Fiends of the Rising Sun (35 page)

"Yes. Yes, you're right. It feels as if events are spiralling out of control. That's a frightening sensation for anyone, let alone those in a war zone." He patted her hand in thanks before walking across to a window that looked out over Clark Field. Dozens of P-40 fighters and B-17s were taking off, no doubt in search of the enemy, trying to head off an attack. "I fear my services could well be needed later, but is there anything I can do right now, my child?"

"We need fresh blood. If the Japanese do come-" The nurse stopped and corrected herself. "When they attack, we'll need all the blood we can get. The other nurses are setting up a donation station downstairs."

"I saw that as I came in and wondered what it was for. I'll go and give blood then. It'll feel good to do something useful. Prayers and comforting are all very well, but they aren't as much use as bullets or blood in a battle."

The vast aerial armada of Japanese bombers and fighters was approaching the Philippines when Suzuki felt a prickling sensation run up the back of his neck. He shivered, unable to account for his sudden feeling that they were on a collision course with trouble. "Otomo, can you see any sign of the enemy?"

"No, sir," the wingman said. "There's nothing up here except us."

"You're sure of that?"

"Yes, sir," Otomo replied. "Why do you ask?"

Suzuki hesitated before answering. "I can't shake the feeling that we're flying into danger. It's nothing tangible, more like a jangling at the back of my brain."

"Perhaps you're one in a thousand."

"Explain."

"Before he left for his own mission, Commander Hitori arranged a meeting with us while you were busy elsewhere. He said he wanted to see what sort of pilots you had chosen for the first squadron of kyuuketsuki."

"That sounds like Hitori, always wants the last word."

"He told us that one in a thousand vampyrs develops latent abilities they never knew they'd possessed. A sixth sense for danger was one such ability."

Suzuki snorted, his sceptical nature making it difficult for him to believe in such notions. But the uneasy sensation nagging at his brain was getting more insistent by the moment, demanding his attention. Perhaps there was something to what Hitori had told his recruits. Three months ago, Suzuki would never have believed in vampyrs, and now he was one of the undead, drinking the blood of living humans to sustain him. How was the idea of an instinct for imminent danger any more unbelievable than that?

"Kyuuketsuki, we must change course," Suzuki said. "On my mark we break right and fly directly south until I determine otherwise."

"Sir, I don't mean to question your judgement, but are you sure about this?" Otomo asked, doubt all too evident in his voice.

"Yes," Suzuki replied, trying to sound more certain than he was. "Prepare to change course: Five, four, three, two, one, break!"

The seven aircraft tipped up their left wings and headed south, moving away from the rest of the planes. Within a few seconds the Japanese flight commander was on the radio, demanding to know why the kyuuketsuki had broken away from the rest of the aerial armada. "Contact our advance radar stations, they'll have the answer," Suzuki said. He wasn't sure if he believed this himself yet, but it was the only response he had.

A minute later the rest of the Japanese planes changed course too, following the vampyr fliers south. The flight commander called Suzuki in person. "One of our radar stations detected another presence in the sky, at least fifty enemy aircraft moving to intercept our former heading. How did you know? The radar station said the presence was right at the edge of its range."

"How I know is not important," Suzuki maintained, "but remember this in the future. When the kyuuketsuki takes action, you should pay attention."

Martinez watched the B-17s and P-40 fighters returning to nearby Clark Field, showing no signs of having engaged the enemy while they were away. He and the other artillery gunners had been poised beside their anti-aircraft weapon all morning, waiting for an attack that never materialised. Now the sun was directly overhead, the blistering heat and humidity sapping their strength. The recruits were grumbling about having to stay out in the sun, when there was nothing to shoot at. Aimes sent two of them to fetch water and K-rations from Stores. The artillery teams didn't dare leave their guns in case the Japanese did attack, but they still had to take on liquid and food.

By midday even Martinez was expressing doubts about the radio accounts of a surprise attack at Pearl. "You know what reporters are like, always exaggerating everything to make their stories more exciting. The whole thing probably boils down to two guys in a midget sub popping up in the middle of the harbour and taking pot shots at the battleships," he muttered.

