Lord help us all!
Eva poked her head into the auditorium. A couple of men stood around chatting, seemingly unconcerned by the planes. This put her at ease and she talked herself into calming down. Deep breaths, Eva, deep breaths. Maybe it was just a drill, after all. A very realistic one. The taller of the two glanced her way, but made no acknowledgment. Soon a couple more men trickled in, and then Dr. Wallace showed up, looking flushed and off-kilter. Still an intimidating figure in his white coat and spectacles. All part of the physician mystique, of course, but her father had been the opposite. A people’s doctor all the way in rumpled clothes and never afraid to rub elbows with the poorest of poor. He made it clear that he was no different than the average person. We are all sewn together with skin, Evelyn. We have hearts and lungs and livers, and we all need food, water and love to survive. Remember that.
“Dr. Wallace, it’s lovely to see you again,” Eva said, seizing the moment to talk to him before he was swarmed by others.
Wallace looked up and recognition dawned. “Well, if it isn’t the little tennis star. You made it. I was beginning to wonder if I had scared you away.”
“They put me to work straightaway so I missed your last two lectures, but here I am, ready to learn more on burns,” she said like an eager pupil. “Say, is this kind of drill normal for a Sunday?”
Wallace seemed to be breathing more heavily than normal. “My word, you haven’t heard, then?”
“Heard?”
His face drooped. “Pearl Harbor is under attack. The Japanese are bombing the island.”
A violent flash of panic ran through her. “But why are we still here?”
“We may as well make ourselves useful. If you will excuse me, I need to get started on the talk.”
Wallace pushed away and went toward the podium. Eva was left standing there in shock. Her mind immediately went to Clark. Where would he be? Her breaths were now coming in shallow bursts. Billy was playing golf on the other side of the island, thank goodness, and Grace and the girls were nearby on Queen Emma Street.
In the distance, another huge explosion split the air. Windows rattled. Uneasy looks on faces. The auditorium had not filled up as expected. Only forty or fifty men where there should have been hundreds. The buzz of excited voices filled the room, yet no one seemed to know what exactly was happening. You hear all kinds of stories, don’t believe it. The Japs are coming ashore in Waikiki. The Navy is stepping up their drills. Eva felt like a trapped rat. It suddenly seemed imperative that she return to Pearl Harbor.
The microphone crackled on and Wallace cleared his throat. “This reminds me a bit of France in 1918,” he said with an uncomfortable laugh.
It all seemed so wrong.
He continued, “‘You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.’ A fitting message from Luke for this Sunday, don’t you think?”
One thing kept running through her mind: How did this happen? We knew they were there, didn’t we? Had Clark not delivered the report?
Somewhere nearby, a concussive blast, and then another. Eva smelled smoke, heard more planes. War had arrived from the sky, not the sea as she had imagined it might. All along, she had assumed the navy would neatly handle the Japanese ships, yet here she was in the midst of an air raid. Another blast rang through her teeth. She tried to rein in her dizzying fear.
A few seconds later the doors burst open and a man slid in and shouted, “This is not a drill! Surgeons are needed at Tripler on the double! They say the wounded are coming in by the truckloads.”
Wallace turned to the man, then looked out at the audience and very calmly said, “I guess we should wrap it up here. Let’s go save some lives.”
If we aren’t blown to smithereens first.
Murmurs erupted and the room cleared faster than if someone had let loose a bagful of snakes. Eva ran down the aisle and hurried after Dr. Wallace, who was being ushered out by another man carrying a worn black medical bag. Her legs felt as wobbly as they had when she’d first stepped off of the ship.
“Doctor, might I catch a ride?” Eva called.
The other man turned. “Where we’re headed is the last place you want to go.”
“I’m a nurse, sir. I’m stationed at Tripler.”
Here she went again, running toward trouble. It seemed to be a habit. But why fight it?
Wallace motioned for her to follow. “She’s with me.”
