The sight of so many aircraft forming up and heading out, to further reduce the enemy's defenses, should have brought joy to the grand admiral. After all, it was rare in war to be given a second chance.
But Yamamoto had not yet fully recovered from the shock of seeing Hidaka on the little movie screen, disheveled and covered in blood, telling him that one mutinous Frenchman had nearly wrecked the entire plan. Indeed, he may well have done so. They hadn't yet determined how much damage this barbarian Danton had wreaked, and they wouldn't know for certain until their own planes flew over the islands and reported back.
Unlike his initial reaction to the Emergence, Yamamoto wasn't incandescent with rage, not this time. For the admiral, rage came from the sudden, unexpected destruction of certainty. And in his heart, he hadn't been at all surprised by this development.
After Midway, nothing seemed to surprise him anymore. If somebody had walked in and told him that Charles Lindbergh had been elected president of the United States, or that a race of super Nazis had suddenly emerged in southern Africa, he doubted he would raise an eyebrow.
So his primary reaction to Hidaka's untimely news was a feeling of sickening free fall, which he fought to keep to himself. He could only wonder if the world would ever return to the certainties of just a few months previous.
The mood on the bridge of the great battleship Yamato mirrored his own. Perhaps if Hidaka had been able to report a complete success, it would have been different. The officers and crew might yet have been seized with the fevers of victory, celebrating as they had during the first few months of the war. But now, they all seemed to wonder if their doom was approaching, and whether or not a squadron of F-22s might still come shrieking toward them at two or three times the speed of sound.
Pounding through the Pacific toward their objective, the Combined Fleet looked unstoppable. Yet in the face of the weapons the Americans now possessed, his cruisers and carriers were little better than origami trifles.
The officer of the watch announced that the last squadron of dive-bombers was away. Yamamoto did not bother to get up from his chair to watch them disappear into the vanishing point, far to the east. But he was quietly gratified to see some of the junior officers excitedly whispering to each other and pointing as the attack got under way. Regardless of any trepidation they might be feeling, they could not contain their enthusiasm to have at the Americans.
It was good, he thought. His Majesty would be well served by these new samurai.
Following their example, he put aside his own concerns. The warrior who drew his blade without confidence was doomed. Hidaka said the missile strike had done an enormous amount of damage, and his own air assault would surely add to the Americans' woes.
"Captain," he said, sitting a little straighter in his command chair, "signal the fleet to redouble its vigilance. There will be enemy submarines in front of us. And a counterattack from Midway remains possible."
The bridge crew took their lead from Yamamoto's renewed vigor. Backs straightened. Orders were barked out just a bit more crisply. Everywhere he looked, he saw evidence of Japan's finest young men, willing to die in the service of the empire.
It wasn't right for him to let them down with maudlin displays of anxiety.
Lieutenant Wally Curtis just couldn't believe it. He had thought of the jet planes as indestructible. And yet there they were, every last one of them, totally fubar. A dozen or more piles of burning wreckage.
Hickham Field was littered with scrap metal and human body parts, but most of the crash crews and fire engines were clustered about the tarmac where the F-22s from the Clinton had been parked. They were all gone, except for two that had been up in the air when the missiles came over. And he'd heard they had been banged up when they had to land on a normal road surface, because there was no undamaged runway anywhere that could take them. The undercarriage of one had collapsed when it fouled in a big pothole, and the other had clipped a power pole and just about torn off a wing.
That was the scuttlebutt, anyway. He hadn't seen it himself, and as Rosanna kept telling him, unless you actually saw it happen, it probably didn't.
Well, he'd seen this happen hadn't he? Curtis had thought he'd never again see anything to equal Midway, but this came close. They'd driven in to Hickham, flashing three different types of ID at the guard post, which was too busy to check them properly, anyhow. The base was a write-off. It was hardly recognizable as a working facility.
Rosanna was too busy filming to answer any of his questions, so he turned to Detective Cherry instead, which was pretty strange when he thought about it, because the policeman was supposed to be following them.
"You think the Japs are gonna invade, Detective?"
