It was easy, almost too easy. The tracks were normally deserted. He’d checked it out before and seen no signs of activity, not even kids or bums or patrols checking for sabotage. Well, he said with a laugh, all that might change after tonight.
They looked around. There were people who spent a lot of time doing nothing more than train watching. However, he did not think he’d run into them as the late afternoon sky darkened. If the trains in California ran on anything resembling a schedule, the freight train they were waiting for should be along within an hour.
Even though it was dangerous, Braun felt compelled to stay and see the results of their handiwork. They drove to a spot where they could look down on the tracks and still remain out of sight. The place where he’d placed the dynamite was a good mile away and he hoped an innocuous Ford station wagon would go unnoticed.
He pulled out a cheese sandwich and ate slowly. He offered half to Krause, who said he wasn’t hungry. After what seemed an eternity, they heard a train whistle in the distance. Braun tried to will it to come closer, sooner, but when it finally appeared, it was a very long one and moving slowly. Braun was delighted.
Two steam engines sending clouds of white smoke into the sky were locked in an almost sexual embrace and pulling a line of freight cars and flatcars that stretched to the horizon. It was the type of train that blocked roads and drove drivers to distraction. Braun thought that blocked roads would be the least of people’s worries in a little while.
Braun smiled as he saw that the flatcars carried a number of M3 Stuart light tanks. They were the best the Americans had at this time, but were pieces of shit in comparison with German armor. He was confident the German Panzer III and the new Panzer IV would destroy them with ease. What disconcerted him was the fact that the tanks would be replaced by the Americans who turned them out like Ford used to make cars.
He wondered what the dirty little Japs had in the way of tanks and decided he really didn’t care. He just wanted this train to crash.
The whistle sounded again, loud and strident. Here I come, it seemed to proclaim. Not for long, Braun laughed, and Krause sighed.
He held his breath as the first locomotive passed over where he’d placed the charge. It drove on and, for a second, Braun thought he’d failed and set the detonator improperly. Then a white flash suddenly appeared underneath the second engine and was followed by an explosion. The train shuddered like a drunk trying to keep his balance. But it couldn’t. The rails had been destroyed. The train lurched and stumbled, and slowly turned to its left and began to careen off the tracks and down the embankment. The sound of metal crashing and tearing ripped through the sky. Car after car played the game of follow the leader and ran down onto the field to their destruction.
The sound of metal and wood colliding and ripping became deafening. Some train cars fell on their sides while others stayed upright and a few actually turned turtle. The despised Stuart tanks ripped free of their shackles and fell onto the field. In a couple of cases, the turrets came loose and rolled around. Braun was mildly disappointed that their crews hadn’t been traveling with them.
Smoke clouds began to obscure the site. The boilers on the locomotives exploded, sending shock waves across the wreckage and white clouds of steam roaring upward.
Braun and Krause exulted as scores of freight cars kept falling to their destruction, screeching as more metal ripped apart, taking large sections of the track with them. When it seemed it couldn’t get any better, something in one of the cars exploded and started a chain reaction. Moments later, a score of freight cars was burning and others threatened to catch fire.
Curiously, they could hear no sounds of screams although a couple of figures could be seen running around in apparent shock and panic. Doubtless what was left of the crew, Braun thought. Too bad it wasn’t a passenger train. Perhaps the next one would be.
As he pulled the station wagon onto the road and drove away, he could see emergency vehicles heading toward the crash site. He turned to Krause and laughed. It was a good start.
Harry Hopkins was a confidante of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and had advised him on many important and delicate issues. He’d traveled on his president’s behalf to Moscow and London and was noted for his bluntness when dealing with foreign leaders. He was so valued by FDR that he now lived in the White House. However, the chain-smoking Harry Hopkins was dying of a stomach cancer, and he looked far older than his fifty-two years.
