CHAPTER ONE

Figuring there was nothing official I could do about a Jap sub at this point, I saw no need to get any closer until things calmed down.  I braked to a stop on the shoulder of the road and pointed to where I'd seen the muzzle flash, "There's a submarine out there, Angel.  She looks to be a little less than a mile from the beach and her skipper is trying to blow up the oilfield."

CHAPTER ONE

The most impressive building was the refinery, itself, a large white structure bristling with smokestacks and pipes going in all directions.  The refinery was at the north end of the property.  South of it six wooden docks poked out into the water.  These I gathered were used for loading ships that transported the refined gasoline to wherever it was needed.

CHAPTER ONE

Across the beach from the loading docks were several large round storage tanks.  They were white, and the large signs they bore said things like, "Richfield Hi-Octane Gasoline."  No attempt had been made to camouflage the tanks and their critical-to-the-war-effort contents.

CHAPTER ONE

The most visible damage from the shelling were some splintered holes in the piers with the derricks.  Also, one of the derricks was down and busted up from what looked like a lucky direct hit.

CHAPTER TWO

North American Aviation makes airplanes, specifically military airplanes.  They are best known in aviation circles as the manufacturer of the T-6 Texan advanced pilot trainer . . .

CHAPTER TWO

. . . and the B-25, a twin-engine medium bomber named the "Mitchell" for General Billy Mitchell who demonstrated the importance of air power to the US Army and was court martialed for his trouble.  All was forgiven when he was proven right.

CHAPTER TWO

The North American Aviation plant is located at the intersection of two major roads—Aviation Boulevard and Imperial Highway—which puts it precisely in the southeast corner of the LA Municipal Airport's property.

CHAPTER TWO

We walked through a double glass doorway and into a large lobby decorated with aircraft photographs and a large replica of the North American Aviation logotype on the wall.

CHAPTER TWO

Sally MacLure was an honest to goodness California blonde with a beach tan and a quick smile.

CHAPTER THREE

Patmar's is a modern motel and coffee shop in the first block of Sepulveda south of Imperial Highway, which makes it quite convenient to Mines Field and the North American Aviation plant.

CHAPTER THREE

A bright red Mercury convertible with its top down drove into the lot and parked next to where I was sitting.  Sally was still a kid at heart.  The Mercury had a car radio and I could hear Artie Shaw just beginning the beguine when Russ shut off the engine.  Yes, Russ was driving.  That made me wonder who was enchanting whom.

CHAPTER THREE

Sally said, "Johnny, do you like South Seas bars?  Trader Joe just opened a new one in Inglewood and I've been dying to see it.  Would that be okay?"

Russ looked back over his shoulder to see if I was going to answer her question honestly or humor her.  I humored her.

CHAPTER THREE

No, there were no Jap bombers over LA, at least that we could see.  What we saw instead was about a hundred searchlights scanning the skies for intruders.  It looked like the Hollywood premiere to end all premiers, . . .

CHAPTER FIVE

They say it’s the longest bridge in the world, or some such thing, and a zillion people drive over it every day, but crossing the Bay Bridge always gives me the heebeegeebees.  The guard rails on the sides of the bridge are open and you can see all the way down to the water, making you wonder if the guy who put all those rivets in the bridge was having a bad day.

CHAPTER FIVE

Alameda is a small island on the eastern edge of the bay southwest of Oakland.  What makes it an island is a long narrow body of water known as the Oakland Estuary that separates Alameda from Oakland.  The Navy part of Alameda is mostly a huge airfield covering the upper end of the island.  Besides the runways—five of them crisscrossing each other in all directions—the Naval Air Station also has a harbor for supply ships and a seaplane lagoon.

CHAPTER FIVE

As I pulled to a stop next to the gate's guard shack, a Shore Patrolman with a Master Chief Petty Officer's chevron on his sleeve stepped out and said, "Good morning, sir.  Please state your business at Alameda Naval Air Station today."

