Joe Steele Read online

“Members of the Congress of the United States, people of America, yesterday the Empire of Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and the Philippines without warning in time of peace,” the President said. “This act of vicious treachery will never be forgotten. Because of it, I ask the Congress to declare that a state of war exists between the United States and the Empire of Japan.”

  More roars. More cheers. Joe Steele went on, “A grave danger hangs over our country. The perfidious Japanese military attack continues. There can be no doubt that this short-lived military gain for the Empire of Japan is only an episode. The war with Japan cannot be considered an ordinary war. It is not only a war between two armies and navies, it is also a great war of the entire American people against the Imperial Japanese forces.

  “In this war of freedom, we shall not stand alone. Our forces are numerous. The arrogant enemy will soon learn this to his cost. Side by side with the U.S. Army and Navy, thousands of workers, community farmers, and scientists are rising to fight the enemy aggressors. The masses of our people will rise up in their millions.

  “To repulse the enemy who used a sneak attack against our country, a National Committee for Defense has been formed, in whose hands the entire power of the state has been vested. The Committee calls upon all people to rally around the party of Jefferson and Jackson and Wilson and around the U.S. government so as self-denyingly to support the U.S. Army and Navy, demolish the enemy, and gain victory. Forward!”

  Forward they went. Two Representatives and one Senator voted against the declaration of war. Nothing, it seemed, was ever unanimous, but that came close enough.

  When Charlie got back to the White House, Stas Mikoian greeted him with a long face. “The Japs just smashed our planes on the ground at Clark Field, outside of Manila,” Mikoian said.

  “Wait,” Charlie said. “They did that today?” Mikoian nodded. “A day after the fighting started? On the ground? Flat-footed?” Mikoian nodded again. Charlie found one more question: “How, for Chrissake?”

  “That, I don’t know,” the Armenian answered. “The boss doesn’t, either—he just found out, too. But he’ll want to know. He’ll have some interesting questions for General MacArthur, don’t you think?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised,” Charlie said. Douglas MacArthur was five thousand miles from the American West Coast. The big naval base between the West Coast and the Philippines had just been blown to hell and gone. All things considered, though, Charlie figured MacArthur was much safer fighting the Japs where he was than he would be if he had to come home and answer those questions from Joe Steele.

  * * *

  Three days after the United States declared war on Japan, Germany did—and overdid—an ally’s duty and declared war on the United States. Charlie thought Hitler did Joe Steele a favor. The President hadn’t declared war on the Nazis, even though the U.S. Navy and German U-boats had been skirmishing for months. Now the Führer had done it for him.

  Three days after that, Admiral Kimmel and General Short arrived in Washington. Husband Kimmel looked handsome in his gold-striped sleeves. Charlie remembered Walter Short from the days when he’d sat on a military tribunal. Now he and Kimmel found themselves on the wrong end of one of those proceedings.

  The questions the officers who served as judges asked the admiral and the general were the obvious ones. Why hadn’t somebody spotted the Japanese fleet before the carriers started launching planes? Why were so many American planes lined up on the runways almost wingtip to wingtip? Why didn’t more of them get airborne once the authorities realized the war was on?

  Admiral Kimmel said, “We searched the areas where we thought the enemy was most likely to appear. Our patrols to the west and to the southwest of Pearl Harbor were thorough and diligent.”

  “But you had no airplanes searching to the north, the direction from which the Japs really came?” a judge asked.

  “No, sir,” Kimmel answered somberly. “We did not look for an approach from the North Pacific. We thought the weather and the waves at that time of the year made it too dangerous for the Japanese to attempt.”

  “You were mistaken, weren’t you?”

  “So it would seem, yes, sir.” Husband Kimmel sounded more somber yet.

  “I ordered the aircraft grouped in a compact mass to better protect them against sabotage,” General Short said when they asked him about that. “Something like one civilian in three on Oahu is a Jap. Too many of them are loyal to the place they came from, not the place where they live now.”

  “Was there any sabotage by Hawaiian Japanese during the enemy attack?” a judge inquired.

