Black Wind

by F. Paul Wilson

  The plan was simple: Bypass the ignition switch, start up the plane, and head down the runway before anyone could stop him. Alamogordo was a few degrees east of due south from here. He had state maps of New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and California for the trip back to San Francisco, but the most important map now was the topographical of Otero County he had stolen from the Albuquerque Public Library. He had studied it exhaustively until he'd found a suitable spot in the Alamogordo area where he ought to be able to land behind a rise about twenty-five miles from the test site. At least on the map it appeared suitable. He would not know for sure until he got there.

  He checked his watch. Timing was everything. He had to get there just before dark so he could use the last light of dusk to land. If he was too early, his plane might be spotted on the ground; if late, he'd never find the site in the dark. The watch again: 5:30. Tension knotted up inside him. Time to go.

  He rose and started across the sandy field toward the tarmac. He approached the sleek little racer in a roundabout way, keeping it between him and the airport buildings. He hopped up on the wing and took a quick look through the glass into the cockpit, then pushed back on the canopy. It wouldn't budge—locked. He had expected that. He would either pry it open or, if that failed, break the glass. He was reaching into his bag for the heavy screwdriver when a voice stopped him.

  "Hey! What the hell do you think you're doing?"

  Matsuo looked up over the canopy. A mechanic in greasy coveralls and a peaked cap was trotting toward the plane with another man coming up behind him. The latter was chubby with a neat little brush mustache; he wore a brown leather aviator's jacket and had a white silk scarf around his neck. Matsuo recognized him—the owner. What was he doing here on a Monday night?

  "Just looking," Matsuo said hoarsely as he lowered himself stiffly from the wing.

  "He has no right being here," said the owner in clipped tones. "Call the police and have him arrested for trespassing."

  Matsuo edged his hand toward the pistol in his belt, but saw that the mechanic was unenthusiastic about bringing the police into this.

  "Aw, don't do that, mister," Matsuo said. "I didn't hurt nothin'. I just saw this little beauty buzzing around up in the sky yesterday, doing all those fancy loops and turns, and I just had to promise myself that I'd come out here today and take a closer look at her." He ran his hand along the dark blue fuselage. "Never saw anything so beautiful in my life."

  "Yes, well…" Matsuo heard the voice soften with the swelling of his ego. "That's all well and good, but you were standing on the wing. You could have damaged something."

  "Oh, I'd never do that. And I'll never go near it again, I promise. It's just that I always wanted to fly but, well, my eyes kept me grounded. Just let me stay for now and watch you take off and maybe do some of those tight little rolls you did yesterday. Okay?"

  The pilot expanded his chest. "Very well. But stay well back when I start up."

  "Oh, yes, sir. I will. I will."

  Clutching his shopping bag Matsuo took one step back and waited while the owner keyed open the canopy and climbed into the cockpit. This wasn't what he had planned, but he had to make the best of it.

  There came a high-pitched whine as the propeller made a slow turn, then a cough and a cloud of smoke as the engine roared to life. Matsuo let that cough be his signal. Two steps and a leap brought him up on the wing beside the cockpit. Before the owner could say a word, Matsuo had the muzzle of the pistol pointed in his face.

  "Out!" Matsuo shouted over the engine noise. "Out now, or I'll shoot you where you sit."

  The owner's face turned a sickly pale but he didn't seem to be able to move. Matsuo grabbed him by the collar and yanked him out onto the wing with him. The mechanic had been crouching under the plane, ready to pull the wheel chocks; he now came around the tail of the plane and stared at them. Matsuo pointed the pistol his way.

  "Over here!"

  As the mechanic hesitantly came forward, Matsuo kept the pistol to the owner's head and climbed halfway into the cockpit.

  "You pull the chocks when I tell you or I'll blow his head off. And don't think I'm bluffing. I just robbed the First National in town. I shot the guard there for tryin' to be a hero and I'll shoot this guy."

