by Neil Russell
Fabian crouched against an equipment locker, trying to will his eyes to see through the continuing torrent of white smoke and orange flame. He finally realized that the shooter was already dead, his finger frozen on the trigger. Moments later, the clip ran dry, and the man pitched forward, hitting the wheel with his face on the way down.
The sentry was a Japanese enlisted man whose rank had been torn from his uniform. Fabian guessed he was a criminal reprieved from the stockade and hauled out to the ship to keep the locals away. The mystery of the light solved, Fabian needed to find the radio room, but the blow to his head had staggered him. The shooting might have also been heard ashore.
With blood dripping from his temple, he woozily made his way back to the main deck and stood for a long moment at the rail, recovering his equilibrium and watching for approaching boats. Minutes went by, but the music played on with no sign of an alarm. When he felt steady enough, he went back down the hull stairs and lowered the extension to the launch.
“What the fuck happened?“ hissed Pags. Fabian ignored him, and shortly, one of the pilots, a Pittsburgher named Tully, joined him aboard. He examined Fabian’s wound and pronounced it superficial. Unfortunately, the favorable diagnosis didn’t lessen the ringing in his ears.
“We’ve got a bigger problem,” said Tully. “One of the kids is only breathing about once every three tries.”
* * * *
The dead man had been bedding down in the executive officer’s quarters. He had ample rations and several bottles of sake, which indicated he wasn’t due to be relieved anytime soon. His thoughtful superiors had also provided him with a comfort woman—an emaciated, nineteen-year-old Chinese girl named Luli who spoke terrified but excellent English.
After Fabian and Tully convinced her they weren’t going to kill her, she led them to the infirmary. Two more pilots then came aboard with the infant in extremis—Zhang’s son. One hooked up an oxygen tank, and the other used scissors and tape to rig a mask to fit him. It was still too large, but they took turns holding it in place.
Luli told Fabian the dead man was Cpl. Hiroki Sato, and he’d already been aboard when she’d arrived two days earlier. She’d been taken at gunpoint from her brothel and put on a Japanese vessel bringing cargo to the Tango.
“What kind of cargo?”
“I don’t know. Boxes. Big ones. With Emperor Hirohito’s seal on them.”
“How do you know? “
“Before they were executed, my parents worked for the British trade office. Japanese companies use two seals. One for commercial goods, like silk and rice, and the royal one for diplomatic and banking consignments. I saw both many times.”
Even with a deck of expensive automobiles, the lone sentry had seemed wrong. If somebody actually thought some poor-ass Hong Kong fishermen were a threat to their Christmas presents, there would have been more security— a lot more. And why a comfort woman? Japanese commanders didn’t worry about the sexual urges of busted corporals. That is, unless his commander needed to be sure this particular corporal remained in place. Finally, there were the functioning engines. Since the deck space was filled, the Tango was probably going to be sailing soon . . . very soon.
“I want to see those boxes,” said Fabian, “but first, a radio.”
Unfortunately, the communications room had been stripped clean. But where the Japanese had taketh, they had also lefteth. On their way across the deck, Luli pulled back a tarp and showed Fabian a banged-up PT boat, apparently headed home for repair. “I tried to convince Hiroki that we could run, but all he wanted to do was drink sake and pass out on top of me.”
Fabian examined the PT as carefully as he could in the dark and found machine gun holes above the waterline, a caved-in port torpedo tube and a slightly bent port screw. Nothing, however, that would interfere with seaworthiness. Climbing aboard, he primed the three Packard V-12s, crossed his fingers and hit the sequential starter. Vroooom! Vroooom! And Vroooom! The fuel gauge jumped to three-quarters. To quote Pags, Fuckin’-A. He quickly shut everything down.
The PT would hold everyone, but handling the sick baby’s oxygen tank at speed was going to be difficult if not impossible. But it wasn’t just the oxygen. The child needed a hospital—and fast. Fabian could pretend things might work out if they could get him back to the Bay, but in his heart of hearts, he knew that by the time they arrived, the kid would be just as dead as if they threw him in the river. He had a tough decision to make, but he didn’t want to think about it yet.
As he climbed out of the PT, he said to Luli, “Okay, show me the boxes, then tell Tully to figure out a way to get this thing in the water.”
The forward hold was the deepest part of the ship, and he entered through a narrow emergency hatch that barely accommodated his shoulders. Immediately, the odor of gasoline wafted over him, which was disconcerting but made sense. At this point, gas was harder to come by than whiskey and ten times more expensive. If you were stealing wheeled transportation you were going to have to run it on something.
As Fabian descended the rungs into the seemingly bottomless chasm, he heard rats bruxing below. Rumor had it that you hadn’t really seen a rat until you’d seen a Chinese one. He resisted the urge to use the flashlight clipped to his belt for a preview and hoped these were just hitchhikers from San Fran.
When he felt the steel floor under his feet, he glanced up. A few stars were visible through the tiny aperture above, but their piece of sky seemed a long way off. The gas smell was stronger here too, nauseatingly so. It was going to have to be a quick trip.
