Black Wind

  "We only have to watch one island," I said. "This one."

  "Saipan? What makes you so sure? So far they've only used the wilt on pancake-flat atolls. This is a big island. It's got hills, mountains. How do we know the wilt will even work here?"

  "Can we risk assuming it won't? Besides, I think there's been enough death here already, don't you?"

  Abrams nodded. "No argument there."

  We were both silent for a moment. The cost of taking Saipan had been horrendous. Fifty thousand lives, we figured—three thousand of them ours, the rest Jap soldiers and civilians. The civilian deaths had been the hardest to take. The women and children had hidden themselves in the caves on the northern tip. When the military defense was snuffed out just eight days ago, they killed themselves by the thousands. Apparently they had been told horror stories of how they would be treated by Americans. I heard battle-hardened marines whisper of seeing mothers with children in their arms throwing themselves off the eight-hundred-foot Morubi Bluffs.

  Saipan was the capital of the Marianas, and of tremendous psychological importance to the Japs. They'd held the island for almost thirty years; it had been their central relay station for communications throughout the South Pacific for all that time; they called it "the gateway to the south."

  I said, "We're on prime real estate. From here on northward you've got the Bonins and the Izus leading right up to Tokyo itself like a trail of stepping stones. Not to mention the fact that we're now in B-29 range of their mainland."

  "I'm well aware of that," Abrams said impatiently. "That's why we busted our asses to take this rock. So what?"

  "They want it back," I said. "They want it back real bad."

  He stared at me. "I think you're onto something there. We'll set up a sub-watch. We'll catch the sub as it's coming in, or if we see it running off, we'll comb that end of the coast to find whatever it is they use before it goes off. We'll—"

  "You'll lose a lot of good men that way if the wilt starts before they find it."

  "You got a better idea?" He pulled out a cigarette as he tried to stare me down.

  "Sure. Send one man in. If you can get a fair idea of where the Nips landed, you can evacuate that end of the island and send in that one guy. Who knows? He may be able to find it in time. If he can't, you've only lost one guy."

  "And who's going to volunteer for that?" He struck a match and lit his cigarette.

  "Me."

  I waited to see what Abrams would do. Would he laugh? Or would he take me seriously. I watched as he held the lighted match and stared at me; held it until it burned his fingers. With a curse, he shook it out and dropped it.

  "You? What are you, some kinda nut?"

  "I'm the best man for the job. I've seen the wilt in action. I know what to expect. I'll know when it's starting and when to turn tail and run."

  "You've seen enough to know that running won't do you a damn bit of good. You must have some kind of death wish or something."

  That wasn't so. I didn't want to die. I never had. But something had changed since the Saturday night before the Pearl Harbor raid. Until then the very thought of dying had terrified me; I’d had so many things left to do and see. Now, death was okay. I wouldn't look for it, but if it came—no big deal. As far as I could see, I hadn't much lying ahead worth getting upset about.

  "No death wish. I've got a safety hatch planned out."

  Abrams went for the idea when I explained it to him.

  * * *

  The sub was sighted two nights later.

  It would have been perfect if we had been able to catch it coming in. We could have captured their wilt device and found out what made it tick. But the sub sneaked in unseen. We spotted it leaving though, making a beeline away from Saipan's northeastern shore at 2332 hours. A pair of destroyers gave chase but lost it.

  I was on the beach at 2350. While choppers, transports, and jeeps moved all the occupying troops south, I began my search. It would have been easier in daylight. Even then, almost anything could have stayed hidden among the craters and shredded palm trees left in the wake of the hellish pre-assault bombardment a month ago. It was high tide and the sand above the waterline was still so chewed up by Amphtracs that I had no possibility of picking out old trails from new. So there I stood with my puny little flashlight, looking up at the moonlit slopes of Mount Tapotchau, and more than a little daunted by the task before me.

  No time to stand there wondering. I ran up to the edge of what was left of the jungle and began the search. I didn't know what I was looking for, but I figured there was a good chance it was metallic, so that was what I concentrated on finding.