  “Not that I am aware of,” Walter Short answered unwillingly.

  “Was there any sabotage by Hawaiian Japanese before the enemy attack?”

  “Not that I am aware of.”

  “Has there been any sabotage by Hawaiian Japanese since the enemy attack?”

  “Not that I am aware of.”

  Charlie wondered why he attended the tribunal. He knew what would happen before it did. Kimmel and Short might not, but that was their hard luck. Anyone who’d been around the White House and seen what kind of mood Joe Steele was in didn’t need a crystal ball to see what was coming.

  And Charlie had been to tribunals before. The United States was a secular country. It didn’t have anything like the old Spanish auto-da-fé. These tribunals, with the verdicts scripted in advance, were about as close as it came.

  Substandard performance. Dereliction of duty. Neglect of duty. During the last war, during any war, those were charges that would blight any officer’s career, even if they were made but not proved. The judges needed only a few minutes to find both men guilty and to deliver the sentence: death by firing squad.

  In spite of everything, Walter Short was astonished. “What? You can’t do that!” he shouted.

  Admiral Kimmel hung his head. He knew too well that they could. He might not have expected it, but he recognized the possibility.

  “By passing sentence on you, we remind other officers in the military service of the United States that they must be diligent in the pursuit of their duties at all times and under all circumstances,” the judge who’d announced the verdict declared.

  “Pour encourager les autres,” Kimmel murmured.

  “I beg your pardon?” the judge said. “I don’t speak French.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Admiral Kimmel replied. Charlie was sure he was right. The judge would never have heard of Admiral Byng. Chances were he’d never heard of Voltaire, either.

  “This is an outrage!” Walter Short certainly sounded outraged. “I’ll appeal this—this travesty of justice!”

  As a matter of fact, that was just what it was. Even so, Charlie was sure appealing wouldn’t do General Short one red cent’s worth of good. The judge didn’t say that, not in so many words. He said, “You have the right to appeal, yes. The President will personally review this proceeding and will pass judgment on all appeals springing from it.”

  “Oh,” Short said in a sick voice. Reality suddenly crashed down and hit him on the head, the way the acorn—and maybe the whole sky—had hit Chicken Little. He wouldn’t be able to talk his way out of the blame for Pearl Harbor. He might or might not deserve all of it, but it had landed on him. Husband Kimmel had figured that out faster.

  In the end, they both appealed. Kimmel must have thought he had nothing to lose, and how could anyone tell him he was wrong? He also had nothing to gain. Neither did Walter Short. Joe Steele rejected both their appeals and ordered the tribunal’s sentence carried out.

  Charlie didn’t go to watch the executions. No one was paying him now to witness men’s deaths. It had sickened him when he did it. Yes, some died more bravely than others. What difference did that make, though? Brave and not so brave ended up equally dead.

  Word came back to the White House that both Short and Kimmel met their
final moments with as much courage as anyone could want. “I didn’t have them shot for cowardice,” Joe Steele said. “I had them shot for stupidity—a much more serious failing in an officer.” His pipe sent up smoke signals. Neither Charlie nor any of the President’s other aides had any reply to that.

  XVII

  Mike approached the encampment’s administration building with trepidation. No, dammit, I’m a writer. Forget the fancy talk, he thought. I’m approaching that place with fear. Like any wrecker, he had good reason to stay as far away from the administration building as he could. It was full of Jeebies, and nobody in his right mind wanted anything to do with those bastards.

  Snow crunched under his boots. The air he breathed in stung his nostrils. He breathed out fog. It was goddamn cold. It was dark, too. The encampment lay on about the latitude of Bangor, Maine—far to the north of the New York City cycles he was used to. When winter neared, night slammed down early and stayed late.

  Not surprisingly, the administration building lay next to the punishment block. The GBI men needed to keep an eye on the luckless fools they jugged. Also not surprisingly, the administration building, unlike the rest of the encampment (well, except for the searchlights in the guard towers), had electricity. A gasoline-powered generator inside chugged away. It sounded like a distant truck engine idling rough.

