Rising Sun (11 page)

Despite the fact that Mickey was a sleazy and violent criminal, she found herself hoping she hadn’t killed him, although she concluded that she’d likely never know unless Mack confessed that he’d lied and that the man was dead when he’d checked on him. That she was coping so well with the possibility that she’d killed was another surprise. The fact that Ace and Mickey were out to rob and possibly kill them made it a justifiable killing, which must be what went through the minds of men in combat when they had time to think about it. Her father had been a corpsman in the Argonne in the first war and never talked about it, politely but firmly refusing to be drawn into any discussions. Now she had a small idea why.

But what about Mack? He’d stabbed the other man without hesitation and then didn’t want to get involved with the cops. If and when the time was right, she’d ask him. There must be a very dark side to his past. She had a thought and almost laughed. Maybe the catamaran wasn’t his and an investigation would prove it. Maybe he’d stolen if from the rightful owners and murdered them. If so, Mack was a thief as well as a killer. Despite belated misgivings, she had to accept the fact that she was on a small sailboat with a man who killed, even though it was in self-defense and on behalf of herself and her friends. Of course, she realized, she had done much the same thing. She hadn’t been aiming for Mickey’s leg. No, she’d shot at his chest and simply missed. So much for her being the next Annie Oakley, she laughed softly.

Mack gathered them for yet another class in navigation. “Remember, ladies, we’ve got to go north as well as east in order to hit California. Hawaii’s just south of the Tropic of Cancer and San Diego is about eight hundred miles north of that, with San Francisco another several hundred miles beyond. It we make a mistake and go too far north, we’ll hit stretches of coast that are as wild and rugged and dangerous as you can believe, and filled with really large bears who like to eat little girls like you. White meat is their favorite, I’ve heard.

“Too far south, and we’ll land in Mexico, where the land is equally crappy, and I’m not too sure whose side they’re on right now. Therefore, we’ve got to hit somewhere between San Diego and San Francisco or we could be in shit as deep as if we’d stayed in Hawaii.”

A couple of days later, their luck with the weather continued and it rained. They happily refilled their water containers and anything else they could, and let the cool but comfortable fresh water wash the salt out of their clothes and off their skin. Amanda was mildly shocked when Mack stripped naked and soaped himself before letting the rain rinse him.

Grace laughed. “What the hell.” She undressed as well and, a moment later, so did Amanda and Sandy. Mack was surprised and grinned happily, but said nothing. After that, neither nudity nor lack of privacy while performing body functions was ever an issue, and lack of clothes not only felt liberating but sometimes enabled them to work better. Mack, however, did at least usually put on an athletic supporter.

“Got to protect my most prized possession,” he laughed.

That night, Grace and Mack commenced having noisy and exuberant sex in the cabin while the other two sat outside and grinned.

When Grace emerged after the first time, her comments were succinct. “What’s the point of taking a Pacific cruise if you’re not going to get laid by the captain?”

Mack made no effort to get Amanda and Sandy into his bunk. He was content with Grace, and the others were fine with that. “He’s so withered,” Sandy giggled. “Even his wrinkles have wrinkles.”

And he’s a killer and likely a thief, Amanda thought.

They had a radio and they listened but did not transmit. The war was still raging, although Hawaii hadn’t been invaded. They caught broadcasts from the islands beginning to beg for food, and they knew they’d made the right decision. Now all they had to do was find California.

* * *

Wilhelm Braun looked admiringly at the U.S. passport that gave his name as William Brown. Braun had been the assistant military attache at the German embassy in Mexico City until Mexico declared war on Germany. Braun was a distant cousin of the cowlike blonde woman who, if rumors were correct, was Hitler’s mistress. Some were shocked at the thought that the beloved Fuehrer was anything but celibate in his total dedication to the Reich, but Braun didn’t care. If Hitler wanted to screw Wilhelm’s dumb and plump cousin, then let him. Apparently, she had been the Fuehrer’s mistress for six or seven years and, while the relationship was unknown to the average German, it was common knowledge to those in the Nazi hierarchy as well as the diplomatic corps, and, of course, the Braun family.

Braun had another passport that proclaimed his Swedish identity and gave his name as Olaf Swenson, and a third that said he was from Denmark and named Oosterbeck. Since Sweden was neutral and likely to remain so, it and the others were aces in the hole. Denmark had been conquered by the Germans and the world was sympathetic to her plight.

