“You bastards!” Joe exclaimed. He swung his Hellcat out over the ocean-and one of the landing craft opened up on him with its.50-caliber machine gun, mistaking him for a Zero. “You bastards!” he said again, this time on an entirely different note. Fortunately, the sailor with the itchy trigger finger couldn’t shoot worth a damn.

And Joe spotted what he’d been looking for: the muzzle flash from the field gun. They’d put it right inside the wreckage of that big pink pile. He dove on it. His finger stabbed the firing button. Six tongues of flame flickered in front of the Hellcat’s wings. As always, the fighter staggered in the air; all at once, the engine had to fight the recoil from half a dozen guns banging away like sons of bitches. Joe controlled the plane through the rough part with a touch honed by practice.

G-force shoved him down hard into his seat as he came out of the dive. The bastard of it was, he couldn’t see what the hell he’d done, or even if he’d done anything. Every ten seconds took him another mile from the Royal Hawaiian.

Clang! A bullet slammed into the Hellcat. “Fuck!” Joe exclaimed. Yeah, the Japs were still doing everything they could-or maybe that was an American bullet running around loose. Either way, it was doing its best to kill him. Either way, its best didn’t seem good enough. “Way to go, babe,” Joe murmured affectionately, and patted the seat the way he would have patted a reliable horse’s neck.

He made one more pass over Waikiki. By the time he finished that one, only two of his guns still held ammo. Time to head for home. He flew back toward the Bunker Hill. They’d gas him up, the armorers would reload the guns, and then he’d be off again. It was almost like commuting to work. You could get killed in a traffic smashup, too.

You could, yeah, but the jerk in the other car was just a jerk. He wasn’t trying to kill you on purpose. The enemy damn well was. It made a difference. Joe was amazed at what a difference it made.

Twenty minutes later, his teeth slammed together as the Hellcat jounced home. At least he didn’t bite his tongue; every once in a while you’d see a guy get out of his plane with blood dripping down his chin. Joe ran across the flight deck and down to the wardroom to debrief. Things had become routine, or pretty close, but the powers that be still wanted as many details as pilots could give.

“Did you radio the position of that field gun so a dive bomber could pay it a visit?” the debriefing officer asked.

“Uh, sorry, sir, but no.” Joe thumped his forehead with the heel of his hand. “Christ, I really am an idiot!”

“Well, you did have other things on your mind,” the debriefing officer said generously. “Speaking of which, you need to see Commander McCaskill in his office right away-‘On the double,’ he said.”

“I do?” Joe yelped. Was he in trouble for not making that radio call? He didn’t think he ought to be in enough trouble for the Bunker Hill’s commander of air operations to ream him out in person. “What for, sir?”

“He’d better be the one to tell you that,” the debriefing officer answered.

Apprehensively, Joe went up to the carrier’s island. He found the door to Commander McCaskill’s office open. McCaskill, a craggy, gray-haired man in his early forties, looked up from his desk. “Ensign Crosetti reporting, sir,” Joe said, fighting not to show the nerves he felt.

“Come in, Crosetti,” the air operations commander said. “I’ve got something for you.” Joe couldn’t read anything in his voice or on his face; he would have made-probably did make-a formidable poker player.

“Sir?” Joe approached as reluctantly as a kid about to get a swat from the principal.

McCaskill reached into a desk drawer and pulled out two small boxes. He shoved them at Joe. “Here. These are yours now.” Joe opened them. One held two silver bars, the other two thin strips of gold cloth. McCaskill’s face had more room for a smile than Joe would have guessed. “Congratulations, Lieutenant Crosetti!” he said.

“My God, I made j.g.!” Joe blurted. It almost came out, Holy shit! Now that would have been something. He wondered if anybody ever had said something like that. He wouldn’t have been surprised.

Still smiling, the older man nodded. “You earned it, son. You’ve done well.”

“I wish Orson hadn’t bought the farm,” Joe said, suddenly sobered. “He would’ve got these way before I did.”

“Oh.” Commander McCaskill also sobered. After a moment’s thought, he said, “I don’t think you’ll find anyone on this ship without absent friends.” Now Joe nodded; that was bound to be true. McCaskill went on, “If it makes you feel any better, Mr. Sharp did win his promotion-posthumously.”

“Maybe a little, sir.” Joe knew he had to be polite. Yelling, Not fucking much! would have landed him in the brig. He wondered how much consolation that promotion was for Sharp’s folks back in Salt Lake. They would sooner have had their son back. Joe would sooner have had his buddy back. “Absent friends,” he muttered, and then, “This is a nasty business.”

“It is indeed,” Commander McCaskill said. “But I will tell you the only thing worse than fighting a war: fighting a war and losing it. We’re here to make sure the USA doesn’t do that.” Joe nodded again, not happily but with great determination.

OSCAR VAN DER KIRK CROUCHED IN THE RUBBLE of what had been his apartment building. He had one arm around Susie and the other around Charlie Kaapu. They all huddled together to take up as little space as they could. Oscar had a cut on his leg. Charlie was missing the top half-inch of his left little finger. Susie, as far as Oscar could tell, didn’t have anything worse than a few bruises. She’d always been lucky.

They were all lucky. Oscar knew it. They were alive, and they weren’t maimed. After everything that had hit the apartment, that was real luck. Not far away, somebody else who’d stuck it out was alternating moans and shrieks. The cries were getting weaker. Whoever it was, Oscar didn’t think he’d make it.

No way to get up and see, or to help the poor bastard. You could almost walk on the bullets flying by overhead. The Marines storming up Waikiki Beach were giving it everything they had. The more lead they put in the air, the less damage the last Japanese pocket in the Honolulu neighborhood could do to them.

And the Japs were fighting back with everything they had left. That meant rifles and machine guns and knee mortars. If one of those little bombs came down on top of Oscar and Susie and Charlie… That would be that. Or a U.S. shell could do the job just as well, or maybe even better.

“Now we know what’s worse that everything we ran into when we were surfing at Waimea!” Oscar yelled into Charlie’s ear.

“Oh, boy!” Charlie yelled back.

Back in college, Oscar had read Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus. He hadn’t understood it then. Now he had understanding rammed down his throat. You really could pay too much for some kinds of knowledge. If he lived, that would be worth remembering.

The Marines were only a block or so away. Oscar could hear them shouting at one another getting a new attack ready. With luck, this one would carry them past what was left of the apartment building. With even more luck, it wouldn’t kill his girl or his buddy-or him.

But he could also hear the Japs shouting a block or so to the north. It couldn’t mean… “They sound like they’re getting ready to charge, too,” Susie said.

And they did. “That’s crazy,” Oscar said. “They’d just be killing themselves.”

No sooner were the words out of his mouth than the Japanese soldiers or naval landing forces or whatever they were charged the Marines. They were screaming like banshees and shooting from the hip. It was so spectacular, and so spectacularly mad, that Oscar stuck his head up for a moment to watch. Heading the charge was a senior Japanese Navy officer in dress whites: bald and bespectacled and waving a sword. Oscar had to blink to make sure he wasn’t seeing things.