Cherry laughed, but it was a sour, shriveled-up sound. Curtis didn't think there was any humor in it at all. "Sure, kid. You sucker-punch a guy this good, you gotta give him a good kickin' while he's down. Finish him off if you can. That was their mistake the first time around. They shoulda finished us back in December last year."
"What should we do, then? I tried to get back to my unit, but it's just a big crater now. I couldn't find anyone at Pearl."
"Forget Pearl," Cherry said. "The Japs are gonna be over to bomb the rubble soon enough. You know how to fire a gun, boy?"
"I did basic," Curtis protested, feeling as if Cherry was somehow disregarding his martial prowess.
The detective let go another one of his humorless laughs, as a series of explosions destroyed a hangar full of Wildcat fighters a couple of hundred yards away. Curtis flinched and ducked, but Cherry hardly moved. Rosanna swung her little movie camera around to take in the new action.
"Basic, huh?" Cherry said. "Well, that's good. Killing a man is pretty basic, when you get right down to it. Put a bullet in him. Or a knife. Put your hands around his neck and choke him to death. You think you could handle that, son? Killing a man right up close like that? Smelling him as he shits his pants and calls out for his mama?" Cherry's eyes were lifeless as he spoke. In a way, it was more disturbing than if he'd been ranting.
"I can handle myself," Curtis replied weakly.
An air raid siren began to wail before the cop could reply. Curtis spun around, almost describing a complete circle before he spotted the danger: dozens of planes coming in from the west, diving toward the airfield out of the late afternoon sun.
"Rosanna!" he yelled. "Run."
They all ran, heading for a slit trench twenty yards away. About a hundred others hand the same idea as the first bombs began their whistling descent.
Both Rosanna and Cherry surprised him. She by jumping into the shelter and then popping right back up to film the attack while others cowered on the floor. Cherry by the speed with which he covered the distance to safety, and then by pulling his service revolver and taking potshots at the Japanese planes.
The policeman wasn't the only one doing that. A crackle of rifle and pistol fire grew into a minor torrent as men, and even a few women, opened up with small arms. Curtis felt less than useless, having no weapon to shoot. He crouched and hurried over to Rosanna's side. She had turned, and was now filming down the trench, capturing the resistance to the bombardment.
The fury of the attack increased so much and with such speed that Curtis thought the sound alone was going to kill them. He tried to shout at Rosanna to duck down, but the crash of gunfire and the storm of exploding bombs all around them made it impossible to communicate. Fire trucks that had been pouring water onto the burning SeaRaptors were suddenly obliterated by a stick of bombs. Massive roiling balls of filthy orange flame engulfed the tenders, and the firefighters who had stayed with them. One truck was lifted high into the air, turned over slowly like a spitted hog, and smashed back to earth, crushing two men and a woman who'd been running for cover.
Curtis didn't know what weird sense cut in to save them, but he grabbed Rosanna and pulled her down a split second before a Zero roared overhead, strafing the trench line and turning dozens of defenders into chopped meat and splinters of bone. Rosanna was screaming and clawing at his face, trying to get to her feet again as another Zero on a strafing run chewed up the trench. Hot soil and pieces of tarmac poured in on them as Curtis used his body weight to press down on the reporter and keep her safe.
"You're going to get killed!" he yelled over the uproar.
"We're all going to get killed, you stupid sonovabitch," she cried back.
Curtis felt someone grab the collar of his torn shirt and haul him up off Rosanna. He was powerless to fight back.
It was Cherry, passing him a rifle. The stock was shattered and sticky with gore. "I admire your spirit, trying to get laid at a time like this," said the cop, "But your country could use a little help, too, Casanova."
The volume of fire pouring from the trench was a fraction of what it had been, now. Curtis saw why when Cherry turned away. Nearly half the soldiers and air crew were dead, shredded by the cannon and machine-gun fire. The floor of the trench was covered in a thick, semiliquid gruel. Curtis felt his gorge rise and his stomach contract. He vomited up everything he'd eaten for lunch.
"That's the spirit," Cherry called back at him. "Spit in their fucking eyes."