Rising Sun (22 page)

Yamamoto shook his head sadly. “For the time being they are on their own. The Americans are doubtless building airfields at several locations and will soon be able to bomb Yamasaki’s forces at will, as well as being able to inflict too much damage on any forces attempting to relieve or evacuate them. In short, our forces in Alaska are doomed. I have spoken with Prime Minister Tojo and he understands the situation. He is confident that Colonel Yamasaki and his men will fight on to the end as true Japanese warriors and will honor the code of bushido.”

Yamamoto scowled. “In the meantime, we must double and redouble our efforts to find that one remaining carrier. She and her escorts must be sunk if we are to continue with our position of strength. We must put pressure on all our intelligence resources to find her.”

More likely, he thought, she was no longer in the Pacific. He had to find out one way or the other. If the
Saratoga
had moved to the relative safety of the Atlantic, so be it. But if she was somewhere within striking range, she had to be destroyed, if only as a symbolic gesture.

CHAPTER 12

LIEUTENANT STEVE FARRIS WAS HOT, TIRED, AND DIRTY. AS A result of the train crash, the army’s duties had expanded to patrolling roads and railroad tracks, along with keeping track of who was using the beaches of the area. Some of his men wondered why, since it was announced that the crash was merely a tragic accident, but Farris knew better and some of his men suspected the truth. His uncle had quietly and confidentially told him that it had indeed been sabotage, and that there had been several other minor incidents as well. Nobody’d been hurt and damage had been minimal in the other incidents, and it was not definite that it had been the same person or persons as those who’d derailed the freight train.

Both the navy and the army decided that the rail lines would be patrolled, and a several-mile stretch of tracks was now the responsibility of Lytle’s recon company, with Farris’s platoon having its own section to patrol.

Farris initially thought he’d exercise his prerogatives as an officer and ride in a jeep while others actually walked the tracks in the hot sun, but two things changed his mind. First, the tracks did not run parallel to most roads, which meant that he would at times be a long ways from his men and, second, it didn’t seem right that he would be in relative comfort while his men hiked. Sometimes he thought it was hell to have both a conscience and a sense of responsibility. But if he didn’t, then he’d be just like his prick of a company commander.

Stecher was back at camp with one squad, while the third patrolled the beaches. Another reason for taking a hands-on approach was the fact that this squad’s leader, Sergeant Adamski, was a tall raw-boned kid from Chicago who’d recently gotten his third stripe. Farris wanted to see how the young buck sergeant operated with a number of men, many of whom were older than he was. So far, so good, he thought. Nobody seemed to be taking advantage of the young sergeant.

Farris let Adamski take the lead while he brought up the rear. It was a pleasant though warm day and the scenery was pretty. As tail end, he could dawdle and enjoy the view as well as observe his men. The sun was shining brightly, so the mountains in the distance could be seen clearly. One of these days he thought he’d like to go hiking or camping up one of them. The only times he’d slept in a tent were while bivouacking during basic and OCS, and that hadn’t been fun at all. He’d only fished a couple of times in his life and thought he might like to try that as well. Then he thought that cleaning and cooking fish might be a little more than he wished to take on.

Farris also thought it would be nice to camp out with a real live girl and maybe both get naked in a sleeping bag. Maybe she would even clean and cook the fish he would catch. Damn, it had been a long time since he’d even talked to an attractive and single young woman. He thought it funny that the enlisted men were certain that young officers like him got all the women they could handle.

Sure. The army was sexless and monastic, and he was in command of forty horny young guys, including himself. He’d heard that there were whores in town and really cheap hookers down across the border in Tijuana, but there was no way he was going to take a chance on getting the clap and fucking up his life. He laughed at his pun and wondered if he’d be young enough to start a family when the war finally ended. If the pressure got too bad, he could always resort to Rosie Palm or Mother Five-fingers if he had to, but it hadn’t gotten that bad yet. Jesus, what if he ever got caught playing with himself? A couple kids had gotten caught and became objects of scorn and ridicule.

“Lieutenant! Come quick!”