CHAPTER FIVE

Fifth Street took us out to the harbor mooring area beyond the lagoon.  I was negotiating a tight squeeze alongside a large truck when I heard Russ say, "Holy cow!"

CHAPTER FIVE

After Russ and I stowed our gear in our rooms, Sally joined us for dinner at Patmar's coffee shop.  We avoided talking business during dinner for obvious reasons, but I left with a copy of the official Pilot's Manual for the North American Aviation B-25C and B-25D (Mitchell) in my back pocket.  For some strange reason I could not fathom, the manual wasn't classified.  I wondered how many Jap and Nazi spies had well-worn copies in their libraries.

CHAPTER SIX

"Can you describe it?"

CHAPTER SIX

"I would remove the panel cover with the screwdriver, and then I would cut the red wire to the power buss and the green wire to the ground buss.  The last step is stripping those two wires of their insulation and twisting them together."

CHAPTER SEVEN

She was tall and slender with blonde hair, and the moment our eyes met, she looked away.  That alone might mean nothing, but when I turned and began walking in her direction, the woman hurried to a recent model pale gray Chevy sedan parked a few feet away from where she was standing.  She turned for another look in my direction, and then climbed into the Chevy and drove away, spinning her tires in the dirt shoulder as she took off east on Imperial Highway.

CHAPTER SEVEN

It was surprisingly calm inside the hospital's emergency ward, despite there being patients in every available corner.  Their injuries ran the gamut from minor to what I would call life-threatening, but they all seemed to be getting the attention they required from the staff.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Leaving the emergency ward, I walked to the hospital's lobby at the main entrance.  There I found a long bank of wooden telephone booths with glass insets in their folding doors, about half of which were occupied.  I stepped into an empty one and called Colonel Beecher in San Francisco.

CHAPTER EIGHT

When she and Russ walked out of Freeman Hospital, Sally was about the happiest mess I've ever seen.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Sally's home turned out to be a little California bungalow in a neighborhood full of little California bungalows.

CHAPTER NINE

San Francisco's Great Highway follows the surf and sand dunes along the western edge of the city.

CHAPTER NINE

The extremely art deco Ocean Park Motel is three blocks east of the Great Highway and a block or so north of the city's new Fleishhacker Zoo.  The Ocean Park Motel is also where we spent Saturday night after driving nearly five hundred miles from Inglewood.

CHAPTER NINE

We were there because Playland was the closest place with a restaurant that was open for breakfast early on Sunday morning.  We sat around a table near the back of the Splendid Inn's dining room drinking coffee while we waited for our breakfasts.

CHAPTER NINE

I drove north past the point where the famous Cliff House restaurant hangs precariously from a precipice overlooking the Pacific Ocean and the appropriately named Seal Rocks.

CHAPTER NINE

We passed the Sutro Baths next and the Great Highway turned east, where it became Point Lobos Avenue, and ultimately, Geary Boulevard.

CHAPTER NINE

I pulled to the curb and parked at our destination, Building 100, otherwise known as Army Military Intelligence Division—Western Headquarters.  Russ helped Sally out of the Dodge and she got her first real look at the San Francisco Presidio.

CHAPTER NINE

Then I flipped a page and Sally's voice echoed off of the room's high ceiling, "There!  There she is!"

The archivist gave us an annoyed glare and I looked at the photo at which Sally was pointing.  Sure enough, Madam X was recognizable even in the grainy out of focus photographic copy of a Kodak snapshot.  She was seated on a bed or cot with her legs crossed and she held a cigarette in her right hand.  "You're right that's her.  No question about it."

CHAPTER TEN

This edifice, a scaled-down replica of some historic joint in France, was built back in the 1920s by one of the city's zillionaires who apparently figured San Francisco just wouldn't be complete without such a magnificent monstrosity.

CHAPTER TEN

The sun had burned off the morning fog by then and the brilliant orange bridge stood out in Technicolor contrast against a deep blue sky while dazzlingly white seagulls put on flying demonstrations overhead.  Sally was impressed.