  That must have sounded tough enough—the owner whimpered and the mechanic swallowed hard and nodded. Matsuo held the owner by his long silk scarf and slipped the rest of the way into the cockpit. He glanced over the instrument panel, smiled at the full fuel tank, set his feet on the rudder pedals, released the brakes, then nodded to the mechanic. He allowed fifteen seconds for the chocks to be moved, then eased the throttle forward. The plane began to roll.

  He released the owner's scarf and said, "You can go now."

  The owner stared at him in shock, looking like a man who had just received a reprieve from death but didn't quite believe it.

  "Run!" Matsuo shouted.

  The owner jumped off the wing and ran. Matsuo gunned the plane forward toward the runway. He glanced at the wind sock over the tiny control tower and turned away from the wind, praying no one was coming in for a landing. Everything looked clear. He taxied to the end of the runway and turned. This was an unfamiliar plane and he wanted all the pavement he could get.

  He pushed the throttle halfway forward and the little Seversky roared ahead. He gave it more gas and it fairly leaped into the air. The acceleration, combined with the giddy climb and the relief at being up in the air and on his way at last made him laugh.

  As he hurtled into the sky he glanced down and saw the owner shaking a fist at him. Matsuo waved, banked right, and headed due north.

  ALAMOGORDO

  A storm was coming. Lightning flashed, starkly illuminating the desert below. Matsuo lay on a rocky, wind-hewn ridge with three sets of sunglasses lined up one after the other over his eyes and stared expectantly toward the Trinity test site some twenty-five miles away across a broad, flat expanse of sand.

  He was worried. Twenty-five miles seemed far too great a distance to learn anything of value about the power of the atomic bomb, especially at night through all these tinted lenses. Dr. Kakihana had told him to shield his eyes at all costs, no matter how many miles he was from the test site, but this seemed ludicrous. He knew what the doctor had said about the power of this weapon, but Matsuo could not quite bring himself to believe it. He must have been exaggerating. No single bomb could have the unimaginable destructive power Dr. Kakihana had described. Still, his reputation was such that Matsuo kept the multiple pairs of glasses in place.

  2:00 A.M. came and went.

  At a quarter after, Matsuo began to wonder if it had failed. Could he allow himself that hope? But what if the test had only been postponed? If delayed even an hour he would have to leave without seeing it, or risk missing his ship. The only way to cross the Pacific these days was in an American ship. If he missed the Indianapolis, he might not get back at all.

  He pounded his fist against the rock in frustration. Everything had gone perfectly until now. He had stolen the plane, feinted to the north to throw off pursuit before turning south, then managed to land it just before dark on a rutted dirt road crossing the desert floor. He had steered it off into the brush and made his way up to this ridge where he had a view of the test site. His timing had been flawless. Why couldn't the Americans be as precise? Nothing was happening. Failure or delay? How could he know?

  He had to wait. No choice but to give the test as much time as possible. If he returned to Japan not knowing, his entire mission would have been futile. And if the test was a success, he had to see for himself.

  He was pulling the sandwich from his sack when the flash came. For an instant he took it for a particularly bright bolt of lightning, then realized that no lightning bolt had ever burned so brightly or so steadily. Light like the noonday sun ballooned from the desert floor. Bright, intolerably bright, even through the layers of lenses it drove spikes of pain through his eyes and into his brain as it chased ni
ght from the desert. All around the fireball, clouds condensed, rose, expanded, layered out, then burned away one after the other in a succession of instants. The fireball looked purple at first, then green, then blazing yellow as it began to rise, drawing clouds of smoke and debris in a tall column in its wake. It slowed and hovered at maybe eight thousand feet with the dust cloud surging up and spreading out around it to form a huge flattened dome. And in the depths of that dome he could still see the red-and-orange fire flashing and raging. It hung there, looming over the desert like some huge and hideous poison mushroom.

  Then came the sound of the explosion, a clap of atomic thunder that struck him like a physical blow. The shock wave followed closely behind, shaking the ground and vibrating one of the pairs of sunglasses off his face.

  Matsuo barely noticed their loss. He lay transfixed on the trembling ridge, gaping at the cloud as his numbed mind battled to comprehend what he had seen. Dr. Kakihana had warned him of the bomb's unimaginable potential power, but no words could have prepared him for this. This was the fire of hell unleashed on earth. This was the end of war as the world knew it, the beginning of a new age or the end of all ages.