Adamski was standing over the tracks and the rest of his men had scattered. Farris ran up and looked down on the tracks.

“Oh, shit,” Farris said. “Is that what I think it is?”

A small device sat over the rail and it was connected to a box underneath. If it wasn’t a bomb, it would do until a real one came along. He checked his watch. According to the schedule he’d gotten, a large freight train was due to pass by in less than an hour.

He sent the sergeant and a couple of men up the tracks to try and wave down the train if they had to. He radioed the captain and was told he was unavailable, which meant he was too drunk to answer the call.

“Damn it,” he muttered as he fumbled for a piece of paper he’d been given by his Uncle Tim. A phone number had been written on it, and Farris had one of his brighter troops climb a telephone pole and tap into a line. He called and an FBI agent named Harris responded and said he’d get the train stopped and would be there as quickly as possible.

Harris said that Steve should not touch the device. “Don’t you worry,” Farris said.

The soldier up the telephone pole called out and pointed. A dark-colored Ford station wagon was pulling into a dirt road a mile or so away, and it looked like one of those with wooden paneling.

An hour later, Harris drove up in a civilian car and showed his credentials. A few moments later, a navy sedan arrived and Dane emerged.

“Glad you called me right away instead of trying to get through channels,” Harris said.

Farris smiled. “Channels were sort of interrupted.”

Harris nodded. “I understand. Your CO’s an asshole. Your uncle said you were smart and he was right. You did the correct thing.”

“We’ll take care of Lytle later,” Dane said, acknowledging that it was touchy for a navy officer to complain about an army equivalent.

A couple of army trucks arrived and half a dozen men climbed down. Harris explained that they were ordnance experts who were skilled in demolitions. Hopefully, they could disarm the bomb, if it was a bomb.

“On the off chance they can’t and something bad happens,” Harris said, “let’s say we get a few hundred yards away where we can’t be hurt if it goes off. Of course, the bomb disposal guys would be fucked, but that’s life.”

When the three of them were at a safe distance, Harris asked if anybody had seen anything and was told about the dark-colored Ford wagon. Harris nodded. “One of the witnesses at the first explosion said he thought he saw a black Ford station wagon along with a small group of other vehicles, but that doesn’t prove a damn thing. One sighting means nothing, two could be a coincidence, but three or more is a pattern. I just hope we end this before there are many more sightings.”

“All clear,” yelled one of the ordnance men, who put an object down and stepped away. He’d been told to leave any evidence as close as possible to where it had originally been.

Another car with two more FBI agents arrived and began interviewing Farris’s soldiers. Farris, Dane, and Harris walked over to the dismembered bomb.

“Nothing much at all,” Harris said on examining the device. “A couple of sticks of TNT and an impact detonator. It’s just like the last time. We’ll check for prints, but I’ll bet you a dollar, gentlemen, that we won’t find a thing. Even if we did it’s a snowball’s chance in hell that we’d be able to connect them with anyone.”

“Can we trace the dynamite?” Dane asked. “At least this time the sticks are intact.”

Harris shook his head. “No unique markings on the sticks, and there’s got to be a couple of hundred construction companies, mining enterprises and such around here who are supplied by a score of businesses legitimately selling explosives. They could have been bought anywhere, or even stolen.”

“At least he didn’t cause any damage,” Farris said hopefully.

Dane laughed. “Didn’t he? This is a single line track, which means trains come and go both ways all according to an elaborate dance so nobody runs into someone else. Now that schedule is all fucked up and it’ll be some time before it gets straightened out. Yeah, you’re right in that nobody got killed or injured, but the saboteur is still messing with the war effort. And who knows what might happen the next time. We got lucky that your man spotted it. If the saboteur had put it down at night, who knows what might have happened.”

“Worse,” Harris added, “there’s no way we can keep this quiet. Just too many people know about it now. We can and will try to keep it out of the newspapers, but rumors will be all over Southern California and people are going to think twice before they go on a train or drive over a bridge.”

“What do we do now?” Farris asked.

