Fiends of the Rising Sun (24 page)

"You think so, do you?" Hicks snapped his fingers for Piper to hand over Maeda's pass. The sergeant glanced over the paperwork before slowly, methodically tearing it in half, then into quarters and finally into eights. "That's what I think of your pass, Maeda. What have you got to say about that?"

"I thought it was an offence to destroy official documents, sergeant."

"Smart guy, huh? Think you're so clever, so much more intelligent than the rest of us, is that it?" Hicks leaned so close to Maeda's face that their noses were touching, their eyeballs only a few inches apart. Every time he spoke the sergeant's spittle flecked the private's face. "Well, I've got a news flash for you, my Oriental friend. You might have a smart mouth but you sure as hell haven't got anything of any value in that skull of yours, otherwise you'd have known better than to enlist in the corps. We want real soldiers, not a bad case of the yellow peril. Have you got that, Toshikazu?"

"Yes, sergeant, loud and clear," Maeda replied before smiling.

"What the hell are you grinning about, boy?"

"Nothing, sergeant. Just like I'm looking at nothing, nothing at all."

"You're looking at me, boy, and that means you ain't looking at nothing. You're staring at a sergeant major in the United States Marine Corps!"

"Still looks like nothing to me," Maeda murmured.

"What did you say?" Hicks bellowed, his voice close to a scream.

"Hey, sarge, leave him," Paxton interjected. "Pat's done nothing wrong."

"Keep out of this," the sergeant warned, "you're in enough trouble."

"Yeah and that's my own stupid fault, but Pat's done nothing wrong." Paxton reached out a hand to pull Hicks away from Maeda. The sergeant whirled around and grabbed Paxton by the arm.

"You try laying hands on me again and I'll break your damned wrist!"

"Is that a fact?" Paxton snarled at Hicks, his temper fast evaporating.

"You better believe it, boy!"

"Oh, yeah? Well, try believing this, asshole!" Paxton smashed a fist into Hicks's face, the sergeant's nose breaking with a satisfying crack. Hicks stumbled backwards, utter disbelief crowding his features. His feet got tangled with each other and the sergeant tripped over backwards, falling towards the guardhouse. The back of his skull smacked hard against the concrete slab of a step, the impact making a noise like an egg cracking. A gasp escaped Hicks's lungs, but that was all. He didn't speak, didn't move, or do anything.

Piper crouched beside the body, searching for any signs of life. After a moment he rested back on his haunches and looked up at Paxton. "Sweet Jesus... I think you've killed him!"

Mike Danner stopped his taxi outside Tokyo Joe's in downtown Honolulu, all too aware of the malevolent presence sitting in the back seat. The Japanese passenger was paying him well for the privilege of being driven around Oahu, but Danner couldn't shake a feeling of dread lurking in his gut. After five years of driving a cab on the island, he'd learned to trust his instincts about such things. He knew when a passenger had drunk too much and was gonna throw up; marines were the worst, they always overdid it, in his experience. He knew when a passenger didn't have the money to pay for their fare by the twitchy way they kept looking at the door handle in the back. And he knew when somebody had violence in mind from their posture, the way they caressed their knuckles or kept one hand buried inside a bulging pocket.

But the Japanese passenger was a blank, a void, and that made his presence in the back seat all the more perturbing. His posture gave off no signals, and both hands rested comfortably in his lap. His sole distinguishing characteristic was to sit in the shadows, keeping out of direct sunlight at all times. Now the sun had set, the passenger appeared a little more relaxed, as if he no longer had any worries. Danner didn't know why this was significant, and his fare certainly wasn't volunteering any information. The cabbie had made a few attempts at conversation, but they were met by a stony silence from the back seat. He soon learned to shut up and drive.

Danner pulled on the handbrake and twisted around to look at his passenger. "Well, this is it, Tokyo Joe's Bar and Grill, the end of the line."

The Japanese man produced two twenty dollar bills and offered them to the driver, more than three times the required amount to settle the fare.

"That's too much," Danner said. "I can't accept that much from you."

His passenger frowned. "Why not?"

"I was just doing my job. Pay me the going rate and a tip if you want, but I can't accept that much. It wouldn't be right."

"You show great honour. I did not expect that."

