Now Peterson’s voice went cold and flat. “You lie like a wet rag. Anybody with two brain cells to rub together would know what I’m talking about. You may be a bastard, but you’re not a jerk. If you start pretending you are, is it any wonder nobody trusts you?”

“I’m not gonna bail out on you guys,” London protested.

“See? You did know what I was talking about after all. How about that?” Peterson’s sarcasm flayed. Walter London turned red. Peterson didn’t care. He drove his point home: “But you’re right. You’re not gonna bail out, because we’re not gonna let you. If you get away, you kill all nine of us. But if you try and get away and we catch you, you don’t need to worry about the Japs. We’ll goddamn well kill you ourselves. Isn’t that right, boys?”

He got nods from the rest of the shooting squad. He wore only the corporal’s stripes he’d earned not long before the American defense on Oahu collapsed. But he still talked like an officer. He knew how to lead. The others responded to that, even if they didn’t quite know what they were responding to.

Hate blazed from Walter London’s eyes. Peterson looked back at him with nothing at all in his own. London wilted-under the hate lay fear. “Honest to God, I’m not going anywhere,” he said.

Push him too hard now, Peterson judged, and he might bolt for the sake of getting everybody else shot. With a broad, insincere smile of his own, Peterson said, “Okay. Sure thing.”

Later, one of the other men in the shooting squad, a PFC named Gordy Braddon, sidled up to him and said, “That asshole still wants to cut out on us.”

“Yeah, I know,” Peterson said. “We’ll watch him. If he does try and disappear, we’ll nab him, too. I’m not about to let a punk like that put me in my grave.”

Braddon had tawny hair, a long-jawed face, and an accent that said he came from Kentucky or Tennessee. His chuckle sounded distinctly cadaverous. “You bet you won’t, on account of the Japs won’t bother throwin’ you in one if they shoot you ’cause London goes south.”

“All the more reason not to let him, then,” Peterson said. Braddon chuckled again and slipped away.

Nights were bad. The rest of the shooting squad had to keep watch on Walter London. That meant giving up part of their own sleep when they were desperately weary. London proved how shrewd he was. If he’d kept complaining and kicking up a fuss, the other men would have been sure they were doing the right thing. He didn’t. He didn’t say boo, in fact. He just slept like a baby himself. He might have been saying, If you want to waste your time, fine. Go ahead. I don’t intend to waste mine. That was a damned effective way to take revenge.

Fighting to keep his own eyes open, watching the other POWs snoring away in the middle of the night, Peterson hated him right back. If London were square, he wouldn’t have needed to waste his time like this. Yeah, and if ifs and buts were candied nuts, we’d all have a hell of a Christmas.

He felt the exhaustion less in the nighttime than he did the next day. One morning when he was particularly frazzled, Braddon handed him three or four small, greenish fruits-they couldn’t have been much above the size of his thumbnail-and said, “Here. Chew on these.”

Peterson did. They were bitter enough to make his face pucker up. “What the hell are they?” he asked, wondering if the other man was playing a nasty practical joke on him.

“Coffee beans,” Braddon answered. “Stuff grows wild here.”

“Oh, yeah?” Peterson let the juice run down his throat. Sure as hell, his heart started beating faster and his eyes opened up. Admiringly, he asked, “How the devil did you recognize ’em?”

“My ma kept tryin’ to grow ’em in Memphis,” Braddon said. “Didn’t work. Winters are mild, but they aren’t that mild. Every time we got a hard frost, it’d kill ’em off. But she kept after it, Ma did. Hell, for all I know, she’s still tryin’.”

“Damn,” Peterson said reverently. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had coffee. Not too long after December 7-he was sure of that. Since he’d gone so long without, the stuff kicked him hard now, almost like Benzedrine. He felt like a new man, and the new man felt ready to go out there and bust his ass. It wouldn’t last-he was sure of that-but he’d make the most of it while it was there.

FLYING ABOARD ONE of the three Kawanishi H8Ks that droned east and north through the darkness awed Commander Mitsuo Fuchida. Part of his excitement was over the mission. The Americans had dared to strike at Hawaii from the air. Now Japan would pay the same kind of visit to the U.S. mainland.

Some good kami must have taken hold of Minoru Genda’s tongue when he proposed the raid to General Yamashita. It was the perfect way to pay the Yankees back for their insolence. As soon as Fuchida heard about it, he knew he had to come along. And here he was, heading straight for North America.

The rest of the awe was devoted to the plane in whose copilot’s seat he flew. The H8K was, quite simply, the best flying boat in the world, and nothing else came close. The airplane was about three-quarters the size of one of the China Clippers that had traveled from the U.S. West Coast to Hong Kong and Macao, but it was half again as fast as they were. It cruised at better than 320 kilometers an hour, and could get up over 460 at top speed.

It packed a wallop, too. Along with the bombs waiting in the bomb bay, it carried five 20mm cannon and five more machine guns. Any U.S. fighter that jumped an H8K was liable to get a very nasty surprise. Not only that, the flying boat, unlike a lot of Japanese planes, was well protected, with self-sealing fuel tanks in the hull and a good fire-extinguishing system. As far as Fuchida could see, the designers had thought of everything.

He said as much to the pilot, who sat to his left. Lieutenant Kinsuke Muto grinned a crooked grin. “Oh, they did, Fuchida-san,” Muto said. “The only trouble was, it took them a while, or the plane would have been in service a long time ago.”

“I heard something about this last year, but not too much,” Fuchida said. “I was busy training for the Hawaii operation. Tell me more, please.”

“Busy? I’ll bet you were, sir-just a little.” Muto laughed out loud, then went on, “Well, you know we wanted something better than the H6K: faster, with longer range, and a plane that wouldn’t catch fire the first time a bullet came anywhere near it.” He laughed again, not that it was funny; attacks against the Dutch East Indies and New Guinea had shown that the H6K turned into a torch when the enemy started shooting at it.

Fuchida leaned forward in his seat to lay a gentle hand on the instrument panel in front of him. “We have what we wanted, too.”

“Hai. We do-now.” Lieutenant Muto stressed the last word. “But it wasn’t easy. The first flight tests showed the beast was unstable at takeoff and a disaster on the water generally. They had to do a total redesign on the lower hull, and it set them back for months.”

“Ah, is that what the trouble was?” Fuchida said. “I knew there was a delay, but I don’t think I ever heard why. It was worth waiting for, though-the plane handles beautifully on the water now. I saw that when we took off from Pearl City.”

Muto snorted. “Hardly a tough test, sir. The water inside Pearl Harbor is going to be calm, no matter what. But wait till you see this baby out on the open ocean. It’s just as good there.”

“You know best,” Fuchida said. He had a hasty familiarization with the H8K. He’d been bound and determined to come on this mission, but he hadn’t wanted to be dead weight while he was along.

The radioman brought tea to Fuchida and Muto. He hesitated for a moment, wondering which man to serve first: Fuchida had the higher rank, but Muto sat in the pilot’s chair. The two of them pointed to each other. They both laughed.