Kamikaze

by Michael Slade

  Jackie kept a straight face, but inside she was howling.

  “Well?” asked the corporal on the night of the ball. “How do I look, Pa?”

  When Chuck turned to face her, his jaw dropped.

  Though his daughter generally eschewed makeup, tonight Jackie had done herself up to the nines. Her flaming red hair and emerald eyes had never looked better. Her “gown” was unlike any Chuck had seen before: a navy blue floor-length skirt topped with the Mounties’ scarlet tunic. Her hourglass figure was cinched with a gold-and-blue belt, in the center of which gleamed a bison-head buckle. Insignia glittered on the collar and shoulder epaulets of her tunic. Stitched to her right biceps was her new corporal’s chevron, and down at the cuff of her left sleeve was the badge of an RCMP marksman. She held black gloves and a black purse in one hand and her Stetson in the other.

  “You’ve come a long way, baby,” Chuck said, “since the test of manhood.”

  The test of manhood was a secret from the days when Jackie was a young girl. The Hetts lived near a creek then, and as Chuck and Jackie strolled along it one day, they came across a fallen tree that spanned the water.

  “Stay here, Pumpkin,” Chuck said, “and don’t move an inch. You are about to see a feat that you’ll remember forever. Your dad is going to pass the test of manhood.”

  His arms outstretched like an acrobat on a tightrope, Chuck scaled the challenging log and, placing one foot in front of the other, began to walk across.

  “Look, Daddy,” Jackie said thirty years later, mimicking her little girl sweetness, “I can pass the test of manhood too.”

  “Phew,” said Chuck, “did you give me a fright. There I was in the middle of the log, and suddenly I had my daughter standing behind the crook of my knees. I imagined you taking a tumble and washing away to the sea, and me going home to tell your mom that there’d only be two for dinner.”

  “As I recall, I had no trouble getting back.”

  “No, you swiveled on one foot and pattered off, while I was left quaking at the knees and barely able to keep my balance for the long journey back.”

  “You promised me a Barbie.”

  “Did I?” said Chuck.

  “You promised me any Barbie I wanted if I didn’t tell Mom.”

  “I’m surprised I didn’t offer you the deed to our house,” he said. “She’d have killed me for being so stupid. Many a time, I overheard her saying, ‘Would you look at that dunce with his daughter? He’s got his back to the street. The kid could run out and get hit by a car, and he wouldn’t even notice. That’s why dads shouldn’t be trusted to watch their kids.’”

  “Good old Mom.”

  “If she could see you now. You look like a million bucks, kid. Red suits you.”

  “It clashes with my hair.”

  “Not to me.”

  “You know what, Dad?”

  “What?”

  “I never snitched on you.”

  So off they’d gone to the Red Serge Ball. Walking in to that sea of red, spurs, and medals, Chuck had felt like an Antarctic penguin let loose in a crowd of dashing cavalrymen. The men wore the same red tunics as Jackie, but they had banana pants, each blue leg lined with a yellow stripe. As the wine flowed, and the band played, and he and his daughter danced the night away, Chuck began to imagine that he’d crashed Queen Victoria’s jubilee. Jackie was in her element, the belle of the ball. And as they swirled around the floor, Chuck gave her a wink.

  “I understand,” he said.

  Red will be a tougher nut to crack, thought Jackie, riding the elevator to her suite.

  In family terms, he was the last frontier.

  As the elevator opened, she gasped, “Oh no! The cat!”

  Jackie had no need for an alarm clock beside her bed. Every morning, at six sharp, Batman sat on her chest, staring into her eyes and meowing loud enough to make the houseplants quiver. Lately, however, her animal had begun to pack on weight, so yesterday Jackie had eliminated his bedtime snack.

  To remind herself to feed the starving feline in the morning, she’d stuck a Post-it Note to the kettle, where she’d be sure to see it when she brewed her coffee. But that morning, running late to pick up Chuck and Red, she’d bought her caffeine at a drive-thru on her way to the airport, and therefore—Negligent owner! she thought—Batman’s meal got missed.