"Like I said, I'm just doing my job."

"Very well." The passenger considered the two notes in his hand. "One of my countrymen or I may have need of your services later. Will you accept this money as advance payment to remain here until required?"

"Well, sure, but-"

Then we have an agreement
, a voice whispered in the cabbie's mind.

"I guess we've got a deal," Danner said, accepting the twenties. "But if you or your friends don't get in my cab before midnight, I'm heading home."

"So be it." The passenger got out of the cab and shut the door.

"Hey!" the cabbie called out. "Nearly half the people on Oahu look Japanese. I need a name, otherwise I could give the wrong person your ride."

"Hitori or Kimura," the passenger said before entering the bar.
Stay
.

Danner decided he'd stay, and wrote the two names in pencil on one of the greenbacks. Maybe he'd been wrong about the passenger. Anybody who was willing to tip you more than twenty bucks couldn't be all bad, could he?

Paxton stared at the fallen sergeant, his mouth moving, but no words coming out. It was Maeda who came to the sergeant's aid, crouching down on the opposite side from Piper. He leaned over the body, one hand resting on the ground beside the head, listening for any sound from Hicks. "He's... It's okay, I can hear something... He's still breathing!" Maeda pointed to the gatehouse. "Piper, get on the phone and call for a medic. Do it!"

"Your hand," the sentry said.

Maeda looked at his palm, the one that had been on the ground. It was covered in blood, crimson dripping from his fingers. Using his clean hand, Maeda tipped the sergeant's head to one side. There was a pool of blood underneath it. "Call a damned medic, Piper, now!"

The sentry hurried into the guardhouse, his frantic voice echoing within the small structure as he shouted into a telephone for help. Paxton knelt down on the other side of Hicks, his face still stricken by the shock of what had happened. "Pat, what should I do? Tell me what I should do!"

Maeda frowned. "They're gonna throw the book at you no matter what happens, whether Hicks makes it or not."

"You think he could die?"

"The sergeant's got blood pouring out of the back of his head, Paxton. You heard what it sounded like when he hit the edge of the step. That noise, I think it was his skull cracking open. God only knows what'll happen to him."

Paxton licked his lips, trying to focus and think. "All I did was punch him. I've punched a dozen guys before and none of them ever..."

"We'll all tell them that, you, Piper and me," Maeda said. "We'll tell them it was an accident. Yeah, you meant to hit him, but that was all; you didn't mean this." Maeda looked at his bloody hand and wiped it dry on his khaki trousers, staining them crimson. "You'll still face charges, but it'll be okay as long as-"

"As long as he doesn't die?" Paxton cut in.

Maeda nodded.

"I can't take that chance," Paxton decided, getting back to his feet. "If I stay here and he dies, that's it, my life is over too."

"Well, what's the alternative?"

Paxton looked over his shoulder to the world beyond the gatehouse. "I take off, lose myself somewhere on the island until this all blows over. If Hicks dies, it'll be in the papers, I'll know not to come out of hiding. If he makes it, leave me a message with Kissy and I'll come back, face the music."

Maeda stood up. "That's crazy! You'll be going AWOL, that only makes you look more guilty. Run now and you'll spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder until they catch you, and they will catch you. Oahu's not a big place, and there're not enough places for you to hide. They'll find you, eventually."

"Maybe," Paxton conceded, "but if I'm going to spend the rest of my damned life rotting in a cell somewhere, I want one night in heaven first!" He turned and strode away from the gatehouse, away from the base.

"Don't do this!" Maeda called after him, but got no response.

Piper emerged from the gatehouse, drawing a pistol from his holster. "I told the MPs what happened. They say I've got to keep Paxton here until they arrive." The sentry glanced around, mystified until he spotted the marine striding away from him. "Hey, Paxton, come back!"

Still the fugitive didn't reply, his pace quickening until he was running away from the base. "I said come back here!" Piper yelled. "Otherwise I open fire."

Paxton was sprinting, running for his life.

The sentry raised his pistol and took aim at the receding figure. "Don't shoot," Maeda pleaded. "You know it was an accident."