"Stow that garbage, Martinez!" Aimes barked. "We've got our orders and we'll stick to them, until somebody tells us different. If the Pentagon had wanted you to think, they would have made you an officer, not a grunt."

"Yes, sergeant," Martinez responded, "but how do we know that radio broadcast wasn't a hoax? Maybe the brass set it up as a kind of test to see if we're ready for war if it happens."

"There's no if about this, soldier. President Roosevelt, Congress and the Joint Chiefs may not have declared war on the Japs yet, but you can bet your bottom dollar we'll be at war by this time tomorrow. Is that clear?" Martinez didn't respond. He was too busy staring at something over the sergeant's shoulder. "I asked you a question, soldier! Is that clear?"

"Yeah, yeah, whatever you say, sergeant..."

"That's insubordination, Martinez. One more crack like that and you'll be spending the first week of the war on report!"

"I think you'll have to report me later," the private said, pointing at the sky. A black cloud had appeared on the horizon, moving towards Clark Field and its neighbour, Fort Stotsenberg. But the dark mass in the air was moving too fast to be a meteorological phenomenon. "Looks like the war's arriving."

Buntz was so busy arguing with the two artillery gunners outside the stores building, he didn't notice the dark cloud on the horizon, getting bigger by the minute. "You two clowns go back and tell Sergeant high-and-mighty Aimes that if he wants to requisition K-rations from me, he needs to supply the proper documentation, in triplicate, or else he and his men will go hungry." Buntz jerked a thumb at his office. "See that in there? It's my private domain. Not only do I run Stores for Fort Stotsenberg, as far as you're concerned I am Stores. You want something, you have to go through me, end of story."

But the two recruits had stopped listening to him. The fresh faced pair dropped the supplies they were trying to requisition and dashed away, back towards their anti-aircraft emplacement. "That's right!" Buntz shouted after them. "You better run! I'm the guy in charge around here, not Sergeant Aimes."

He watched the sprinting soldiers and realised his words were falling on deaf ears. Then he noticed the black cloud in the sky and heard the thrum of distant engines, getting louder and nearer with each passing moment. Private Arnold Buntz muttered a profane curse under his breath, all notions of his superiority forgotten in the face of more than two hundred and fifty enemy aircraft. He watched as a shower of black objects tumbled from the cloud, falling towards the US planes parked outside at Clark Field.

The Pacific war had reached the Philippines. The Japanese attack had begun. Buntz did the only thing he could think of at that second, the most historic moment of his greedy, grasping life: he ran for the nearest latrine.

TO: Sister Marie Kelly, Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Convent, Chicago

Dear Sis,

I watched people die today. The Japanese attacked Clark Field and Fort Stotsenberg with bombs and bullets, causing God only knows how much damage and death, and pain and suffering. Now that we're at war, I know I can't say too much in my letters to you, in case these missives should fall into the wrong hands. I'm sure you'll forgive my vagueness about specifics: censors have better things to do with their time than worry about a priest telling his sister the nun any military secrets.

I've seen death before of course, many times in fact. As a parish priest I sat with the old and the young alike as they passed from this life into God's eternal embrace. I've witnessed people dying so peacefully you'd think they had merely fallen asleep, and others who raged against the end as if it were a foe they could pummel into submission. I always thought such experiences would be ample preparation for life as an army chaplain. Death is death, and there's no denying it.

But the reality of so much death coming so quickly to so many, it rocks you back, it pushes all your certainties aside. I've never felt so helpless and yet so needed as I did today. Helpless because holding a gun is anathema to me, let alone firing one. The Japanese planes came and I could do nothing to turn them away beyond prayer. Invocations to heaven may be good for the soul, but I've found they have little effect when your enemy can neither hear your prayers nor understand the language in which they are spoken. So yes, I felt helpless amid the onslaught.

