Harry Turtledove - Days of Infamy

Five minutes later, Peterson had in his possession an order releasing him for ground combat “in the best interest of the Navy and the United States of America.” McAndrews’ eyes said he hoped Peterson stopped a bullet with his teeth. Peterson didn’t care. Regardless of what McAndrews thought, he had what he wanted.

WHEN THE AMERICANS pulled out of Haleiwa, they’d done their best to wreck the airstrip near the little town on the north shore of Oahu. They’d dynamited the runways to try to make sure planes couldn’t land or take off on them. A lot of pick-and-shovel men would have needed a long time to get the airstrip ready for operations again, and the Japanese Army didn’t have that kind of manpower to spare.

As Lieutenant Saburo Shindo took off from that airstrip, a smile wreathed his usually impassive features. The Americans hadn’t been as smart as they thought they had. When they pulled out of Haleiwa, they’d left behind a couple of bulldozers and a steamroller. With those, Japanese military engineers had been able to repair the airstrip in a couple of days, not several weeks.

The smile faded a little as he gained altitude. There sat one of the dozers, painted a friendly civilian yellow, by the side of a runway. Such a casual display of U.S. wealth bothered Shindo a little, or more than a little. That wealth of earth-moving equipment wouldn’t have been casually available in a Japanese small town. His countrymen had been able to take advantage of it, yes. But they couldn’t come close to producing it themselves. Attacking a nation that could was worrying.

With a shrug, Shindo dismissed such worries from his mind. They were things to keep an admiral or a cabinet minister up in the wee small hours, not a lieutenant. As a matter of fact, nothing much kept Shindo awake at night. He looked forward, not back.

Forward lay the American positions. U.S. forces were trying to form a line between Oahu’s two mountain ranges, the Waianae in the west and the Koolau in the east. They seemed to assume the land outside the mountain ranges didn’t matter much. So far, they hadn’t managed to stop the Japanese advance, but they had slowed it down.

Black puffs of antiaircraft fire appeared behind Shindo’s Zero. The Americans were much more alert than they had been when the fighting started. They still didn’t lead the Japanese fighters enough. They couldn’t believe how fast Zeros were.

Shindo dove on a U.S. artillery position in front of Wahiawa. Sooner or later, the Yankees were bound to figure out that the Japanese had a land-based airstrip and weren’t just flying off carriers any more. When they did, 105mm guns here had no trouble reaching Haleiwa. Knocking them out was important.

He dove on the guns. The Americans realized they had an important position here, too, though they might not have realized why. Tracers from machine-gun fire spat past the stooping Zero. Shindo couldn’t do anything about them, so he ignored them. If they knocked him out of the sky, that was fate, karma. If they didn’t, he would carry out his mission.

His thumb came down on the firing button. He was better at shooting up ground targets than he had been when the fighting here began. He didn’t overshoot any more. As with everything else, practice made perfect. The men around the American guns scattered. Some of them fell. One or two snatched up rifles and banged away at him. That was brave. It was also futile.

Or so Shindo thought till a sharp clank told him somebody’s bullet had struck home. He pulled up, eyeing his instrument panel. No fuel leak showed. His eyes flicked to left and right. His wing tanks weren’t on fire, either. All the controls answered. The round must have hit somewhere harmless. In the privacy of the cockpit, he allowed himself a sigh of relief.

The Americans wasted weight on self-sealing fuel tanks and armored pilot’s seats. That cost them speed and maneuverability. Japan’s fliers had been inclined to laugh at them on account of it. Lieutenant Shindo still was… but less so than when the fighting started. Yes, the extra weight hurt performance. But Shindo had seen U.S. planes take hits that would have sent a Zero down in flames and keep on flying as if nothing had happened. There were advantages on both sides.

Half his attention was on the ground as he looked for more strongpoints to shoot up. The other half was in the air. Every so often, the Yankees sent up some of their few surviving fighters. They weren’t much if you knew they were coming, but they could give you a nasty surprise if they got on your tail before you knew it. The pilot who didn’t learn to check six in a hurry usually didn’t last long enough to learn at his leisure.

Shindo didn’t spot any trouble this time. As usual, the Japanese had the skies over Oahu to themselves. All he had to worry about was ground fire. That didn’t bother him much. He had its measure.

A column of olive-drab trucks was heading north up the highway that ran through the center of the island. The column wasn’t moving anywhere near so fast as it might have. Southbound refugees, some on foot, others in automobiles, clogged the road. Shindo laughed. He’d seen that before. Americans had no discipline. They refused to keep refugees off the road by whatever means necessary, as Japanese soldiers surely would have. And they paid the price for their softness, too.

Radial engine roaring, the Zero dove on the road. Shindo cut loose with the fighter’s machine guns and cannons. It was like stamping on an anthill. People down there scattered in what seemed like slow motion-far too slowly to evade bullets and shells.

Fire and smoke erupted from truck and automobile engines. The plume was tiny compared to the one rising from Pearl Harbor, but every little bit served its purpose. Those soldiers wouldn’t get where they were going when they wanted to get there. That ought to help the Japanese move forward.

On the way back to Haleiwa, Shindo spotted an American machine-gun nest spitting tracers at Japanese foot soldiers. A tank would have taken care of it, but none seemed close by. The pilot felt as if he were looking for a policeman when he really wanted one. He had to do the job himself. And he did, swooping down on the gunners from behind. They might have died before they even knew they were under attack.

Behind the Japanese lines, commandeered cars carried soldiers here and there. Again, Shindo’s side took advantage of the enemy’s wealth. He wished his own country had a larger share of wealth for itself. Getting that larger share, of course, was what this war was all about.

Shindo was used to coming in on the rolling, pitching deck of a carrier. Landing at a strip on dry land felt ridiculously easy, as if he were back in flight school. The only thing the signalman had to do was guide him into one of the earth-banked revetments engineers had made with the bulldozers. They kept his plane safe from anything but a direct hit. As soon as the Zero was in the U-shaped shelter, camouflage nets covered it. The Yankees wouldn’t spot it from the air.

“How did it go?” a groundcrew man asked after Shindo climbed out of the fighter.

“Routine,” he answered. “Just routine.”

MACHINE-GUN BULLETS STRUCK flesh with wet slaps. The noise reminded Fletcher Armitage of the last few fights he and Jane had had before she threw him out of the apartment. When she slapped him, though, his head had only felt as if it would fly off his shoulders. When a real machine-gun bullet hit…

The Zero roared away to the south, bound for more mischief. It was low enough to the ground to kick up dust. Fletch fired a last futile shot at it. The fellow piloting it was an artist, which didn’t keep Fletch from hoping he’d burn in hell, and soon, too.

He had more immediate things to worry about, though. Two of his precious, irreplaceable gunners were down, one clutching his leg and moaning, the other ominously still. A quick glance told Fletch nobody could help the second man this side of Judgment Day. He’d caught a slug in the back of the head, and spilled his brains out in the dirt. The only good thing you could say about such an end was that it was quick. He’d never known what hit him.