A warrior’s iron steadied him. Japan had beaten the Americans before. One well-trained man who despised death was worth half a dozen of the ordinary kind. So his country’s doctrine insisted, and so it had seemed up till now.

If, however, the enemy opposed you with a dozen ordinary men…

He shook his head. He would not think like that. The Japanese strike force had plenty, even now, to blunt the force of this attack. He believed that. He had to believe it. The alternative was feeling that rising panic again.

“Commander-san?” The voice on the intercom belonged to his bombardier.

“Hai?” Fuchida did his best to suppress what was going on inside him, but he could still hear the tension even in that one-word response.

“Sir, I was just thinking-it’s a shame we can’t carry two torpedoes,” the rating said.

Fuchida broke up, right there in the cockpit. He didn’t think he’d ever done that before. Laughter washed away the last of the fear. “Domo arigato, Imura-san,” he said. “I needed that. We’ll just have to do what we can with what we’ve got.”

From the rear cockpit, Mizuki the radioman said, “That’s what the man with the little dick said when he went to bed with the geisha.”

Both Fuchida and Imura snorted. Fuchida’s confidence, having returned, now soared. How could his country lose when it had men who cracked silly jokes in the face of death?

The Americans seemed intent on showing him exactly how Japan could lose. The destroyers and cruisers protecting the U.S. carriers-and were those battleships out ahead of them, too? — threw up a curtain of flak the likes of which he’d never seen before. That didn’t worry him so much, though. The antiaircraft fire would knock down a few planes, but only a few. You went ahead and did your job and didn’t worry about it. If you and an enemy shell happened to wind up in the same place at the same time, that was hard luck, and you couldn’t do a thing about it.

But the Yankees, despite having dispatched such an enormous strike force against Akagi and Shokaku, also kept a formidable combat air patrol above their own fleet. Wildcats and the new fighters-whose name Fuchida did not know-tore into the attacking Japanese planes.

Mizuki’s rear-facing machine guns chattered. “Scared the baka yaro off!” the radioman said triumphantly. And he must have, for no machine-gun bullets tore into the torpedo plane. Fuchida allowed himself the luxury of a sigh of relief. He hadn’t even seen the enemy plane Mizuki fired at.

Two burning Zeros plummeted into the Pacific. Part of the problem was that the new American fighters looked a lot like bigger versions of the Wildcats with which they mingled. They were plainly descended from the planes with which Fuchida and the Japanese were familiar. But any careless Zero pilot who tried to take them on as if they were Wildcats discovered he’d made a mistake-usually his last one. Zeros could outfly the older American fighters, but not these, not these.

A piece of shrapnel clanged against Fuchida’s wing. He glanced to the left. He didn’t see fire. That deserved-and got-another sigh of relief from him. Then the curtain of antiaircraft fire eased. He’d brought his Nakajima past the enemy’s screening ships. A carrier loomed ahead.

It threw out its own flak, of course. Tracers stabbed toward him. He ignored them. A torpedo run had to be straight. “Ready?” he called to the bombardier.

“Ready, sir,” Imura answered. “A hair to the right, sir, if you please. I think she’ll try to dodge to port when we launch.”

Fuchida made the adjustment. The torpedo splashed into the sea. The Nakajima suddenly grew lighter, faster, and more maneuverable. Now Fuchida wished he were only a spectator, and a man who had to get out of there alive if he could. But, as the officer in overall command of the Japanese air strike, he had to linger and do what he could to direct his countrymen against the enemy. And lingering, in this neighborhood, was asking not to grow old.

“Diving against a Yankee carrier. May the Emperor live ten thousand years!” The radio call made Fuchida look around to see if he could find the attacking Aichi. But the Americans were spread out over so much ocean, he couldn’t spot it. It might have been a good many kilometers away. He didn’t see any sudden great plume of smoke rising from a stricken ship, either. Too bad, he thought.

THE PILOT IN THIS WILDCAT flew his plane as aggressively as if it were one of the new American fighters. Saburo Shindo didn’t mind that at all. Aggressiveness was a great virtue in a fighter pilot-when he had the aircraft that could make the most of it. This fellow didn’t, not against a Zero. Shindo got on his tail and stayed there, pumping bullets into the enemy plane till at last it caught fire and went down.

Shooting down enemy fighters was the reason he’d accompanied the Japanese dive bombers and torpedo planes against the Americans. Doing his job should have given him more satisfaction, especially since he was good at it. Today, he felt like a man snatching up whatever he could as he escaped a burning house. He might hang on to a few trinkets, a few toys, but the house would still be gone forever.

Two American fighters knocked down a Nakajima just as it started its run against an enemy ship. Shindo was too far away to help or to draw off the American planes. He could only watch helplessly.

That summed up how he felt about too much of this fight. The Japanese strike force from Akagi and Shokaku that had done such splendid work around Hawaii was getting hacked to bits before his eyes. One after another, planes tumbled into the sea. Where would more highly trained, highly experienced pilots and aircrew come from after these men were gone? He had no idea.

He also had no idea whether he would live long enough for the question to be anything but academic to him. The Americans were hitting the strike force with everything they had, and they had more than he’d ever imagined. He felt like a man who’d stuck his hand into a meat grinder.

Being an experienced fighter pilot had drilled the habit of checking six into him. That let him spot an onrushing American plane in time to pull up and roll away. The enemy zoomed by without being able to open fire on him. Had this fellow flown a Wildcat, Shindo would have gone after him in turn. But the Yankee had one of the new fighters. Chasing them in a Zero was like trying to fly up to the sun. You could try, sure, but it wouldn’t do you any good.

“Banzai!” The victory shout made Shindo look around. He hadn’t heard it nearly often enough in this fight. He felt like cheering himself when he saw a U.S. carrier on fire and listing to starboard. Something had gone right. About time, too.

But how many carriers formed the core of this fleet? However many there were, they far outnumbered the half dozen Japan had used to open the war against the USA. His own country had been prepared to lose a third of that force if it meant a successful attack. Would the Americans be any less ruthless in their counterattack? It seemed unlikely.

“Shindo-san! Are you still there? This is Fuchida.”

“Yes, sir. I’m still here. What are your orders?”

“We’ve done everything we can here, I think-and the Americans will have done what they can do to us,” Fuchida answered; Shindo wished he’d left out the second part of the observation, no matter how true it was. The strike-force commander went on, “Time to return to our ships.”

“Yes, sir,” Shindo repeated stolidly. Whether the Japanese carriers were still there was anybody’s guess. Shindo knew as much, and no doubt Fuchida did, too. That didn’t mean the senior officer was wrong. They had to try.

ALL OF AKAGI’S antiaircraft guns seemed to be going off at once, the heavy and the light together. The din on the bridge was indescribable. Genda and the other officers had to shout to make themselves heard. Admiral Kaku had the conn himself. Genda could do things the skipper couldn’t. His strategic grasp reached from Hawaii into the Indian Ocean, while he doubted Tomeo Kaku cared a sen’s worth about anything that happened beyond the ends of Akagi’s flight deck. But Kaku handled the carrier the way a fighter ace flew his Zero: as if the craft were an extension of his own body. Genda admired his skill and knew he would never be able to match it himself, not if he lived to be ninety.