  A guard in a fur hat frowned and hefted his Tommy gun when Mike came inside the circle of light the bulb above the entryway threw into the darkness all around. “Who are you? What do you want?” the Jeebie asked, his voice harsh and suspicious.

  “Sullivan, Michael, NY24601, sir. Barracks Seventeen.” Mike identified himself the way a wrecker should. He exhaled more vapor before he went on, “I want to ask permission to join the Army, sir.”

  “Oh, Jesus! Another one!” But the guard didn’t tell Mike to get lost, the way he would have before the Japs hit Pearl Harbor. The United States was at war now. A wrecker who volunteered for the Army wouldn’t necessarily have it easier than one who served out his stretch inside an encampment. All kinds of bad things could happen to you in these places, sure. But unless you ran away or the guards were feeling uncommonly mean, they weren’t likely to shoot you. Japanese and German soldiers might prove less considerate.

  “Yes, sir.” Mike stood there and waited. He didn’t come any closer. Doing that before the guard said he could might make the SOB decide he was dangerous. He didn’t want that. Oh, no.

  After a few seconds, the Jeebie gestured toward the door with his Tommy gun. “Well, come on, then,” he said gruffly. His breath smoked, too. “They’re putting together some kind of asshole list in there. You wanna stick your name on it, you can. Guy you wanna see is Lopatynski. Room 127—turn left when you get inside and go halfway down the hall.”

  “Thank you, sir!” Mike knew most of that from other wreckers, men who already had their names on the list. But you had to keep the guards buttered up. They’d make you pay if you didn’t. Sometimes they’d make you pay even if you did.

  The Jeebie patted him down before letting him inside. He had a knife, one made from part of a big can of corn and patiently sharpened on granite. Most wreckers had them. They used them as tools more than as weapons. He’d made sure to stash his in his miserable sawdust-stuffed mattress before coming here, though. No matter how common they were, they were also against the rules.

  Bright lights and heat clobbered him inside the building. He unbuttoned his jacket, something he hadn’t done since early fall except for the weekly scrub in disinfectant soap. Wreckers shivered through about eight months of the year. Not the Jeebies. They had it soft.

  Aloysius Lopatynski was a warrant officer. Not a sergeant. Not a lieutenant. Betwixt and between. He had a specialty that made him useful, but not enough general wonderfulness for them to turn him into a full-fledged officer. He was typing some sort of report—respectably fast—when Mike stood in the doorway to room 127 and waited to be noticed.

  He didn’t have to wait long. Lopatynski looked up and said, “Who are you? What do you need?” Not What do you want?—an interesting variant, especially from a Jeebie.

  “Sullivan, Michael, NY24601, sir. Barracks Seventeen.” Mike went through the ritual again. Then he said, “Jonesy outside told me you were the one to see about joining the Army.”

  “Right now, no one from any encampment is joining the Army. No wrecker, I mean—several guards here have enlisted,” the warrant officer said. “What I am doing is putting together a list of people who may be interested in volunteering if and when that’s permitted.”

  “Okay, that’s what I need, then.” Mike gave his information to Lopatynski once more. The Jeebie entered it on that list. Then Mike said, “My stretch is five to ten. I got here in 1937, so they could be turning me loose in a few months.”

  “You were an early bird, weren’t you?” Lopatynski remarked.

  “Well, kinda,” Mike answered with a certain pride. He wasn’t an early bird next to somebody like John Dennison, but far more wreckers had come in after him than before. He went on, “If they do turn me loose next summer, can I go straight into the Army then?”

  “That’s an interesting question. I’m not sure of the answer. Of course, you also don’t know if they’ll turn you loose at the short end of your stretch. But if they release you while the war is still going on . . . I don’t know what your obligation would be. I don’t know if you can volunteer, either. You can try, and find out what happens.”

  “All right. I’ll do that when I get the chance. If I get the chance.” Mike hesitated before adding, “Thanks.” He said it to the guards all the time. It didn’t mean much to them, though; he was just another wrecker trying to keep the screws sweet. Saying it when he did mean it came harder.