  Matsuo felt his control suddenly evaporate. He scrambled to his feet and ran down the narrow rocky path to the desert, slipping twice and once almost falling off the edge. He had never felt so afraid in all his life, afraid for himself, for Meiko, for Japan, afraid even for the future. Japan had to surrender. He could not let what he had just seen on the desert happen in a Japanese city.

  With trembling hands he started the Sev-S2 and coasted along the desert floor and up into the night sky. He had a long leg north-northwest to Goldfield, Nevada, then a shorter hop due west to San Francisco. He stayed low, pushed the throttle to the limit, and shot through the air. No laughter this time. He was shaking. He flew like all the demons of hell were after him while the purple afterimage of the explosion danced in the air ahead.

  SAN FRANCISCO

  Made it!

  Matsuo paused for breath as he recognized the mound where he had left his duffel bag and a change of clothes.

  It had been a hellish trip. Landing at the airport without clearance hadn't been so bad—it was predawn and air traffic was virtually nil—but the engine had been running on fumes and he had almost killed himself running the plane off the north end of the field and fleeing on foot through the dark marshes.

  Now, after a breathless slog through miles of wetlands between the airport and Hunter's Point, Matsuo could rest for a moment before he became Mariano Cruz.

  He froze in his tracks. Someone was waiting on the mound. He huddled in the wet grass for a moment, straining his eyes through the dim, predawn half-light. With relief, he recognized Sachi's old-man-with-the-bad-eyes costume. He was sitting on a suitcase.

  "Something wrong?" he asked, hurrying up the mound.

  "Tell me first if the test was a success," Sachi said.

  Matsuo glanced at him without saying anything more. Apparently his look said enough.

  "My God, what did you see?"

  "The end of the war. Their bomb works and it's…" How could he describe it? "It's utterly devastating."

  He sat down and closed his eyes. He was exhausted. Everything seemed to be coming apart. The unbridled fury of the blast had opened a gash in him, and slowly during the breakneck trip from Alamogordo all hope of a negotiated peace had bled out. Japan would have to accept the American terms no matter what they were.

  "I figured the test was a success," Sachi said. "The Americans—" He paused and shook his head. "Funny, I used to think of myself as an American."

  "Well, start thinking of yourself that way again, because right now that's the best thing in the world to be."

  "Yeah. Maybe. Anyway, I found out why our Filipino friend's orders were so rushed. The Americans were so confident of the test that they delivered one of the bombs right here to Hunter's Point just two days ago." He smiled slyly at Matsuo. "And it's going out on the Indianapolis."

  Matsuo stared at Sachi. "You're sure?"

  "As sure as I can be of anything in this war. The message came through yesterday. That's why I'm here. You've got to see to it that the Indianapolis never delivers that bomb."

  "That won't work—" Matsuo began.

  "Sure it will. We know its route now, too: It stops at Pearl Harbor, Tinian, and Guam. Tinian has the biggest airstrips in the Marianas, maybe in the world. That's where they launch their planes to bomb Japan. That has to be where they're going to drop off this atomic bomb. But we won't know the ship's exact location at any one time." He patted the suitcase he was using as a seat. "If you can somehow use my trusty radio here to send out a signal, a sub can—"

  "You don't understand," Matsuo said. "If the Indianapolis is sunk, they'll just send another bomb another way, maybe by air. One way or the other, an atomic bomb will be dropped on Japan unless I can get to the Supreme Command, or maybe even the Emperor, and tell what I saw. Don't you see? I've got to get home to tell them what we're up against. If I can stop the war, I can save Japan from these bombs."

  He thought of Meiko and Naka in an atomic holocaust like the one he had seen in the desert hours ago.

  "Sachi, I've got to get back to Japan."

  "You've got a chance. A message arrived through Panama while you were away. Someone will meet you in a sampan off the northern tip of Tinian after you arrive there."

  That was a relief. "Maybe I'll get home after all."

  " ‘Home,' " he said. "You're lucky you can feel that way about Japan."

