Mortars and artillery pounded the Japanese in front of Iolani Palace. Les wouldn’t have wanted to be a Jap, pinned down by superior firepower and with no place to go. But he’d already seen the slant-eyed monkeys had no quit in them. Maybe that barrage knocked out some of their strongpoints, but the ones that survived kept right on shooting.

Dauntlesses roared down out of the sky to bomb the Japs. The ground shook under Les. Blast slugged him like a Sugar Ray Robinson right-and he wasn’t even the target. No, he wouldn’t have wanted to trade places with the Emperor’s samurai.

Marines started dashing across Richards toward the palace grounds. Even after the dive bombers came in, the Japs had plenty of machine guns waiting for them. And snipers in the buildings on this side of the street took a toll, too.

A lieutenant from another company dove into the doorway with Les. “We’re going to have to clear this whole block,” he said.

“What? You and me?” Lieutenant or no lieutenant, Les was ready to tell him to piss up a rope if he said yes to that. Combat was one thing, and bad enough all by itself. Suicide when suicide wouldn’t do you or your side any good was something else again. As far as Les was concerned, the Japs were welcome to that.

But the officer, who’d probably been born about the time when Les started going over the top in France, shook his head. “No, no, no,” he said. “I’ve got some men following me. If they don’t get chopped up too bad, they’ll be along.”

“Okay, sir. That’s business,” Les said. The junior officer wasn’t asking his men to do anything he wouldn’t do himself, and he’d got here ahead of them. Les asked, “How are they fixed for grenades?”

“Lots,” the lieutenant said, which was the right answer. While waiting for the rest of the Marines to get there, Les kicked in the door. If Japs had lurked right behind it, he would have been dead long since. He went inside, his heart pounding. Then he had company, lots of company. It helped-some.

Clearing that block across the street from the palace grounds was as nasty a job as he’d ever been part of. The Japs, as usual, wouldn’t retreat and wouldn’t surrender. They had grenades, too. He would hear them banging the damn things on a helmet or against a wall to start their fuses. That would be the signal to duck into an office or back around a corner when you could, then to move forward again once the enemy grenades went off.

It might as well have been trench warfare. Along with the grenades, it came down to hand-to-hand more than once. Some Hawaiians fought alongside the Japs. Instead of being small and tough, they were big and tough, and no more inclined to surrender than Hirohito’s boys.

“Just my luck,” Les panted after the Marines finished a knot of them. He had blood on his bayonet and blood on his boots. The stink of it filled the air. “Some of these Hawaiian fuckers quit as soon as they got the chance-but none of the ones I ever ran into.”

“Maybe they don’t like you, Sarge,” a Marine said.

“Wouldn’t be surprised,” Les said. The other leatherneck had put a bayonet into the kidneys of the Hawaiian he’d been fighting, so he couldn’t complain about undue familiarity. “Got a butt on you? I’m out.”

“Sure.” The Marine handed him a pack.

He took one and lit it with a Zippo. “Thanks, buddy. Damn, I needed that.” He gratefully sucked in smoke.

“I believe you,” the other Marine said. “Some of the people here, they’d rather have cigarettes than food, and they’re so goddamn skinny, they look like they oughta go into the hospital. It’s a funny business.”

“Yeah.” Les looked down at the Camel between his index and middle fingers. A thin, curling ribbon of smoke rose from it. “Wonder how come you want ’em so goddamn bad. They don’t do that much for you-not like booze or anything-but they sure get their hooks in.” He shrugged. “Fuck, what difference does it make?”

“None I can see,” the other Marine answered. “We’re gonna have to clean out the stinking palace next, won’t we? Boy, that’ll be fun.”

“Yeah, maybe even more fun than we just had here.” Les took another drag. His eyes crossed as he tried to focus on the glowing coal. “Well, we knew pretty damn quick this was gonna be a game of last man standing. Can’t be that many Japs left.”

“Here’s hoping,” the other Marine said.

WHEN PROPAGANDA AND MILITARY NECESSITY RAN into each other, propaganda had to take a back seat. Minoru Genda understood that. Unfortunately, the Americans did, too. They were methodically knocking down Iolani Palace above his head. They might even get propaganda mileage out of that-something on the order of, We had to destroy this historic building to liberate it. Before long, Japan would be in no position to contradict them.

If not for the basement, which had been the preserve of servants and bureaucrats in days gone by, the palace would have been uninhabitable. As things were, Genda took refuge there with a few Japanese soldiers-his unofficial runner, Senior Private Furusawa, among them-and with King Stanley Owana Laanui and Queen Cynthia.

King Stanley was holding up better than Genda would have expected. He was holding up better than a lot of the soldiers, in fact. He gave Genda a crooked smile and said, “Well, this didn’t work out the way we expected, did it?”

“Please excuse me, your Majesty, but it did not,” Genda said. “Karma, neh? We did the best we could.”

“I know. I’m not mad.” Stanley Laanui laughed. “I oughta be, huh?”

“What do you mean?” Genda asked cautiously. If the King of Hawaii knew about his affair with the Queen… Genda almost laughed, too. What difference did it make now? No matter how you sliced it, none of them was going to live much longer. A couple of 105mm shells slammed into the palace to underscore that. Something up above Genda fell over with a crash-one of the cast-iron columns supporting the second story?

But King Stanley said, “If you’d picked somebody else to put a crown on, he’d be in the hot seat now, and I’d be off somewhere else thinking, Better you than me, you poor, sorry bastard.”

“You were a good king,” Cynthia Laanui said. “You are a good king.” She set a hand on his arm. Genda had to work to keep his face impassive. She might have had fun with him-she had had fun with him-but she did love her husband. Or if she didn’t, she wouldn’t show it now, not when everything was falling apart.

“No offense to you, sweetheart, but I always did want to give the USA one right in the eye,” Stanley Laanui said. “I was just a little kid when that damn Dole and the rest of those pirates hijacked the kingdom, but I always figured I owed ’em one. So I tried to pay ’em back-and now they’re paying me back.” Up above, something else came down, hard enough to make the floor over their heads shake. Whatever it was, it had almost come through the floor.

A machine gun mounted at the edge of the dry moat began to chatter. If the U.S. Marines wanted Iolani Palace, they would have to pay the price for it. They did want it, and they were paying.

“All over now,” King Stanley said. “All over.” He had a U.S. Army.45 in a holster on his belt-a brute of a pistol that would knock over a horse, let alone a man. He took it out and looked at it. “Better to go this way than to let those shitheads catch me and hang me.” No Japanese could have put it better.

“Yes,” Cynthia said softly. She eyed the pistol with a strange fascination-half longing, half dread. “They wouldn’t let us go on living for very long, and they’d have fun with us before they did hang us or shoot us. We did what we did, and it didn’t quite work-you’re right-and now it’s time to close the door.”

Stanley Laanui glanced over to Genda. “Shall I give you one between the eyes before I finish Cyndi and me?” he inquired. The way things were, he might have asked the question anyhow. But the words held a certain bitter edge. He does know , Genda thought. His gaze flicked to Cynthia. She must have realized the same thing, for she couldn’t hide her surprise and alarm.