  I walked in lengthening arcs, moving deeper and deeper into the shattered jungle. Everything smelled of death. Like a wilt had already struck. Dead animals and dead humans were buried in all that debris. They had died over a month ago and must have provided a feast for scavengers. But even now, when the onshore breeze waned, the unmistakable odor of putrefaction rose up like a ghost. At those times I mouth-breathed and pressed on.

  I was quickly coming to the conclusion that I had made a mistake. This was an impossible task for one man, too big even for a platoon. But I pressed on. I was all I had right now and it was too late to turn back.

  And then it began.

  It started with a prickling chill along the back of my neck. I froze and waited for it to go away. It didn't. It spread across my shoulders and down my back. I spun around but saw nothing at first. Then I noticed a dark spot in the moonlit debris off to my left. It seemed to be moving, growing. I realized it was a shadow and looked up.

  There it was—a black cloud, roiling, racked with violent swirlings and eddyings, growing in the air. I ran toward it. I figured the device generating it would be directly below. If I could get there in time, maybe I could disable it.

  Months ago I had seen another cloud like this from a plane. From that viewpoint, it had seemed to spread slowly over Balajuro. That had been an illusion. For as I looked up now, I could see the cloud expanding at a terrifying rate, swallowing the moon, the stars, all of the sky. Before I had gone a hundred feet, the cloud settled over my end of the island like a canopy, engulfing me in darkness.

  The breeze changed, not only in direction but in quality. It came from the center of that cloud. This was no briny puff of trade winds off the ocean. This air was stale, cold, musty, wet, and sour, like an updraft from a forgotten dungeon of the soul. I rubbed my eyes and coughed as a wave of nausea swept over me.

  The breeze grew to a wind, the wind to a gale, tearing at me, roaring in my ears, roaring through me. It seemed to moan, a sound of such heartbreaking despair that I felt a sob rise in my throat. I fought against the tide of the wind for about a dozen feet and then stopped.

  No use. I'd never make it.

  As I stopped, I looked around, startled. The wind continued to howl by me, buffet my face, tear at my clothes, but the bombed-out jungle was still and quiet. Not a leaf or a frond or a blade of grass so much as dipped in a breeze.

  Suddenly I felt very cold, and I wanted to be away from here. Over the past few months I had convinced myself, despite what I had seen over Balajuro, that the wilts had a rational, scientific explanation. Now I knew that wasn't so. Nothing was rational here.

  I had to get off this island. I had to get back to the beach. I turned to run but my legs wouldn't carry me. Suddenly, I couldn't go on.

  "It's just no use," I heard myself say.

  I felt so tired all of a sudden, enveloped in a fog of exhaustion. The beach was two hundred yards away but it might as well have been twenty thousand leagues. I’d never make it. Strange emotions wafted about me and then clung: emptiness, abysmal loneliness, eternal, unfulfilled longing. Everything was hopeless, infinitely hopeless. And shot through it all was a formless, abject fear, a silent howl of terror that resonated in the darkest corners of the soul.

  I slumped to my knees. "No use at all."

  That sounded familiar. I tugged at the
memory until it finally came free: Ahern had said the same thing over the radio while the wilt was hitting Balajuro. Was that it? Was this desperate inertia part of the wilt? Before it sucked the life out of you, did it first take all hope and will?

  I didn't know what the cloud was doing to the jungle—it was dark and there didn't seem to be much left to kill after the offshore barrage—but I knew what it was doing to me.

  I fought to my feet. So weak. Just standing upright drained me. I was afraid now—really afraid. I lunged toward the beach in some combination of a stagger and a stumble. And all the while the hopelessness kept dragging me down, crying out in my brain with my own voice…

  ...it's no use you'll never make it so why even try it's all so futile so hopeless you might as well just lie down and give yourself over to the inevitable without this senseless struggle…

  But I forced myself on. From somewhere under the dank stifling cloud of depression, a tiny spark of anger urged me on, wordlessly, but no less relentlessly. I clung to it: They weren't going to beat me down again. They weren't going to make me give up. Not this time.