He hit the switch on his flashlight and let the beam wander. Luli had said “boxes.” In a literal sense, she was right, but these were finely engineered black steel cases the length of coffins. And the Emperor’s seal wasn’t wax or ink, but a dinner-plate-sized circle of gold inlaid into each one’s top.
As he made his way among them, Fabian counted. Thirty-one, each on its own wooden skid and braced against shifting at sea with thick pine slats. He ran his fingers along one’s seam. It had been fitted so tightly that he could barely feel where the metal came together. There was no latch, and the lid was immovable. He kicked a row of slats away and tried to push it, but it wouldn’t budge.
He slid his knife out of its sheath and wedged it into the seam. He had to do it in several places, but pretty soon, there was a rush of air, and the lid gave. It took his full strength to lift it back.
War annuls subtlety. Everything moves too fast or doesn’t seem to move at all. Colors disappear or are unpleasantly vivid; sounds are uncomfortably loud. Its partner victims are personal intimacy and private reflection—the building blocks of beauty. In another time, Fabian would have had words for what lay before him. At that moment, six hundred pounds of dead, white Siberian tiger didn’t bring any to mind.
A voice interrupted his thoughts. “Jesus Christ, what’s that? “
Fabian turned and saw Tully halfway down the ladder. He didn’t think it was a question that needed an answer, so he closed the lid. “How’s the PT coming?“ he asked.
“Once we made space to move some of those goddamn cars, no problem. The rack was on rollers. Good thing too; son of a bitch must weigh ten tons.”
“More like forty.”
“Either way, it’s gonna make a helluva racket when it hits. Boy, how you standin’ that smell?” Tully aimed his flashlight into the far reaches of the hold. “No wonder.”
Fabian looked where the beam lingered. Apparently, sealed barrels were as hard to come by as gas. The Japanese had filled anything they could get their hands on— buckets, watering cans, flour barrels, empty bottles—and capped them with rags or ill-fitting pieces of wood.
“How much muscle do you need to finish?“ Fabian asked.
“Way it’s sitting now, Luli could do it.”
“Then get everybody but the sick kid in the launch, pronto. And tell Pags to keep it on the side away from the PT. I don’t want the damn thing falling on anybody.”
&nb
sp; “Will do.”
As Tully disappeared up, Fabian took one last look around. Then, on an impulse, he lifted the lid on the case again. Delicately, he cut off one of the big cat’s whiskers and carefully folded it into his handkerchief, which he buttoned into his shirt pocket. He wanted to remember, and something told him that, a few years from now, this kind of ugliness might not seem real.
Up top, the wind had picked up, and he could see white-caps forming. Tully came across the deck holding on to his hat. “Everybody’s in the launch except Luli. She’s with the kid and willing to stay. What do you want to do? “
“Put them in the boat too.”
“You sure?”
“No, I’m not sure, but Fm not leaving anybody.”
* * * *
Pags brought the launch around to the Tango’s bow but was careful not to drift beyond the protection of her starboard side. The water had become much rougher, and his passengers had to make weight adjustments to keep the small craft from tipping.
Fabian watched from deck, and when Pags was in place, he moved quickly back to the hatch leading to the hold. He jerked the tarp off a ‘32 Pierce Arrow, crouched behind it and rammed the tip of his knife upward into the gas tank. Liquid immediately began dripping onto his wrist. He shifted position and jabbed the knife into the tank again, only this time above where he estimated the fuel level would be. With the change in pressure, the drip became a stream that ran rapidly along the deck toward the hold.
Fabian kicked away pieces of the raised edge of the hatch and watched the gas flow over the lip and into the darkness below. He then opened the Pierce’s front door and scooped a handful of liquid onto the front seat. For a moment, he was concerned the wind would blow out his Zippo, but just like the ads, it stayed lit. Seconds later, the interior of the car was on fire.
The PT rocked precariously halfway over the bow rail, her nose rising and falling with the chop. Tully’s crew had used a block and tackle to get it that far, then chocked the rack and tied everything off with two thick lines affixed to her stern. The ropes, however, were overmatched and could go at any time.
In the increasingly rough water, the PT was backing up an inch each time the Tango seesawed, and the last thing Fabian could afford was to cut it loose and have it slide backward. He found an eight-foot length of steel bar and shoved it under the boat rack, then pulled it tight over a cleat. It wouldn’t hold long, but for the moment, the PT was locked in place. He took a deep breath and cut both ropes with his knife.
Forty tons of mahogany and metal suddenly danced free, pitched up and down a couple of times, then shifted sideways, seemingly trying to walk the rail. Its tension gone, the steel bar dislodged and windmilled at Fabian, head high. He dove away just in time, and the bar hit the starboard rail and clattered along the deck.
With a final loud, scraping sound, the PT pivoted 180 degrees and slid transom first over the side. Fabian got there in time to see a thundering splash and watch it disappear beneath the swells. A moment later, it exploded back to the surface. He leaped onto the rail, gauged the drift and went after it.
