Days of Infamy (doi-1) by Harry Turtledove

Author:Harry Turtledove [Turtledove, Harry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: sf_fantasy
ISBN: 0451460561
Publisher: Roc
Published: 2005-03-14T05:00:00+00:00

IX

ACCELERATION PRESSED LIEUTENANT SABURO SHINDO back into his seat as he roared off the Akagi ’s flight deck. He’d had the mechanics install steel plates in the back and bottom of the seat. A lot of Japanese pilots disdained the extra weight: it made their Zeros slower and less maneuverable. The Americans had carried much more armor than he did. It had saved a lot of pilots, or at least let them bail out. It hadn’t saved Hawaii, but he still thought it was a good idea.

Surrounded by a screen of destroyers, Akagi patrolled northeast of Oahu. The Japanese had also commandeered some big fishing sampans, mounted radios on them, and posted them in a picket arc close to a thousand kilometers out from the Hawaiian Islands. No carrier-based bomber could fly that far and return to the ship that had launched it. The United States wasn’t going to catch Japan napping, the way Japan had caught the USA.

Just in case the boats in that picket arc had missed something, Shindo watched the sky like a hawk. Some people slacked off when they didn’t expect to run into trouble. Shindo wasn’t one of those. Routine meant routinely capable, routinely excellent, to him.

He also glanced down at the ocean every now and again. Losing the Bordeaux Maru was a wake-up call for the Japanese Navy. That had happened more than three weeks ago now. The submarine that got the freighter was bound to be long gone. That didn’t mean others hadn’t come to take its place, though. Shindo couldn’t sink one if he spotted it on the surface: the Zero didn’t carry bombs. But he could shoot it up. If his machine guns and cannons filled it full of holes, it couldn’t submerge. Then it would be easy meat for bombers or destroyers.

Here, though, nothing marred the Pacific but the ships of the Japanese flotilla and their wakes. The rest of the ocean seemed glassy smooth. There was hardly any chop; the wind was the next thing to a dead calm. No big swells were rolling down out of the north, either, as they had been when the task force moved on Hawaii. Had those been much worse, the barges would have had trouble landing, and the invasion might have turned into a fiasco. Admiral Yamamoto had bet against the kami of wind and wave, and he’d won.

Shindo called the other fighter pilots flying combat air patrol: “Anything?”

A chorus of “No”s resounded in his earphones. Some pilots were even tempted to take the radio out of a plane to save weight. Shindo had issued stern orders against that. As far as he was concerned, staying in touch counted for more than the tiny bit of extra speed and liveliness you might gain from saving the kilos the radio weighed. Some people had grumbled about it, but he’d stood firm.

A sudden spurt of steam down below, foam and spray everywhere as a great bulk heaved itself out of the water. Excitement coursed through Shindo.

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