Harry Turtledove - End of the Beginning

For now, he kept scanning the Pacific. He’d been in overall charge of air operations for both the invasion of Hawaii and the defense against the U.S. counterattack. A lot of men with such exalted responsibilities wouldn’t have gone out on ordinary search missions themselves. Fuchida liked to keep his hand in any way he could.

He called to his bombardier on the intercom: “See anything?”

“No, Commander- san,” the rating answered. “Please excuse me, but I don’t. How about you?”

“I wish I did,” Fuchida told him. “That sub is probably fifty meters down and waiting for nightfall to surface and get away.”

“I’d do the same thing,” the bombardier said. “Why stick your neck out when you don’t have to?”

“We’ll search a while longer,” Fuchida said. “The sub skipper may not think the freighter got a radio message off before she went down. If he doesn’t, he might figure he’s home free and head back to the U.S. mainland on the surface.”

“Maybe.” The bombardier didn’t sound as if he believed it-which was fair enough, because Fuchida didn’t believe it, either. It was possible, but not likely. The bombardier added, “Hard work!”

That implied the work was not only hard but pointless. “Can’t be helped,” Fuchida said. “I’d love to bomb a U.S. submarine. If I have any kind of chance, I will. Maybe it will persuade the Yankees to keep their boats away from Hawaii.”

“Fat chance!” That wasn’t the bombardier. It was the radioman, First Flying Petty Officer Tokonobu Mizuki. He’d been listening in from the rear of the cockpit, where he faced the way the plane had come. He and Fuchida went back a long way together, long enough to let him speak his mind to his superior: rare in any military, and especially in the obsessively hierarchical Japanese Navy.

Fuchida saw nothing but a little light chop on the surface of the Pacific. No trace of a wake, no trace of exhaust-not that a sub’s diesel engine gave off much.

He eyed the fuel gauge. He still had plenty left. He intended to search as long as he could. He’d gone into battle with appendicitis, and kept doing what he had to do till he landed aboard Akagi . If illness hadn’t stopped him, nothing less would.

There was a wake! But that was no submarine. It was a Japanese destroyer, also searching for the enemy boat. Fuchida waggled his wings to his countrymen down on the Pacific. He couldn’t tell if they saw him-they weren’t going to send up a flare or anything like that.

The spiral got wider and wider. Still no sign of the submarine. Fuchida muttered to himself, there in the cockpit. He hadn’t really expected anything different. Subs’ elusiveness was a big part of what made them so dangerous. So no, he hadn’t expected anything different. But he had hoped…

“Sir?” Petty Officer Mizuki said. “I’ve got an idea.”

“I’ll listen,” Fuchida said.

“When night comes, we ought to send some of those big H8K flying boats along the course from here to the American mainland,” the radioman said. “The submarine will be on the surface then. If one of our pilots spots it, he can make a good bombing run.”

Fuchida scratched at his closely trimmed mustache. Slowly, he nodded to himself. “That’s not a bad notion,” he said. “Someone else may have had it already, but it’s not a bad notion at all. Radio it back to Oahu. If we send out the flying boats tonight, the sub will still be close to the islands, and we’ll have a better chance of finding it.”

“Commander- san, I’ll do it, but what are the odds the brass hats will pay any attention to a lousy rating?” Mizuki spoke without bitterness, but with an acute knowledge of how things worked. How frankly he spoke told how much he trusted his superior, who was, after all, a brass hat himself.

“Do this,” Fuchida said after a little more thought. “Radio it back to Oahu. Do it in my name. Tell them I want it done. If nothing happens, if the flying boats don’t find a sub, we’ll leave it there. Failure on something like that won’t hurt my reputation. But if it works, if one of them nails the enemy, I’ll see that you get the credit.”

“Domo arigato,” Mizuki said. Some officers stole credit when the men who served under them came up with good ideas. Fuchida wasn’t one of that sort, and the radioman knew it. “They acknowledge, sir,” Mizuki told him a few minutes later. “They promise they’ll tend to it.”

“Good,” Fuchida said. “How does it feel to be a brass hat yourself?”

“I like it,” Mizuki answered at once. “And I like it even better because I’m doing it under an assumed name.” He and Fuchida both laughed.

Inexorably, the bomber’s fuel ran down. Fuchida hadn’t seen any sign of the American submarine. With a regretful sigh, he turned the Nakajima B5N1 back towards Oahu.

With the Akagi anchored in the calm waters of Pearl Harbor, landing aboard her was almost as easy as coming in on an ordinary runway. She wasn’t rolling and pitching, the way she would out on the open sea. It required precision, but flying always required precision. Fuchida obeyed the landing officer’s wigwag signals as if the man on the flight deck were piloting the bomber. The first arrester wire snagged the bomber’s tailhook, and the plane jerked to a stop.

Fuchida slid back the cockpit canopy and climbed out of the Nakajima. So did Mizuki. The bombardier emerged a little later; he had to scramble up from his prone bombing position in the plane’s belly.

Captain Kaku came across the flight deck toward Fuchida. “A good thought about the flying boats,” the Akagi ’s skipper said. “No guarantees, of course, but it’s worth a try.”

“That’s what I thought when Mizuki here proposed it.” Fuchida set a hand on his radioman’s shoulder.

Kaku’s eyes narrowed. “The signal came in under your name.”

“Yes, sir,” Fuchida agreed. “My idea was that no one would take a suggestion from a petty officer seriously. With my name attached to it, it might have a better chance of going forward.”

“Irregular,” Tomeo Kaku rumbled. Then, almost in spite of himself, he smiled. “Irregular, but probably effective.” He nodded to the rating. “Mizuki, eh?”

“Yes, sir.” The radioman saluted.

“Well, Mizuki, I think this will go into your promotion jacket,” the Akagi ’s skipper said.

Mizuki saluted again. “Thank you very much, sir!”

“You earned it,” Kaku said, and he strolled off.

The petty officer turned to Fuchida. “And thank you very much, sir!”

“I’m glad to help, Mizuki, but I didn’t do it for you,” Fuchida answered. “Anything that will twist the Americans’ tails-anything at all-I’m for it.”

“Good. That’s good,” Mizuki said. “It doesn’t look like they’re going away, does it?”

Fuchida turned toward the north and east. He’d made that motion a good many times before. The U.S. mainland drew him the way magnetic north drew a compass needle. He sighed and shook his head. “No. I wish they were, but they aren’t.”

“DILLON, LESTER A.” The supply sergeant behind the counter checked Les Dillon’s name off a list.

“Here you are. You have now been issued an M1 helmet.” He handed Dillon the new helmet, and a fiber liner that went inside it.

“What the hell was wrong with my old tin hat?” Dillon grumbled. He’d worn the British-style wide-brimmed helmet since he joined the Marine Corps during the First World War. He stared suspiciously at the replacement, which was much deeper. “Looks like a damn pot, or maybe a footbath.”

“Bitch, bitch, bitch,” the supply sergeant said. By his craggy, weathered features, he’d been a Marine at least as long as Dillon. “For one thing, the new model covers more of your head than the old one did. For another thing, orders are that we get rid of the old ones and wear these. You don’t like it, don’t cry to me. Talk to your Congressman.”