Days of Infamy by Harry Turtledove Read Free Book Online Page B

carriers. At most, the Americans have three, and they probably aren’t concentrated. We have the best fliers in the world. They have . . . less than the best. If they find us, they will be the ones to regret it.”
    â€œSo you say.” Nagumo still sounded anything but happy. Shindo had yet to hear him sound happy since the fleet sailed from Japan. Even the astounding damage the first two waves of attackers had caused did nothing to cheer him. He went on, “I tell you, gentlemen, if it were not for the landing forces accompanying us, I would turn around and sail for the home islands now.”
    Commander Fuchida couldn’t hide his horror. “Sir, we have a job to finish!” he exclaimed.
    â€œI know,” Nagumo answered. “And I will stay, and I will carry it through. Those are my orders, and I cannot abandon the soldiers. But what I told you is no less true. We are in danger here.”
    â€œSo are the Americans,” Shindo said. Genda and Fuchida both nodded. At last, reluctantly, so did Admiral Nagumo.

II
    T HE MESSAGE CAME in to the Enterprise from one of the scouts just after eight in the morning: “White 16—Pearl Harbor under attack! Do not acknowledge.”
    Aboard the carrier, rage boiled. “Those little slanty-eyed cocksuckers want a war, they’ve got one!” Lieutenant Jim Peterson shouted to whoever would listen.
    â€œYou were the one who said they wouldn’t fight.” Three people reminded Peterson of that at the same time.
    He was too furious to get embarrassed at being wrong. “I don’t give a shit what I said,” he snarled. “Let’s knock the yellow bastards into the middle of next week.”
    But that was easier said than done. Everyone knew the Japanese were somewhere off the Hawaiian Islands—but where? Had they come down out of the north or up from the south? The Enterprise couldn’t even ask the harried men at Pearl Harbor what they knew. As soon as that horrifying message came in, Admiral Halsey slapped radio silence on the whole task force. No Japs were going to spot the carrier and her satellites by their signals.
    In the wardroom, the pilots drank coffee and cursed the Japanese—and also cursed the Pearl Harbor defenders, who’d shot down some of the scouts trying to land in the middle of the attack.
    The ships steamed furiously toward Pearl Harbor. They’d been about two hundred miles northwest of Oahu when they got the dreadful news—aboutseven hours at top speed. And they were making top speed. Bull Halsey was not a man to hang back when he saw a fight right in front of his nose—far from it. He wanted to get in there and start swinging. The only trouble was, he had no more idea than anybody else where to aim his punches.
    As the minutes passed and turned into hours, fury and frustration built aboard the Enterprise . The news in the wardroom was fragmentary—people on Oahu were clamping down on radio traffic, too—but what trickled in didn’t sound good. “Jesus!” somebody said after the intercom piped in yet another gloomy report. “Sounds like Battleship Row’s taken a hell of a licking.”
    â€œ That won’t end the world,” Peterson said. “The Navy’s needed to get rid of those wallowing tubs for years.” He spoke like what he was: a carrier fighter pilot. Billy Mitchell had proved battleships obsolete twenty years earlier. Nobody’d paid any attention then. It sounded as if the Japs were driving home the lesson. Would anybody pay attention now?
    â€œYou’re a coldhearted bastard, Peterson,” a lieutenant named Edgar Kelley said. “It’s not just ships, you know. It’s God knows how many sailors, too.”
    â€œYeah? So?” Peterson scowled at the other pilot. “If they didn’t get it now, they sure as hell would when they took their battlewagons west to fight the Japs. Carrier air