Harry Turtledove: Days of Infamy

A Zero landed on Akagi. Fuchida circled, waiting his turn and watching the fuel gauge. He was low, but not too low. He could last long enough-he hoped. An Aichi dive bomber followed the fighter down. Men from the flight crew hustled to get each new arrival off to one side and clear the flight deck for the next. Another Zero landed. Was that Lieutenant Shindo’s plane? Fuchida thought so, but he couldn’t be sure. He couldn’t be sure of anything except how much he hurt-and that his turn came next.

He lined up on Akagi ’s stern with extra-fussy care. He always hated to get waved off and have to go around again. Feeling the way he did right now, he hated the idea ten times as much. The landing officer signaled that he was a little high. Obediently, he brought the B5N1’s nose down. No arguments today. Whatever the landing officer wanted, the landing officer would get.

Down came the bomber, straight and true. Fuchida checked once more-yes, he’d lowered his wheels. The landing officer signaled for him to land. He dove for the deck. A carrier landing was always a controlled crash. Most of the time, controlled was the key word. Here, for Fuchida, crash counted for more. The impact made him groan. The world turned gray for a moment. The Nakajima’s tailhook caught an arrester wire. The bomber jerked to a stop. As color returned to things, Fuchida remembered to kill the engine. He was proud of himself for that.

He slid back the canopy and, moving like an old man, got down from the plane. One of the flight crew who’d come to push the bomber out of the landing path looked at him and exclaimed, “Are you all right, Commander?”

“So sorry, but no,” Fuchida answered as his crewmen also left the B5N1.

“Are you wounded?”

“No. Sick. Belly.” Every word took effort.

“Don’t worry, sir. We’ll get you to sick bay,” the man from the flight crew said. And the sailors did, helping him down to the compartment. Usually, it was almost empty; wounded men crowded it now. Had Akagi caught fire, the place would have been a death trap. Damage control must have done a good job.

A doctor in surgical whites eyed Fuchida from over a masuku. “What’s the trouble?” he asked. Fuchida explained his symptoms in a few words. The doctor said, “ Ah, so desu. Could be your appendix. Lie down.”

“Where?” Fuchida asked-the beds were all full.

“On the deck.” The doctor sounded impatient. Fuchida obeyed. The doctor peeled him out of his flight suit and jabbed a thumb into his belly between his navel and his right hipbone. “Does that hurt?”

Fuchida didn’t bounce off the steel ceiling, though why he didn’t he couldn’t have said. He didn’t scream, either-another marvel. In lieu of that shriek, he gasped, “ Hai.”

“Well, it’s got to come out. Can’t leave it in there-liable to kill you if we do.” The doctor sounded perfectly cheerful. Why not? It wasn’t his appendix. Fuchida lay on the deck till the doctors got another surgical case off one of the operating tables. They helped him onto it. The fellow who’d poked him in the belly stuck an ether cone over his face. The stuff made him think he was being asphyxiated. He feebly tried to fight back. The struggle was the last thing he remembered as blackness swept over him.

THE B. F. IRVINE ’S engine started thudding away again for all it was worth. Lester Dillon had served aboard warships. He didn’t think much of freighters. He doubted this one could make better than fifteen knots unless you threw her off a cliff. By the racket and the vibration, she was sure as hell trying now.

He’d gone to the head a couple of times. Otherwise, he’d stayed in the poker game. He would have been a fool to bail out; he was up close to two hundred bucks. You could have a hell of a good time in Honolulu for a couple of hundred bucks.

When he said as much, though, Dutch Wenzel looked up from his cards and asked, “Who says we’re still heading for Hawaii?”

“Well, fuck,” Dillon said. That was a damn good question. He waited till the hand was done. He dropped out early; Dutch ended up taking it with three queens. Then Les stood and stretched. “I’m going up on deck, see what I can find out.”

“I’ll come with you,” Wenzel said, which effectively broke up the poker game. Everybody pocketed his cash. The cards belonged to Dillon. He stuck them in his hip pocket and headed for the narrow steel stairway up to the B. F. Irvine ’s deck.

Sailors in tin hats manned hastily mounted antiaircraft guns. Les didn’t laugh out loud, even if he felt like it. The swabbies didn’t look as if they’d ever drawn that duty before. Marines could have done it a hell of a lot better. But Dillon hadn’t come up there to scoff at the sailors.

He glanced at his watch: half past three. He looked at the sun: astern and a little to starboard. He swore in disgust. “We’re heading east,” he said, spitting out the words as if they tasted bad-and they did. “Fucking east, goddammit. We’re running away like sons of bitches.”

A petty officer hurrying by paused. He might have been thinking about chewing Dillon out. But either a look at the platoon sergeant’s stripes or a look at the other Marine with him changed the rating’s mind. All he said was, “You ain’t got the word?”

“Down there?” Dillon jerked a thumb toward the passageway from which he’d just emerged. “Shit, no, Navy. They don’t even give us the time of day down there. What is the skinny?”

“Two carriers sunk-two of ours, I mean-and the third one smashed to hell and gone. God only knows how many pilots lost.” The petty officer spoke with the somber relish contemplating a really large disaster can bring. He went on, “We hurt the Japs some-don’t know just how much. It doesn’t look like they’re chasing us. Why the hell should they, when we ain’t got any air support left? Sure as hell can’t go on without it. So we’re heading back to port, fast as we can go.”

“Oughta be zigzagging, then,” said Dillon, remembering his trip Over There as a young man. “Otherwise, we’re liable to make some Jap sub driver’s day.”

The Navy man pointed to the bridge. “You wanna go talk to the skipper? He’s just dying to hear from you, I bet.”

“We’re all liable to be dying,” Dillon said. But he took not one step in the direction the petty officer had indicated. Would a Navy officer listen to a jar-head sergeant? Fat chance. Anyhow, all the troopships should have been zigzagging, not just the B. F. Irvine.

He took another look down the deck. Along with the men at the antiaircraft guns, the ship did have sailors at the rail, some with binoculars, looking for periscopes. That was better than nothing. How much better? Time would tell.

Behind him, Dutch Wenzel started swearing with a sudden impassioned fury. “What’s eating you?” Les asked.

“If I’d known we were gonna get our butts kicked here, I would’ve let ’em make me a gunny,” Wenzel answered. “We won’t be coming back this way for a while-better believe we won’t. When we do, we’ll have some of the new fish with us, too. I could’ve got that new rocker and still had a chance to hit Hawaii.”

“Oh,” Dillon said. “Yeah. Hadn’t even thought of that.” He too contemplated rank gone glimmering. “Too late to worry about it now, and it ain’t the biggest worry we’ve got right now, either. Maybe we’ll get another crack at it once we make it back to base.” If we make it back to base, he added to himself.

Vince Monahan came up on deck. “Let’s pick up the game again. You guys have got a chunk of my money, and I aim to get it back again.”