She felt like kissing him at that moment, and swept out after them and into a jeep. Outside, in the direction of Pearl Harbor, the sky was smeared black with billowing shafts of smoke. A new line of planes zoomed past, strafing the steeple of an old stone church.
“Step on it, Joe,” Wallace said, leaning his head out the window and looking skyward. “Jesus, it looks like Armageddon out there.”
Bombs were coming down, bombs were going up, or maybe that was antiaircraft fire. The whistle of bullets. The rat, tat, tat of machine guns. And above all, the swarming hum of airplane engines.
Joe turned on the radio, but it was all static. “Find us a station,” he yelled to Wallace.
All of the sudden, Webley Edwards’s voice came on. Wallace turned it up so they could hear above the noise. In the backseat, Eva sat in disbelief at the nightmare unfolding around them. There was a strange feeling of numb detachment, that this could not be real.
“All right now, listen carefully. The island of Oahu is being attacked by enemy planes. The center of this attack is Pearl Harbor, but the planes are attacking airfields, as well. We are under attack. There seems to be no doubt about it. Do not go out on the streets. Keep under cover and keep calm. Some of you may think that this is just another military maneuver. This is not a maneuver. This is the real McCoy! I repeat, we have been attacked by enemy planes. The mark of the rising sun has been seen on the wings of these planes and they are attacking Pearl Harbor at this moment. Now keep your radio on and tell your neighbor to do the same. Keep off the streets and highways unless you have a duty to perform. Please don’t use your telephone unless you absolutely have to do so. All of these phone facilities are needed for emergency calls. Now standby all military personnel and all police—police regulars and reserves. Report for duty at once. I repeat, we are under attack by enemy planes. The mark of the rising sun has been seen on these planes. Many of you have been asking if this is a maneuver. This is not a maneuver. This is the real McCoy!”
EGG LAYING
0730
Clark ran as much for his mind as he did for his body. Nothing could beat the peace and quiet of an hour of running. His body craved the movement and his mind required the trancelike state he fell into step after step after step. Running had been his salvation after Beth died, when the agony of living had been almost too much to bear. Today, it had taken him longer than usual to settle in. Too much on the mind. Eva, and that damn Flag Officers Code that was stubborn as a blind mule with three legs.
Under patchy clouds and a light drizzle, he had taken the road toward Ford Island and headed south along a rocky path, through kiawe trees with one-inch thorns and down to a marshland where long-legged birds hunted for fish.
As always, he admired the might of Battleship Row. Arizona, Maryland, Nevada, Oklahoma, Tennessee, California and West Virginia all lined up along the southeast side of Ford Island. Of the bunch, the Nevada and the Oklahoma were the navy’s first super-dreadnoughts, and Clark, like any good soldier, got a lump in his chest just looking at them. Triple gun turrets, a radical new armor scheme, geared steam turbines, and they burned oil instead of coal for fuel. There was no doubt in his mind that here were the greatest battleships afloat.
At Hickam Field, he circled the long runway, waving at a couple of airmen getting ready for the B-17 Flying Fortresses that were scheduled to come in. Hickam housed the bombers—B-17s, A-20s and B-18s—whose pilots loved to razz their sailor neigh
bors with screaming flybys. But when the carriers came in, the navy hotshots gave them a run for their money. Clark got a kick watching their antics. No carriers today, though.
Being Sunday, Ford was off and had a family picnic planned, but Clark had decided it was time to bring up the matter of the radio signals. He had waited three days, and in those three days not one person had mentioned anything about ships being detected northwest of Oahu. Even the boys at He’eia. They were focused on radio activity in the South China Sea and the Dutch West Indies. There is no activity of importance observed in the Sub Force, they’d told him. Clark was more confused than ever. He would swing by Ford’s this afternoon.
His T-shirt stuck to his back as he hit the grass for a round of push-ups. Once a football player, always a football player. Show him a green grassy field, and he would show you fifty push-ups. Sometimes, he felt like a show-off because he could outwork most of the younger guys, but he believed in keeping himself finely tuned and ready for action.
