And the chief mechanic shook his head. “Oh, no, sir. But what about a malfunction? How could you land on a carrier with an unreleased bomb?”

“Carefully, I suspect.” Shindo’s voice was dry.

Had the mechanic been an officer, he would have had plenty to say. His face made that very plain. Since he was only a rating, “Sir, that’s not funny” had to suffice.

“I didn’t say it was,” Shindo answered. “What other way would you expect me to land after those conditions? And after I get down-because I will get down-the first thing I will do is come after the thumb-fingered idiots who mounted a malfunctioning piece of equipment on my plane. So it had better work, the first time and every single time after the first. Do you understand that ?”

The mouthy mechanic bowed. So did all his friends. They had to know Shindo wasn’t kidding. If something went wrong with the bomb rack, he would come after them, probably with his sword. And no Japanese military court was likely to convict an officer for anything he did to ratings.

“Good.” Shindo nodded coldly to them. “You can’t tell me there’s no scrap metal to do the job, either. Hawaii has more scrap metal than a dog has fleas.”

They bowed again. Their faces showed nothing, nothing at all. Shindo knew what that meant. They hated his guts, but discipline kept them from showing it. For a moment, that tickled him-but only for a moment. A mechanic who didn’t like a pilot had a million ways to take his revenge. Planes broke down a million ways. If an accident wasn’t quite an accident… who’d know? Yes, who’d know, especially if the evidence, if there was any evidence, lay at the bottom of the Pacific?

Shindo bowed back. It went against his grain, but he did it. The mechanics flicked glances at one another. “Domo arigato,” he said. Their eyebrows sprang up like startled stags. Superiors were not in the habit of thanking inferiors so warmly. He went on, “We all serve the Empire of Japan, and we should always do everything we can to help her.”

“Hai.” Several of the stolid men in coveralls spoke up. The word could have been no more than acknowledgment, but he thought it was also agreement. They did love the Empire, no matter what they thought of him. And they had to know he felt the same way about his country.

“Good,” he told them. “Very good. Take care of it. We never can tell when the Americans will come sneaking around again.”

They did what he told them. If they did it more for Japan than for him, he didn’t mind. If anything, that made it better. If they did it for Japan, they were likelier to forget their anger at him.

A couple of days later, though, he did get a telephone call from Commander Fuchida. “What’s this I hear about fitting bomb racks to your fighters up there?” Fuchida asked.

Shindo slowly nodded to himself. I might have known, he thought. Mechanics had more ways than sabotage to make their displeasure felt. Gossip could be just as dangerous. “It’s true, sir,” Shindo told the senior air officer. “I want to be in a position to kill a submarine if I spot one. I can’t dive like an Aichi, but I’ll get the job done.”

He waited. If Fuchida said no, to whom could he appeal? Commander Genda? Not likely, not when Genda and Fuchida were two fingers of the same hand. Captain Toda? Would he overturn a ruling his air experts had made? Again, not likely. Admiral Yamamoto? Shindo was not the least bold of men, but he quailed at that. Besides, Yamamoto was back in Japan, and would surely defer to his men on the spot.

But Fuchida said, “All right, Shindo-san, go ahead and do it. The more versatility we can give our aircraft here, the better off we’ll be.”

“Thank you, sir!” Shindo said in glad surprise. “I had the same thought myself.” He hadn’t, not really; his own ideas centered on finding new ways to strike the enemy. Keeping a superior sweet never hurt, though, especially when he’d just given you what you wanted.

“I’ve been sub-hunting myself, but I haven’t had any luck. Nobody’s had a whole lot of luck hunting subs, and the Army isn’t very happy with us on account of that,” Fuchida said. “Anything that gives a plane that spots a sub a chance to sink it sounds good in my book.”

“We agree completely.” This time, Shindo was telling the truth. He and Fuchida talked a little while longer before the senior officer broke the connection.

A smile of satisfaction on his face, Shindo hung up, too. He started to get up and throw the news in the mechanics’ faces. So they thought they could go behind his back, did they? Well, they had another think coming!

After a couple of steps, Shindo checked himself. He laughed an unpleasant laugh. Better if he kept his mouth shut. Let the mechanics find out for themselves that Fuchida had come down on his side. They would, soon enough. Then they would spend some time worrying about whether he knew what they’d done. He laughed again. Yes, letting them stew was better.

He could tell when they learned what Fuchida had said. They’d worked on the bomb racks before that, but in slow motion. All at once, they got serious about the project. Things that shouldn’t have taken very long suddenly didn’t take very long. Only a few days later than they would have if they’d worked flat-out from the start, they had the racks on every Zero at Haleiwa.

Shindo was the first man to test one. He didn’t want any of the people he led doing something he wouldn’t or couldn’t do himself. He had the armorers load a light practice bomb into the rack and took his Zero up. It did feel a little sluggish with the bomb attached; the mechanics were right about that. The problem wasn’t bad, though.

He picked a target not far from the airstrip; a boulder poking up through the grass did duty for a surfaced submarine. He thumbed the new button the mechanics had installed on the instrument panel. The bomb fell free.

He didn’t hit the boulder, but he frightened it. A sub made a much bigger target, and he would have been carrying a much bigger bomb. If he’d put that bomb so close to a submarine, he was sure he would have hurt it.

Back to the airstrip he went; there wasn’t a lot of fuel for practice. Groundcrew men guided his plane back to its camouflaged revetment. In spite of the fuel shortage, he told his pilots, “I want all of you to get as much practice as you can. This is important. The better you get when it doesn’t count, the better you’ll do when it does.”

The pilots nodded, almost in unison. Most of them were veterans of the Pearl Harbor strikes that had opened the war in the Pacific. They knew what meticulous planning and preparation were worth.

Let me find a submarine, Shindo thought. Let me find one, and I’ll give it a nasty surprise.

WERE THOSE THE CRATERS of the moon down there? Joe Crosetti knew better, but the bombing range had sure as hell taken a beating. He held the Texan in a dive, watching height peel off the altimeter. When he got down to 2,500 feet, he released the bomb that hung beneath the trainer.

The Texan wasn’t a dive bomber, any more than it was a fighter. But it could impersonate either. Joe pulled back hard on the stick to bring the plane’s nose up and get it out of the dive. When you were down to half a mile off the ground, you didn’t have much margin for error, even in a plane a lot more sedate than one you would take into combat.

“Not bad, Mr. Crosetti,” the instructor said-about as much praise as he ever gave. “Take her back to the base and land her.”

“Aye aye, sir.” Joe had to look around to figure out where he was and in which direction Pensacola Naval Air Station lay. That didn’t matter much here-he had plenty of landmarks to guide him back. With only ocean between his plane and a carrier, it might not be so good.

Some guys seemed to have a compass between their ears. They always knew right where they were and how to get where they were going without fuss, muss, bother, or visible calculation. Joe suspected Orson Sharp was like that. His roomie was a strange bird, but a damn capable one. He wished he could find home as automatically as he reached into his pocket for a half-dollar. But navigation didn’t come easy for him.