Rising Sun

When they finally got to the ruined little town, it was even more depressing. Even though the army was setting up shop and building an airbase, Anchorage itself was a burned and broken shell. Ruby had a difficult time convincing a couple of young MPs that she was the owner of the pile of charred rubble that had once been her restaurant, her one and only source of income. In the ruins, she found very little of worth to her.

While she was looking through the debris, she was approached by a man who said he was a real-estate speculator, and would she sell to him? They haggled right then and there and he ended up paying cash for the property, giving her what she felt was about a third of what it was worth. She didn’t care. It was time to move on with her life.

She did talk to the army and pointed out where she’d seen the Japanese shoot and kill the men they’d pushed into the water. She was somewhat gratified when her information resulted in divers finding several bodies. They would continue to search for others. The murdered young men would be going home, she thought with a good deal of satisfaction. And so would she, only it wouldn’t be Anchorage.

“We should live in Fairbanks,” Ruby announced.

“And do what?” Bear asked. His world was changing, too, and he wondered what the future would bring.

“Well, they’re building a new airbase up there as well, and the road to the south is now open. If we play it right, we might have enough money to open a bar and restaurant, and you can make some cash guiding officers out into the wilderness to do some big-game hunting, Alaska style.”

“That’ll do for the summertime,” Bear said, “but what will we do in the winter?”

Ruby smiled. “Why, we’ll do what everyone else does up here in the winter. We’ll drink ourselves silly and screw our brains out.”

He smacked her on the bottom. “Damnation, why didn’t I think of that? What the hell are we waiting for?”

* * *

Admirals Chester Nimitz and Ray Spruance were the toast of the nation, a fact which perplexed them because of their innately shy natures, and annoyed Admiral King, who rather relished publicity. Their pictures had graced the covers of Time, Life, Collier’s, and the Saturday Evening Post. Even Nimitz had to acknowledge that Yamamoto and what remained of his fleet were clearly on the ropes. The Japanese were pulling back and, from the intercepts they’d gotten, were going totally on the defensive.

The one-sidedness of the wide-ranging fighting still stunned Admiral Nimitz. The Saratoga was already back in action after some miracle-working by repair crews in San Diego and, in the next few months, would be joined by no fewer than three fleet carriers and nine escort carriers. Additional new battleships were on the way including one Iowa-class monster that might even be a match for the Yamato’s remaining sister ship, the Musashi. Most felt that the day of the battleship was over, but maybe the Musashi would fall prey to the guns of the Iowa and her sisters. The admirals thought that would be suitable justice for Pearl Harbor and the destruction of so much of San Diego and Los Angeles.

More than three hundred American planes had been shot down in the battle, but more than half of their pilots had been recovered and most of those rescued would return to service. Not so with the Japanese. Intercepts said they acknowledged four hundred and fifty planes and pilots lost. Even the Japanese admitted that they could not replace the quality of the men who’d died in the battle. In future plane-to-plane encounters, the edge would now belong to the United States. The American pilots had not died in vain.

Enough melancholy, Nimitz thought. There was a duty to perform. After a lot of investigating and haggling, it was finally determined that one torpedo from the Shark had damaged the Yamato sufficiently that she could not flee to safety, thus causing her destruction. Yes, planes and gunfire had ultimately sunk her, but it was Torelli’s torpedo that had slowed her down to the point where the planes and ships could catch and kill her.

All he had to do was remind Torelli that neither he nor his crew were to say anything about modifying their torpedoes. He still could not fathom why the brains at BuOrd in Washington couldn’t get it through their heads that something was wrong with their expensive toys.

* * *

Juan Camarena was one of a number of army officers who despised the incompetence, corruption, stupidity, and greed of so many of his fellow officers in the Mexican military. Ever since Mexico first won her independence from Spain in 1821, the nation had been wracked with revolutions, coups, and theft on a monumental scale that sometimes made his beloved country a joke. Now, just when it seemed like events were coming under control, his nation was forced to choose between the United States and Hitler’s Germany.

When pushed, Camarena would admit that he didn’t give a damn for either nation. The United States had stolen Mexico’s northern provinces a century before and turned them into the states of Texas, California, Arizona, and New Mexico, among others. Germany, under Hitler, had become a monster. So too had Japan, and the Land of the Rising Sun posed a greater threat to Mexico than did Germany.

Camarena and his associates hated the United States. However, his government had decided to side with the Americans against Germany. He thought he saw expediency in this decision as the U.S. was so close and Hitler so far, but he saw absolute evil in Hitler. Camarena almost couldn’t comprehend the reports of Nazi atrocities he was getting from diplomats and others in Europe. Nor could he abide the idea of a militant and expansionist Japan being victorious. If they defeated the United States, Japanese ships would then be able to cruise up and down the western Mexican coast without any interference from the joke that was the Mexican Navy. Mexico would be dominated by the yellow-skin savages even more than she was by the gringos north of the border. Therefore, backing the U.S. was the lesser of two evils and Camarena dedicated himself to that purpose.

Camarena and his allies had engineered the killing of the traitor, Juan Escobar. It pleased him that the American FBI agent, Harris, had been able to observe justice being served. Unlike so many Americans, Harris seemed to play fair. The police had closed the case. They’d quickly concluded that Escobar the traitor had been killed in a street robbery gone very badly awry.

That left the Germans who’d been left behind in Mexico and who had been directing Escobar’s moves on behalf of the Japanese. At first the Americans wanted them left alone, but now they gave the go-ahead to dispose of them. Camarena was glad. He would take care of the human garbage, not for the United States, but for Mexico.

First, Camarena had a series of notes sent to the remaining Germans from someone who identified himself as a friend of the late Escobar. The notes said that the Mexican police had found out about the Germans’ activities and would arrest them shortly if they didn’t flee. Since they weren’t in uniform, they would be shot or hanged as spies. The “friend” suggested that they move to a place in the country and suggested just such a place.

Thankful, the remaining Germans moved out to a small one-story house in the middle of a field about fifty miles from Mexico City. Camarena was a captain in the Mexican Army and his companions were all officers who felt like he did about the Nazi filth.

There were a total of eight well-armed Mexicans in on the raid, not a great numerical advantage, but they hoped that a middle-of-the-night assault would catch the Germans either asleep or exhausted from their daily bouts of drinking. At least this night there were no whores in the house.

There was only one guard stationed fifty yards down the dirt road leading to the shabby house, and Camarena took care of him personally. He snuck up on the half-drunken idiot and sliced his throat. He gave a signal and the others rushed the windows, smashed the glass, and threw in hand grenades that exploded with a roar.

Incredibly, not all the German swine were killed by the blasts. Two men staggered out the door. Their clothes were torn and they were disoriented and bleeding badly. Camarena’s men quickly gunned them down. Camarena led his men into the house. Inside, it was a pile of broken furniture and mangled bodies. They counted the pieces and decided they had gotten all of the Germans. The house was a long ways away from other houses and the bodies might not be discovered for some time.

As they drove back to Mexico City, Camarena decided that he would telephone Harris and let him know that the garbage had been taken out. Harris and others like him needed to know that Mexico didn’t need help doing