  "I don't really fit in all that well." Matsuo couldn't bring himself to voice his mixed feelings about America. "I was raised here, too, you know."

  "Yeah. But you speak Japanese like a native. I don't." He was silent while Matsuo changed his clothes. Then he said, "So the war's over?" His voice sounded strange. Matsuo couldn't see his face.

  "It has to be."

  "What are you going to do after surrender?"

  "Try to get by, I guess. How about you?"

  "Don't know. Don't know at all."

  "You could come to Japan."

  "I don't think so. In Japan, I'd always be an American."

  "So stay in America."

  "Why? I'll always be a ‘lousy Jap' here. Besides, I don't know if I can live here anymore after the way they've treated us. Don't know where I'm gonna go."

  Matsuo's heart went out to Sachi. He had an inkling of how he felt: a man without a country. He had some of those feelings, too.

  "There must be someplace you can call home."

  The sadness in Sachi's voice was almost palpable. "Yeah, maybe. Maybe not. Anyway, we've got to get you back to Japan. That's the main thing. I'm sure they've beefed up security because of the bomb, but you'll get on board." His voice hardened with determination. "I guarantee it."

  He took his suitcase radio and hurled it into the marsh. Matsuo wanted to ask him why he was throwing it away, but Sachi jerked his thumb over his shoulder toward Hunter's Point.

  "Let's go."

  He followed in silence.

  * * *

  Matsuo knew nothing about the usual security at American Navy yards, but it seemed to be an awful lot of guards about. He showed his papers at the main gate and was passed through with a curt, "Better move your ass, Cruz."

  As he hurried toward the dock area, he saw the ship. Although nowhere near the tonnage of Admiral Yamamoto's old flagship, Yamoto, the Indianapolis was still a ship of considerable size. It had a strange shape: a dip in the superstructure amidships between the two stacks gave it an odd, swayback appearance. As he neared, he saw a pair of seaplane catapults in the dip and a crane rising above them. He saw motorized launches on chocks and made a quick tally of the ship's visible weaponry. She was old, but she was big, with big eight-inch turret guns. She had probably stood off to sea and pounded her share of Japanese shore positions during the past three and a half years.

  He saw two Marine guards and two men in plain suits f
lanking the gangplank. With his heart thudding wildly in his chest, he walked past them and stepped on the gangplank.

  "Whoa!" said one of the civilians. "Let's see some paper, boy. We're gonna have to take a real close look at the likes of you."

  Matsuo smiled shyly as he pulled out his orders and identification papers. He handed them to the one who had spoken.

  "Yes, sir." He hoped his accent would pass. He noticed the second civilian staring at him intently.

  "Another Pineapple for the kitchen," the first muttered, flipping through the papers.

  The second said nothing. He had picked out the identification card and his eyes were flicking back and forth between the photo and Matsuo's face.

  "Just where is Baguio, Cruz?" the second said.

  Matsuo was glad he had brushed up on his Philippine geography. "On Luzon, sir."

  "How come you aren't there fighting the Japs?"

  "Sir, I have been working for the Navy since before the war began. I wasn't there when they invaded."

  "Your papers show you've been working the mess in San Diego all through the war. How come you suddenly get to go to the Forward Area now?"

  Matsuo was ready for this one. "Sir, I did not want to be on a ship that might be shooting at my homeland. Now that the Philippines are free again, I want to go to the fighting."

  "Sounds pretty good to me," the first civilian said, but the second still didn't seem satisfied.

  A marine with a drawn pistol cut off the next question when he trotted up and leaned over the table. He spoke in a whisper, but Matsuo heard enough to pull his already tense insides into a strangle-knot:

  "…possible Jap spy…don't know how reliable ..."

  Matsuo felt as if he had been shot. How had they have found out? Who could have told them anything? Had Cruz had second thoughts about selling his papers? A thousand questions, none of them answerable. And nowhere to run. He was trapped here.

  "... how'd he get in?… seen going over fence… keep you informed ..."

  To hide his shock, he let his gaze roam the contours of the ship while he fought to slow his heart and calm his nerves.