  And with the anger came hope. There was a chance to escape. I could make it. All I had to do was put one foot after the other in the direction of the beach and soon I'd be at the motorized launch anchored just beyond the breakers.

  So I kept forcing one foot in front of the other. The wind tried to force me back. No matter which way I turned, the wind always seemed to be in my face, pushing at me, impeding me. But I kept going.

  Eventually, I reached the beach. I lurched into the gentle surf. The water was refreshing. It seemed to clear my head. The violence of the wind seemed somehow diminished here.

  Squinting through the darkness, I finally picked out the launch and struck out for it. I was feeling stronger now. And the further I got from shore, the stronger I felt. The boat was soon within reach. I pulled myself over the gunwale and reached for the starter button. As the engine roared to life, I cut the anchor rope, threw the engine into gear, and pointed the prow toward the open sea. As soon as we were moving, I pulled the signal pistol from its compartment and fired a flare into the air.

  Only after the bright red glow had lit up the sky did I dare a look back.

  The black wilt cloud was still there, darker and more ominous than ever, growing, spreading along the beach in either direction, working its way toward the mountains.

  Explosions thundered to my left. The Indianapolis, lying offshore, had let loose with her cannon. As the first shells riddled the near jungle, I could barely make out the orange flashes through the blackness. The roar was deafening. And then suddenly the blackness began to thin, break up, fade away.

  Once again moonlight lit the beach.

  * * *

  We combed the beach and the jungle the next day. We found nothing out of the ordinary except the corpse of a small Japanese child. He had been torn almost beyond recognition by the shelling of the beach. Around him were the remnants of some sort of wicker basket, almost like a tiny coffin.

  I recalled the other child's body we had found on Balajuro and wondered if there was a connection, but brushed off the thought.

  How could there be?

  NOVEMBER

  TOKYO

  Hiroki savored the quiet and solitude here in the lower level of the temple. There was a timelessness about Shimazu's quarters. They looked the same today as they had over thirty years ago when he first stepped through the door. He took comfort in that stability. For change ruled the city outside.

  A relief to find comfort in anything these days. Simply shutting oneself off from the outside world for a moment or two was a joy. But the events of that world had a way of worming their way into every thought, every action, even here in the depths of the Kakureta Kao temple.

  "The war is all but lost," he told Shimazu.

  He heard his sensei cluck. "Has the Emperor directed his children to surrender?"

  "No, but—"

  "Then the war is not lost. Don't you remember the Seer's words?"

  Hiroki had repeated them over and over in his mind a hundred times a day for the past year. He did not need to hear them again, but he did not stop Shimazu.

  " ‘And then, when all looks blackest, blackness will save us: The Kuroikaze, borne by a noble firstborn, shall return full force to strike down all who oppose the Imperial Will.' After the blackness will come the blinding light of the Son of the Sun."

  Hiroki wanted so much to believe that. But the disasters of the summer—the fall of Saipan and the rest of the Marianas, the defeats in Burma, the start of American high-level bombings on Japan itself—had resulted in Premier Tojo's forced resignation despite all the efforts of the Order to keep him in power.

  The fall was proving even worse. The Americans had thrust through the Palaus and into the Philippines in a seemingly unstoppable drive, leaving a mortally wounded Imperial Navy foundering in their wake in the Leyte Gulf.

  "I don't see how the situation can become blacker. Our army is outgunned and outmanned on every front; our navy is in ruins, our supply lines are shattered, our best pilots are dead and the ones we have left are now using their planes as bombs."

  "Ah, yes," Shimazu said. "The kamikaze. I suspect they are not as effective as expected."

  Hiroki still marveled at the numbers of men in their late teens and early twenties volunteering to pilot the suicide planes. They vied, begged for the chance. If one were destined to die in battle for the Emperor, what better way to do so than to steer thousands of pounds of explosive into the deck of an American carrier? It was honorable, graceful, dignified, clean, quick, and glorious. And utterly painless.