  With guilt in her heart, she opened the door, and there crouched Batman, chewing something yellow on the kitchen floor.

  He was eating the Post-it Note.

  Fireworks

  October 31, Now

  Viewed from the sky, the lower mainland of British Columbia resembles Neptune’s trident. The waterways that make up the three prongs are Burrard Inlet and the north and south arms of the Fraser River. Yesterday, after leaving Jackie to her work at Special X, Chuck and Joe had driven downtown to check into their hotel and then had set off with Jackie’s map to the Mud Bay Airport. Now, alone in his daughter’s car, Chuck took the same scenic route around the tip of Point Grey, the chunk of the city between the inlet and the north arm, to the bridge that led to Highway 99 and the border.

  On reaching the highway, the retired USAF colonel sped through the soggy darkness for Boundary Bay, following the slick asphalt ribbon around that bight of the Pacific and its tiny neighbor, Mud Bay. Just north of the border, along the top of Mud Bay, Chuck left the highway for a country road that led him through misty farmland to the water’s edge.

  A sign was picked out of the blackness by his headlights. “Mud Bay Airport.”

  Airfields don’t come any dinkier than this. An old military hangar squatted in a field, flanked by rows of huts just large enough to house single-engine planes. Aircraft lined the triangular runway: two open lanes for takeoffs and landings, and a closed taxiway. If you were cheap, you parked your plane on the grass. If you weren’t, you paid extra to park on the ramp. The airport administration building was a double-wide trailer.

  Flying on a wing and a prayer.

  It wasn’t the USAF.

  “We don’t get many colonels here,” the airfield operator had said yesterday as he perused Chuck’s pilot’s license and his impressive flying record.

  “I’m out to pasture.”

  “Our F-16 is in the shop. I’ve only got single-engine prop planes at the moment.”

  “That’ll do,” Chuck said, grinning. “Three of us are going to circle the harbor for the Halloween fireworks.”

  “Don’t get shot down.”

  “I won’t.”

  “The unbroken rule is that we take renters up for a familiarization run. But for you—”

  “Let’s do it by the rules.”

  It didn’t matter to Chuck how he got up into the blue—well, gray, actually, as this was Vancouver—so long as he did. It was fun to be at the controls of such a small plane; it took him back to the thrill of his first solo flight. Later, on the ground, they completed the paperwork, and the owner explained the procedure that Chuck would follow for his Halloween flight.

  It had been drizzling on and off all day. So sodden was the weather that it threatened to put a damper on Halloween. But the grave waits for no man, so ghouls and goblins were out in force.

  Ninjas too.

  The ones lurking in the shrubs that flanked the gate.

  Kamikaze watched the two headlights grow brighter as they approached the chain-link fence that supposedly secured the Mud Bay Airport. Damp, dark, quiet, and eerie, that was the atmosphere out here, which made it the perfect spot for what the yakuza had planned.

  His plan.

  The one he had sold last night to Genjo Tokuda.

  So far, everything was going better than he’d hoped. His letter to his father after the failed meeting in Stanley Park had sketched a scheme of revenge that required a skilled Japanese pilot. He hadn’t expected the yakuza to bring the kamikaze pilot they did, and he was doubly elated when Chuck and Joe Hett had unexpectedly led him here.

  What were the odds of the Americans plann
ing a flight too?

  Perhaps not that remote, as both Hetts were pilots.

  Still ...

  He had staked out the international arrivals chute at the airport so he would know if Genjo Tokuda had taken the bait. Coincidentally, Kamikaze had also been there for the arrival of his prospective victims, one of whom got into a shoving match with a bodyguard for the kumicho.

  Tokuda was here.

  That meant the meeting was on.

  So Kamikaze had decided to take advantage of the coincidence and tail the Hetts instead, to make sure he could find them when it was time to strike.

  From the airport, they had gone to the White Spot for lunch. From the restaurant, they had driven to Special X. Leaving Jackie at work, the men had checked in to the hotel, before heading off to the totem pole museum on the cliffs of Point Grey. Finally, having followed the highway down here, they’d taken what had to be a familiarization flight.