CHAPTER TEN

San Francisco is lousy with palaces and our next stop was another one, the Palace of Fine Arts in the Marina district just east of the Presidio.  This palace is a holdover from the 1915 Panama Pacific Exposition and you have to see it to believe it.  The structure is an octagonal rotunda covered with more gewgaws than I've ever seen in one place before.  This monument to the classical arts is reddish tan with a white dome topping it off.  The rotunda and a backdrop of columns and arches are impressively mirrored in a large reflecting pool.  Aside from housing some tennis courts, the primary function of the place seems to be purely ornamental.

CHAPTER TEN

Fortunately, Sally didn't require that a landmark make sense or be practical to enjoy it.  She snapped her Kodak at the thing a couple of times and I watched the traffic again.

CHAPTER TEN

Next we stopped at what's known locally as the Marina Green, a large patch of lawn right on the bay where the big attractions are views of the federal penitentiary on Alcatraz Island and more scenes of the Golden Gate Bridge.

CHAPTER TEN

If you turn around and look south from the Green, you will see some of the most expensive mansions in San Francisco.  They're jammed together cheek to jowl, but the views from their front windows are spectacular . . .

CHAPTER TEN

There are two attractions at Fisherman's Wharf.  First, there are the quaint little fishing boats crewed by the descendants of Italian immigrants.  The second attraction is the tasty seafood served by restaurants owned by more descendants of Italian immigrants.

CHAPTER TEN

Back in 1939 I worked a case requiring me to spend a fair amount of time in the city by the bay.  During that visit I was told by locals, including a tough San Francisco homicide cop by the unlikely name of Horatio Bailey, that the best seafood to be had at the wharf was at a joint called Number Nine Fisherman's Grotto.  With that recommendation in mind, I parked as close as I could get to the place and we wandered in.

CHAPTER TEN

Our lunches, accompanied by thick-crusted sourdough bread, were well prepared, and best of all, the seafood was fresh.

CHAPTER TEN

The bridge dumped us in the tiny burg of Vallejo.  Vallejo is a Spanish surname pronounced vah-LĀY-hoe.  Now you know everything I know about Vallejo, except they build submarines on an island somewhere nearby and you can buy Flying A gasoline for 20.9-cents per gallon there.  I learned that last detail because we stopped at the Flying A station to fill up the Dodge.

CHAPTER TEN

"Maybe.  Black Plymouth back there.  It pulled in and parked on the apron of that Flying A station while we were getting gas."

CHAPTER TEN

I spotted the El Rancho Motel's giant neon windmill alongside Route 40 and pulled up to the office.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Security was much tighter at McClellan Airfield.  The MP at the gate gave us and our IDs a thorough going over.  When he was satisfied we were who we said we were, I asked him where to find McClellan Air Service Command HQ.  He gave me clear directions and a snappy salute.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Wings Way was only about three blocks long and I was at its eastern end, so I could see the entire street.  Absolutely nothing moved anywhere along its length.  It occurred to me that Wings Way was the perfect locale for a cemetery.

CHAPTER TWELVE

"To call him and explain what the blazes is going on with Dragon Lady and how we're going to make her and her pals into good little Jap spies."

Sally looked puzzled and Russ filled in the blank for her.  "The expression goes 'the only good Jap spy is a dead Jap spy.'"

"And who is Dragon Lady."

I grinned.  "She's the femme fatale in the Terry and the Pirates comic strip.  It seemed like a good code name for Marjorie Yount."

" That gave Sally the giggles.  "A comic strip character?  You guys are nuts!"

