Kamikaze

by Michael Slade

  But that thought had forced her to ask, “Why would Japanese terrorists attack Vancouver?”

  Japan, to her mind, wasn’t a hotbed of international terrorism. Of course, there had been that Sarin gas attack on Tokyo’s subway system in 1995, when twelve people died and six thousand were injured. But that was an act of domestic terrorism by a religious cult trying to hasten the apocalypse. That sort of craziness could spawn in any country.

  For a 9/11 parallel, you had to go back to 1972, the year three members of a terrorist cell called the Japanese Red Army landed at Tel Aviv’s airport and opened up with machine guns on a group of Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land, killing twenty-five and wounding eighty.

  Still, why Vancouver?

  Sucking in deep breaths of ocean air as she ran through the tunnel of night, Jackie thought back to the headlines she’d read on the day after 9/11.

  “Kamikaze Terrorist Attacks.”

  “Kamikaze Blitz on the U.S.A.”

  At the time, that was a forgivable connection to make. During the Pacific War, Americans had reacted with disbelief to the Japanese kamikaze attacks. Sure, they’d been raised on Nathan Hale—“I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country”—but kamikazes actually meant it, and that scared the hell out of most Americans. So it was only natural to equate the human bombs of the Al-Qaeda attacks with the kamikazes of the past.

  The similarities seemed striking.

  Both the attackers of 9/11 and the kamikazes volunteered to sacrifice themselves for sacred beliefs. Both thought that they were inflicting divine punishment on their enemies. Both prepared themselves spiritually for the carnage to come. Both thought that their gods were watching over them, and that death had its own rewards. The Al-Qaeda crews were told to shout “Allah is great!” as they struck, for that’s believed to incite terror in the hearts of infidels. And the kamikazes were told to yell “Hissatsu!” at warships as they crash-dived.

  There was, however, a big difference.

  The targets, Jackie thought now.

  Splash ...

  Splash ...

  Splash ...

  At both Pearl Harbor and Okinawa, the Japanese had aimed their planes at military targets: the warships, airfields, and armed soldiers of their enemy. Sneak attacks have always been a legitimate tactic in war—fighting men refer to them as “the element of surprise”—so America had the wherewithal to defend itself.

  Not so with 9/11.

  That involved the indiscriminate massacre of civilians.

  So what to make of this?

  Here, the plane had slammed into a ship-shaped conference center hosting military vets from the Pacific Theater. Quasi-civilians, but vets at heart. So did that qualify as a terrorist attack?

  It has to be a long-simmering grudge, thought Jackie.

  A vendetta by a Japanese vet—or his relatives—with a wound still festering from the Pacific War.

  A kamikaze attack required a plane.

  Mud Bay Airport had poor security.

  And her father—a Pacific vet himself—was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  Splash ...

  Splash ...

  Splash ...

  Ironically, the rising sun was just about to conquer the overcast horizon beyond the Lions Gate Bridge and the torpedoed convention center. Having reached Ambleside Park at the foot of Sentinel Hill, with Gill Macbeth’s home at its crown, Jackie stopped running east and turned around. Across the water and against the distant lights of Point Grey, she glimpsed the black silhouette of Siwash Rock, just offshore from Stanley Park. Unlike the sandstone that had once surrounded it, this volcanic chimney had withstood erosion from the relentless sea to become one of the prominent landmarks of Vancouver.

  It was no use.

  She couldn’t hold back.

  One look at Siwash Rock and Jackie burst into tears for her dad.

  The way Jackie heard it, the story went like this.

  Thousands of years ago, said a Squamish Indian chief, there was a noble and upright warrior whose wife was about to give birth. According to his religion, “clean fatherhood” was most noble and upright. That’s why the warrior and his wife walked down to where the sea met the shore of what is now Stanley Park.

  “I must swim,” the warrior said.

  “I must swim too,” said his wife.

  It was a custom for both parents of an unborn child to swim until their flesh was so clean that there was no scent for the creatures of the wilderness to pick up. The scent of a human is fearsome to forest animals, and it was believed that parents would be fit to have their child only if there was no reason for such fear.

