Robert Conroy - Rising Sun

Hours later, Arao realized his error. He should have begun his destruction of the locks farther up at Pedro Miguel where the water from the Calebra Cut waited to flow to the Pacific and not so close to the ocean itself. Still, success was within reach. The Americans had been slow to realize the threat, but when they did, they’d attacked with a vengeance. He’d lost nearly half his men, many of them to low flying and obsolete American biplanes who’d caught them out in the open and cut them down with machine guns. His men had shot down one plane that had flown too low. They’d ambushed Americans who were slow to recognize the artfully placed traps he’d set for them. Americans were brave, he concluded, just not very smart. Now he was at the last of the locks he needed to destroy.

Rifle and machine-gun fire ripped through the air and mortars exploded around him. All the charges were placed. He gave the signal and drew his sword, then dashed up the wall of the cut to where the rushing water wouldn’t reach him. He would die with his sword in his hand and not beneath a wave of scummy water rushing from the lake like a Pacific tsunami. The explosion ripped the final gates and water from a few miles above him began to flow freely to the sea. Arao laughed harshly. It had taken the Americans many years to dig the Canal. How long would it take them to fix it?

Bullets ripped into his body and he fell to the ground, gasping in pain and shock. His sword flew out of his hand and, before he could reach it, an American soldier picked it up and shot him again.

“Leave him be,” yelled an American officer. “We want a prisoner, not another dead Jap.”

Arao didn’t understand the words, but their intent was plain. The Americans wanted to take him prisoner. He would not let that happen. He had succeeded, but his men were all dead and soon he would be as well. He was lying on his stomach and he managed to take a grenade from his belt. He pulled the pin but kept the trigger down. He groaned piteously to gain sympathy. It was easy, and it was the truth. He was in agony from his wounds and death would be welcome.

The officer who wanted him alive and a medic rolled him over. The last thing Arao saw in this world was the look of horror on the Americans’ faces when they realized he was holding a live grenade.

The women had earlier guessed that Mack was somewhere between fifty and eighty. He was small, wizened, and withered. His skin was baked brown by the sun, and covered by a multitude of tattoos. He never said where he came from and no one knew if Mack was his first or last name or none of the above. He lived in a shack on the beach near the small town of Nanakuli, a few miles west of Honolulu. Mack was one of the few residents of the area not of Hawaiian ancestry. Nobody minded. He was friendly, spent his money locally, and sometimes brought business to the area’s poor restaurants and bars.

He greeted the three women with a smile and threw his cigarette into the ocean. The nurses had been customers, good customers who’d enjoyed both his tours and his company. Mack owned a forty-foot twin-hulled sailboat of a type called a catamaran, and he made a living of sorts taking tourists and locals sailing in the clear waters around Oahu. He especially liked taking scantily clad young and not-so-young ladies out on his boat. As he told his few friends, he was old, not dead, and, besides, every now and then one of the vacationing old maid school teachers from New Jersey or some other dull place felt liberated enough by being in paradise to get herself laid by a genuine tattooed Hawaiian who owned a sailboat.

These three nurses had been fairly frequent visitors and, while not raving beauties, were pleasant enough in the two-piece bathing suits many young women liked to wear, or with their regular clothing wet and plastered against their young bodies. He hadn’t screwed either of them yet, but that was correctable. In his opinion, Amanda was too thin and Sandy too plump, but either would do in a pinch. Grace, however, was a little older and shapelier, and seemed more worldly. In Mack’s opinion she was prime for the plucking.

The women were skilled enough sailors that he didn’t have to hire others to crew his cat when they were on board, which saved him money, and they got free rides. He smiled and thought he’d really like to give Grace a free ride.

It was not a bad life, but war clouds had gathered and he was afraid his pleasant and near-idyllic life was coming to an end. Fuck.

“Ladies, how can I help you?”

“How far can you sail this thing?” Amanda asked with a smile.

Mack shrugged. It was a most intriguing question. “How far do you want to go?”

“California,” Grace said.

If Mack was surprised, he didn’t show it. “Kinda been thinking along those lines myself. I think paradise is about to get damn near ugly, hellish, if you will.”

“Will you take us?” Amanda asked.

Mack paused before answering. He hadn’t anticipated the question. “Do you know what you’d be getting into? I’d rather have three men than three women. Men are stronger.”

Amanda smiled tightly. “But no men are lining up to go with you, are they? And besides, we asked first. And since we’re smaller than the average male, we won’t take up as much room or eat as much, now will we? And don’t forget, we do know how to sail the cat.”

“Like I said, do you have any idea what you’d be getting into? It’s maybe two thousand miles or more to California and even if we got lucky, it’d likely take us a month or two. For us to make it, we’d need a lot of food and water so we don’t die. There’d be no privacy whatsoever. There’s a cabin on the cat and a one-holer inside leading to the ocean, but that’s for tourists. If we sailed, the cabin and everyplace else would be full of supplies. Any of you genteel ladies want to pee or poop, you’d have to hang your butts off the boat and solve your problem that way.”

“Or we could jump into the ocean to relieve ourselves and scare all the little fishies away,” Amanda said sweetly. “Don’t worry, we can do it. Besides, we’ve done it before.”

“And if we guess wrong about the currents or the wind doesn’t cooperate,” Mack continued, “we could die a long and painful death in the middle of the ocean where nobody will find us.”

“On the other hand,” Amanda rebutted grimly, “we could die of starvation here on Oahu, or be raped and murdered when the Japs come ashore, which they will surely do, sooner or later. We’ve talked it over and we’d rather take our chances on your sailboat. We’d much rather do something to save ourselves than wait for the worst to happen. We’d also rather do it sooner rather than later, while we’re still strong enough to do it.”

Mack appeared to think for a moment, then nodded. “I want money, a thousand dollars apiece, and that’d be above and beyond anything we spend getting set up for this cruise.”

“Why?” asked a surprised Sandy.

Mack smiled. “Because, sweetmeat, this catamaran is my living here. Assuming we make it to California, I’m going to have to pick up the pieces of my life and actually start earning a living. California ain’t Hawaii. There they actually expect you to work instead of letting the sun bake your ass. Shit, I might even have to get a job in a factory,” he said in mock horror.

Amanda thought quickly. She had fifteen hundred dollars in the bank. Whether they sailed or not, pulling it out before there was a run on the banks now seemed like a prudent idea. Sandy was a saver, too, but she had no idea how much Grace had. Whatever it was, they would make do.

“A deal,” she said.

“Fine. Now we ain’t leaving tomorrow or anything like that. I say we take a month to get ready, and that includes you nice ladies getting the money, finding supplies that won’t perish or need cooking, and spending every weekend and any other time you can with me learning more about how to sail this beautiful boat that I named after my ex-wife.”