CHAPTER TWELVE

When I turned around to head for the lobby, I got a good overall view of the Claremont.  It was something to behold.  Sitting atop a rise, the Claremont sprawled outward from a central tower that stood at least a dozen stories.  I have no idea what the architectural style is called, but the lines seemed very formal to my eye, with tall peaked rooves rising above buildings that were four or five floors.  Without a doubt though, the hotel's best features were its fabulous views of the bay and San Francisco.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I started Tuesday off about 0500 with a drive along Oakland's Twelfth Street to take a look at the nonexistent address Harada Daisuke, the Plymouth driver, and Dragon Lady gave the California Department of Motor Vehicles as their residence.  It was an older neighborhood with narrow two-story 1920s houses jammed together so tightly you couldn't slide a dollar bill between them without scraping feathers off the eagle, and after nearly twenty years, the neighborhood was beginning to look a little dingy and worn around the edges.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I looked where he was pointing and saw a highly polished dark blue Buick Roadmaster four-door sedan with whitewall tires and Buick's signature Cruise-a-Line Vent-a-Ports. above its front fenders.  "Damn!  You could bolt a turret on that thing and use it for a tank!"

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I looked through the open door.  She was right, in fact snazzy barely described the dashboard's opulence.  The three-spoke steering wheel had a full-circle chrome horn ring with a stylish Buick emblem at its center.  A huge chrome waterfall of radio speaker grille filled the entire center of the dashboard, and the right side was taken up by a giant glove compartment that seemed darn near as big as the Dodge's trunk.  What's more, the glove compartment door had a clock in it, and the clock was big enough to read from the back seat.  Everything on the dashboard that wasn't chrome was painted a glossy dark blue to match the exterior paint.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

"That's about the size of it.  Tell you what, Russ, drive over to Crissy Field and park someplace with a good view.  I need some think time."

I saw him glance at Sally.  They were both wearing grave expressions now.  The Major was losing his touch.  Maybe I was.  I was certainly missing something somewhere."

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The Model 1912, or M12 as it was more popularly known in military circles, is a pump action shotgun.  Ours was the 12 gauge short-barrel model.  One reason the Army likes the M12 is it can be slam-fired.  That means if you hold the trigger back, it fires every time you pump the slide.  An expert can fire the six rounds the M12 holds in a matter of seconds, making it as effective as a Thompson in close quarters.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

We pulled up in front of Wilkins' house and it only took a few seconds to get the lay of the land.  It was a 1920s bungalow with a small half-walled front porch area, a narrow driveway on our left, and a large tree with a wide trunk on the right.  Best of all, the distance from the curb to the front door was short, not more than fifteen feet.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

There were also no streetlights on Brynhurst, which made it a small miracle that I spotted a large sedan that, by its silhouette against the white house behind it, looked to be a Caddy—a Cadillac that seemed out of place in an older low-rent neighborhood.  What gave the car away were its large white sidewall tires . . .

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The rest of the waiting room is home to an odd assortment of mismatched chairs and benches; a long row of public telephone booths; and a collection of vending machines offering snacks, cold drinks, and coffee or watery soup.  I'd made a meal out of the contents of those machines on more than one occasion.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I turned and climbed a stairway to the second floor of the four-apartment complex and knocked on the door with a metal "3" screwed to it.  I was fairly certain there would be no answer to my knock.  The time was almost ten-hundred hours and Susan Jackson, at whose apartment door I stood, was almost certainly at the private clinic where she holds the lofty position of head nurse

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I waved and walked over to my Buick Century Sedanette.  It was a dumb name for one of the fastest production cars made in the US.

Elton joined me and wiped at an invisible dirty spot on the fender with his rag. "You know, Mister Spicer, my offer is still good.  Anytime you want to sell this beauty here, I'll give you a hundred more than you paid for it."

"Elton, please call me Johnny, and if I was going to sell it to anyone, you'd get first dibs, but I'm not through having fun with it yet."

Elton laughed.  "You can have a lot of fun with eight cylinders, 250 cubic inches, and 125 horses in a light weight coupe like this, that's for sure."

"That's why I bought it."