Hopkins looked at Admiral Nimitz and Lieutenant General John Lesesne DeWitt. Even though he was gaunt, disheveled, and dressed in an ill-fitting suit, Hopkins was clearly in charge. He was also a little annoyed that he’d been sent west to negotiate what amounted to a truce between the army and the navy and the nation’s overall war goals. At least, he thought wryly, he didn’t have to deal with the arrogant General Douglas MacArthur, who was busy trying desperately to hold onto Australia.
Hopkins coughed and began. “Gentlemen, enough is enough. We are now certain that the Japanese will not invade California or anyplace else on the West Coast. Therefore, we have to make some changes consistent with plans for coming events. In short, we now have more than a million American soldiers sitting on their thumbs, waiting in trenches and pillboxes along the Pacific coast for an enemy who isn’t going to come.”
“Is your intelligence that good?” DeWitt asked with a trace of sulkiness.
As a three-star, DeWitt was junior to Nimitz and strongly suspected that he wasn’t getting all the information the higher-ranking admiral was. He was also getting a lot of flack for interning Japanese civilians even though he was convinced that the actions were necessary and his efforts were supported by FDR. DeWitt was painfully conscious that most of his experience in the army was as a quartermaster and not as a combat officer. He now commanded the sprawling Fourth Army area, which also included Alaska, and was being heavily criticized for the ease with which the Japanese had taken Anchorage.
The internment of Japanese civilians and American citizens was another major problem. The short-tempered DeWitt had been infuriated by the lack of preparedness and common sense shown by civilian authorities. This included failure to black out cities and several absurd false alarms when people thought the Japanese fleet was approaching. The sixty-two-year-old DeWitt felt all of those years.
“Our intelligence is excellent,” answered Hopkins as Nimitz looked down at his hands. The admiral was among a chosen few who knew the United States had broken at least some of the Japanese codes. DeWitt was not.
Hopkins continued. “I assume everyone has heard the rumors that we are going to invade North Africa. Well, the rumors are true and, in order to do that, we are going to need an army. Specifically, General DeWitt, we are going to need many of those several hundreds of thousands of troops who were sent here after the Midway battle to protect against what we now know is a nonexistent invasion, and to forestall the hysteria among the civilian population that was assuming epic proportions. Gentlemen, there never was any threat of an invasion. The Japs can and will continue to raid, but they will not invade. Therefore, we need significant components of the Fourth Army sent back east pronto so they can be prepared to land in North Africa in November.”
DeWitt was angry. He’d been an officer in the army for more than forty years and didn’t like the bullshit that was being shoveled in his direction.
“And just how the hell am I supposed to forestall raids without an army? And how also am I supposed to recover Alaska, or do we let the Japs keep on beheading people?”
Hopkins glared at him. He wasn’t used to people arguing with him. “General, it has been noted over and over again that your Fourth Army cannot ever be large enough to defend literally thousands of miles of coastline. We have to depend on air and naval patrols along with coastal radar to identify the Jap fleet’s location and plan accordingly. Yes, I understand that the enemy can cruise up and down the coast causing the army to run up and down as well. Nor can we stop the Japs from shelling small towns like they’ve been doing with impunity since we don’t yet have enough ships to stop them. It can’t be helped. The president is under extreme pressure from the Russians to open up a second front against the Nazis and support Stalin.”
DeWitt was not impressed. “The Russians are a long ways away, while the Japs are here on our soil. Even worse, the shelling of small towns has resulted in hundreds of thousands of refugees heading inland. We can’t handle all that. We need more help here and to hell with the Russians.”
Hopkins seethed. He felt his stomach aching, but he chose to continue, ignoring DeWitt’s outburst. “It is also imperative that we prevent Rommel from defeating the British in North Africa. If that happens, fascist Spain is likely to decide that allying with Nazi Germany is the better good bet and scrap its neutrality. Don’t forget that Hitler supported Franco in Spain’s civil war and has been pushing for that debt to be repaid. We believe Spain is wavering