  Once they’d left the airport, Kamikaze had walked in. And sure enough, on the counter in plain sight was the paperwork that told him where the Hetts would be tonight.

  Banzai!

  Shifting to Park with the engine still idling, Chuck swung open the driver’s door. The beams of the headlights struck faint slashes of rain between the windshield and the gate. As he strode to the fence to punch in the access code, Chuck—for the umpteenth time since leaving the hotel—wondered if he should scrub the flight because of the weather. Joe had been held up by a dress rehearsal of the veterans’ ceremony and Jackie had been delayed at work, so Chuck was to get the plane himself, then fly a short hop northwest to the Mounties’ Air Services runway on Sea Island, where he would set down and pick them up.

  The access code opened the gate to the field.

  While he was pushing it wide enough to admit his car, Chuck glimpsed movement at the corner of his eye and heard the splash of footfalls from the shrubs on his other flank. But before he could react, something slammed against his skull and his consciousness faded to black.

  Dressed from head to foot in black, the four yakuza were invisible in the shadows. The one who darted to the idling car to take the wheel remained a silhouette even when illuminated by the headlights. Once the filaments dimmed down, the other three pounced on the unconscious man like vultures going for a feast.

  “The ring,” said Kamikaze. “That’ll do. Hack his ring finger off at the palm.”

  By the glow of the parking lamps, the hoods shackled Chuck Hett like a courthouse prisoner, cuffing both hands to a belt around his waist and closing his ankles in leg irons. One stuffed a rag into the knocked-out man’s mouth and secured it with a gag. The Claw tugged Chuck’s ring down to the knuckle and tied off the blood flow to that finger. Then the thug chopped off the finger with a knife as the trussed-up, wrenched-conscious man’s cry of pain got stifled to a mewl.

  “Roll him,” said Kamikaze.

  From the bushes, one of the yakuza fetched what appeared to be a rolled-up sleeping bag. Unbuckling the straps, he flapped it out and let it settle down on the roadway like a picnic blanket. Chuck was thrashing as hard as he could to burst free, but his effort was no match for the manhandling by the muggers. They stretched him out on the sleeping bag, then wrapped him up like a sausage roll. To finish him off, the Claw buckled the straps back around the bag.

  “Let’s go,” said Kamikaze.

  The four thugs and their victim all crammed into Chuck’s car. The Claw tossed the bloody finger, still wearing its ring, onto the dashboard in front of the driver. As the vehicle passed through the gate that gave access to the airfield, a security guard came around the corner of the administration building, rubbing his eyes as if he’d just woken up.

  “Squash him!” Kamikaze said.

  The Claw translated.

  The driver flattened the gas pedal, and the car lurched forward. It hit the guard so hard that the ninjas could hear the crack of breaking bones. There was a thump and a heave as the tires passed over his torso, then out jumped the Claw with his yubitsume knife to slash the guard’s throat.

  The plane was on the ramp, fueled and ready to go. The car crept up beside it and the ninjas climbed out. Three of the four lifted Chuck to the copilot’s door, which Kamikaze held open until they’d maneuvered him inside. Once they had him sitting in the right-hand seat, they strapped him in with the seatbelt and shoulder harness to keep him from slumping onto the controls. That done, the yakuza pilot climbed into the cockpit.

  The fact that he was dying of cancer could be deduced if you examined his skin, but jaundice doesn’t stand out as starkly with Asians. All his life, the man had served Tokuda faithfully, and this death would be far more honorable than wasting away in pain.

  “From your kumicho,” said Kamikaze, handing the cancerous pilot a white scarf.

  The man wrapped the hachimaki around his brow.

  Cracking the seal on a bottle of sake, the Claw poured a cup and passed it up.

  The pilot drank.

  “Hissatsu!” said Kamikaze.

  “Hissatsu!” echoed the pilot.

  Then he closed the door, waited for his ground crew to vacate the ramp, started the engine, and keyed the mike.

  The runway lit up.

  Every airport in the world publishes information in what is called a flight supplement book. Basically, these books describe the operating procedures that make each runway function. That’s how the pilot knew to punch the button on the microphone five times within eight seconds to activate the runway lights. Lashed to the seat beside him, Chuck blinked when the stygian airfield lit up along the takeoff and landing strips and the joining taxiway.