He shook his head. If he was going to pass muster north of the border, he’d damned well better get used to being either Swenson, Oosterbeck, or Brown. In either case he’d be a fifty-year-old mining engineer from Wisconsin who’d been working for the Mexican government. Claiming to be from Wisconsin was safe since he’d lived there for several years with an elderly aunt and uncle who’d died a few years earlier.

But first he had to get across the border with a truck full of very special and dangerous material.

He’d been in San Francisco doing nothing more sinister than taking a vacation and doing some shopping when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and war unexpectedly broke out. He’d quickly checked out of his hotel and driven to the border, where he crossed easily, and only a day before Germany declared war on the United States. The Americans were suddenly watching out for those entering their country, but blithely unconcerned about who left. Americans, he concluded, were stupid and had no concept of security.

Once back in the embassy, he’d tried to figure out ways to help Germany in her increasingly desperate struggle against England and Russia, and now the United States. Braun was neither a fool nor suicidal. He knew he now had little chance of getting back to Germany, and, if he stayed in Mexico, might even be interned for the duration of the war, or at best, forced to wait many months until exchange arrangements could be made. That he considered intolerable.

Even if he did somehow make it back to the Reich, he didn’t much feel like getting killed in the steppes of Russia as the initially dramatic and far-reaching German advances into the Soviet Union had become more like a bloody brawl between two equally matched titans. His age and the leg wound he’d endured in the last war and which caused him to limp in bad weather were no guarantee he wouldn’t be sent to an SS line division.

Although no one would say it out loud, there were those who thought that Germany had been badly bloodied and needed to focus on destroying Russia before the United States got over its lethargy and stupidity and began to fight for real. Braun had traveled extensively throughout America and seen firsthand her potential warmaking capabilities. He wondered if the leaders in Berlin had any concept of that, or had they recalled the fact that the United States had a population much larger than Germany’s, which was already dwarfed by that of the Soviet Union and the British Empire?

Yes, the Americans were decadent, corrupt, incompetent, and ruled by Jews, but they could cause great damage to the Nazi cause. He despised the Americans, but he did not underestimate them. Curiously, he understood that the Japanese admiral, Yamamoto, had also lived in the U.S.

German advances toward Moscow, Leningrad, and now Stalingrad had slowed. Russian winter had proven to be a shock and Braun was delighted to be in the warmth of Mexico instead of frozen Russia even though it was now summer outside of Moscow. Another terrible and murderous winter would come soon enough to Germany’s Eastern Front.

When it first became apparent that Mexico was going to declare war on Germany, Braun and a couple of others simply disappeared from the embassy and, using their several aliases, set up a bogus import-export business north of Mexico City in the industrial city of Monterrey.

While official Mexico declared war on Germany, the average Mexican cared little about a European conflict and many totally despised the United States for being the greedy gringos who’d stolen her northern provinces.

In the First World War, the Kaiser had tried to take advantage of those hatreds by inducing the Mexicans to invade the United States. A shame nothing had come of it, Braun thought, although it had been a primary cause of America’s declaration of war on Imperial Germany and had led to the shameful Treaty of Versailles. Even though the Mexicans were squat and ugly, nearly subhuman as the Jews, their hatred of the United States could be channeled to Germany’s advantage.

Braun held the SS rank of
Obersturmbannfuehrer
, which was equivalent to a colonel in the American army. When word came that a landing on the American east coast was planned by German saboteurs, he thought it was insane and was quickly proven right. The would-be saboteurs had all been captured or killed. He was sadly confident that the ones captured would be hanged. Thus, when the request came down for Germany to take the war to America’s west coast in support of Japan, he was delighted to volunteer. He knew he could do far better than the buffoons who’d been landed by sub on the east coast. Anything that aided Japan would help keep America’s growing military forces from aiding Britain or Russia in their war with the Third Reich.

He recognized the irony that he would be helping apelike little yellow subhumans defeat the Jewish-dominated United States. Well, he thought, one can’t always choose one’s enemies any more than one can choose their own relatives, like his fat cousin Eva. Sooner or later, the Jewish-controlled United States would fall into the gutter of history, and he would be a part of that glorious effort, whether he did it directly for Germany or indirectly in behalf of Japan. He would do anything to destroy America and the Jews. While he wanted no part of Russian weather, he did envy others in the SS who were wreaking bloody havoc among the Jews as they advanced.