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Leaving Elton Bishoff's garage in separate cars, Susan and I met at Joe's Café down State Street toward the beach.  Joe's had become a favorite of ours and the food was always tasty.  I hadn't eaten anything since grabbing a candy bar at the military hanger at some absurd hour that morning, so I was hungry.  Susan and I split a dinner platter of spaghetti with two meatballs as big as my fist.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I pulled into the parking lot of the Casa Sobre El Mar Clinic.  The name means House on the Sea and it fits the rustic buildings nestled in the pines above the Pacific Ocean perfectly.  The place is a little larger now than it was when I was a patient four years ago, but despite its size the clinic still has the charm of a country seaside cottage.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

After Susan dropped me at Santa Barbara's municipal airport, I stood in the brisk morning air sorting out a few thoughts while waiting for Stu Irvin to arrive.  At the top of the list was the cause of death in Captain Frank Ellis' autopsy report.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

For the curious, Stu explains that the AT7 is a variant of the Beechcraft B-18 light twin.

If you've never seen a B-18, they are tail-draggers with two engines and twin rudders.  Most AAF versions are unpainted and fly around in their sliver birthday suits.  The interior is somewhat cramped, but still manages to carry eight or nine passengers, plus a two-man crew.  The Navy also flies B-18s.  The sailor boys call their AT7s SNB1s.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Stu made a slight right turn after passing over the American River five or six miles south of the field and we were lined up perfectly with runway three-four-zero.  The next thing I knew we were rolling along that runway with hardly a bump to know we'd landed.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

His twin was standing in the corner of the ASC lobby, but he didn't have a bayonet.  The barrel of the Colt Tommy Gun he cradled in his arms was not designed to accommodate such accessories.  It didn't need them.  His eyes never left me the entire time I was at the lobby counter.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

It was a '39 Plymouth sedan staff car that would have been on a scrap heap somewhere if there wasn't war on.  Still, I'm a Chrysler guy and appreciated the sedan's finer qualities that were lost on Captain Irvin.  When Stu first saw it, he unholstered his .45 intending, he said, to shoot the Plymouth and put it out of its misery.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

I picked the Lockheed plant and airfield in Burbank for our next stop, but I got quite a surprise when we arrived.  The modern streamline style administration building I was used to seeing had disappeared. 

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

In place of the plant's buildings, runways, and rows of P-38 fighters were rolling hills, trees, alfalfa fields, and houses.  At least that's what Lockheed's extensive camouflage netting would look like to a Jap bomber crew looking for an aircraft plant to bomb.  Even Stu Irvin was impressed.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Directly ahead was the hook-shaped pier and breakwater of Aquatic Park.  Stu banked hard left, and after a few seconds, hard right.  That pair of maneuvers put directly over the brilliantly-lit Palace of Fine Arts and in line with the runway lights of the Crissy Field.  Faster than I can tell it, we covered the remaining distance, there was a slight bump, and I felt the wheels rolling along the tarmac.  We had arrived.  The instrument panel clock showed 1939.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

It could not have housed many offices, though, because the entire structure only measured about 20-feet wide by 50-feet deep.  Nestled between a couple of large trees, the building sits on a slope and was built atop a raised foundation to make things level.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

We stood out there watching the trees and shrubs drip and enjoying our coffee a while longer before the door behind us opened and Sally stuck her head out into the world.  "Is this coffee club strictly for guys or can a gal join it?"

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Battery Chamberlin mounted two six-inch guns pointed out across the Golden Gate, which is the name given the entrance to San Francisco Bay long before there was any thought of building the bridge of the same name across it.  The guns were mounted in a concrete pit at beach level and positioned to fire in a nearly straight line trajectory at any enemy ships that wandered by.  There were two additional mounts without guns in the battery, indicating there might have been four guns at one time.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

We drove across the unpaved parking area just south of the guns and found a road that appeared to complete a loop back to Lincoln Boulevard.  Just as we left the parking area, something flashed at me from a clump of pine trees just ahead to the right of the access road.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

As Russ pulled into the pine tree grove, I saw the flash again, only this time I also saw what was flashing.  It was window glass on the passenger side of a nearly new ugly green Ford Super Deluxe station wagon with wood paneling.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Looking down the slope where Russ was pointing, I could see something black at the bottom of a tree trunk.  When I got a few steps closer, it all became clear.  I was looking at a small inflatable rubber life raft.  In it were a paddle and what appeared as if it might be a Winchester Model 70 bolt-action hunting rifle poking out of an oilskin sack.