Dane smiled and slapped his nephew on the shoulder. “Well, you get to keep walking up and down train tracks while Agent Harris and I get a bite to eat.”

* * *

Wilhelm Braun was even more frustrated than usual. Another attempt to derail a train had gone awry. Even with the help of the skilled and physically powerful Gunther Krause he was accomplishing nothing. He’d tried to blow up a couple of vehicle bridges and underestimated the amount of dynamite it would take. He had a goodly supply of explosives, but it would not last forever. Braun was not confident he would be able to buy any more locally. Logic told him that merchants had been warned to be on the lookout for anyone buying dynamite, especially someone with an accent, and to report it to the police or FBI. He would live with what he had.

So far, the best that had happened after destroying that first freight train was that he’d caused some traffic tie-ups and delayed a few other trains.

It was not what he or Berlin had in mind. To complicate matters, he had just received a coded message that he was to concentrate on finding out the location of the American naval squadron that included the carrier
Saratoga
. He snorted and took a swallow of his beer. The Americans made miserable beer. The only thing this bottle of something brewed in California had going for it was the fact that it was cold. Mexican beer was even worse. A friend in the Mexico City embassy had described it as cold horse piss and, even though he had never tried horse piss, he thought the description was likely apt. To make matters even worse, the alcohol content was low.

“What now?” asked Krause.

“Where would you look for an aircraft carrier?”

“Why, in the ocean, sir,” he said cheekily, forgetting the fact that they were to use first names.

“Krause, when we get back to Germany I will have you broken to the rank of private.”

The sergeant took his own beer from the old refrigerator, popped the bottle top, and took a swallow. He shook his head and grimaced. “At least it’s cold,” he said, and Braun chuckled.

“Seriously,” Krause continued, “do you think we will ever get back to the Reich? There’s a huge ocean between us and Europe and a number of belligerent nations who’d like nothing better than to kill us. And what the devil are we doing playing at helping the fucking slanty-eyed Japs? They should be waiting on tables for us at best, or even going to camps like we are sending the fucking Jews.”

Braun couldn’t argue with him. He’d tried so many times to rationalize the point that helping the Japs helped Germany, but he had done so little to help the Japs it was sad.

“What are you suggesting?” Braun asked.

“I suggest we lie low for a while, unless some target of opportunity pops up and is irresistibly tempting. The Americans are doubtless checking mail and monitoring phone calls, so that leaves our radio, which, if we use it too often, will enable the enemy to triangulate and find us.”

“We could, of course, move the radio,” Braun said thoughtfully.

“Excellent to a point, but every time we’d dismantle it we’d be running the risk of damaging it, or, worse, being stopped by the police for any reason. A simple speeding ticket or a small accident and we would be found out. How would we explain the existence of a shortwave radio in our truck?”

Krause was right, of course. He was smart and more than a thug, which was why Braun had wanted him as the second man on his two-man team. Despite the disparity in their ranks, their long relationship went beyond simple respect.

“Krause, have you heard anything about the
Saratoga
in your wanderings through San Diego’s bars?”

Krause laughed. “I wouldn’t dream of bringing up the topic, but every now and then somebody wonders where she is and when she’ll be coming back, but nobody seems to know.”

In his own wanderings and listenings, Braun had picked up pretty much the same thing. One rumor that kept repeating itself was that the top brass had told the admiral in charge of the
Saratoga
and her escorts to get lost and not tell anyone in the Pacific Fleet where they were or what their plans were. That, of course, killed any idea of ferreting out the carrier’s location.

Nor could he and Krause get any help locally. They were swimming alone in a hostile sea. They had to maintain the facade of Swenson Engineering, which meant they periodically had to drive the truck or station wagon to fictitious work sites, lest the neighbors get suspicious and call the police.

Braun took a long swallow of the cold horse piss and weak beer. “What we will do is quite simple. We will continue to send reports saying how hard we are working and what difficulties we are encountering. In the meantime, we will continue to look for targets to destroy, along with anything new that comes up. I am not quite ready to write this off as a useless venture, no matter how frustrating it might be.”