Fabian collided with the water at an awkward angle and momentarily lost his breath. While he spit foam and coughed, he found one of the securing ropes and began pulling himself toward the PT. By the time he had the engines started, Pags was already alongside, and people were climbing aboard.
Fabian brought the PT around in a tight arc, but instead of heading toward open water, he aimed the prow directly at the harbor, the three Packards wide open. Pags screamed something unintelligible, but he ignored him. A few minutes later, he throttled back as a large, dark houseboat loomed ahead. Wheeling the PT into a sideways drift, he brought it to a stop almost against the stationary boat’s side, his wake rocking the houseboat violently. Lights came on, and a family of Chinese scrambled out.
Fabian yelled, “Hand them the boy!”
The pilot holding the kid froze, but Luli understood. She took the infant from him and reached up. At first, no one on the houseboat reacted. Then Luli shouted something in Chinese, and an older woman stepped forward hesitantly and took the bundle. Fabian jammed the throttles forward and whipped the wheel hard.
The Tango was well aflame, and even from his water-level vantage point, Fabian could see orange plumes shooting from the area where the open hatch would be. It wouldn’t be long before the first explosion.
Over the thundering Packards, he heard sirens onshore. As they roared toward the mouth of the river, the first rays of sunlight slashed across the horizon. It was going to be a short ride into an even shorter morning.
* * * *
17
Air-Conditioning and Martinis
The Cathedral of the Testaments sat at the edge of an empty parking lot half the size of the Rose Bowl. The JCPenney signage over the front door was gone, replaced by an immense marquee flanked on either side by a ten-foot crown of thorns and an even larger Bible, open to the Book of Revelation. And in black, grand-opening-size lettering was the always intriguing
WHERE WERE YOU THE NIGHT JESUS DIED?
“Don’t you just love a soft sell?” asked Birdy.
Three cars were nosed into the curb in a no-parking zone inches from the front door. Ten yards farther down, a yellow Mercedes 500 with a wheelchair rack was half-in, half-out of a handicapped space.
Birdy looked at the Mercedes. “Wouldn’t it have been closer ... Oh, never mind.”
It was interesting, but some people instinctively follow the rules. I took his lead and parked the Ram in a designated slot. The air was oven-hot, and a waft of thick breeze kicked a handful of brown grit against my face, a brick of which took out my left eye. Ah, the desert.
Inside, it was just north of an Antarctic winter. “Jesus Christ,” said Birdy, “you see a box of mittens? Oops, sorry, Jesus.”
You had to wonder what it was costing to keep the place this cold. “I think even He would have asked them to back off the A/C. I’ve got a jacket in the car.”
“I’ll just pretend I’m in Chicago.”
With the heavily tinted front windows and only a few tiny ceiling lights, the place was in twilight. We were in a spacious, carpeted outer lobby, which, if my catechism memory could be trusted, was called the narthex. I didn’t know if that term applied to a place that began life selling Big Mac jeans, but probably.
Running along the left wall was a long, glass trophy case filled with softball, basketball and bowling statuettes next to a number of community service plaques. Above the case were five rows of nicely framed candid photographs showing parishioners doing various church work. At least a third were Asian—I was betting Chinese—and some of those, plus a few others, wore the uniforms of various police departments, mostly LAPD. The officers ranged in rank from patrolman to commander and included two female captains, both Caucasian. I looked for Chuck and Lucille or Wes Crowe, but didn’t find them. Maxine Crowe, however, beamed out at me, wearing an apron and showing off a plate of brownies.
One row of pictures was entirely Asian children wearing Santa hats, smiling at the camera like kids always do. I put most of them between four and twelve. An interesting grouping, obviously special for some reason.
Just beyond the trophy case was a narrow offering table under a much larger and expensively framed black-and-white photograph. It had been taken decades ago, and it portrayed a tall, chiseled-jawed man holding the reins of a white horse while a group of ragged Asian children huddled around him and smiled into the lens. Three more children sat on the horse’s broad back, and a fourth stood under its neck, her small hand caressing the animal’s cheek. An engraved brass plate beneath the picture read
During the evening of December 6, 1941,
Riverside CHP officer “Big Jim” Rackmann—
a man who had not set foot inside a house
of worship in twenty years—had a vision:
It told him to go to China.
The next day, Pearl Harbor was attacked.
But B
ig Jim never wavered.
Because of his faith and commitment, our church exists.
Please help continue his mission.
The offering basket was labeled THE RACKMANN PROJECT and was flanked by a stack of pledge envelopes and box of new Bibles. I put twenty dollars in the basket.
“Guilty conscience?” asked Birdy.
“I wish it were limited to my conscience.”
I steered her in the direction of a wall of red fire doors and pushed one open. It wasn’t much lighter inside but enough to see that what had once been an acre of lingerie and lawn mowers was now an ocean of expensive, powder blue theatre seats. And to give the acoustics an obligatory reverential hush, the walls were draped in museum-sized blue and gold-bordered tapestries depicting scenes from the Gospels. I wasn’t an expert on fabric and embroidery, but these had cost thousands, so unless, Penney’s had left a full safe behind, this was not a cut-rate congregation.