  “You’re welcome,” Lopatynski said. “Now you’d better hustle to your barracks. I know it’s cold out there.”

  Not cold in here, Mike thought. But he didn’t come out with the sarcastic crack. As far as he could tell, Lopatynski just didn’t want him freezing. He gave back a brusque nod and walked away. Getting reminded that even a GBI man could be a decent human being was one of the more disturbing things that had happened to him lately.

  * * *

  The U.S. Army and Navy had known for years that they might have to fight Japan. Like other armed forces the world around, they made plans against the day. Anyone, even generals or admirals, could see that the Philippines, American-ruled but close to the potential enemy, were an area the Japs would try to overrun as soon as they could.

  Holding the entire island chain wasn’t practical or even possible, not with the relatively small American garrison and the larger but less trained native Philippine forces. The plan, then, was for most of the Americans and as many locals as could join them to hole up on the Bataan Peninsula and hang on for as long as they could.

  By holding out there, they denied the Japs the use of Manila’s fine harbor. And, if everything went according to plan, they might still be holding out when the Pacific Fleet steamed west from Hawaii and met the Imperial Japanese Navy in a sea battle that would make Jutland look as if it were fought in a bathtub by toy boats.

  But things didn’t go according to plan. The Pacific Fleet wouldn’t be coming. Too much of it lay at the bottom of Pearl Harbor. The soldiers holed up on the Bataan Peninsula could still deny Manila’s harbor to Japan. Nobody was coming to their rescue, though. Sooner or later, they would have to throw in the towel.

  Meanwhile, they fought bravely, Americans and Filipinos alike. They held back the Japanese week after week, month after month. They took a moniker that they wore with a kind of upside-down pride—the Battling Bastards of Bataan. A reporter wrote a limerick about them, one of the few good clean ones:

  “We’re the Battling Bastards of Bataan,

  No Mama, no Papa, no Uncle Sam,

  No aunts, no uncles, no cousins, no nieces,

 
; No pills, no planes, no artillery pieces,

  And nobody gives a damn!”

  That last line, as Charlie knew all too well, wasn’t true. Joe Steele did give a damn about the men fighting in the Philippines, and about what losing the islands would mean. But there was a difference between giving a damn and being able to do anything about it.

  The difference got underscored in the middle of February, when England surrendered Singapore to the Japs. Wanting to hang on was one thing. Being able to was another. Joe Steele started sending Douglas MacArthur messages urging him to leave Bataan and come back to Washington for consultation about his next assignment.

  Charlie polished up the President’s messages and smoothed them as much as he could. Joe Steele was angry at the distant general, and it showed in anything that came from his pen. Despite the smoothing, MacArthur remained cagey. One of his replies read I wish to share the fate of the garrison. I know the situation here in the Philippines and unless the right moment is chosen for this delicate operation, a sudden collapse might occur.

  “He doesn’t want to come back,” Charlie said to Lazar Kagan after that one came in.

  Kagan looked at him, expressionless as usual. “Would you?” Remembering what had happened to Short and Kimmel, Charlie had to shake his head.

  Finally, Joe Steele stopped dickering and ordered MacArthur to leave Bataan, go to Australia, and from Australia come to Washington as quickly as he could. MacArthur still hesitated. Joe Steele had George Marshall send a cable to the U.S. commander in the Philippines, reminding him that refusing to obey orders was a court-martial offense.

  That did the trick. A PT boat plucked MacArthur, his family, and his entourage off the peninsula and took them to the island of Mindanao, which was also in the process of falling to the Japs. Three B-17s came up from Australia and landed on a dirt strip to take the general and his companions to safety.

  A roundabout air route got MacArthur to Honolulu. He dropped a wreath into the oily water of Pearl Harbor before flying on to San Diego. Soldiers, sailors, Marines, and civilians there gave him a hero’s welcome and put him on a cross-country train. He made speeches at half the stops, sounding more like a political campaigner than a military man.