  Leaving behind this ramp of sleeping aircraft, the plane taxied out to the button at the end of Runway 12—which, like all runways in the world, was numbered according to a magnetic compass. Once the engine had revved up to takeoff speed, the pilot powered down the runway and lifted up into the sodden black velvet sky above Mud Bay.

  Chuck wondered where they were going, and what the kidnappers had planned for him.

  It could hardly be ransom.

  So what could it be?

  The plane banked to the west in a wide circle, passing the tip of Point Roberts in the United States and heading straight for the Lions Gate Bridge.

  The night sky was already ablaze with pyrotechnics—not from the professionals in English Bay, but from people’s backyard fireworks. Boom! The sky lit up with multi-burst barrages of green, white, and red stars; orange-tailed comets; and bright silver glitters. Like a Second World War battlefield, the land on both sides of the harbor was alive with explosions—buzz-bomb bottle rockets, colorful Roman candles, and the fountains of whooshing volcanoes.

  Now the plane was slowing down to reduce the slipstream effect of forward motion and the spinning propeller. Leaving the aircraft to fly itself, the pilot reached across Chuck to unlock the right-hand door. He unbuckled the shoulder harness and seat belt, and pushed Chuck toward the open exit. The pilot ignited a hand-held propane torch. He applied the flame to the end of a magnesium ribbon that was jutting from the stuffing of the sleeping bag, and it began to burn along its carefully measured length like the fuse on a stick of dynamite.

  Then the pilot shoved Chuck out the door.

  Many a time had the colonel stared down death in the cockpit of a plane, and he knew there was always the chance that he would die plummeting to earth without a parachute. His final thoughts were of Jackie—Oh, how he loved his daughter!—but even those were cut short when the magnesium fuse set off the thermite that had been stuffed between the layers of the sleeping bag.

  Thermite is a mixture of iron oxide, commonly known as rust, and powdered aluminum. Because it carries its own oxygen source, it doesn’t require oxygen to burn, which is a useful characteristic at high altitudes. When it burns—as it was doing now around Chuck’s body—it burns at 4,500 degrees Fahrenheit. Criminals use it to melt steel to open safes, while combatants use it to burn through heavy armor and fireproof barriers.


  The flash of white that was Chuck plunging out of the night sky, his skin barbecuing while his insides cooked, was so brilliant, even in comparison with the Halloween fireworks, that watchers below thought they were gazing up at a meteor shower or a shooting star.

  Down ...

  Down ...

  Slam!

  Chuck hit ...

  Just before the plane.

  Floating Chrysanthemums

  Okinawa, Japan

  April 6, 1945

  Pearl Harbor was nothing like this!

  The knights of bushido had launched the opening attack of the Pacific War to bring glory to Japan, and all had yearned to see the Rising Sun at high noon. But now, these modern samurai teetered on the knife-edge of shameful defeat, with Okinawa the last island in the path of the Yankee avengers before they set foot on Nippon’s sacred soil. As it had during the Mongol invasion of 1281, survival of the Chrysanthemum Throne depended on the Divine Wind’s sinking of the enemy’s fleet, which was now hovering just 240 miles south of the home islands and 550 miles from Tokyo itself. Surrender was unthinkable, so the call went out for pilots willing to make the ultimate sacrifice. These men—these kamikaze—would be sent on a mission from which they’d never return, in planes fueled for a one-way trip and loaded down with five hundred pounds of explosives.

  “If in doubt whether to live or die, it is always better to die.”

  “One life for many.”

  “Death simultaneously with a mortal blow to the enemy.”

  “To die while people still lament your death; to die while you are pure and fresh; this is truly bushido.”

  So many young men had applied to die for their emperor that there weren’t enough flying coffins to meet the demand. Some showed their commitment by writing their applications in blood. They were sent off in aircraft so obsolete they looked like paper planes. Some of the planes were designed to drop their landing gear on takeoff so it could be picked up and reused for other suicide runs.