Pearl Harbour - A novel of December 8th (48 page)

“Their carriers are somewhere at sea. I am willing to bet all that they are nearby. Perhaps not a hundred miles south or west of Pearl Harbor on maneuvers, perhaps toward Midway or Wake Island, maneuvering there or delivering additional aircraft. I plan to seek them out tomorrow ... and I plan to destroy them. I plan to take this war to the Americans with a ferocity they have yet to imagine. That is why I ordered the tankers to stay close to us instead of sailing off to a northeastern rendezvous point as the original plan provided. I wanted the flexibility to respond to reality, and I did not want to be trapped by assumptions that might fail.”

“But our plan to strike, then fall back, to lure them into the Marshalls, to form a defensive barrier to weaken them till they seek a peace?”

Yamamoto shook his head forcefully.

“I fear that our plan for a negotiated peace once we had destroyed their fleet is no longer possible. Beneath our brave Commander Fuchida’s report there is a message concealed. The Foreign Ministry has failed to deliver what was promised.”

He sighed and looked off.

“I know America. There will be no negotiations as there were with the Russians in our last war. This will now be bitter and a fight to the death, until they realize the futility of a fight against us.

“That leaves me with but one option. To so thoroughly cripple their fleet, to so completely destroy their carriers, their docks, their ships at Pearl, that it will not be six months, but a year, two years before they can even hope to respond.

“If need be we must now take this war clear to their West Coast to sow panic, and in that panic irresolve. We must sweep the ocean clean of their shipping. Let Hawaii be the bait now. Cripple it beyond repair but do not take it. Force them to try and keep the shipping lanes open and now their navy will be stretched on two fronts, here and in the Atlantic.

“I believe some thought that after this, after what too many considered to be a raid merely to cripple, we could run riot for six months and seize what we need, dig in, then let the Americans come and defeat them till they grow weary. I can tell you. They will not grow weary. They will be filled with a terrible resolve and that will be to prosecute this war until Japan is destroyed.”

“Our only chance now? We must carry the war, instead, to them. That is our only hope.”

He fell silent, eyes again closed as if looking off to some distant, dark land.

“Commander Genda, we shall find their carriers and sink them.

“And this time, when we do sink them, they will not merely settle into the mud of the harbor to be restored, their trained crews taken off to be used on other ships. No, we must sink them in a thousand fathoms of water, all hands aboard, and thus destroy every carrier in the Pacific before the year is finished.

“It will be a different war now, a more terrible one,” Yamamoto said, his features fixed, cool, as if another hand of poker had just been drawn.

Two Hundred Fifty Miles West of Pearl Harbor
USS Enterprise:
5:00 p.m. Local Time

Admiral William “Bull” Halsey crumpled the note that had just been handed to him by his signal officer.

The news was horrifying. Every battleship, sunk or seriously damaged by two waves of Jap attackers. Thousands feared dead, the once proud fleet a shambles, oil tank farms, dry dock, repair facilities, and more ships destroyed in a third strike. And damn all, still no one thought to track which direction they had departed to after the strike was over. For all he knew the Japs were fifty miles away, or five hundred miles away. He had been running his scout squadron ragged all day looking for something, anything.

He stood up, walked out onto the flying bridge and looked down as a Grumman Wildcat prepared to lift off, to maintain patrol over the fleet.

Where were the damn Japs? Not a single fool back on Oahu had bothered to take the time to just watch for a few minutes, to see which way the Japs had departed. Where did they rendezvous after the strike, did they run north, west, east, south? They could be anywhere within two hundred miles of Oahu in any direction... more than one hundred thousand square miles of ocean to hide in . . . but by God he would find the bastards.

Turning, he looked back at his staff.

“By the time we are done with them,” he snarled, “Japanese will only be spoken in hell. Now let’s go find their carriers.”