The first assault waves had been Imperial marines, who had taken surprisingly heavy casualties, but they had been leapfrogged by the reinforced 38th Infantry. The marines had accomplished their purpose by establishing the beachhead; now it was the army’s task to complete the conquest. For once, cooperation between the two services had been fairly good. Neither wanted to bear the onus of failure, and both wanted the laurels of victory.

“I don’t know,” Goto answered after some thought.

Omori smiled. The boy had so much to learn, but at least he was honest. “Terror.”

Colonel Collins waved Jake Novacek into his office and shut the door. “Jake, in your humble opinion, what’re our chances of winning this thing?”

The junior officer laughed harshly. “Slim to none.” After several days of gathering their forces, the Japanese had moved. A double-pronged attack had been launched against the hastily made defensive line that ran across the middle of the island. Both American flanks were anchored on Schofield Barracks. Japanese infantry and armor had probed and, with suffocating air support, breached the line in several parts. As a result, Schofield was surrounded on three sides and was in grave danger of being cut off entirely.

An earlier attempt at a counterattack had been launched over Collins’s and Jake’s vehement protests. Both men had stressed the fact that any forward movement was hazardous and could be countered by the Japanese. To say the attack had fizzled would have been a compliment. Very few units even reached their jump-off points, and none launched their attacks at the assigned time. Those that finally did make piecemeal attacks were cut to pieces by the Japanese. At least a third of Oahu’s garrison was dead, wounded, or missing. If the pocket at Schofield was cut off or wiped out, the casualties would be at 50 percent.

Pearl Harbor and Honolulu were becoming a defensive perimeter with most of the garrison’s best soldiers already out of action. As in the Philippines, the Americans were fighting bravely and hard but were being overwhelmed. Within the Honolulu-Pearl perimeter, there was a great deal of confusion, with thousands of soldiers either separated from their units or, worse from Jake’s standpoint, noncombat troops who hadn’t held a rifle in years. Useless mouths was the phrase kicked around at headquarters.

Collins nodded thoughtfully. “You think Short’ll surrender?”

“He has to,” Jake answered.

“Will you?” Collins asked and saw surprise register on Jake’s face. “Look, Jake, I know what you’ve been up to. After all, I’m intelligence too, aren’t I? You’re going to bail out of the surrender and go it alone on this island, aren’t you?”

“True.” In the last couple of weeks, Jake had taken guns, ammunition, and rations from various storehouses and cached them in a number of places on the island. While he had given a good deal to Alexa and Melissa, much more had been buried elsewhere.

“Were you planning to run your own war?” Collins asked with a grin.

Jake took a deep breath. “Sort of. Joe, you ever been in jail?” Collins hadn’t. “As a young, dumb kid, I spent a few days in various smalltown jails and hated it. A POW camp is nothing more than a jail, only worse. In jail, at least you know how long your sentence is, or that you’ll be let out on Monday when you’ve sobered up. If the Japs put us in one of their camps, you’ll have no idea when you’ll get out. If ever.”

Collins agreed. News of atrocities in Japanese-run prison camps was slowly filtering through to the rest of the world. Both men knew that an extended stay in a Jap camp was equivalent to a death sentence. An ugly, agonizing death sentence.

“And no,” Jake said, “I wasn’t planning anything as foolish as starting a guerrilla war. The weapons and supplies are reserves in case they’re needed, but I was first planning to stay alive, and then I’d organize some kind of resistance, but not a war.”

Collins handed Jake an envelope. “I’m leaving tonight on that big Pan Am flying boat. It’s been painted black, and it’ll be taking off with a full complement of people. You’ll be on it.”

“What?”

“It’s all in the envelope. The navy has a problem. They’ve lost something important, and they want us to find it, and you in particular have been chosen to do it. The fools sat on the problem until it was almost too late. Apparently some important people were on a ship that got sunk and they wound up on the Big Island. Your job is to find them and make certain they don’t fall into Jap hands. That ought to tie in with your plans to skip the surrender ceremonies.”

“I’m damned,” Jake said.

“Probably. The navy would have the marines do it, but they’re all gone, so it’s up to us. You’ll have a squad of infantry with you. I don’t know who these people are on Hawaii, or why they’re so damned important, but it was stressed that the Japs cannot get their hands on them under any circumstances, is that understood?”

Jake understood. His orders were to kill them if capture appeared imminent. Good Lord, who were they?

“One other thing,” Collins said. “These navy types may have rank on you, and that cannot be permitted to interfere with your duties. You were just promoted to the temporary rank of major, right? Well, that’s been changed to a permanent grade, and you now have the temporary rank of lieutenant colonel. Who knows, if this damned war lasts long enough, you might outrank me, although you’ll never, ever, be smarter or better looking. Oh yeah, the orders also have you reporting directly to someone in Washington so you won’t be court-martialed if you decline to honor Short’s order to surrender. It won’t mean anything to the Japs, who’ll probably chop off your head if they catch you, but it might save your tail in the future.”

“Who’s the someone in Washington who’s now my boss?”

“Marshall,” Collins said and chuckled as Jake’s jaw dropped.

Jake’s emotions were mixed. Rank and recognition were things he’d always dreamed of, but they had come during an enormous and humiliating American defeat, and he was expected to be an assassin if it became necessary.

Collins laughed. “Like I said, we leave tonight. Get your things in order and be back here at ten.”

“I’m a bachelor and I’m totally dedicated to the army. There’s little to put in order.”

“Then go say good-bye to the widder woman you’ve been seeing and you think I don’t know about.”

“Bastard,” Jake said with a grin as he left Collins.

He didn’t want to leave Alexa alone in Honolulu, but at least he’d be free and not in a prison camp. In that case, perhaps he could help her out while attending to the rest of his plans. He would also ask a favor of Toyoza Kaga. Jake had no idea which way Kaga would leap when the Japs took over, but asking him to maintain a discreet observation of Alexa and Melissa was nonpolitical and couldn’t hurt.

Alexa tried not to cry. With Tim gone, Jake had become her friend and her anchor. That and the fact that she was genuinely fond of him made the thought of his leaving all the more upsetting.

Damn the military and its secrets, she raged inwardly. All Jake had been able to tell her was that he was departing for someplace that night. But if he had been going stateside, she realized, there would have been no need for secrecy. He hadn’t said he was going to the mainland, which meant he would still be someplace on or near the islands. Interesting.

On the plus side, Jake had brought some more supplies and a bottle of white wine, which she, Melissa, and Jake had finished. They’d had to drink it warm, but it still tasted good.

Melissa said she heard the baby crying and left the two of them sitting on the couch. Jake’s large hand was enfolded by Alexa’s two.

“The last time you left me,” she said, “I told you to be careful. I should have waited until this.”