Not here. These landing boats had real steel sides and front, protecting the men in them. Shimizu stared in honest envy. He wished his own country could have made landing craft like them.

A few Japanese airplanes swooped low to attack the boats. They did some damage, but fearsome American fighters like the ones that had shot up Shimizu’s regiment hacked several of them out of the sky. Shimizu groaned to see a beautiful Zero reduced to nothing but a slick of gasoline burning on the surface of the sea.

“Be ready!” the noncom called to whoever could hear him. “They’re getting close.”

Behind him, somebody with an officer’s authority in his voice shouted, “The enemy must not get off the beach! We will drive him back into the Pacific! Banzai! for the Emperor! May he live ten thousand years!”

“Banzai!” Shimizu joined in the cry. It heartened him. If he thought about the Emperor, that enormous fleet out there and all the accompanying air power didn’t seem-quite-so terrifying.

An artillery shell scored a hit on one of the landing ships. A column of smoke rose from the big vessel, but it managed to reach the beach. The doors at the bow opened. Out rumbled a tank, a snorting monster bigger and fiercer-looking than anything Japan built. On it came, sand flying up from its churning tracks.

The smaller landing boats were coming ashore, too. The men who scrambled out of them wore green uniforms, not the khaki the Americans had used before. Their helmets were also new: domed like the Japanese model rather than British-style steel derbies.

“Forward!” that officer yelled. “We must throw the invaders into the sea! I will lead you!”

Forward was the last direction Takeo Shimizu wanted to go. But I will lead you! was hard to ignore, and the habit of obedience to orders was as strong in him as in any other Japanese soldier. When the officer ran by, katana in hand, Shimizu scrambled out of his foxhole and ran after him.

Mortar bombs and artillery shells burst among the Americans on the beach. Men fell, men flew, men were torn to pieces. Machine-gun and rifle fire ripped into the Yankees, too. Not all of them went down, worse luck. A bullet cracked past Shimizu’s head. He threw himself down behind a boulder. Another bullet spanged off the front of it.

He had to make himself get up and run on. Combat got no easier because he’d been away from it for a while. If anything, it felt harder. The fear came back faster. It felt worse than it had when the Japanese invaded Hawaii, much worse than it had when he fought in China.

A mortar bomb hissed down not nearly far enough away. That wasn’t a Japanese round; Shimizu remembered the sound of the burst from the last time he’d fought Americans. One of his comrades started screaming. Fragments must have done their bloody work. American machine guns started stitching the air with death, too. Those big men in the unfamiliar uniforms wouldn’t be easy to throw back.

Shimizu looked around him. You always wanted to see that you weren’t going forward all alone. Some of his men were still with him. Good. Other Japanese farther away were advancing, too. Yes, very good.

The officer was looking around, too, when a burst from a Yankee machine gun caught him in the chest. The katana flew from his hand. The blade flashed in the sun as it fell to the ground. The officer twisted, staggered, and fell. He kept thrashing on the ground, but he was a dead man. At least two, maybe three, rounds had torn out through his back. As always, exit wounds were ever so much larger and bloodier than the holes bullets made going in. If one of those rounds hadn’t found his heart, he would still bleed to death in short order.

Was anybody else of higher rank still up and fighting? Shimizu didn’t see anyone. That wasn’t a good sign, but he didn’t have time to brood about it. “Come on!” he shouted. “We can do it!” Could they? They had to try.

Even though he ran forward in a crouch, a bullet caught him in the side. At first, he felt only the impact. His legs didn’t want to carry him any more. He held on to his rifle as he sprawled on the ground. The pain hit then. His mouth filled with blood when he howled. He tried not to thrash like a dog hit by a truck. If he lay still, maybe he could take out one more enemy soldier.

An American in that new green uniform eyed him. Shimizu looked back, his own eyes mere slits. The American brought up his rifle to make sure of him. Shimizu tried to shoot first, but found he lacked the strength to raise the heavy Springfield. He saw the muzzle flash. Then darkness crashed down. SABURO SHINDO SHOT DOWN HIS SECOND AMERICAN FIGHTER in the space of a few minutes. It was luck as much as anything else: he put a cannon shell through the enemy’s canopy, and probably through the pilot, too. The plane, out of control, spiraled down to the Pacific.

Much good it does me, Shindo thought. Smash one ant, and the rest would still steal the picnic. The Yankees were ashore. It was the Army’s fight now. The Navy had done everything it could-and failed. Shindo hated failure. He knew that none of what had happened was his fault. That didn’t mean it hadn’t happened, or that what sprang from it wouldn’t be bad.

American landing craft littered the beaches like children’s toys at the edge of a bathtub. Those ingenious boats, the great fleet of warships offshore, and the stifling enemy air umbrella overhead spoke of an industrial power and of a determination far greater than he’d imagined. He’d scorned the Americans in 1941. He didn’t enjoy that luxury any more.

Tracers zipped past his Zero. He couldn’t outdive or outclimb the U.S. fighter on his tail. He could outturn it, and he did, throwing his aircraft hard to the right. The American tried to stay with him, but couldn’t. Only a Japanese Army Hayabusa could turn with a Zero, but a Hayabusa couldn’t stay up with one if it did.

And Shindo and his Zero couldn’t stay up with the American. He fired a burst at the enemy fighter, but it did no harm. Then the other plane sped away from his as if he were wearing heavy boots. He’d seen that before, too. It infuriated and humiliated him. None of what he felt showed on his face or in his demeanor. It seldom did.

An antiaircraft shell from one of the ships below burst too close for comfort. It didn’t harm the Zero, but staggered it, as if it had rolled into a pothole in the air. He swung through some quick turns and speed changes to throw off the gunners, all the while wondering what to do next.

He couldn’t harm the enemy carriers, not now. Strafing the other warships wouldn’t do a thing to their big guns. He couldn’t do much to the landing craft, either, and what he could do wouldn’t matter; the Americans were on the beaches. I have to hit them there, then, he decided.

He came in low, machine guns hammering. His bullets sent something up in flames. Enemy soldiers scrambled for cover and flopped down when they found it. Not all of them ran. Some stood their ground and blazed away at him with small arms. They’d done the same thing during the first day of the Japanese attack on Hawaii. Anyone who thought the Americans weren’t brave was a fool. They were soft, and they let themselves be captured so their enemies could make sport of them, but in action they showed plenty of courage.

Machine guns also opened up on Shindo. They put enough lead in the air to be nuisances, or worse than nuisances. A bullet clanged home, somewhere behind the cockpit. Shindo eyed his instruments. No damage showed. His controls still worked. He climbed, spun back, and made another run along the beach.

More fire answered him this time. The Americans were ready to the point of being trigger-happy. They missed him, though, missed him again and again. He watched his own bullets chew up sand, and hoped they chewed up men as well.