42

SHOWA YEAR 20, SECOND MONTH, 21ST DAY

21 FEBRUARY 1945

The third chamber had caught most of the blast. As he squirmed into the entranceway, Earl saw that the big automatic weapon was atilt and two men, standing over the body of a third, struggled to restore it to a firing position. Goddamn, they were good, the little bastards. Fighting so hard, no matter that death was here for them, to kill a few more marines. You had to respect them, even as you killed them, and kill them he did, one spray that caught them in tracer and clouds of debris from the bullet-strikes against concrete behind them. He stepped forward in aggression. Then he caught a flash of movement in his peripheral, turned, and saw that it was too late, as a man with a sword drove forward, had him cold and uncoiled, the sword diving toward his neck.

But then it stopped. There was a frozen moment when the sword caught on the ceiling for some reason, and the arc was interrupted.

Earl pulled back in panic, swept left and fired. The gun fired three times, went empty, but the three had all hit. The Japanese officer went down. He squirmed into the fetal position, blood pooling beneath him hard and black and glossy in the low, smoky light of the gun pit. He moaned, convulsed, thrashed.

Kill him! Earl thought.

He dumped the light machine gun, and his hand flew to his.45; he got it up, jacked back the hammer, and put the sight on the man’s head.

Kill him!

But he couldn’t. The man was twisting in great pain, his jaws clamped shut. Earl quickly stuffed the pistol back in its holster, reached around for his first-aid kit, and pulled out a Squibb morphine syrette. Quickly, he broke the glass casing that shielded the needle, removed the needle, and reversed it to puncture the tube seal, then screwed the needle onto the neck. All he had to do was inject the needle point and squeeze the tube.

He bent to the man, pulled back his tunic collar to expose some neck, and placed the pinprick against the flesh, and-

The American fired from just outside the entrance. His gun threw light into the room, like the sparkly contents of a pail of water. Then the man stepped into the room to make sure and Captain Yano uncoiled.

He had done it a thousand, a hundred thousand times, felt the muscles charge with power as the sword acquired speed and certainty, flashed through its arc and hungered for flesh. He had him cold, for he was so ahead of the reaction time that the hairy beast could do nothing but die. The blade would shatter the clavicle bone, cut through spine and lungs and heart, continue to the intestines; he would drive on, cutting, then withdraw on the same plane and-

Then he felt his foot, thrust forward in the stroke, alight atop something hard, so he was two inches high and the sword caught on the ceiling and its vibration of disaster flowed from point down shaft to grip-from kissaki down to nakago-and in the second he lost, the hairy one squirmed right, spun the gun, and it erupted.

He did not feel himself fall. He did not feel his legs. What he felt was that he’d been drenched in hot, steaming water. The pain soon localized into three bad sites, and his fingers clawed at them, to hold the blood in, but he could not. He lay on his side, his knees up, feeling his life drain away.

He felt the American on him. He felt the pressure of the other body, he felt the hands go to his neck.

He cuts my throat!

His hands bunched at his stomach, his elbows drawn in, he suddenly realized he had a whisper of advantage, for his enemy considered him dead already and in that second his elbow achieved force and speed and it slammed hard into the man’s face just under the eye, driving him back, and again the captain elbowed him in the face, driving him back still more in a moment of stunned weakness. The captain, liberated from the weight of the man, drove himself at him.

They rolled in the dirt. The captain seemed to get his hands around the American’s throat, but a punch arrived from nowhere, breaking his grip, knocking out two teeth. He slammed the American under the eye with the palm of his hand, feeling the blow strike hard, hearing the other man grunt. They pounded into each other’s torsos with fists and open hands, their sweat fell on each other’s faces, they tried to find leverage bracing against the floor.

He knew he would die; his strength was ebbing and the pain in his guts rose.

Gradually the stronger American seemed to prevail, but the captain thought of kendo, of perfect emptiness, and found a blow to the throat, and the man jacked upright, lost his grip, and somehow the captain put strength in it, then took it away, and the American’s own strength toppled him, so the captain slithered over him, and was atop him in terrible intimacy. His right hand flew to the leather haft of a knife the American wore on his belt; he snatched it, again feeling the friction as the blade freed itself from a metal scabbard. He rammed his wrist into the man’s throat, driving him back, and continued on the roll, thrusting the knife upward, nesting it between two ribs so that it would slide easily into the central chest cavity. The grip was wood or leather, grooved heavily, a little thick for him, but he controlled it quickly enough, securing it in his strong fingers. He felt the knife point pressuring the skin, the skin fighting, then yielding, as the blade penetrated a quarter of an inch. Two ounces more of pressure and he could thrust through to the man’s heart and take one more with him.

Earl was dead. Where did the scrawny man find the strength? He looked into the Japanese’s eyes, felt the pinprick of the blade of his KA-BAR between his ribs, and fought to get his hands around the man’s throat but was too late.

I am dead, he thought.

He got me.

He beat me.

He closed his eyes. He felt the wrist heavy against his throat, smelled sweat and oil and fish, felt their two hearts beating almost against each other, locked in the murder embrace.

The deadly point of the KA-BAR probed his skin, bent it down, maybe drew a drop of blood. It would slide in easily, climb through lung tissue, and find the clump of muscle called his heart.

Oh, Christ, Junie, I tried so hard.

The captain leaned into the knife hilt and-stopped.

He saw on the ground next to the American’s head a flexible metal tube with a syrette screwed to its mouth. He realized instantly it was morphine. The American hadn’t been trying to cut his throat; he’d been trying to ease his pain.

He drew back. It seemed suddenly wrong to kill a man who meant to save him.

But it seemed wrong to surrender to him too.

I wish I done gave you a child, I am so sorry to leave you alone. There wasn’t no time, I had so much to tell you.

But he felt an immense liberation as the pinprick went away and the man somehow heaved himself off Earl’s body, and lay a foot away, breathing hard.

A smile came to the man’s grimy face.

“Samurai,” he said.

Then he reversed the heavy war knife, plunged it into his own neck, where a major artery carried a river of blood to his brain. The jab was expert, and the blood spurted out in a bright and gaudy fountain. In eight seconds his brain had devoured the oxygen and glucose that remained, and his eyes closed.

“He killed himself,” Susan said.

“Yeah. Dad told Sam he thought the guy may have seen the morphine single he was trying to inject. It was right there on the floor next to them. Or maybe Hideki Yano had had enough killing. Or maybe he was saying, I’m the better man, I can kill you or not, and then I can embrace death. Whatever, my father always felt he’d lost that battle. The Japanese officer won it. And for whatever reason in the middle of a battlefield, the worst battle on earth, the most dangerous-on a ‘moon of hell,’ as someone called it-the officer let Earl Swagger live. That’s why my dad gave up that sword. Maybe that’s why he never talked about the medal. And also because of that, Earl got to go home, where he got his wife pregnant and they had a little boy called Bob Lee. And how Mr. Earl loved that boy, and helped him and taught him. So Bob Lee not only got his own life in the deal, he got nine more years with his daddy, who was a great man. And thirty-odd years down the worthless road, Bob Lee himself got a daughter out of it, and she’s a great one too. It all goes back to the decision that Japanese officer made in that pillbox. So you could say Bob Lee, he owes the Yanos something big. Call it on, call it whatever you want. But what he owes them is everything.”