Robert Conroy - Rising Sun

Despite the fact that Mickey was a sleazy and violent criminal, she found herself hoping she hadn’t killed him, although she concluded that she’d likely never know unless Mack confessed that he’d lied and that the man was dead when he’d checked on him. That she was coping so well with the possibility that she’d killed was another surprise. The fact that Ace and Mickey were out to rob and possibly kill them made it a justifiable killing, which must be what went through the minds of men in combat when they had time to think about it. Her father had been a corpsman in the Argonne in the first war and never talked about it, politely but firmly refusing to be drawn into any discussions. Now she had a small idea why.

But what about Mack? He’d stabbed the other man without hesitation and then didn’t want to get involved with the cops. If and when the time was right, she’d ask him. There must be a very dark side to his past. She had a thought and almost laughed. Maybe the catamaran wasn’t his and an investigation would prove it. Maybe he’d stolen if from the rightful owners and murdered them. If so, Mack was a thief as well as a killer. Despite belated misgivings, she had to accept the fact that she was on a small sailboat with a man who killed, even though it was in self-defense and on behalf of herself and her friends. Of course, she realized, she had done much the same thing. She hadn’t been aiming for Mickey’s leg. No, she’d shot at his chest and simply missed. So much for her being the next Annie Oakley, she laughed softly.

Mack gathered them for yet another class in navigation. “Remember, ladies, we’ve got to go north as well as east in order to hit California. Hawaii’s just south of the Tropic of Cancer and San Diego is about eight hundred miles north of that, with San Francisco another several hundred miles beyond. It we make a mistake and go too far north, we’ll hit stretches of coast that are as wild and rugged and dangerous as you can believe, and filled with really large bears who like to eat little girls like you. White meat is their favorite, I’ve heard.

“Too far south, and we’ll land in Mexico, where the land is equally crappy, and I’m not too sure whose side they’re on right now. Therefore, we’ve got to hit somewhere between San Diego and San Francisco or we could be in shit as deep as if we’d stayed in Hawaii.”

A couple of days later, their luck with the weather continued and it rained. They happily refilled their water containers and anything else they could, and let the cool but comfortable fresh water wash the salt out of their clothes and off their skin. Amanda was mildly shocked when Mack stripped naked and soaped himself before letting the rain rinse him.

Grace laughed. “What the hell.” She undressed as well and, a moment later, so did Amanda and Sandy. Mack was surprised and grinned happily, but said nothing. After that, neither nudity nor lack of privacy while performing body functions was ever an issue, and lack of clothes not only felt liberating but sometimes enabled them to work better. Mack, however, did at least usually put on an athletic supporter.

“Got to protect my most prized possession,” he laughed.

That night, Grace and Mack commenced having noisy and exuberant sex in the cabin while the other two sat outside and grinned.

When Grace emerged after the first time, her comments were succinct. “What’s the point of taking a Pacific cruise if you’re not going to get laid by the captain?”

Mack made no effort to get Amanda and Sandy into his bunk. He was content with Grace, and the others were fine with that. “He’s so withered,” Sandy giggled. “Even his wrinkles have wrinkles.”

And he’s a killer and likely a thief, Amanda thought.

They had a radio and they listened but did not transmit. The war was still raging, although Hawaii hadn’t been invaded. They caught broadcasts from the islands beginning to beg for food, and they knew they’d made the right decision. Now all they had to do was find California.

Wilhelm Braun looked admiringly at the U.S. passport that gave his name as William Brown. Braun had been the assistant military attache at the German embassy in Mexico City until Mexico declared war on Germany. Braun was a distant cousin of the cowlike blonde woman who, if rumors were correct, was Hitler’s mistress. Some were shocked at the thought that the beloved Fuehrer was anything but celibate in his total dedication to the Reich, but Braun didn’t care. If Hitler wanted to screw Wilhelm’s dumb and plump cousin, then let him. Apparently, she had been the Fuehrer’s mistress for six or seven years and, while the relationship was unknown to the average German, it was common knowledge to those in the Nazi hierarchy as well as the diplomatic corps, and, of course, the Braun family.

Braun had another passport that proclaimed his Swedish identity and gave his name as Olaf Swenson, and a third that said he was from Denmark and named Oosterbeck. Since Sweden was neutral and likely to remain so, it and the others were aces in the hole. Denmark had been conquered by the Germans and the world was sympathetic to her plight.

He shook his head. If he was going to pass muster north of the border, he’d damned well better get used to being either Swenson, Oosterbeck, or Brown. In either case he’d be a fifty-year-old mining engineer from Wisconsin who’d been working for the Mexican government. Claiming to be from Wisconsin was safe since he’d lived there for several years with an elderly aunt and uncle who’d died a few years earlier.

But first he had to get across the border with a truck full of very special and dangerous material.

He’d been in San Francisco doing nothing more sinister than taking a vacation and doing some shopping when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and war unexpectedly broke out. He’d quickly checked out of his hotel and driven to the border, where he crossed easily, and only a day before Germany declared war on the United States. The Americans were suddenly watching out for those entering their country, but blithely unconcerned about who left. Americans, he concluded, were stupid and had no concept of security.

Once back in the embassy, he’d tried to figure out ways to help Germany in her increasingly desperate struggle against England and Russia, and now the United States. Braun was neither a fool nor suicidal. He knew he now had little chance of getting back to Germany, and, if he stayed in Mexico, might even be interned for the duration of the war, or at best, forced to wait many months until exchange arrangements could be made. That he considered intolerable.

Even if he did somehow make it back to the Reich, he didn’t much feel like getting killed in the steppes of Russia as the initially dramatic and far-reaching German advances into the Soviet Union had become more like a bloody brawl between two equally matched titans. His age and the leg wound he’d endured in the last war and which caused him to limp in bad weather were no guarantee he wouldn’t be sent to an SS line division.

Although no one would say it out loud, there were those who thought that Germany had been badly bloodied and needed to focus on destroying Russia before the United States got over its lethargy and stupidity and began to fight for real. Braun had traveled extensively throughout America and seen firsthand her potential warmaking capabilities. He wondered if the leaders in Berlin had any concept of that, or had they recalled the fact that the United States had a population much larger than Germany’s, which was already dwarfed by that of the Soviet Union and the British Empire?

Yes, the Americans were decadent, corrupt, incompetent, and ruled by Jews, but they could cause great damage to the Nazi cause. He despised the Americans, but he did not underestimate them. Curiously, he understood that the Japanese admiral, Yamamoto, had also lived in the U.S.