Nimitz shook his head. “Of course, the navy has no planes that can make it, either.”
“No, sir,” Merchant said, “Maybe in a year or two, but not today.”
Dane raised his hand and earned a quick glare from Nimitz. “What, Commander? You’ve got an idea?”
“Yes, sir, or at least it’d be a stopgap until we get things rolling at Vancouver. A PBY can fly two thousand miles and carry a ton of bombs and doesn’t need an airfield. I suggest we stage them out of the waters of Puget Sound, fly up to Anchorage via the overland route, and bomb the place. We might not accomplish all that much with just a few tons of bombs, but they’ll know we’re alive and kicking.”
“It’s a great idea,” Merchant said. “In a way it’d be like Doolittle hitting Tokyo. Not much damage, but we sure as hell got their attention. We don’t even have to wait for an airfield to be developed. The Catalinas can land in the water off Juneau, or anywhere else for that matter, refuel, take off, and be on their way.”
Everyone seemed pleased that they could soon be striking back. “Hopefully, our people in Alaska can pinpoint some good targets for us.” Nimitz said. Then his mood turned dark. “The PBYs are large, slow targets. We might get in one or two raids before the Japs figure that out and either land their own planes at Anchorage or station a carrier nearby and slaughter our boys.”
“But it’s a lot better than doing nothing,” Spruance added softly. “We have to strike back. We’re all sick and tired of being kicked.”
“May I ask one more question?” Dane inquired, and Spruance nodded. “Sir, who is commanding the Japs in Alaska?”
Spruance laughed, recalling Dane’s background. “Think you might know him?”
“Yes, sir, I did meet some army officers.”
“His name is Yasuyo Yamasaki and he’s a colonel,” Spruance answered.
“Admiral, I never met him, but some of the people I knew in Japan said he had a reputation. Sir, he’s a fanatic. He’s cold, hard, and cruel, and one of those who will fight to the last man.”
Amanda was so weak she could barely stand up, much less work the sails or stand at the wheel. With food and water at dangerously low levels, they’d cut down to what they hoped was subsistence levels. Now she wondered if they’d gone too far. There was only a little left, and they were wondering if they should finish everything in one almost literal gulp that would build up their strength, however temporarily. Of course, when it was gone, it was gone and they would go back to dying slowly. No, it was decided, they would stretch it out. Every day they still lived was a triumph.
There had been no more rogue waves or storms. Instead, just the opposite. Too much of their time was spent floating in the calm seas and praying for a wind to take them to safety.
Nor had it rained. They’d seen cloudbursts in the distance dumping tantalizing loads of water into an ocean that didn’t need it. Once, a storm had been close enough for them to see the raindrops lashing the waves. They’d tried to steer the cat toward it, but the cloudburst ended as quickly as it had begun, leaving them with the feeling that they and their puny efforts were being mocked by the gods.
“I’m a Christian,” Sandy had said weakly. “I don’t believe in plural gods. At least not until recently. Get us to safety and I’ll believe anything.”
They’d managed to catch a few fish. They’d devoured them raw and gotten diarrhea that had left them weaker and sicker than before they’d eaten. Their joints hurt, their teeth were beginning to feel loose, and their gums were painful, sure signs of developing scurvy. Soon they would be unable to work the catamaran. Soon they would die.
Far, far worse was the horrible feeling that they were lost. They’d done their best to keep on course, but their navigational skills weren’t up to Mack’s and they had zero confidence that they knew precisely where they were going. That they were headed east and north was the best they could conclude. Assuming they could keep sailing, sooner or later they would hit the Americas. They could only hope and pray that they were still alive when it happened.
“I think I was falling in love with him,” Grace announced a couple of days after Mack’s death.
“We’ll have a memorial service for him when we reach California,” Amanda said, rubbing her aching jaw and wishing she had an orange or a lime. And that’s assuming we reach California, she thought.
When they left Hawaii they knew that the amount of time necessary to make the trip was impossible to estimate. Still, they had the feeling that they should have bumped into something as immense as North America by now. They were well north of the equator and should be on track, but they couldn’t be certain. They knew by the stars that they were headed in the right general direction, but that didn’t tell them how near or far landfall might be. In a few days, their reduced rations would run out, and a few days after that they’d be dead with no one to know what had happened to them.
They’d begun keeping journals in case the catamaran was found drifting at some time in the future with their desiccated, mummified corpses on board. Or maybe they wouldn’t be on board. Maybe their bodies would tumble into the ocean and be devoured by the fish. They wondered how long the last to die would want to spend staring at the bodies of her friends before she heaved them overboard. How long would the last one survive before going mad or killing herself? And what about cannibalism? Would the last one have the strength to devour the flesh of the others? They all said no, but nobody could truly rule it out.
Amanda wondered how long her parents and sisters in Annapolis would grieve for her, especially since they didn’t know that she was out in the ocean in the first place. Someday, when Hawaii was again free of the Japanese, her family might hire someone to look for her. She’d left messages in her apartment and “mailed” some letters to her family that might not be delivered for years, but that was it. All three of them wondered if they had done something truly foolish and tragic by setting out from Hawaii in the first place. At least starvation in Hawaii might mean a marked grave, Grace remarked bitterly.
Sandy was the one who first noticed the difference. The swells were higher, but that was nothing new. The size of the waves differed all the time. If it meant a storm was coming, however, it might mean that their end might be sooner than they thought. They all doubted that they had the strength left in their frail bodies to fight a storm. In that area alone had they been fortunate. With the exception of the rogue wave, the seas had not been at all treacherous.
“Quiet,” Sandy said. They did as they were told. “Do you hear it?”
“I don’t hear anything but the wind and the waves,” Amanda said. “I hurt too much to hear anything else.”
“Listen for the waves,” Sandy insisted. “They’re different.”
Amanda listened intently. They were surrounded in the rolling sea by a fog so thick they’d tried to lick its moisture off their arms. Sandy was right, the sound was different. She thought she heard breakers. “Oh, God,” she yelled, “we’re near shore!”
“Or rocks,” Grace said, quickly dampening their sudden enthusiasm. They lowered the main sail and attempted to coast toward the sounds, which were becoming louder. If they were headed toward rocks, they didn’t want to crash into them. They might be close to shore, or the rocks might be part of a reef scores of miles away from land. Either way, they had to get through them unscathed. They grabbed poles to use to push the cat away from the still unseen rocks.
Sandy went to the bow of the cat and tried to peer through the fog. “I still can’t see a thing, but we’re definitely near land. I can almost smell it.” She giggled almost hysterically. “God, I hope it’s California and not the Galapagos, or Easter Island.”
An unseen force suddenly lifted the cat and threw it forward, causing them to fall backward, again held tight by their lifelines. They felt the hull grate on sand and another wave pushed it onto land. “Get out,” Amanda yelled. “Get out and pull the boat farther onto the shore.”
With the remnants of their strength, they managed to drag it a few feet farther onto the sand where they collapsed, gasping and choking from their exertions. The catamaran wouldn’t run away, at least not for a while. Maybe they’d find a little water, or some food. Maybe they’d find out just where the hell they were. Of course, it would help if they could see through the fog.
They stood, but it was difficult to walk. The steady ground was so different from the plunging of the cat that they fell down like a trio of drunks. They lay there, helpless and exhausted until a breeze stroked them and blew away the fog. The gods had not mocked them. They had somehow landed between a number of large rocks, any one of which could have smashed the catamaran into pieces and sent them into the ocean to drown. A few feet