  And so they swam in the turbulent waters of the narrows, just off Prospect Point.

  Before the woman waded ashore and vanished into the forest, she said to her husband, “Come to me at sunrise, and you’ll not find me alone.”

  On and on, the warrior swam so he would be spotlessly clean for his child’s first look at the world. The law of vicarious purity held that only a child unhampered by uncleanness at birth would have the opportunity to live a clean life.

  But as he swam, a great canoe manned by four giants representing the deity paddled into the narrows.

  “Get out of our way,” the giants ordered, for if their oars touched a mortal, they would lose their powers.

  Ignoring them, the warrior kept on swimming.

  “Move ashore,” they commanded.

  The swimmer refused. “I won’t stop,” he declared. “Nor will I go ashore.”

  “You dare defy the deity?”

  “For my child to live a spotless life, I’ll defy anyone, including the deity himself.”

  As the giants debated what to do, they heard the cry of a newborn child in the forests of Stanley Park. Because the warrior had placed his child’s future above everything else, the deity decreed him to be an example for all men to come. As the warrior’s feet straddled the line where sea met land, the giants raised their paddles and transformed him to stone.

  That’s why, today, the petrified image of T’elch stands as an erect and enduring sentinel at the entrance to the harbor. Like a noble-spirited and upright warrior, Siwash Rock is a monument to a man who kept his own life clean so that Clean Fatherhood would be the heritage of generations to come.

  From now on, Jackie knew the sight of Siwash Rock would remind her of her dad.

  All cried out and running with the wind in her face, Chuck’s daughter focused on the revolving beam of the lighthouse ahead, which winked just this side of DeClercq’s waterfront home. Suddenly, Jackie was tired and ready for sleep.

  Splash ...

  Splash ...

  Splash ...

  Not a soul had passed her during her pre-dawn jog. Not in this kind of weather. But as Jackie closed on the finish line in front of the cul-de-sac where she’d parked Dane’s car, she saw the first fellow runner of dawn come around the corner. He was bundled up in waterproof gear that she thought unsuitable for jogging, and his face was hidden by the hood. As they crossed paths, she nodded and said, “It’s all yours.” Then, an instant after she discerned Japanese features in the cowl, the jogger karate-chopped her with the edge of his hand and, stunned, Jackie lost consciousness.

  Black Rain

  Knock, knock ...

  A pause.

  Knock, knock ...

  Again.

  In his dream, Joe Hett awoke to knocking on his door, an insistent rapping that was a harbinger of official business. Throwing back the covers, he swung out of bed, slipped into his slippers and tugged on his terry-towel bathrobe, then shuffled through his house to confront whoever was at his door.

  Knock, knock ...

  “Hold on,” Joe said in his dream, sliding off the burglar chain and thumbing back the lock. When he swung wide the door, he came face to face with two uncomfortable men in USAF uniforms.

  “Colonel Hett,” said the Southerner with the higher rank, “I regret to inform you that
your son, Captain Chuck Hett, was killed in combat in Vietnam.”

  Knock, knock ...

  “Jesus Christ!”

  Joe’s eyes snapped open and he jerked bolt upright in bed. His heart pounded in his throat and cold sweat beaded his forehead. For an instant, he was relieved that it had only been a dream—that Chuck had not been killed in Vietnam—but then it sank in that his son was dead all the same.

  Throwing back the covers, Joe swung out of bed. Slipping into his slippers, he pulled on his bathrobe and cinched the belt around his waist. Then he shuffled across the hotel room to the door and undid the various anti-burglary devices.

  Knock, knock ...

  “Hold on,” Joe said, as he had in his dream, and he opened the door to two men dressed in the red serge uniform of the RCMP.

  “Colonel Hett,” said the Mountie with the higher rank, “I’m Chief Superintendent Robert DeClercq. This is Sergeant Dane Winter. We have reason to believe that your granddaughter, Corporal Jacqueline Hett of my section, Special X, has been kidnapped.”

