Page 46 of Daikon
TWENTY-FOUR
“IT’S NUMBER THREE,” SAID THE flight engineer, Lieutenant Otani. He watched as the needle on the pressure gauge dropped and the temperature soared.
Captain Onda eased back on the throttles, but it was too late. Another cough, followed by a muffled explosion and a lick of flame illuminating the night, and the propeller on Number Three ground to a halt.
The mission had just failed. Without Kamibeppu’s star sightings and accurate navigation, the chance of finding Tinian, a speck in the ocean, was extremely remote.
Morning would come, they would conduct a futile search for the island, their fuel would run out, and they would crash into the sea. Onda could see no other conclusion.
Should he continue? Make the desperate gesture? That would be the honorable thing.
But that would mean wasting the heaven-sent weapon.
He hesitated, dreading Colonel Sagara’s rage.
He spoke into the interphone: “We’re turning back.”
In the radio compartment, Keizo Kan heard the words through a fog of confusion. He felt the aircraft bank as it went into a turn.
PO Yagi was looming over him, pressing him into his seat. Keeping one hand on Kan’s chest, Yagi reached out and flipped the locking bracket back onto the Daikon’s triggering switch. Then he was in Kan’s face, snarling: “Don’t touch it!”
Kan stared at him blankly. Had he actually been about to set off the bomb? His mind was in such turmoil that he didn’t know.
He nodded weakly. “It’s all right. I’m all right.”
Yagi’s grip relaxed. He made Kan switch seats, moving him farther away from the trigger. Then he restored the twist of wire around the locking bracket as a further precaution.
Kan was returning to himself now. He became aware of a burning in his right hand. It was freezing. He pulled on his glove and settled into his seat, feeling shattered.
Humph. Yagi’s familiar sound. Kan looked over to see the petty officer rocking back and forth as if releasing the hours of tension, his expression somewhere between a scowl and a smile.
They continued northwest by dead reckoning for two and a half hours, halfway back to Tama Airfield at reduced speed, coddling the three functioning engines.
A tense moment when flight engineer Otani began pumping fuel from the outboard tanks to refill the dedicated tanks feeding Engines One and Four.
More throbbing, this time from Engine One, but a catastrophe was averted.
They continued on with six of the eighteen outboard wing tanks shut down.
There was clearly something wrong with the 1,400 liters of fuel they were holding.
They didn’t dare burn it. Getting back home would be a close thing.
Six o’clock in the morning, the sun breaking above the horizon. Captain Onda took the Renzan down to 2,000 meters, out of the clouds, hoping to spot the Ogasawara Islands and fix their position.
The islands were nowhere to be seen. Kamibeppu went to the back of the plane to scan the rear horizon from the tail gunner’s position, passing through the compartment where Kan and Yagi were seated. He saw nothing, only gray ocean.
“Is everything all right?” Kan asked as Kamibeppu returned to the flight deck.
“Halfway there,” the navigator replied.
Onda took the aircraft back up into the safety of the clouds, altitude 3,000 meters. It was as high as he dared push the plane. They continued on through the white.
At 8:05, Kamibeppu’s dead reckoning put them within sight of the coast of Japan.
Onda took another Philopon tablet to stave off his mounting fatigue, then signaled to copilot Yoshino that they would make another descent out of the clouds.
Soon flashes of ocean began to peek through the mist. Then, like a curtain swept back, the view ahead cleared.
They all recognized the graceful arc of shore in an instant. They were nearing the north end of the Chiba Peninsula, 100 kilometers off course.
“Heading 320,” said Kamibeppu, making a quick calculation. “We’re 230 kilometers out.”
Onda felt a wave of relief. Less than an hour to go. They had enough fuel. They would make it.
He banked the Renzan to the left. An armada of ships came into view. Hulking battleships. Cruisers. Destroyers. And aircraft carriers, more than Onda could count.
It was the American fleet.
“Fighters!”
Captain Yoshino was pointing at one of the carriers, a dozen aircraft circling above it like flies.
Onda had already come out of the turn and was advancing the throttles, straining the engines as he pulled back on the yoke. Their only hope was to climb back up and hide in the clouds. Slowly, agonizingly slowly, the Renzan ascended.
Yoshino: “They’ve seen us. They’re coming up!”
Onda went on the interphone: “Otani! Turret gun! Yagi! Get on the tail gun!”
Yagi leaped out of his seat in the radio operator’s compartment and disappeared through the rear door, scrambling back to the tail gunner’s position.
After the long hours of pent-up tension, he was hungry for action.
He squeezed into the narrow space, settled into the rear-facing seat, and plugged in his helmet.
“Two fighters approaching,” he said, cocking the twenty-millimeter Type 99. “Six hundred meters out.” He flicked off the safety, sighting on the growing black dots.
