crew who'd come to push the bomber out of the landing path looked at him and exclaimed, “Are you all right, Commander?”

“So sorry, but no,” Fuchida answered as his crewmen also left the B5N1.

“Are you wounded?”

“No. Sick. Belly.” Every word took effort.

“Don't worry, sir. We'll get you to sick bay,” the man from the flight crew said. And the sailors did, helping him down to the compartment. Usually, it was almost empty; wounded men crowded it now. Had
Akagi
caught fire, the place would have been a death trap. Damage control must have done a good job.

A doctor in surgical whites eyed Fuchida from over a
masuku
. “What's the trouble?” he asked. Fuchida explained his symptoms in a few words. The doctor said, “
Ah, so desu
. Could be your appendix. Lie down.”

“Where?” Fuchida asked—the beds were all full.

“On the deck.” The doctor sounded impatient. Fuchida obeyed. The doctor peeled him out of his flight suit and jabbed a thumb into his belly between his navel and his right hipbone. “Does that hurt?”

Fuchida didn't bounce off the steel ceiling, though why he didn't he couldn't have said. He didn't scream, either—another marvel. In lieu of that shriek, he gasped, “
Hai
.”

“Well, it's got to come out. Can't leave it in there—liable to kill you if we do.” The doctor sounded perfectly cheerful. Why not? It wasn't
his
appendix. Fuchida lay on the deck till the doctors got another surgical case off one of the operating tables. They helped him onto it. The fellow who'd poked him in the belly stuck an ether cone over his face. The stuff made him think he was being asphyxiated. He feebly tried to fight back. The struggle was the last thing he remembered as blackness swept over him.

T
HE
B. F. I
RVINE
'
S
engine started thudding away again for all it was worth. Lester Dillon had served aboard warships. He didn't think much of freighters.
He doubted this one could make better than fifteen knots unless you threw her off a cliff. By the racket and the vibration, she was sure as hell trying now.

He'd gone to the head a couple of times. Otherwise, he'd stayed in the poker game. He would have been a fool to bail out; he was up close to two hundred bucks. You could have a hell of a good time in Honolulu for a couple of hundred bucks.

When he said as much, though, Dutch Wenzel looked up from his cards and asked, “Who says we're still heading for Hawaii?”

“Well, fuck,” Dillon said. That was a damn good question. He waited till the hand was done. He dropped out early; Dutch ended up taking it with three queens. Then Les stood and stretched. “I'm going up on deck, see what I can find out.”

“I'll come with you,” Wenzel said, which effectively broke up the poker game. Everybody pocketed his cash. The cards belonged to Dillon. He stuck them in his hip pocket and headed for the narrow steel stairway up to the
B. F. Irvine
's deck.

Sailors in tin hats manned hastily mounted antiaircraft guns. Les didn't laugh out loud, even if he felt like it. The swabbies didn't look as if they'd ever drawn that duty before. Marines could have done it a hell of a lot better. But Dillon hadn't come up there to scoff at the sailors.

He glanced at his watch: half past three. He looked at the sun: astern and a little to starboard. He swore in disgust. “We're heading east,” he said, spitting out the words as if they tasted bad—and they did. “Fucking east, goddammit. We're running away like sons of bitches.”

A petty officer hurrying by paused. He might have been thinking about chewing Dillon out. But either a look at the platoon sergeant's stripes or a look at the other Marine with him changed the rating's mind. All he said was, “You ain't got the word?”

“Down there?” Dillon jerked a thumb toward the passageway from which he'd just emerged. “Shit, no, Navy. They don't even give us the time of day down there. What
is
the skinny?”

“Two carriers sunk—two of ours, I mean—and the third one smashed to hell and gone. God only knows how many pilots lost.” The petty officer spoke with the somber relish contemplating a really large disaster can bring. He went on, “We hurt the Japs some—don't know just how much. It doesn't
look
like they're chasing us. Why the hell should they, when we ain't got any air
support left? Sure as hell can't go on without it. So we're heading back to port, fast as we can go.”

“Oughta be zigzagging, then,” said Dillon, remembering his trip Over There as a young man. “Otherwise, we're liable to make some Jap sub driver's day.”

The Navy man pointed to the bridge. “You wanna go talk to the skipper? He's just dying to hear from you, I bet.”

“We're all liable to be dying,” Dillon said. But he took not one step in the direction the petty officer had indicated. Would a Navy officer listen to a jar-head sergeant? Fat chance. Anyhow, all the troopships should have been zigzagging, not just the
B. F. Irvine
.

He took another look down the deck. Along with the men at the antiaircraft guns, the ship did have sailors at the rail, some with binoculars, looking for periscopes. That was better than nothing. How much better? Time would tell.

Behind him, Dutch Wenzel started swearing with a sudden impassioned fury. “What's eating you?” Les asked.

“If I'd known we were gonna get our butts kicked here, I would've let 'em make me a gunny,” Wenzel answered. “We won't be coming back this way for a while—better believe we won't. When we do, we'll have some of the new fish with us, too. I could've got that new rocker and still had a chance to hit Hawaii.”

“Oh,” Dillon said. “Yeah. Hadn't even thought of that.” He too contemplated rank gone glimmering. “Too late to worry about it now, and it ain't the biggest worry we've got right now, either. Maybe we'll get another crack at it once we make it back to base.”
If we make it back to base
, he added to himself.

Vince Monahan came up on deck. “Let's pick up the game again. You guys have got a chunk of my money, and I aim to get it back again.”

Les said, “Just don't shoot at the Japs with aim like that.” They went below, reclaimed their spot—no mere privates had presumed to occupy it—and got down to business. Dillon took out the cards. “My deal this time, I think.”