A handful of other staffers were fluent enough in English to function in the U.S., but he rejected them for the time being, instead keeping them in Monterrey and Mexico City, literally watching the store and prepared to relay reports. Braun was concerned that their accents would cause suspicion at the border, while his very slight accent could be explained away as Midwestern, or Swedish, or Danish. He would go alone, at least initially. He liked that idea. The Americans at the border would not suspect a middle-aged and slightly overweight man who walked with a little limp and drove a truck filled with junk. If he later decided he needed more help, he would send for it.
If
he decided he needed help, he would send for Gunther Krause. Although not an SS man like him, Krause had combat experience and possessed good English speaking skills and had been a loyal Nazi party member for some time.

He bought a decrepit junk-hauling truck, and, instead of junk, loaded it with weapons, ammunition, and dynamite bought with money provided by the German embassy before it was closed. In a couple of weeks at the most, he would cross the border even though he had no clear idea what he would do then. He did not think there would be a shortage of targets, however.

CHAPTER 6

THE MASSIVE PBY FLYING BOAT TOOK OFF FROM SAN DIEGO BAY with a crew of eight and Lieutenant Commander Tim Dane along as an observer. Built by Consolidated, the flying boat initially looked as if it would never leave the surface, but her powerful Pratt and Whitney engines soon lifted her off the bay’s protected and gentle waters.

Dane was along for what he hoped was a long but pleasant ride. The idea had been Merchant’s. Dane was along not just to see the ocean below, but also the large numbers of ships traveling the Pacific coast, and try to get some idea of the difficulty involved in tracking any vessel that might be carrying enemy soldiers or contraband for enemy subversives already in place. Merchant and Spruance also wanted him out of the office for a while. The report he’d written about Japanese-Americans not being threats to American security and the abuses they were suffering at the hands of cops and the army had ruffled some high-ranking feathers. General DeWitt had gotten a copy and he was furious, as was Governor Olson. Olson was a politician who was in deep trouble with the electorate, but John L. DeWitt was a three-star general in charge of the Fourth Army and the western states. Even though he was in the army, he had to be respected until he calmed down.

The PBY could fly at over ten thousand feet and her top speed was a hair under two hundred miles an hour. Her pilot was an ensign named Ronnie Tuller who appeared to be a teenager, although he insisted he was twenty-two.

“There’s a whole boatload of ships out there,” Tuller said, laughing at his own bad joke, “and we have to check them over visually. If we fly at a conservative speed, say one hundred and twenty-five miles an hour, we can stay out here for a very long time. We’d likely run out of food and toilet paper before we ran out of gas.”

Dane was seated in the co-pilot’s seat. “Could you fly this thing to Hawaii?”

“Stripped down, stuffed with fuel, and with a lot of luck, yes. Realistically, we’d probably get close, and then have to land in the ocean because we’d probably hit a headwind or have to detour around a storm. Why?”

“Just thinking of all the people trying to get off the islands,” he said. Thoughts of Amanda kept intruding. Where the hell was she?

“Understood,” Tuller said. “I have heard that the Japs have a seaplane that is even larger than this baby and can fly twice as far. Too bad we don’t have some of those. Maybe we could run a shuttle to Hawaii and back.” Too bad indeed, Dane thought.

Tuller banked the massive plane. A freighter was in view, heading north, and he skillfully turned toward it.

“Just so you know, Commander, the idea of using our seaplanes was kicked around, but it just wasn’t feasible. Filled with refugees, it would be too heavy to make it back. Getting there we’d doubtless have to land short and refuel, and that’d be a mess what with Jap ships and planes all around. That and the fact that there were so many people on Hawaii who’d want to leave, and so few planes, kinda nixed the idea.”

Dane nodded and reluctantly accepted the logic. The people on the Hawaiian Islands were trapped. But was Amanda?

Observers on the PBY checked out the freighter. It was flying an American flag and several of her crewmen waved at the plane. No one in the PBY was taking chances, however, and guns were trained on her. Memories of an innocuous-looking ship unloading Japanese troops at the Panama Canal were still too fresh.

