A distant rumbling sound rolled over the sub and rocked it, causing some of his men to gasp in surprise. Someone was being fired upon, and Hashimoto concluded that the target was probably one of the numerous midget submarines that were also trying to sink American ships. The Americans were alerted and it would now be a time of great peril for the I-58.

He was about to order the I-58 back down to the bottom when a thought struck him and he smiled. It was indeed a time of great peril, but might it not be a time of great opportunity as well?

"Up periscope," he ordered, and enjoyed seeing the dismay on Yokochi's face. Lieutenant Yokochi was a fool and the type of man who would never had made it to the rank of lieutenant had there not been so many casualties in the navy.

Hashimoto stared through the lens as additional explosions vibrated along the I-58's hull. Someone was getting heavily depth-charged. He felt a momentary twinge of regret for the agonies of his unknown countrymen, but he was more concerned by the possibility that this was his chance to penetrate the American destroyer screen.

He looked at the American destroyers and smiled. Like predators moving in for the kill, the warships were streaking away from the I-58. Two Fletcher-class destroyers positively raced past his view in their haste to join in the fun of the final attack. The result was a gap in their lines. It would only exist for a while, but it did exist at this moment.

"Ha!" he exulted, and ordered the still submerged I-58 toward the gap at flank speed. He ignored the sharp intake of breath from his officers, especially Yokochi. He ordered the periscope down and stood by it with his arms folded across his chest. If any of the American ships did detect him underneath the water with their sonar, the I-58 could be doomed.

Minutes of waiting stretched into eternity. The American line of warships had been only a couple of miles away. He calculated time and speed; they were right where the Americans had been. If his gamble was successful, they would now proceed without incident into the heart of the hive and steal the honey. Hashimoto decided he liked the analogy.

If they'd been detected, or if one of the American ships that had left station realized that a mistake had been made and returned to its place, then the I-58 would likely be located and destroyed.

Further minutes crept by and he willed himself to relax, but not show his surging emotions. The men of the I-58 must believe that their captain had everything under control at all times. Beside him, Yokochi had checked his watch and figured it out as well. He smiled timidly at his captain, who chose not to acknowledge it.

They were past the defenses. Now they were in the heart of the American fleet. It would be full daylight in a little while. Once again the I-58 would lie on the bottom and wait for darkness to return. This time, however, when night fell, the sub would be the hunter and not the hunted. This night Hashimoto would be the predator.

Chapter 35

Seaman Tim Jardine rubbed his burning eyes and leaned against the mount of the 40mm antiaircraft gun that was his battle station on the Augusta. He was supposed to be resting while others scanned the darkened sea and skies for signs of the Japanese. Everyone on board the nine-thousand-ton heavy cruiser was tired from days of being at their battle stations. It was so bad Tim wondered if they would be capable of fighting if a Jap plane did manage to find them. All he and the others really wanted was to go to sleep and the hell with the Japs.

At least they were able to let some of the men rest and doze while the others watched and waited through the night. He wished he could have a cigarette, but orders were to keep everything as dark as possible.

Jardine caught the shadow of motion behind him and froze. At the last possible second he recognized the famous silhouette and snapped to attention. He was about to salute when Gen. Douglas MacArthur swept by him, unseeing and apparently deep in thought.

Jardine turned to his mates and hissed, "Hey! You guys see that? It was MacArthur, his royal self."

"You mean Dugout Doug in the flesh?" chuckled Carl Haverman, one of Jardine's buddies in the gun mount. A couple of the others laughed softly as well.

Jardine looked at the disappearing figure as MacArthur headed toward the bow of the cruiser. "Shit, I hope he didn't hear you. I got this thing about not insulting five-star generals. Piss one of them off and he can really make your life miserable."

Haverman snorted. "I don't care if he hears us or not. What the hell can he do to us, huh? Hell, he's the reason we're here, ain't he? If it weren't for him flicking up so badly in the Philippines and all over the ocean, we'd all be home by now."

Jardine looked to see if anyone else had heard Haverman's comments. He was particularly concerned that the ensign on duty didn't take offense, but that young man was hunched over in his chair and snoring deeply.

MacArthur was considered a hero by some for his actions, and a bum by others. There was little middle ground. Either you admired the man or you thought he was scum. Jardine tended to admire him, feeling that people didn't get to five-star rank on charm alone. He rubbed his eyes again and tried to rest. In a little while it would be his turn to look into the night and try to differentiate between twinkling stars and a Jap fighter.

Alone on the bow of the Augusta, Douglas MacArthur gripped the rail and tried to peer through the night toward Japan. Only the slight glint of starlight off his West Point ring of the class of 1903 was visible.

Although an older man who needed glasses to read, his hearing was excellent and he had heard Haverman's comment calling him Dugout Doug. He had heard it a thousand times before and even seen it in print. It wasn't fair. None of the disasters of late 1941 and early '42 were his fault.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had put him in an impossible position, then blamed him when the Japanese had swarmed over the Philippines and caused the surrenders of Bataan and Corregidor along with tens of thousands of American and Philippine troops. Gen. Douglas MacArthur also held the rank of field marshal in the Philippine army. He had wanted to stay with his men of both nations and fight alongside them, perhaps die with them.

Roosevelt would have none of it. There had been too great a risk that MacArthur would have been captured instead of killed, then displayed as a trophy by the Japs. Instead, Roosevelt had ordered MacArthur to escape to Australia. MacArthur had reluctantly complied and, along with his wife and young son, taken the danger-filled trek across the southern Pacific.

Only when he arrived at Australia did he understand Roosevelt's treachery as augmented by his other enemy, General Marshall. MacArthur's understanding was that he would retain control over the army in the Philippines, but Marshall placed Lt. Gen. Jonathan Wainwright in command. Wainwright had surrendered, not MacArthur. MacArthur had wanted Wainwright to fight on, but Wainwright had received permission from Marshall to surrender not only Bataan and Corregidor, but all of the Philippines. It was outrageous. Some of the land and soldiers surrendered hadn't been threatened and could have held out as armed enclaves for quite some time, perhaps until being reinforced.

Of course, as he later found out, there were to be no reinforcements. Roosevelt had decreed that Nazi Germany was the primary threat to America and that the Pacific war could wait. Instead of an army, MacArthur had been given only handftils of units and dribbles of reinforcements with which to launch limited and bloody offensives. Even so, he had persevered and won island after island and battle after battle, culminating in the liberation of the Philippines in 1944 and now, the ultimate, the invasion of Japan herself.