As planes began to leap into the air, Joe thought about what he would be doing. Wheeler Field. The center of the island. Between the mountain ranges. By now, after so much study, he could have drawn the map of Oahu in his sleep. Schofield Barracks and the town on the other side of the highway-Wahiawa-would guide him in if he had trouble finding the place. With the arrogance of youth, he didn’t figure he would. The island wasn’t very big to begin with.

And then he got the checkered flag. The Hellcat sprinted down the flight deck. There was that momentary lurch as it tried to fall into the Pacific. Joe yanked the stick back. The nose went up. The fighter zoomed away to find its fellows. Was any feeling in the world better than this? Well, maybe one.

He kept an eye peeled for ships down below. Not quite all the escorts from the Jap task force were accounted for. He figured the U.S. battlewagons and cruisers and destroyers could handle whatever was left, but why take chances? He didn’t spot any major warships. They’d either gone back to the bottom or scooted back to Oahu. He did see several fishing boats. At first, he just accepted that-he was, after all, a fisherman’s son. But then he remembered the Japs used those boats as pickets. They would have radios aboard. The attack from the U.S. fleet wouldn’t be a surprise. If the enemy could put planes in the air, he would.

He could. And he did. Joe had just spotted Oahu, green in the distance, when a warning dinned in his earphones: “Bandits! Bandits at ten o’ clock!”

Some distance back of the lead planes, Joe peered southeast till he spotted the Japanese planes. Their pilots were sly. They’d swung around toward the sun so they could come out of it and be harder to spot. Joe wished his Hellcat carried radar. Then the enemy wouldn’t be able to play tricks like that. Well, they hadn’t worked this time.

He glanced over at his wingman. He led an element now, instead of following in one. Survival of the fittest-or luckiest-worked in the air just the way it had in his biology textbook. The other pilot, a big blond guy from South Dakota named Dave Andersen, waved in the cockpit to show he was paying attention. Joe waved back.

Here came the Japs. Some of the fighters were Zeros. Maybe they’d made it back to Oahu after their carriers went down. Maybe they’d been based there-the Japs sure did that with their Navy planes in the South Pacific. Others were shorter, trimmer, with a smaller cockpit canopy. Silhouette recognition paid off. Those were Jap Army fighters-Oscars, in U.S. code.

Oscars were slower than Zeros. They didn’t carry cannon, either, only two rifle-caliber machine guns. But they were supposed to be even more nimble and maneuverable than the Navy fighters. Having watched pilots in Zeros pull off some mind-boggling loops and turns and spins, Joe was from Missouri on that; he wouldn’t believe it till he saw it for himself.

Which he did, in short order. Hellcats could outclimb and outdive Oscars with ease. But an enemy pilot who knew what he was doing could damn near fly his plane back around under itself. Hellcats flew like flycatchers. Oscars dodged like butterflies.

They couldn’t hit much harder than butterflies, though. Canvas-and-wire biplanes in the last war had had just as much firepower. And Hellcats were built to take it. Oscars weren’t. They were several hundred pounds lighter even than Zeros, and correspondingly flimsier. All that maneuverability came at a price. If an Oscar got in the way of a burst from a Hellcat’s six.50-caliber guns, as often as not it would break up in midair.

That couldn’t have been good for morale, but the Japs who flew the Army fighters had guts. They bored in on the Dauntlesses the Hellcats escorted. So did their Navy buddies in Zeros. They got a few, too, but they paid, and paid high. The Hellcats badly outnumbered them. Joe wondered how many Oscars and Zeros-and Jap bombers, too-were stuck on the ground because they couldn’t take off. Lots, he hoped.

He took a shot at an Oscar. His tracers went wide. He tried to keep his nose aimed at the Jap fighter, but he couldn’t. It was that much more agile in the air. In a hop and a skip, it was on his tail, those two popguns it carried blazing away. One round hit the Hellcat. Joe glanced anxiously at his gauges as he gave his plane the gun and ran away from the Oscar. No fire. No leaks. No problems. Yeah, a Hellcat could take it. And Hellcats could dish it out, too. That Jap pilot was a pro, but he’d be a dead pro in short order if he tangled with very many of the big, muscular American fighters.

There was the Koolau Range to the east, and the Waianae Range to the west. Japanese antiaircraft guns near the beach started throwing up flak. Joe swerved back and forth, just a little, to keep the gunners from being quite sure where he was going. Dave Andersen stuck with him.

Sure enough, Oahu was little. Only three or four minutes after he saw waves breaking on the beach, he was over the target. Dauntlesses screamed down out of the sky to blast the runways of Wheeler Field. Funny to think how, less than two years earlier, Japanese Vals had done the same damn thing. What goes around comes around, you bastards, Joe thought. Your turn now.

Back in December of ’41, American planes had been parked on the runways wingtip to wingtip. The people in charge then worried about sabotage. They hadn’t figured they’d get sucker-punched. Joe was damned if he knew why not, but they hadn’t.

The Japs, unfortunately, weren’t as dumb or as trusting as the Americans had been. They knew enough to build revetments, and they knew enough to camouflage them, too. But they hadn’t painted a civilian bulldozer in camouflage colors-they’d left it school-bus yellow. Joe couldn’t have found a juicier target in a month of Sundays. His thumb came down on the firing button. Tracers leaped ahead of the Hellcat.

A fireball spouted from the ’dozer. Joe pulled up to make sure he didn’t get caught in it. He swung around for another pass at Wheeler. Shooting up what had been an American facility was fun. All the same, part of him kept imagining he’d get a bill for destroying government property.

This stuff belongs to the Japanese government now. Let them send me a bill. And let them hold their breath till I pay it!

Flak around Wheeler was heavier than it had been by the shore. The Japs knew the Americans would try to come back, and they’d done what they could to get ready. “And it’s not gonna be enough, goddammit!” Joe said.

Muzzle flashes let him spot a gun’s upthrust snout. Shoot at me, will you? Shoot at my buddies? See how you like being on the other end! The gun crew scattered as Joe opened up on them. He roared by before he could see what his bullets did to them. Maybe that was just as well. Those.50-caliber rounds were designed to pierce things like engine blocks and armor plate. What they’d do to flesh and bones hardly bore thinking about.

Several plumes of greasy black smoke fouled the blue sky. Some were from burning Jap planes caught in their revetments. Others, Joe feared, came from downed Hellcats and Dauntlesses. You couldn’t do this for free, however much you wished you could.

As he climbed to make another strafing run, he got a good look at the craters pocking the runways. Even as he watched, another Hellcat shot up a bulldozer. One more cloud of smoke billowed up. Joe slammed his left fist into his thigh. One more ’dozer that wouldn’t make repairs. If the Japs had to fix this mess with picks and shovels, they’d need weeks, not days.

They’d need ’em, but they wouldn’t have ’em. The Marines and the Army were on the way.

“Boys, we have done what we came to do. Let’s go home and gas up and do it some more.” The exultant order kept Joe from heeling his fighter into another dive. He didn’t complain. They had indeed done what they’d come to do.