Tuller waved back. “We’ll attempt to contact them by radio and try to determine that they are what they say they are and that no one’s being forced to do anything bad because there’s a gun to their heads. Odds are, everything’s okay, but you never know. Even if we do make radio contact, we can’t always believe what they’re telling us if we’re to do our job. They may not be saboteurs but they could be smugglers.”

Dane smiled tightly. “I suppose if they start shooting at us, we’ll know everything isn’t on the up and up.”

“Absolutely, Commander. If they do, we get to shoot back. It hasn’t happened yet, but we’re ready.”

The Catalina carried three .30-caliber machine guns and two fifties. She could also carry two tons of bombs, but had none on this flight. If the bombs weren’t dropped, landing with them still on their racks was dicey at best and could result in an explosion. The other alternative was to dump them into the ocean, which was a waste of good bombs.

They left the freighter behind and flew on to the next one, gave it a look-see and moved on. Dane was coming to the conclusion that this excursion was a waste of time. A steady stream of ships was flowing both north and south and generally staying fairly close to the coastline. Despite her long-range capabilities, the PBY wouldn’t fly too far out into the ocean this trip. Other long-range planes were doing that and trying to prevent the sort of sneak attack that had devastated the fleet at Pearl Harbor. Long-range radar installations were being constructed on the hills around major cities and would also provide warnings. Still, everyone knew that nothing would or could be foolproof. The coastline was just too long and the ocean too vast.

Many military personnel wished the Japanese would make an attack. While the American fleet was virtually nonexistent, just about every airfield, airstrip, or even flat piece of land around the major West Coast cities was lined with American fighters and bombers, all piloted by young men eager to take on the bastard sons of Nippon. Dane had seen figures saying that almost fifteen hundred U.S. planes were ready to be launched at the enemy, with more on the way. Types of fighters included a few of the older P39 and P40s, which were outclassed by the Japanese Zero. Planes lined up in growing numbers included the army’s P47, the navy’s F4F fighter, which was a carrier plane without carriers, and the army’s twin-tailed P38.

Tuller coaxed the plane to a higher altitude. “I know there are Jap subs out there. I think I might have spotted one a couple of days ago, but the damn thing dived before I could turn and attack it. Hell, maybe it was a whale. I just don’t understand why they don’t hit our shipping. Jeez, the ships down there are so vulnerable. They aren’t even sailing in convoys, which is stupid if you ask me.” He laughed. “Nobody does, of course.”

Dane looked at the distant ships with his binoculars. “The Japs have a different mentality,” he answered. “The Germans think it’s a great idea to attack our civilian ships, especially oil tankers, and they’re right. On the other hand, the Japs see attacking anything other than a warship as an insult to their manhood. ‘Warriors attack warriors’ is their philosophy according to their interpretation of bushido. I think some Jap skippers would actually disobey orders to attack a freighter or a tanker and save their torpedoes for warships instead.”

Tuller rolled his eyes. “That ain’t too smart. Those ships are our lifeblood.”

That’s right, Dane thought. And maybe they’ll regret that someday. He also realized that he’d been calling the Japanese by the derogatory term
Japs
. So much for absorbing the culture of Japan when he was a kid.

* * *

The great wall of water came on them like a giant black train in the middle of the night. One moment, Amanda was lightly holding the wheel and simply steering in the direction of California by keeping the boat aligned with the correct stars, and the next, the swiftly moving wave had blotted out the stars and the night. Before she could do anything more than scream, the wave crashed over the catamaran, inundating it and her under several feet of roaring water.

She lost her grip on the wheel and thought she was going to be swept overboard as the wave knocked her about. She swallowed what felt like gallons of salty, nauseating water. The lifeline Mack insisted everyone use, especially at night, caught and held her while her fingers tried to grab and claw at anything that would keep her on the cat. She was wearing a Mae West life jacket that might keep her afloat if she was swept overboard, but that was not what she wanted. If that happened, she’d be alone in the ocean and condemned to die a terrible death. She thought about that and desperately hung on to the deck and prayed that the line would hold.

The cat lurched upward and she thought it would flip over on its back like a turtle and kill her as it climbed the wave. A part of her mind recalled Mack saying that killer waves, rogues, sometimes appeared out of nowhere, squashing everything in their path. She also remembered him saying that a catamaran could go bow-down into the water and sink like a rock. She prayed for the boat to make it through the torrent.