He heard the planes before he saw them, thinking it would be a treat to watch those babies come in. Forty-six, forty-seven. Beads of sweat dripped down his nose. He jumped up, dusted the grass from his palms and looked north, facing the middle of the island. A formation of bombers in a perfect V flew toward them.
“Here they come!” someone shouted.
Damn, what a sight.
“We’re going to have an air show,” another guy called.
The bombers began to peel away and swoop down, coming straight at Hickam faster than they ought to. Something seemed off. Clark moved closer to the men.
“Hey, those look more like navy fighters,” a stocky mechanic next to him said.
Everyone was squinting to get a better look.
“What the—”
Several of the planes swerved around and dived straight at the harbor. On the underside of their wings were big red circles. Everyone stood for a fraction of a second, mouths hanging open. Half the formation was still making a beeline for them.
“Holy shit. It’s the Japs!”
The crew scattered like schoolchildren after the bell, some heading for the barracks, others for a line of trees. Clark was in the bunch scrambling for the barracks. The dive-bomber was a mere two dozen feet over their heads. Close enough that Clark swore he saw the screws in the underbelly of the plane. The pilot smiled before opening fire, strafing the grass where only a minute ago, he’d been exercising. Clark wondered what was going through his mind. The guy’s lips had been moving, and what Clark would have given to know what he said. War suddenly seemed different when it was down to the lowest denominator. Man on man.
The next thing he knew, a detonation flattened everyone to the ground. He had a second to think, as the ground came up at him, So this is how it ends.
One of the nearby soldiers screamed, “I’m hit, I’m hit. Oh God, I’m hit.”
That was how Clark knew he was still alive. He could still hear. Men screaming, the thrum of engines, bombs cracking the sky. Hangar Seven went up in flames. The taste of dirt and blood filled his mouth, but otherwise he seemed in one piece. When he jumped up, two guys were pulling the wounded man toward the building, leaving behind a dark red streak in the grass.
How could this be happening?
Another dive-bomber swooped down on them. There was nothing to do but run. A moving target ready to be peppered with bullets. Miraculously, he made it to a truck and slid underneath just as the front door of the barracks burst open and soldiers spilled out—some still in their pajamas, others in their skivvies—carrying guns. Colt .45 semiautomatics and several old Springfield rifles.
What the fuck? Clark thought. As if we stand a chance with those.
Two guys on the parade ground had managed to get a Thomson submachine gun, and he watched in horror as the Zero shot through them as easily as if they’d been pieces of paper. Strangely, he felt nothing. Between the passes of the fighters and dive-bombers, he ran out and checked to see if either man had survived, even though he knew they hadn’t. Both were full of holes. Gagging, he grabbed the gun and sprinted back to the truck, where he leaned against it, ready for the next round. He’d be damned if he didn’t shoot down one of these devils.
Fires were popping up everywhere. The planes on the tarmacs made easy targets, exploding and spilling their gas into burning streams that lit up anything they touched.
A man came out of the building yelling like crazy. “Help, help, Lieutenant Braden is hit!” Of all things, a small dog on a rope cowered behind him.
Clark followed him into the mess hall, where a hole had been ripped through the roof.
Bodies lay on the floor with limbs at unnatural angles, or missing altogether. The metallic smell of blood hit him hard but he kept on going. One man had opened a five-gallon pail of pickles and was handing them out.
“In case we have to hide out in the hills. Here, take one,” he said to Clark, completely shell-shocked. Clark took the pickle and stuck it in his pocket.
He was determined to help the panicky kid. The weird thing was, everywhere the kid went, the dog was right at his heels, panting.
“Where’d the mutt come from?”
“She’s a stray, sir. Me and a couple of the guys started feeding her and I think I’ve become her favorite.” The kid knelt next to a man on the floor. “Here he is.”
Blood oozed out of Braden’s chest and he was moaning and wheezing. They lifted him onto the counter. Someone was calling an ambulance. As if an ambulance would be able to make it through. Clark was ready to move on to others who seemed more likely to survive, but the kid begged him to stay. He found a rag and pressed it firmly to the man’s wound.