  “Jesus Christ!” said Joe.

  Joe himself had been a part of U.S. Air Force “notification teams,” and he knew the drill by heart. The dead or missing member’s commander or an officer of equal or higher rank would arrive at the door with a chaplain and a doctor or nurse, if available. The brass would be in USAF dress blues: matching coat, trousers, and tie, with a lighter blue shirt. Metal rank insignia would glitter on the coat, and a service cap would be tucked under one arm.

  What threw him here was the color.

  Both Mounties wore scarlet, and each had a weaponless Sam Browne, riding breeches, high boots, and brown leather gloves. Rank and insignia pins and medals gleamed on their chests. And of course, each held the Stetson hat.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” DeClercq said.

  “You do?” said Joe.

  “You wish you were home so America could handle this.”

  “No disrespect intended, Chief Superintendent, but history doesn’t condition us to have confidence in redcoats.”

  “Do you want this uniform to instill confidence in you? Or do you want it to instill purpose in us?”

  Joe was plumbing for any sign that he could trust this Horseman. Earlier, Jackie had said to him, “DeClercq’s the sharpest cop I know. We can leave the manhunting to him.” But she was talking about tracking down a killer after Chuck was already dead. This was his beloved granddaughter alive in some thug’s clutches.

  Still, he found what he was looking for in DeClercq’s bearing. Usually, a passing of the burden occurs at times like this. The notification officer has tragic information that he must pass on to somebody else. As soon as the news is delivered, the weight of the burden shifts. The officer can do little to comfort the upset recipient, and the bearer of the bad news finds relief in having discharged his duty.

  But not here.

  For what Joe sensed was that the Mountie was taking on a burden, as if the effect of his news on Joe was the effect on him too. And then the colonel recalled something else Jackie had said: “He’ll track down whoever killed Dad as much for himself as he will for us.”

  “She’s your granddaughter,” DeClercq said, “but Corporal Hett is under my command. We have a call to arms in the Mounted for ordeals like this: ‘A member is down.’ You have my promise. I’ll not leave her behind.”

  The old man nodded. That’s what he had to hear. The last thing he thought he’d be doing in his eighties was girding himself for battle. But if this was where the battle was, this was where he’d fight it. Old though he might be, Joe still had the right stuff. He had steeled himself in the Pacific so many decades ago, and he found the fortitude to do it once more.

  “Fill me in,” he said.

  “After she dropped you here last night, we think Jackie went for a jog,” the chief began. “She parked Sergeant Winter’s car in a cul-de-sac off the North Shore seawall, and it was later found abandoned by the local police. The same MO we saw with your son.”

  “Jac can take care of herself. We trained her in self-defense from the time she was a girl.”

  “We think that she was waylaid by professionals. And that this hood is behind it.”

  DeClercq showed the colonel a photo.

  “I had a beef with this guy at the airport,” said Joe.

  “We know. His name is Genjo Tokuda. He’s a retired godfather of Tokyo’s yakuza.”

  “What’s he doing here?”

  “I think we just found out. I thought your son died because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. But Jackie’s snatching is too great a coincidence.”

  “And the kamikaze attack?”

  “Crashing the plane into the Pacific vets’ convention was designed to blindside us while the real target is in play. Grabbing Jackie—like the murder of your son—is a means to that end.”

  Joe stared at the photo. “He’s about the same age as me.”

  “Tokuda was in the Pacific War. We checked,” said Winter.

  “Stationed where?”

  “China. Hong Kong. The South Pacific. And finally, Okinawa.”

  “That’s a long time to hold a military grudge.”

  “It’s more than that.”

  “How so?”

  “You served in the 509th Group, Colonel. Jackie told me you flew in the Enola Gay.”

  Joe took a deep breath and slowly exhaled.

  “You think Tokuda holds the same grudge that Tokyo’s governor gave voice to after 9/11?”

  “What’s that?” asked DeClercq.