  "They are very effective. They've inflicted terrible damage on many American ships. But not enough to turn the tide of battle in our favor. They will continue to inflict serious damage, but—" Hiroki sighed. Once again, the same old story. "But there are simply too many American Hellcats flying protection for too many American ships with too many antiaircraft guns firing too many rounds at our limited number of kamikazes. We simply cannot stop their advance."

  He was reminded of Matsuo's warning before the war: America will bury us with her resources and her productive capacity. Little Brother had been right, although Hiroki could never admit that.

  "The Supreme Command is calling for wholesale use of the Kuroikaze," Hiroki said. "But the Americans have learned how to protect themselves from the Black Winds. Their radar and sonar are everywhere. They spot our shoten-carrying sub and immediately send battleships to the area. They bombard the coast as soon as the Kuroikaze manifests itself. They flatten the jungle in the area of the growing Black Wind and abort it before it reaches full force by killing the shoten."

  How maddening to have the supreme weapon—albeit in short supply—and yet be thwarted in its use by these barbarians.

  "We will slow their momentum by more conventional means, then," Shimazu said calmly. "They have penetrated only our outer circles of defense, but our inner circles are much denser. We will stop them. It will be as the Seer has spoken."

  "They will be on Japanese soil in less than a year."

  Shimazu's voice rose. "Then we shall defeat them here! They will have to send a million or more troops ashore. The Black Wind will wreak havoc on their armada before they land just like it did to the Mongol Kublai Khan's seven hundred years ago, and it will be waiting on the beaches to destroy those who should get that far. Will they bombard their own troops on the beaches?"

  "We don't have enough shoten for that," Hiroki reminded him.

  "We will," Shimazu said, smiling serenely. "We will."

  Hiroki wanted to scream and pull at his hair. He wished he could take his master by the shoulders and drag him outside into the real world where he would hear a different story. But he merely bowed.

  "Yes, sensei."

  PART SEVEN

  1945

  1945

  THE YEAR OF THE ROOSTER

  MARCH

  TOKYO
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  Meiko lay in the dark in Matsuo's arms. She should have felt safe and secure, but instead she was like a tightly coiled spring. She closed her eyes and tried to sleep but the sound of the wind surrounded her, enveloped her, penetrated her.

  The weather had certainly been freakish lately. Just last Sunday it had snowed, blanketing the threadbare, war-weary city with a flawless coat of pristine white. Yet even then the bombers—B-san, as the people called the B-29s—had come, invisible above the snow clouds, dropping their packages of fiery death through the gentle flakes that muffled the sound of their passing, lighting sleeping neighborhoods far away with flames that suffused the snow-thick air with a cherry light.

  That had been just five days ago. The snow was gone now, melted away in the nightly heat of the firebomb raids and the glow of today's warm, fresh weather. Spring was making its usual surprise entrance in Tokyo.

  But the wind concerned her. It had started as a breeze in the morning, stiffened to a gusty wind by afternoon, and by sunset was a full-force gale, nearing hurricane proportions. She watched it lift and warp the bamboo sudare half-raised across the window, listened to it rattle the shoji and fusama, and whistle through the transoms. The folding screen in the front room had blown over so many times tonight that Matsuo had finally left it flat on the floor. Meiko listened beyond the wind, above it, searching for another sound.

  But wind was all she heard. As eleven o'clock approached, she began to relax. Maybe they wouldn't come. A lone B-29 had flown over the city this afternoon on reconnaissance. The Americans knew what the weather was like in Tokyo today. Maybe they wouldn't come this time.

  And then the sirens began to wail.

  Matsuo bolted upright beside her on the futon. "Oh, no! Not tonight!" He leapt to his feet and ran to the window. "Not tonight!"

  Meiko followed him. The wind roared against their faces as they looked out toward what was called "the plain side” of the city. Their home was slightly more toward "the mountain side" of Tokyo. They left their lights out, as did all their neighbors and everyone else in the city, but kept the radio on, tuned to station NHK.