After an eternity, the cat reached the wave’s peak, teetered, and lurched forward, skimming down the other side. It was a deadly and terrifying roller coaster ride.

It was over as quickly as it began. The rogue disappeared and continued on its journey. Amanda lay on the deck, gagging and vomiting the sea water she’d swallowed. She grabbed the lifeline and clawed her way back to the wheel, steadied it, and looped a rope around a spoke to keep it steady on course.

“Somebody!” she yelled. “Talk to me!”

She heard moans. Sandy had been on deck with her, and she was a few feet away, trying to get up. She was on her hands and knees, retching and shaking, but otherwise seemed unhurt. Okay, Amanda thought, now where were Mack and Grace? In the cabin, she recalled.

At first the cabin seemed okay, but then she saw that a wall had caved in. From inside came the ominous sound of silence. Reluctantly, she unclipped her lifeline and moved into the cabin. Grace lay on the floor. She was moaning softly and beginning to move. Her pulse was strong, so Amanda moved on to Mack. To her horror, she saw that his skull was distorted and he was drooling blood.

“Sandy, get in here.”

“I’m sick.”

“You’re a nurse and these people are hurt. Get your butt in here.”

Sandy came in a few seconds later. “Sorry,” she said sheepishly. “My mind wasn’t working.”

Grace was coming around. Her eyes were clear and she seemed more stunned than injured. Neither she nor Mack had been wearing their lifelines, nor anything else, Amanda noted. They checked Mack over and looked at each other in dismay. Grace crawled to them and confirmed their diagnosis—Mack had a depressed skull fracture along with several broken ribs, maybe a punctured lung, and God only knew what other internal injuries. Maybe he’d be able to tell them if he regained consciousness.

“I don’t think he’s going to recover,” Amanda said sadly. “He might stand a chance if we were first-class surgeons instead of nurses and if this was a great hospital instead of a dinky sailboat.”

“You’re right,” said Sandy while Grace sobbed. “All we can do is make him comfortable and hope for the best.”

There was one bunk and it was damaged. They repaired it as best they could and carefully laid Mack on it. He groaned but didn’t wake up. They tied him to it, tried to give him some water, and then went out on deck. A beautiful multihued Pacific dawn was rising but they didn’t see it. They were only dimly aware that the seas were as calm as an inland pond, with nothing to remind them of the horror of the night and the killer wave.

Amanda was aware that the others were looking at her for directions. Grace was the oldest, but leadership was never her strong suit.

She took a deep breath. “Okay, first of all we take inventory. What’s left in the way of food and water, is the sail damaged, and, oh yeah, is the radio working?”

It didn’t take long to confirm that the news was mostly bad. The radio was smashed, and some of the food had been swept overboard along with a couple of containers of precious water. They’d all thought their provisions had been secured, but obviously not well enough. Their sail had been slightly damaged, but it could be repaired and, besides, they had a spare. Fortunately, the mast was solid.

“We should all pray for rain,” Grace said.

“And for Mack,” Sandy added.

Amanda shook her head sadly. “He might die without us knowing much about him except that he was our friend.”

Grace smiled shyly. “His name is Maxwell Garver and he was an embezzler from Kansas City.”

“You’re joking,” Amanda said.

“Nope. He worked for a bank that doubled as a brokerage house and he was stealing from them for about five years. He took the money and put it into cash and securities because he thought opening an account, even in another bank, would attract attention. When the Crash came, both the bank and the brokerage disappeared before they caught on to the fact that they were short some money.”

“How much?” Sandy asked.

Grace shrugged. “Who knows? Mack said he wasn’t interested in going back and claiming it because he was perfectly fine with his current life. Right now, it is sitting in a safe-deposit box in San Francisco. He did, however, write up a will a few days ago leaving it all to the three of us to be divided equally. The Three Stooges was the way he put it. If he doesn’t live, it’s ours, whatever it is.”

Amanda laughed sardonically. “Are you telling me we could be filthy rich and dying of thirst in the middle of the world’s largest ocean?”

“He gave me the key to the box, but I couldn’t do anything with it unless I had something to prove it belonged to me, like the will. When we get there, I guess we’ll find out.”