“Don’t fire. Wait until they do,” said Onda. He was hoping the Americans had been confused by the sight of them appearing from seaward rather than from the land. Caution might buy them enough time to get back into the clouds.
Yagi, squinting through the thick ballistic glass: “Three hundred meters… Two hundred meters.”
Onda turned to see an aircraft, blue with a white star, coming into view outside his starboard-side window. It was a Corsair. It was so close that he could see the American pilot staring at him.
“Onda!”
It was Yoshino. Onda turned to see his copilot staring at a second Corsair on their left. Then the two fighters were peeling away.
Yagi’s voice in the earphones: “They’re coming around—”
A stream of bullets shot past the cockpit, followed an instant later by the sound of Yagi returning fire from the tail gun and Otani from the turret. The Renzan lurched. Onda felt something give with the rudder. He fought to control the aircraft as the world turned white.
Keizo Kan sat frozen in his lonely seat in the radio operator’s compartment, waiting for another burst of machine gun fire to rip through the plane.
It didn’t come. Finally he noticed the uniform white through the window over his head.
They were in clouds. The Americans couldn’t see them.
And if the Americans couldn’t see them, they might survive.
It was the second time he had lived through an enemy attack in an airplane.
The experience did not get easier with repetition.
His heart was beating so hard that it left him feeling ill, as if the terror had damaged the organ.
He unsnapped his face mask, which had been hanging under his chin, and cast it aside as he took in deep breaths.
A wave of heat swept over his body. He unzipped his flight suit and pulled it open, letting in the cold air.
The helmet went next. He pulled it off and laid it in his lap, not noticing the hair from his head that came off with it.
“Tama Airfield. Tama Airfield.”
The crippled Renzan had continued west through the clouds and was descending now that they were well inland, away from the American fleet patrolling the coast. Captain Onda was flying at 400 meters, hopefully low enough not to be spotted by prowling enemy aircraft.
He would have preferred to fly even lower, hugging the ground, but he didn’t dare—not on three engines and without a functioning rudder.
“Tama Airfield. This is Ko-G8-3. Are you there?”
Another banking turn, 30 degrees, the Renzan clumsily yawing.
The terrain below was mountains scarred by clear-cutting, large swaths completely denuded of trees.
Onda, Yoshino, and Kamibeppu were all scanning the sky for fighters.
If there was an attack, it would come from above.
PO Yagi remained at the tail gun, watching behind.
Flight engineer Otani had his eyes on the fuel gauges.
The needle for the Number Two engine was reading effectively empty.
Number One and Number Four engines had another twenty minutes at best.
“Tama Airfield, this is Ko-G8-3. Do you read me?”
The headphones crackled. A clipped acknowledgment. Nothing more.
“Tama Airfield, I’ve lost the rudder and an engine. I’m coming in.”
The terrain was flattening. Onda brought the Renzan down another 100 meters, approaching the airfield from the south. Sweat glistened on his face. Yoshino beside him kept craning around in his seat, looking from the gauges to scan for threats in the sky.
There was the town of Hachioji ahead, the thread of the Tama River beyond it. Then the airfield came into view.
Onda banked right, yawing wildly, and began his final approach.
“Flaps fifteen,” he said.
Yoshino confirmed: “Flaps fifteen.”
“Landing gear down.”
Yoshino threw the switch. A whine and chunk confirmed that the wheels had descended and locked.
“Landing gear down.”
Flight engineer Otani tapped one of the gauges.
Number Two engine was running on fumes now.
It would die at any moment. His mind went to the 1,400 liters of fuel still in the outboard tanks, the foul fuel they didn’t dare use.
If they crashed, the Renzan would become a fireball. They would all burn.
They were passing over the Tama River, not much more than a stream amid a wide swatch of wetland. A freight train line, a village, a cluster of barracks.
Two kilometers out now, altitude one hundred meters. The Renzan’s tail slewed to port. Onda brought it back. It was like skating on ice. He reminded himself that his eye level in the cockpit was four meters up off the ground.
“Thirty meters,” said Yoshino.
Onda throttled back on the three functioning engines. Number Two engine died.
“Ten meters. We just lost Number Two.”
The Renzan came down hard, its starboard wheel exploding. It bounced and came down again and veered to the left, sending men who were watching from the side of the runway scrambling for safety. Yoshino throttled down. Onda, fighting with the controls, muscled the plane back to center.
“Brakes!” said Yoshino, willing them to stop, stiff in his seat.
Onda heaved down on the pedals and brought the big plane to a halt at the north end of the runway.
The engines were silent. The hatch was open. Kan climbed down the ladder and stood on firm ground for the first time in eleven hours, the phantom roar of the engines still in their ears. He felt empty. His legs were weak. He wanted nothing more than to lie down and sleep.
Something touched the top of his head. He looked up. A drop struck his face.
It was starting to rain.