“This is the right altitude, isn’t it?” Howell asked.

“Yeah,” muttered Doolittle, “five hundred feet.” There had been a number of attempts at altitudes that were higher and safer, but the only consistent hits came from flying low. It was almost treetop level, only there wouldn’t be any trees on the ocean. Five hundred feet was almost tantamount to suicide unless something happened to distract the fighters. With surprise on their side, they might just be able to make it through the antiaircraft storm, but the Zeros would follow them and swat them into the sea. “God help us all,” said Doolittle.

Sergeant Charley Finch thought that he might just have outsmarted himself. Local Hawaiians had been very helpful in getting him in touch with someone who got him in contact with others who finally took him to the American camp. No one was suspicious of him until he actually made it to the American base and realized that the commanders were people he knew personally or had heard of.

Somehow, Captain Jake Novacek had gotten promoted to light colonel, and Sergeant Will Hawkins was, even more incredibly, a captain in this ragtag army. Neither event boded well in Finch’s opinion. Novacek had been in intelligence, G-2, which probably accounted for his suspicious nature, and Hawkins had been one of the straight shooters who’d always looked down on Finch’s schemes. It was unfortunate, but there was little he could do about it right now.

What Novacek had done was very impressive. The camp was well organized and the people well armed and disciplined. Finch was afraid it would be a little tougher nut to crack than had been anticipated. The presence of marines and army personnel meant that he could be in grave danger should the Japanese find the place and attack. These weren’t the confused and lost souls he’d led to destruction on Lanai.

Finch was pleased that Novacek had assigned him to work with the storage of supplies. Other than being a natural fit because of his background, the task enabled him to figure out how the American force was organized. It also surprised him just a little to realize that he now thought of the Americans as “them” and not “we.”

Finch hoped his position would give him a chance to feed himself a little better than the rations that were provided. Despite the fact that Hawaii was fertile and grew just about anything, food was a chronic problem. The guerrillas did grow crops in a manner intended to make the fields look wild, and they did get other supplies from sympathetic and supportive locals, but they seemed to be always on the edge of scarcity.

In one regard, Finch gave Novacek grudging respect. The group he was with was the central command, but there were satellite enterprises that were very important, and about which he could find out very little. The problem was that only a handful of people knew what they did and where they were, and he wasn’t yet one of them.

He’d figured out that there was a radio station somewhere nearby. Hell, that had been common knowledge way back with Omori. But something else was going on that required a lot of material, and he didn’t know what it was. There were some disturbing references to airplanes that couldn’t possibly be true. Novacek did not have an air force, so what were they talking about?

Or could they? He had to find out. If Novacek’s force was planning something big, Finch had to find out so he could tell Goto and Omori. If he could do that, then he could count on an even bigger reward.

It occurred to him that the fact that the Americans were dispersed would likely mean there would be survivors when the Japanese finally acted on his information and attacked. That would be yet another good reason for his not ever returning to the United States. He laughed. As if he needed another one.

The only other disturbing thing about the camp was the virtual lack of women. What few there were either native Hawaiian or Chinese, and he’d had his fill of those. The only white woman was the widow of some navy guy, and she spent as much time as possible around Novacek, who was very possessive about her. That meant she was very much off-limits. Novacek was a burly guy who’d rip the arms off anyone who touched her.

Besides, Finch knew who she was. Alexa Sanderson was the bitch Omori had been fucking back on Oahu. She was okay as far as looks went but definitely not his type. She was too tall and too elegant, as well as too strong willed for him. He grinned. Omori had done all right by Charley Finch after the Lanai job-he’d seen to it that he’d had the services of one very classy American blonde.

Even though Admiral King had flown in a private plane from Washington, and thus managed to avoid the abominable hassles of travel, he was tired and more irritable than usual.

He finished reading the report and almost threw it across the table, where Admirals Nimitz and Spruance watched tolerantly.

“This is bullshit,” King finally said. “This isn’t an offensive or a counterattack. Hell, it doesn’t even qualify as a raid. It’s a fucking pinprick if it works and not even that if it doesn’t. I expected a plan, not a stunt like this.”

Nimitz was unfazed. “It’s the best we can do without a real fleet.”

King’s eyes flashed angrily. “That is not my fault. If I had my way, every ship in our navy would be over here fighting the Japs instead of helping the goddamned British. And it’s damned sure not my fault that you lost two carriers in the Coral Sea.”

The battle of early May had been the first in which the combatant ships had not seen each other. It had been entirely fought by carrier planes. The Lexington had been sunk in the fighting, while the badly damaged Yorktown had foundered and sunk while limping back to San Francisco. Had she been able to go only the shorter distance to Pearl Harbor, she might have made it. Most of her crew and almost all of her pilots had been rescued, but the task force commander, Admiral Frank Fletcher, was among the missing. The Yorktown was yet another casualty from the attack on Pearl Harbor and the subsequent loss of Hawaii.

The Americans were certain they’d sunk one Japanese carrier and damaged two others. More important, they’d stopped Japan’s thrust toward Australia. Nimitz and Spruance were satisfied with the outcome, although it meant that the United States in the Pacific was almost as totally out of carriers as it was of battleships.

“All right.” King sighed, his anger spent. “What do you need?”

Nimitz answered. “Hornet and Enterprise are all we’ll have available for the next round. I want more carriers. All of them.”

King snorted. “You don’t want much, do you? Roosevelt wants them in the Atlantic when we invade German-controlled North Africa in November, and I don’t have to tell you how important it is that we succeed. As much as I opposed it, North Africa’s a go, and a defeat there would knock us back a long ways.”

Nimitz and Spruance had long heard the rumors that an attack was pending, and now it was confirmed. It meant that they had only a small window of opportunity for action in 1942, but, if that was what FDR wanted, that was what the president would get.

Nimitz pressed that point, and King took a deep breath. “All right. You get Saratoga, Wasp, and Ranger, but on one condition. They must not be unduly risked, and they must be returned to the Atlantic theater by mid-September.”

“They won’t be risked,” Spruance said. “No carrier will move against the Japanese unless the pinpricks we’re devising actually work.”

King was far from convinced. “You think they can?”

Nimitz answered. “I’m reminded of a story I read about a wasp or hornet, or maybe even a bee, getting inside a moving car with four people in it. When everyone tried to swat the pesky little insect, the car lost control and crashed. All four were killed and the wasp flew away. In fact,” he said with a slight smile, “I’ve just decided to rename this pinprick Operation Wasp. It fits marvelously and sounds better than Operation Cork.”