“Hang in there, buddy, your men need you,” Clark said.
Oddly enough, five minutes later, an ambulance came screeching to a halt in front of the blown-up building. Clark and the kid carried Braden out and laid him in the back of the vehicle. The dog followed with its rope dragging behind.
The ambulance driver helped them, then took one look at Clark and said, “Come on, I’ll get you to Tripler.”
“I’m fine. I wasn’t the one hit.”
“Sure, sure,” the driver said, grabbing his arm and trying to pull him into the ambulance, too.
The guy was so persistent, Clark got in, crawled over the passenger seat and left through the back door. Walking away, he looked down and saw that his entire shirt was soaked in blood. His hands had turned red and he hardly recognized them.
A new roaring overhead as another round of planes approached. These looked like bombers. “Get outta there! You’ll all get killed,” someone screamed to a bunch of men on the field.
What were they doing out there?
Clark and the kid and the dog ran to the side of the building, looking for a way underneath it. The kid was shaking, and Clark couldn’t tell if he was injured, too, or just covered in Braden’s blood. “You okay?” he asked.
The kid ignored his question. “Are we going to have to move into the mountains? I heard they skewer their prisoners and eat dogs.”
“Let’s worry about getting out of here alive first.”
He felt as though he were watching a war movie, his eyes unable to believe what he saw. He kept thinking about that first Zero and how close it had been. The bastard had actually waved. That face, he would never forget. He rubbed his eyes, trying to make sense of it all.
“For Chrissake, someone save that plane!” a man barked. Most of the planes on the airstrip had been strafed to hell, but one appeared to be untouched.
Clark watched another guy, dressed in shorts with no shirt, leap into the plane. The engine roared to life.
The kid next to him yelled, “Damn, I sure hope he knows how to fly that thing.”
Another round of Japanese fighters bunched up over the harbor. “Shit,” Clark mumbled, running out for the submachine gu
n, which he’d left under the truck.
When the fighters flew over, whoever was in the American plane didn’t try to take off, but zigzagged her across the runway. By some miracle, he managed to avoid strafing from the Zeros. Clark blasted away at the low-flying planes, feeling pathetically undergunned. A second later, one blew up just beyond the barracks and rained down fiery metal and glass. Everyone in the vicinity cheered.
“Was that me?” Clark said to the kid.
“Beats me. Either you or the antiaircraft guns.”
The tiny moment of victory was short-lived as a new formation of bombers arrived. Blinding explosions rocked the ground. Right in front of their eyes, the jeep he’d been hiding behind evaporated. A P-36 exploded in a fiery ball. Chunks of shrapnel sprayed out and lodged in anything within a fifty-foot radius. Clark was torn between hiding out in the building or staying outside. Either way, it was luck of the draw. Over the bushes, he could see a soldier without legs bleeding out into the grass. He wanted to help, but knew there was no point. The break in fire wouldn’t last long. The kid bent over and started vomiting on his shoes.
“Make it stop. Can you make it stop?” the kid said.
“What’s your name?” Clark asked.
“Jack. Private Jack Singer,” he said to the ground.
“Jack, it looks like they’re coming back, so you need to hold yourself together. We’ll get through this,” Clark ordered. “This dog needs you, too,” he said as an afterthought.
Jack reached down and stroked the dog tenderly. Her tail was tucked so far under her legs you couldn’t even see it. Still, she looked up at him with adoring brown eyes. “Brandy, you’re my girl, aren’t you?” he said.
Clark patted Brandy on the head. “Stay with us and you’ll be fine.”
If only.
This time, there were dive-bombers and fighters lined up, coming at them from two directions. He watched the bombs fall, first on Hangar One, which lifted entirely off the ground, and then into some kind of fuel storage building that sent a shock wave through the whole block. Next, they must have hit an ammunition depot, because the aircraft machine guns popped like firecrackers before the whole place detonated. Without any foxholes or trenches, they were shit out of luck.
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