"I've got my orders," the sentry said, hands trembling as his finger moved to pull the trigger. Maeda stepped over the prone sergeant and shoulder charged Piper so his shot flew harmlessly into the air. By the time the sentry had recovered from the attack, Paxton was out of sight. "Damn you!" Piper hissed at Maeda. "I'd have got him if you hadn't interfered."

"I doubt it; your hands were shaking too much."

The sentry swung his pistol around and aimed at Maeda, preparing to shoot the unarmed marine from point blank range. "Yeah, well, I think even I could hit you from this distance if I tried hard enough."

"Piper, I didn't do anything," Maeda protested.

"You aided and abetted the escape of an attempted murderer."

"What? All I did was bump into you, and Paxton didn't try to kill the sarge, he just punched him in the face. The rest was an accident and you know it!"

"Right now that's your word against mine."

"Fine! Shoot me if you want," Maeda snapped, kneeling back down beside the fallen man. "But killing me while I try to stop Sergeant Hicks from bleeding to death won't look good on your service record, will it?"

Suzuki and his cadre of kyuuketsuki sat at the back of the briefing as the assembled pilots were given their targets for the next day. More than 250 planes would fly from Taiwan to the Philippines where they were to attack Clark Field and Fort Stotsenberg. Two-thirds of the aerial armada would be bombers, with close to a hundred Zeros as escort. Once the bombers had finished pounding the US facilities, the fighters would swoop down and strafe anything that had escaped the high altitude bombardment. The goal was simple: to destroy the US Army Air Force in the Philippines, eliminating any American aerial counter-strike against Japanese forces.

The briefing officer was succinct and fierce. "Due to the time difference between here and Hawaii, our attack on Pearl Harbour will start before we reach the Philippines. We will not have the element of surprise on our side, so we'll need all our skill and courage to defeat the enemy. Dismissed!"

Suzuki kept his kyuuketsuki back while the other pilots filed out of the briefing. A few of those leaving risked a glance at the vampyr pilots, but most of the fliers didn't acknowledge their presence at the back of the room. Once the room had emptied, Suzuki stood to address his vampyr cadre.

"It will not have escaped your attention that our countrymen keep away from us. Like all mortals, they fear the unknown, so they fear us. Remember that well, my brethren. When the attack commences tomorrow, the seven of us will fly as a separate unit from the others. They have strategic objectives to fulfil. Our goal is to bring fear and terror to the Americans. That is why our fighters are painted black from nose to tail, to mark us out as different, a force to be feared. Our capabilities are unknown. Tomorrow we shall change that. Tomorrow our wrath shall become the stuff of legends and nightmares."

Walton approached the gatehouse expecting another dull night of watching other marines coming and going. They'd leave the navy yard reeking of aftershave and hormones, ready to spend their hard earned dollars in the city. Around midnight the survivors would stagger back to their barracks, stinking of beer and tobacco, usually in pairs to stop one another from collapsing. Those that didn't make it back under their own steam would reappear later, slumped over in the back of MPs' jeeps, cuts and bruises telling their own story about what had happened.

After the brawl at Tokyo Joe's in September, Walton had little enthusiasm for similar bouts of debauchery. He was a simple country boy from a farming community, the eldest of half a dozen siblings. Aside from a few sips of hooch from an illicit still back home, he rarely drank and usually found himself regretting the consequences when he did. So, whenever Walton felt the urge to paint the town red, the young marine would volunteer for a night of sentry duty at the gatehouse. Seeing the effect demon drink had on his fellow recruits was more than enough to convince him that staying sober was the safer option.

But the night was still young when he reached the gatehouse to relieve Piper and already somebody was flat out on the ground. From a distance he looked dead drunk. When Walton got closer, the fallen figure just looked dead. He was shocked to realise that it was Sergeant Hicks, a pool of blood spreading out from beneath his skull. Maeda and Piper were standing over the sergeant arguing, the sentry shoving a pistol in Maeda's face.

"What the hell's going on?" Walton demanded.

"Thank god you're here," Maeda replied, relief all too evident on the marine's face. "Did you bring a medical bag or a first aid kit?"

"I'm just here to relieve Piper. What happened to the sarge?"

"Paxton attacked him and ran off, aided and abetted by an accomplice," the sentry said, pointing his pistol at Maeda, "him."