In any case, the round trip between Honolulu and San Francisco was about twenty hours. Without a layover-again, unlikely! — much of it had to be by night.

After about three and a half hours, Lieutenant Muto yawned and stretched and opened his eyes. He looked over at Fuchida and asked, “How is everything?”

“Fine,” Fuchida answered. “We were going on to the Panama Canal from San Francisco, weren’t we?”

“The Panama Canal?” Muto’s eyes flashed to the compass. Only after he made sure of the course did he laugh. “You know how to wake a fellow up in a hurry, don’t you, Commander?”

“I try,” Fuchida said. Lieutenant Muto clucked in mock reproach and shook his head. Though Fuchida had been joking, he couldn’t help looking back toward the southeast. The Panama Canal lay in that direction. If Japan could put it out of action, that would be a tremendous blow to the USA. If the Americans had to ship everything around South America…

Regretfully, he shook his head. The Panama Canal was more than twice as far from Honolulu as San Francisco was: out of range even for an H8K. The Canal would be well defended, too, and the Americans would move heaven and earth to repair whatever damage it suffered. Attacking it was nice to think about. So was making love to a beautiful movie actress. In real life, neither was likely to be practical.

Little by little, the sky began to grow light. They were flying away from the sunrise, which slowed it, but it came anyway. Even when dawn did arrive, though, there was nothing to see but sky above and an endless expanse of ocean below. Fuchida checked the fuel gauge. They’d filled every tank to overflowing before takeoff. Even so, they didn’t have enough left to get back to Honolulu.

Half an hour later, the radioman’s voice sounded in Muto’s earphones, and in Fuchida’s: “I have the signal from the I-25! ”

“Ichi-ban! ” Muto exclaimed. The relief in his voice said he must have been watching the needle drop toward empty, too. “What is the bearing?”

“Sir, we’re going to need to swing south about five degrees,” the radioman replied. “We’ll all keep our eyes peeled after that. By the strength of the signal, I don’t think we’re very far away.”

“Pass the word to the other planes on the low-power circuit,” Muto said. “No one’s likely to pick it up here, and no one’s likely to be able to do anything about it even if he does.”

“Hai,” the radioman said.

A crewman on one of the other flying boats first spotted the surfaced submarine. His radioman passed the word to Fuchida’s H8K and the third one. Then Fuchida and Muto both pointed out the window at the same time. Muto brought the flying boat down to the water. Spray kicked up from the hull as it landed. Suddenly, its motion took on a new character. For a plane, it had an excellent hull. For a boat… Fuchida gulped. I am a good sailor, he told himself sternly.

Muto taxied up alongside the I-25. Sailors on the sub’s deck waved to the flying boat. “How did it go?” somebody shouted. Muto and Fuchida waved and grinned. The sailors clapped their hands. They yelled, “Banzai! ”

Then they got down to business. The I-25 carried fuel for the last leg of the flying boats’ return to Honolulu. Two sailors in a boat ran a hose from the submarine to the H8K. Fuchida listened to fuel flowing into the tanks. When the plane had enough to get back to Honolulu, the sailors disconnected the hose.

Muto taxied out of the way. The other two flying boats refueled in turn. When all three had got what they needed, the submarine sailed away. Fuchida breathed a silent sigh of relief when the H8Ks got airborne once more after long takeoff runs that put him in mind of geese sprinting along the surface of a lake before they could get airborne. The flying boats had been hideously vulnerable as they bobbed on the surface of the Pacific. Now they were in their proper element again, and could take care of themselves.

They came back to the Pan American Clipper base about four in the afternoon. Japanese officers waited for them as if they really were tourists coming to Hawaii from the West Coast of the USA. Applause and shouts of, “Banzai! ” greeted them as they got out of the planes.

“Radio in the United States is going mad!” a signals officer yelled. “The Yankees are saying this was as big an embarrassment as Pearl Harbor!”

Fuchida and Muto bowed to each other. Then they both yawned. Together, they started to laugh.

COMPASSIONATE LEAVE WAS the last thing Joe Crosetti wanted. But here he was, tearing across the country on the fastest trains he could get. Most of the bombs the Japs had dropped on San Francisco came down on the harbor or near it. As they were leaving, though, they’d emptied their racks-and one of those afterthoughts had landed on the house where Uncle Tony and Aunt Maria and their four kids lived. One of the kids was still alive, though he’d lost a leg. He’d been blown into a tree across the street, which doubtless saved his life. The rest of the family? Gone.

In the harbor, the Japs had damaged a cruiser, a destroyer, and two freighters, and they’d sent another freighter to the bottom. Nobody’d laid a glove on them, not so far as anyone could tell. They’d come out of the night, done their dirty work, and then disappeared again.

To Joe, the ships mattered much less than his family. Had his aunt and uncle’s house not been hit, he might have given the enemy grudging credit for a nice piece of work. Not now. Now the war was personal. He did want to string up the San Francisco civil-defense authorities, who must have been asleep at the switch when the Japs came in. Had they had their radar on? Had they watched it if they had? Not likely, not by what had happened.

No one paid any special attention to him as he rolled west across the country. Men in uniform were a dime a dozen. More were soldiers than sailors, and more sailors were ratings than officers, but Joe wasn’t unusual enough to draw notice. That suited him fine. He preferred being alone with his thoughts.

His own family lived only a few blocks from what had been Uncle Tony’s house. The bomb could have blown up his mom and dad as easily as his aunt and uncle. He couldn’t see anything but dumb luck that had kept it from doing just that-and there was a thought he would rather not have had.

His train got into the Southern Pacific station at First and Broadway in Oakland at two in the morning on the day of the funeral. His father waited on the platform for him. Dad was in his usual fisherman’s dungarees; he wouldn’t change to a suit till later.

They embraced. Dad hadn’t shrunk, exactly, but he seemed frailer than he had before Joe started flight training. Joe didn’t stop and think how much more muscle he’d added since then; he wasn’t built like a middle infielder any more.

His father kissed him on the cheek, saying, “Good to see you, boy. I wish it wasn’t for something like this.”

“Jesus, so do I!” Joe said. “Those dirty, stinking bastards. I-”

“You go pay ’em back, that’s all,” his father said. “Those other pilots, they can yell, ‘Remember Pearl Harbor!’ when they give the Japs what-for. You, you yell, ‘Remember Tony and Maria and Lou and Tina and Gina!’-and Paul, too, dammit!”

“I will,” Joe said. “I’ve got a picture of ’em in my wallet. Whenever I go up, it goes up with me.” He wished he were flying planes hotter than the sedate trainers at Pensacola. You had to crawl before you could walk and walk before you could run, but he wanted to run like Jesse Owens-run right at the Japs and run right over them.

“Okay, Joey.” His father set a hand on his shoulder. “Come on, then. I’ll take you back to the house. That all your stuff?”

“Yeah.” Joe slung the duffel bag over his shoulder. “They teach us to travel light.” He yawned. “I’d like to sleep for about a week when I get home.”