As soon as the Jap was out of earshot, Charlie said, “I bet the USA is doing something. These little cocksuckers wouldn’t be so jumpy if we weren’t.”

Is that hope I feel? Jim Peterson wondered. He’d gone without so long, he had trouble recognizing it. He’d had grim determination to survive, but not hope. Hope was different. And yes, this was a dose of that fragile, precious feeling, by God.

Everybody worked harder, not because the guards were beating on people but because hope, in spite of that POW with the authoritative voice, was contagious. Men wanted to believe the Americans were on their way back, and thinking they might be made even dying prisoners stronger… for a little while.

When the shift ended, Peterson trudged out of the tunnel with as much spring in his step as a starving man with beriberi could have. He wolfed down his rice and nasty leaves with good appetite. But then, he was always hungry. By the time he ate, he knew the Americans had returned. Men too sick to labor-men who would die soon, in other words-had watched smoke rise in the southwest, from the direction of Honolulu and Pearl Harbor. Some of them had seen the bombers. Peterson couldn’t see anything; it had got dark. He hardly cared. His mind’s eye was in excellent working order.

The guards acted nervous at evening roll call, too. Naturally, they screwed up the count. Just as naturally, they took it out on the POWs. Peterson thought they killed a man when they knocked him down and kicked him, but he wasn’t sure.

Even sleep, normally a man’s most precious asset after food, went by the wayside tonight. Prisoners talked in low, excited voices, falling silent whenever a Jap stalked by. Their longings after an American victory came down to two things: steak and french fries. A few men talked about pussy, but only a few; most were too far gone to worry much about women one way or the other. Fantasies about food were much more immediately gratifying.

“Pussy’s more trouble than it’s worth,” Charlie Kaapu opined. That surprised Peterson; Charlie, of all people here, was in good enough shape to do a woman justice-or maybe even injustice, if he saw the chance.

“It’s trouble I’d like to have,” somebody else said wistfully.

The big, burly-by camp standards, anyhow-hapa-Hawaiian shook his head. “Why you think I ended up in this goddamn place, except for pussy?”

“Tell us the story again, Charlie,” Peterson said. It was better than most of the ones the prisoners told, and he hadn’t heard it so often, either.

Charlie Kaapu looked disgusted with himself. “This Jap major have a blond girlfriend.” He used some of the rhythms of the local pidgin without quite falling into it. Leering, he went on, “Blond girlfriend have good-looking boyfriend.” He jabbed a thumb at his own chest. But then his face fell. “You go after nooky, you get stupid. I got stupid. I quarrel with the silly bitch, and she squeal on me. They grab me, they ship my ass up here. Ain’t you boys lucky they do that?”

He got jeered, as he must have known he would have. As poor Gordy had said, Peterson wished he’d had that much fun before getting sent to the Kalihi Valley. But the news of the day left him all the more determined to outlast the Japanese.

As he and everyone else in the camp discovered much too early the next morning, the news of the day left the guards all the more determined to make sure none of the prisoners there lived through it.

JOE CROSETTI LISTENED TO THE BRIEFING OFFICER. “All right, gentlemen,” the man said, and paused to swig at his milk. “We’ve given the Japs a left to the jaw and a right to the belly. We’ve sunk their carriers and we’ve walloped the rest of their surface ships and we’ve plastered their airfields on Oahu. They’re on the ropes and they’re wobbly, but they’re still on their feet. Now we go for the KO.”

Several fliers near Joe said, “Yeah!” A few others growled deep in their throats, a low animal noise he didn’t think they knew they were making. He had to listen to be sure he wasn’t making it himself.

“Our own losses were in the expected range,” the briefing officer continued. “One light carrier sunk, an escort carrier and a fleet carrier damaged. The fleet carrier can still launch planes, and we are still in business.”

More growls rose, and even a couple of whoops. This time, Joe didn’t feel like joining them. The way he looked at it, the Japs had shown just how good they were. Badly outnumbered, mauled going in, they’d still managed to do real damage to the American task force. Well, those dive-bomber and torpedo-plane pilots were out of the game now, most of them for good. The ones whose planes hadn’t got shot down would have had to ditch in the ocean. There couldn’t have been many pickups.

“You’ll know we hit their air bases on Oahu yesterday with B-17s and B-24s,” the briefing officer said.

“They made it all the way from the West Coast with their bombs, but they couldn’t hope to get home again. That’s why they headed for Kauai once the raid was done. How we got an airstrip long enough to land bombers built there under the Japs’ noses is a story they’ll write books about after the war. You can bet your life on that.”

Of course, the bombers would still be sitting there at the end of the strip. If the Japs wanted to smash them up, they could. It must have been a one-way mission from the start. Talk about balls-out, Joe thought.

“Our assets on Oahu say we did a good job hitting the enemy bases, but the Japs are attempting to get them into usable shape again,” the briefing officer said. “We don’t want them doing that.” A few grim chuckles accompanied the statement. A wry smile on his own face, the lieutenant commander went on, “Bringing carriers-to say nothing of the troopships behind us-into range of land-based air is liable to be hazardous to everybody’s health.” A few more chuckles, for all the world as if he were joking. “What you boys are going to do is, you’re going to make damn sure that doesn’t happen. Our ship’s bombers are going to hit Wheeler Field again, to keep the Japs from flying off it. You fighter pilots-knock down anything that gets into the air and shoot up as much as you can on the ground. Shoot up enemy planes wherever you spot ’em, and shoot up the earth-moving machinery that lets the Japs make fast repairs. We’ll hit them hard, and we’ll keep hitting them till they can’t hit back any more. Questions?”

“Yes, sir.” A pilot raised his hand. “When do the Marines go in?”

“Day after tomorrow, if everything works the way it’s supposed to,” the briefing officer said. “You can make that happen. You will make it happen. Now go man your planes!”

As Joe hurried up to the flight deck, he fell into stride with Orson Sharp. “Day after tomorrow! We really are gonna take it back from them.”

“Well, sure.” Sharp looked at him. “Did you think we wouldn’t?”

“Of course not!” Joe made himself sound indignant. If he’d had doubts, he didn’t want to admit them even to himself, let alone to his buddy.

Hellcats buzzed overhead as he climbed into his cockpit. The combat air patrol was heavy. They were already in range of land-based air, though none had appeared yet after the naval battle. That too argued the bombers had done a good job of putting the runways on Oahu out of action for the time being.

Joe’s Hellcat was gassed up and brim full of ammo. The plane had a few bullet holes that hadn’t been there twenty-four hours earlier, but nothing vital had taken any damage. The engine came to life at once. Joe methodically ran through his checks-they’d drilled that into him before they let him into a Yellow Peril. Everything looked green.

Not quite so many pilots took off as had the day before. Bill Frank, who’d roomed with Joe and Orson Sharp and another guy at ground school in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, was one of the missing. Nobody’d seen his plane go down, but he hadn’t landed, either. Joe tried not to think about losses. It’s a job, he told himself. You’ve got to do it. Sometimes things happen, that’s all. But they won’t happen to you.