  “The governor said that September 11 was nothing like the kamikaze attacks in the Pacific War. He said it more closely resembled the indiscriminate attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”

  The colonel glowered at the photo. “I think you’re right,” he said. “Tokuda wants me.”

  Hiroshima, Japan

  August 6, 1945

  The all-clear siren had sounded at 7:31 a.m. to tell the war-weary citizens of Hiroshima that it was safe to come out of their shelters for the day and go to work. By a quarter after eight, as rush hour got under way, the streets were bustling. Seen from above, Hiroshima resembled a human hand. Its fingers poked into the bay where the commander of the Japanese fleet had waited for the first triumphant radio reports from the forces attacking Pearl Harbor. Already, the cruel August sun beat down on the deep blue sea and the six brown finger-forks of the Ota River. Within the clusters of wooden houses with their black-tiled peaks and rooftop vegetable gardens, people lit ovens to cook breakfast or read the Chugoku Shimbun. Outside, the byways were abuzz with people in trolleys, on horse carts, on bicycles, and on foot. In a throwback to the days when the Imperial Cavalry had trampled all before it, officers at Hiroshima Castle rode to work on horseback. At the moment, a prince on a white stallion cantered across the Aioi Bridge.

  Six miles above the city, in the Enola Gay, that bridge moved into the bombsight that was aiming Little Boy.

  Hiroshima Castle sat on the palm of the hand. The four-hundred-year-old moated citadel was the command center of the Imperial Army. In its shadow stood several armaments factories and the Gaisenkan, the “triumphal hall” from which so many soldiers had embarked and to which so few would return. In the cells of the castle, American prisoners ate bowls of mush. With forty thousand Japanese troops in residence, the yard outside was full of men doing calisthenics.

  The strange thing is that no one heard the blast.

  A noiseless flash of light—whiter than any white most Japanese had ever seen—cut across the sky like a sheet of sunlight. In that first millisecond, the fireball was more than a hundred million degrees Fahrenheit. Those close to the blast were vaporized. Some left behind permanent shadows where their own bodies had shielded brick and concrete. The ghost of a painter up a ladder, about to dip his brush into a paint can, was etched on the face of a building. A coachman, hand up and whip in the air, and his horse were cast as silhouettes on a bridge. In the hospitals, all t
he X-ray plates were exposed.

  Within seconds, 78,000 died and 51,000 were injured. Death took a quarter of the population, and a third of the casualties were soldiers. At Hiroshima Castle, just nine hundred yards from the epicenter, stone columns were rammed straight down into the ground.

  The castle vanished.

  The heat flash ignited fires a mile away. The eyes of those caught gazing up as the weapon exploded melted into their sockets and dribbled down their cheeks. Steel doors and stone walls glowed red. The asphalt pavement turned to tar.

  Hiroshima had been built to burn. Ninety percent of the closely packed houses were constructed of wood, and seventy thousand buildings instantly went up in flames. The raging firestorm consumed everything in its path. The dome of the Museum of Science and Industry was stripped to its steel frame. Burned-out cars, trucks, and trolleys and crumpled bicycles tumbled along the streets. Any trees left standing were black and bare of leaves, their limbs stretched heavenward as if begging for mercy. So intense was the heat even a mile away that men’s caps were etched into their scalps, kimono patterns were tattooed on women’s bodies, and children’s socks were fused to their legs.

  The bomb caught them going and coming. First came the explosion. Morning commuters were snatched off the streets and hurled through the air. Workmen were buried alive. Water mains snapped, and glass shards shot in all directions. Atop Mount Futaba, an officer whose uniform was torn off by the blast extended his sword as the signal for his dead anti-aircraft crew to open fire.

  Then came the implosion.

  Tongues of fire licked up through the dust-choked miasma, and the seething mass at the purple-red core of the explosion sucked in superheated air. Uprooted trees and airborne doors, roofs, and strips of matting got lost in a whirlwind. The boiling mushroom cloud blotted out the sun, plunging Hiroshima into atomic darkness.

  Within the hour, black rain began to fall.