Page 1 of Clive Cussler Ghost Soldier

Prologue

1945

North Field, Guam

TheMoonshinerwas the eighty-seventh aircraft in a line of 145 B-29B Superfortress bombers rolling down the tarmac. Their primary target was an aircraft factory near Tokyo, 1,500 miles away—about the distance from Canada to Mexico, and most of it over shark-infested waters.

Normally stationed by the “putt-putt” auxiliary motor during takeoff, the claustrophobic twenty-two-year-old tail gunner, Technical Sergeant Carl Jansen, had been given permission to stand near the cockpit so he could watch the takeoff through the big glass canopy.

The pilot mashed the brakes to the floorboard, his eyes fixed on the bomb-laden plane ahead of him wobbling uneasily into the sky.

Jansen mopped the sweat from his forehead, but it wasn’t from the heat. He’d seen enough fatal crashes during takeoff to know this part of the flight was as dangerous as the flak and fighters waiting to ambush them along the way. This would be his fourth mission over Japan. Not so long ago, he was riding a Farmall F-20 tractor in his father’s cornfields near Manteca, California. Over his mother’s protests, he waived his occupational service exemption to join the war before it was too late.

Finally cleared by the tower, the pilot advanced the four throttles, rattling the airframe as they powered up. He released the brakes, andtheMoonshinerrolled forward with its crew of eight and twenty tons of munitions.

Moments later, the sixty-seven-ton war wagon was aloft.

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In the air over Tokyo

Jansen stood in the cramped tail section compartment, his head on a swivel and his hands on the radar-assisted pedestal gunsight. Japanese interceptors preferred nighttime attacks and they especially favored hitting the big American bombers from the rear.

That put Jansen squarely in the crosshairs. It didn’t matter. He had a job to do. Built for speed and increased range, the B-29B had only one gunnery station—his. If Japanese fighters closed in on his vulnerable position it just meant he had a better chance of swatting them out of the sky with his three .50-caliber Browning machine guns.

He told his mother that his body armor and helmet protected him from Japanese bullets, but it wasn’t true. He put more faith in his parachute despite the fact he had never gone through actual jump training.

The tail section roared with engine noise as the young gunner glanced through the large armored-glass windows. The night sky was filled with the shadows of bombers in formation—and, more ominously, hundreds of small black clouds of flak thumping all around them.

The first planes were already dropping their loads. Clouds covered the city far below, their undersides lit up by the flickering lights of exploding ordnance.

“Bombs away,” the bombardier said. His voice over the interphone was clear and measured despite the thundering flak. TheMoonshinershuddered as the thousand-pound bombs released from their bay.

Jansen had once sat in the bombardier’s tiny, unarmored compartment in the glass nose during a training flight in Texas. “Best seat in the house,” the mustachioed lieutenant had joked with him. Jansen wasn’t so sure back then. But now, standing here, with their P-51Mustang fighter escorts far behind them, Jansen wondered if the bombardier wasn’t right after all.

A sudden, blinding explosion tore through Jansen’s compartment. Searing pain clawed at his back, shredding his parachute. With the distant shouts of “Bail out!” screaming in his headphones, the gunner turned and reached for the emergency door only to see theMoonshiner’s flaming fuselage streaking high and away as the tail section separated from the rest of the plane.

The tail section helicoptered down like a falling maple seed. Even if Jansen wanted to jump, he couldn’t. Too shocked to scream, he hardly registered the ice-cold wind scouring his face and whistling beneath his helmet.

His narrowing eyesight fixed on the maelstrom of light erupting beneath the hellish clouds far below.

Jansen’s mind reeled in terror, his death certain.

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Unit 731 Complex

Japanese-Occupied Manchuria

Four days later

Dr. Yoshio Mitomo stood in the doorway of his clinic, shivering in the biting wind as the Japanese army truck screeched to a halt. Neither his thin lab coat nor well-trimmed beard offered any protection against the subzero temperature.

A burly sergeant jumped out of the cab, his boots sinking into the snowdrift. He barked orders as he approached the canvas-topped rear.

The truck gate slammed open and the large body of an American was tossed out. He lay in the snow, groaning as two soldiers leaped out of the back and began hitting him with the butts of their rifles, shouting for him to get up. The big American cried out in pain as he curled up in a fetal position to protect himself.

“Stop this!” Dr. Mitomo shouted as he stumbled through the snow. “I order you—stop this, now!”