But I also felt needed. I was in the base hospital when the attack started, stacking sandbags in front of windows and helping to move patients away from vulnerable parts of the building. The hospital at Fort Stotsenberg is small and primitive by Chicago standards, but it is a solid enough building. That probably saved quite a few lives today. The first casualties reached the hospital not long after the bombing began, men risking their lives to deliver comrades in arms to the care of doctors and nurses. I'd never seen so many broken bones, so much scorched flesh.

The sobbing and wailing and groaning undid me at first, the level of suffering overwhelming me. But my training at the seminary and all my time as a parish priest was better preparation than I ever thought possible for life during wartime. I know that probably sounds amusing, even incongruous, but I believe it to be the truth. As a priest, your actions become ritualised, an automatic response overtaking you in certain situations. So it was for me today. I saw a soldier dying and found myself giving him the last rites, without even thinking. It was simply the right thing to do, the natural response to his suffering.

When I wasn't committing men's souls to the Lord, I was helping to save their lives, in my limited way. I carried stretchers, I put pressure on wounds to stop them bleeding, I even held one man down while his leg was being amputated. I'd never felt more alive in my life, in the midst of so much death and carnage. I believe I've found my true calling, the reason I took the cloth and became a man of God. But there was one moment from today that will haunt me forever, no matter how much good I do during this war, one loss that I cannot overcome or undo. The look in that person's eyes on facing death...

Forgive me, sister, I am rambling. I have not yet slept and am not sure when I will sleep again. My nerves are still jangling from the day and my heart is overflowing with emotion. Thank you for being there, someone to whom I could pour out my soul, a confessor for my sins.

All my love,

Shamus.

FIVE

The bombers attacked first, unloading their deadly cargos from 23,000 feet. The bombs rained down on Clark Field, sprinkled like explosive confetti from the sky. The blasts walked down the runway where all the B-17s were parked, the aircraft engines still warm from their abortive search for the incoming Mitsubishis and Zeros. The American planes were stripped of their skins, either blown off by the explosions or burnt down to the frame by the scorching fires that followed. Within minutes the US aircraft were little more than twisted hulks, metal skeletons like the bones of some extinct species. Thick black smoke from the fires billowed up into the tropical sky, creating a dark shroud in front of the green mountains around the facility.

The anti-aircraft guns manned by the 200th Coast Artillery peppered the sky with flak, but their powder train fuses were only effective to 20,000 feet and could do no damage to the high altitude bombers. After ten minutes of firing uselessly at the heavens, Sergeant Aimes ordered his unit to stand down. "Stop wasting the damned ammunition!" he bellowed, pulling the recruits away from their guns one by one. "Stand down! You're not hitting anything, you're just blowing holes in the sky."

Martinez was last to abandon the effort, so intent was he upon targeting the enemy aircraft. "But we can get them, sarge! They can't stay up there forever; sooner or later those yellow bastards will run out of bombs. They'll have to come down here to shoot us. That'll be our chance!"

"Exactly," Aimes agreed. "Until they do come down, there's nothing we can do. Be patient, soldier, the war won't be won or lost today."

"But they're kicking the crap out of us!"

"We'll get out turn, don't you worry about that." The sergeant gestured at the remnants of nearby Clark Field. "Count yourselves lucky you didn't enlist with the Air Force, otherwise you might be over there."

No sooner had he finished speaking than a fresh wave of bombs was dropped on the airstrip and its surroundings by Japanese planes, flying over in a V formation. The Clark Field barracks exploded in a fireball, followed seconds later by the PX and two hangars. An air raid siren wailed in protest, its mournful tone underscoring the barrage of explosions rocking the ground.

"Sweet Jesus," Martinez whispered. "What do we do if the Japs start bombing us? We haven't got air raid shelters or any trenches for taking cover."

"We're about to find out," the sergeant said, his face full of grim resolve, one hand pointing at the next wave of bombers. They were flying directly towards Fort Stotsenberg, those at the front of the formation already unloading their bombs. "Everybody, hit the dirt! Get down, now! Do it!"

The men of the anti-aircraft unit flung themselves to the ground, clutching metal helmets close to their heads. Martinez could hear someone praying, reciting the rosary. The young soldier glanced around to see who it was, but couldn't find him. Then he recognised the voice praying, it was his own.