“Colonel, it’s like this: If I were dead and Fur Ball were sitting here instead of me, I would want him to have a cigar. I would want him to savor this sublime moment. If I could, I would light the cigar for him.”
Scheer stretched out his arms and yawned. “Best goddamned two minutes of my life. The very best.” He sighed. “The sad thing is that it’s all downhill from here. What could possibly equal that?”
Scheer slowly got to his feet. As cigar smoke swirled around his head, he hitched up his gun belt, reached into his unzipped G suit and scratched, then helped himself to a swallow of water from a small bottle. Opening the desk drawer, he extracted two cigars and held them out.
“One each. This was our stash, Hudek’s and mine. When you smoke them, think of Fur Ball and Foy Sauce and the Preacher. Three damned good men.”
Cassidy and Elitch each took the offered cigars.
Paul Scheer strolled out of the room, trailing smoke.
When he was lying in his bunk that evening, Jiro Kimura could not sleep. The morning fight kept swirling through his mind. After a while, he got out his flashlight, pulled the blanket over his head, and wrote a letter to his wife.
Dear Shizuko, Today we had a big fight with the American fighters, the American Squadron that you have been hearing about. Bob Cassidy is their commanding officer!
Ota, Miura, and Sasai are missing in action and presumed dead. By the time you receive this letter, their families will have been notified. As you know, I have been very concerned about meeting Cassidy in the sky. Today I must have done so. He was probably there. Beloved wife, you will be proud to know that I did not hesitate to do my duty. I did my very best, which is the only reason I am still alive. Still, I have worried so about the possibility of shooting at Cassidy that I now feel guilty that my comrades are dead. Strange how even secret sins return to haunt you. That is a very un-Japanese thought, but the Americans always assured me it was so. Secret sins are the worst, they said. I have promised myself to think no more of Bob Cassidy. I will be cold-blooded about this murderous business. I will fight with a tiger’s resolve. I write of these things to you because I may not see you again in this life. It is probable that I shall soon join my friends in death, which is not a prospect I fear, as you know. Still, the thought of my death fills me with despair that you will be left to go on alone, that we will not live long lives together, which was, we always believed, our destiny. If I die before you, I will be waiting for you in whatever comes after this life. When you are old and full of years, you will rejoin the husband of your youth, who will be waiting with a heart full of love. Know that in the days to come. Jiro THE TRAIN WAS barely an hour north of Vladivostok when it derailed. Isamu Iwakuro felt the engine and cars lurch. He had spent his adult life working as a locomotive repair specialist, and he knew. The car he was in, the second behind the last locomotive, went over on its side and the lights went out. The car skidded for what seemed to be a long time before it came to rest. Inside the car, civilians and soldiers and their baggage were hopelessly jumbled. Someone was screaming. Iwakuro managed to get upright and clamber over several seats toward the door, all the while shouting for everyone to remain quiet and not panic. Then the explosions began. Steel and smoke ripped through the shattered railroad car. Antitank grenades!
The explosions popped like firecrackers. All up and down the train, he could hear the hammering of the grenades. And he could hear machine guns, long, ripping bursts. Something smashed into his shoulder and he went down. Another explosion near his head knocked him unconscious. When Iwakuro came to, he could see nothing. Night had fallen, although he didn’t know it. At first, he thought he was blind. His shoulder was bleeding and hurt horribly, so he knew he was alive. He felt his way over bodies, searching for a way out of the railroad car. He saw a bit of light, finally, just a glimmer from a distant fire. Somehow, he managed to crawl through a hole in the floor of the railroad car, which was still on its side. To his right, away from the engine, he saw that one of the freight cars was burning. Iwakuro crawled directly away from the train. When he had gone at least fifty meters, he sat and tried to bind his coat around his shoulder.
He was sitting in the grass, moaning ever so slightly, when someone shot him in the back.
Rough hands rolled him over. A flashlight shown on his face. Now someone grabbed him by the hair and rammed a knife into his neck. Isamu Iwakuro filled his lungs to scream, but he was dead before the sound came out.
The man who had shot Iwakuro finished cutting off his head. He dropped it into a bag with six others. His orders were to decapitate every body he found.
Two hundred miles east of Honshu Admiral Kolchak was at periscope depth, running at six knots on a course of 195 degrees magnetic. Through the main scope Pavel Saratov could see an empty, wind-whipped sea and sky.
After a careful, 360-degree transit with the scope, Saratov ordered it lowered. The navigator was bent over the chart table when Saratov joined him.
“How fast do you want to go, Captain?” As was usual aboard Admiral Kolchak, the navigator asked the question in a low, subdued voice.
“I want to keep a good charge on the batteries at all times,” Saratov answered, automatically making his voice match the navigator’s. “We must be able to go deep and stay there to have any chance against the Jap patrols.”
“We are in the Japanese current, bucking it. We would make better time if we got out of it to the southeast, then headed southwest.”
“Stay in it, right in the middle. We’re in no hurry.”
“Do you really think they are looking for us?”
“You can bet your life on it.”
Askold leaned over the table. “How do you plan to go in, Captain?”
“I have no plans. We must see what develops.”
“Getting out?”
“God knows. We will see.”
“What will you see, Saratov?” The voice boomed in the little room. Esenin was right behind them. As usual, he was wearing the box, a gray metal box about three inches wide, five inches long, and an inch deep. It hung on a strap around his neck. Since the boat had submerged at Trojan Island, he had never been without the box.
“We will see if we can get out of Japanese waters alive,” Saratov said.
“Don’t be such a pessimist. This is an opportunity of a lifetime to do something important for your country.”
“For you, General, perhaps. These men have already struck a stupendous blow for Russia.”
“Don’t be insubordinate,” Esenin snapped. “You are in a leadership position.”
“I’m in command of this vessel, and I won’t forget it.”
Esenin looked into the faces of the men in the control room. Then he turned to Saratov and whispered, “Don’t push me.”
A P-3 came that night. The sonar operator heard it first. The watch officer called Saratov, who was lying down in his stateroom, trying to sleep.
The plane went by about two miles to the south, flying east. “He’s flying a search pattern,” the navigator said.
“Probably,” Saratov said, “but the question is, Are we inside the pattern or outside of it?”
The sound of the plane disappeared. After a few minutes the watch team relaxed, smiled at one another, and went back to checking gauges, filling out logs, reading, and scratching themselves. Esenin had stationed one of his armed naval infantrymen in the control room. The man was trying to stay out of the way, but in a compartment that crowded, it was impossible. He had to move whenever anyone else moved.
Saratov eyed the man. He was in his mid-twenties, said almost nothing, obviously understood little of what went on around him. Was he a real naval infantryman? Or was he something else? Apparently, he had never before been to sea, or had he?
The P-3 returned. It went behind the submarine a mile or so to the north, headed west.
“We’re in his pattern,” the navigator said.
“Hold this heading. In about ten minutes, we’ll cross his original flight path. He’ll search behind us.”
That was the way it worked out. Still, the XO and the navigator looked worried.
At midnight, when the captain gave the order to snorkel, the XO wanted to discuss it. “Sir, the P-3’s can pick up the snorkel head on radar.”
