The captain stepped back among the squadron commanders behind the admiral. Halsey squinted around the room, contracting his flaring gray eyebrows. “Thank you, skipper. I’m told there were questions yesterday. I’m here to accommodate you, gentlemen.”
Not a word or a raised hand.
Admiral Halsey involuntarily grimaced, glancing over his shoulder at the ship’s captain and the squadron commanders. He addressed the pilots again. “Cat got your tongue?” This raised an uneasy titter. “I’m reliably informed that someone said this paper gave every one of you carte blanche to put the United States of America into the world war. Now would the brave soul who said that care to stand?”
Warren Henry took a step forward from the bulkhead. Faces turned to him.
“What’s your name?”
“Lieutenant Warren Henry, sir.”
“Henry?” Halsey looked a shade less grim. “Are you related to Captain Victor Henry?”
“He’s my father, sir.”
“Well,
“Sir, I added yesterday that I was all for it.”
“You’re all for it, hey? Why? What are you, one of these bloodthirsty killer types?” The admiral raised his outthrust jaw.
“Admiral, I think we’re in the war now, but fighting with both hands tied behind us.”
Halsey’s face twitched and he motioned Warren to step back. Clasping his hands behind his back the admiral said in harsh tones: “Gentlemen, this force stripped for action weeks ago. There’s nothing loose, dispensable, or inflammable left aboard the
He slowly looked around at the young sober faces. “Good day, then, and good hunting.”
Later, Warren’s wing mate, lying naked on the top bunk, said, “Well, give him one thing. He’s a fighting son of a bitch.”
“Or trigger-happy old nut,” said Warren, rinsing lather from his razor. “Depending on events.”
On the day that the Japanese steaming east and Halsey’s ships steaming west made their closest approach, Warren Henry flew the northern search pattern, more than two hundred miles straight toward the Japanese fleet. The Japanese routinely sent a scout plane due south about the same distance. But in the broad Pacific Ocean the game was still blindman’s buff. Hundreds of unsearched miles of water stretched between the two scouting planes at their far reach, and the two forces passed in peace.
The light was failing over Guam. From the window of the descending Clipper, Victor Henry glimpsed in the sunset glow the island’s mountain ridges and broken sea cliffs to the south, levelling northward to a jungle checkered with terraced fields. The shadowy light flattened perspectives; Guam was like a painted island on a Japanese screen. Sharp on the red horizon jutted the black lump of Rota, an island held by the Japanese.
The passengers were standing in a sweaty weary cluster outside the immigration shed in the twilight, when a gray car drove up, fluttering on its front fenders an American flag and a starry blue jack.
“Captain Henry?” The white-clad marine officer saluted and handed him an envelope, confidently picking out the Navy four-striper in a seersucker suit from among the ferry pilots and civilians. “Compliments of the governor, sir.”
The note was scrawled on cream-colored stationery crested in gold:
THE GOVERNOR OF GUAM
Clifton Norbert Tollever, Jr., Captain, U.S.N.
Hi, Pug-
Greetings to the world’s worst hearts player, and as long as it’s not Sunday, how’s for coming around for drinks, dinner, and a game?
Pug smiled at the tired joke about his minor Sabbath abstinence. “NG, Lieutenant. Sorry. By the time I check through here, go to the hotel, and get cleaned up and whatnot, it’ll be way past the governor’s dinner hour.”
“No, sir. Let me expedite this. The governor said I’m to bring you out to the palace, bags and all. He’ll give you a room to freshen up in.”
The gold loops on the starchy, white shoulder of the governor’s aide conjured away difficulties. Victor Henry was entering the governor’s car within five minutes, leaving the other Clipper passengers behind, enviously staring.
Driving across the island in gathering darkness on a narrow winding tarred road, the lieutenant skillfully avoided some potholes but struck others with bone-jarring jolts.
“You folks short of road repair equipment?” Pug asked.
“Sir, the governor’s been cadging money from public works for gun emplacements and pillboxes. He says maybe he’ll hang for it, but his first duty is not to patch roads but to defend this island. Insofar as it can be defended.”
The headlights shone on green jungle and a few tilled fields most of the way. “Well, here’s the metropolis at last, sir.”
The car passed down a paved block of shuttered shops, and dimly lit bars with names like Sloppy Joe’s and The Bucket of Blood. Here lonesome-looking sailors meandered on the sidewalk, some with giggling brown girls in flimsy dresses. The car emerged on a broad, handsomely gardened square, formed by four stone structures in antique Spanish style: a cathedral, a long barracks, an immense jail, and an ornate building that the lieutenant called the Governor’s Palace.
Kip Tollever waved as Victor Henry mounted a broad staircase to the palace terrace. Wearing stiffly starched whites, he sat in a large carved Spanish armchair, in yellow light cast by a wrought-iron chandelier. Natives in shirt-sleeves and trousers stood before him.
“Sit you down, Pug!” He motioned at a chair beside him. “Welcome aboard. This won’t take long. Go ahead, Salas. What about the schoolchildren? Have they been drilling every day?”
It was a conference on defense preparations. Tollever addressed the Guamanians in English or Spanish, with condescending kindness. One or two spoke a queer dialect that the others translated. The men were taller than Filipinos, and very good-looking.
“Well, Pug Henry!” The governor lightly slapped his guest’s knee as the natives bowed and went off down the stairs. “Quite a surprise, seeing
They drank excellent rum punches there on the terrace, in tall curiously carved green glasses, and Pug talked about his travels. Tollever seemed far more interested in the Russian war than in Japan. His response to Pug’s remark that he had spent four days in Tokyo was, “Oh, really? Say, incidentally, you’ll stay overnight, won’t you? I’ll assign a boy to look after you. You’ll be very comfortable.”
“Well, Kip, thanks. I’d better bed down in the Pan Am Hotel. Takeoff depends on weather, and I don’t want