CHAPTER TWENTY

It was about 1330 when we parked in the tiny lot next to Eddie's Soup & Sandwich Shop at the intersection of Lombard & Broderick.  Eddie's was popular with civilian employees at the Presidio because it was within walking distance for lunch and they served the best soup in town.  The little café offered counter service, plus three small tables at the very back.  Russ and I grabbed one of the tables.

CHAPTER TWENTY

By the time I got to Letterman I was close to giving up on the whole scheme, but then I witnessed the complete lack of security at the hospital.  I found out Sally's room number simply by asking the exceptionally helpful woman at the lobby reception desk.  I was in civvies so she had no idea who the hell I was, but she happily told me what room Miss MacLure was in on the second floor and gave me detailed instructions for finding it.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

"What school did you go to?"

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

"You've got it.  I'll just shoot any Letterman nurses who want in."

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

A few minutes after 0800 hours an orderly informed me there was an ambulance at the rear entrance to the hospital to transport Miss MacLure.  He and another fellow lifted Sally onto a gurney and, with Russ, Susan, and I in close attendance, wheeled her down to the waiting transportation.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

The ambulance Doctor Rothenberg promised was not only there, but they drove it right out to the AT7 on the aircraft parking ramp to simplify loading.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

"Yes, she has, and that's a shame because Sally's a good kid."

Chuckling, Susan said, "And I knew she'd be cute."

Feigning surprise, I said, "Is she?  I hadn't noticed."

Now Susan was laughing.  "You, sir, are a lousy liar.  Go take care of your cute blonde.  I have work to do."

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Rothenberg nodded.  "I see.  Would I be correct if I were to guess a certain Mister Whiskers prompted that comment?"

Sally looked surprised.  "Do you know Mister Whiskers, too, Doctor?"

Stepping closer to Sally's bed so he could apply his stethoscope, the doctor said, "My dear, everyone who is anyone in Santa Barbara knows Mister Whiskers.  Take a deep breath please."

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

After completing my circumnavigation of the clinic, I stood on the front porch puffing a Lucky Strike and watching a black Cadillac limo that looked to be about a block long pull up to the main entrance.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

. . . the pistol, a nine-millimeter German Lugar from the quick look I'd gotten when he shot at me, was pressed against the right side of Susan's head.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

She consulted a clever little upside-down watch pinned to her apron so it read right side up when she looked down at it.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

There was something there, all right.  It looked like a blue canvas duffel bag, the kind with a zippered opening on top and a leather carrying handle on each side of the opening.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

. . . and the label said, "RCA Radio B Battery—67.5 Volts".  It was the sort of battery used in portable radio receivers and was probably the power source for detonating the blasting cap, which in turn, detonated the dynamite.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

. . . the blue Talbot coupé the doctor drove to the clinic that morning [was] gone.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

I offered him a Lucky Strike, which he accepted.  We lit our cigarettes with the brushed chrome Zippo lighter Susan gave me.  I kept it in my hand for a while because if felt good.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

It was 1700 hours by the time Susan and I got all the cars where they belonged and arrived at her apartment.  Once there, we decide we were hungry, so I walked over to the Chinese take-out place in the next block of State Street and took out some of those little white boxes full of stuff like Chow Mein and fried rice.  We shared a few morsels of chicken with Mister Whiskers as compensation for leaving him on his so much.  He seemed to think that was an excellent tradeoff.

CHAPTER THIRTY

With a cardboard cup of fresh hot coffee in hand, I walked out of the hangar and sat myself down at a picnic table in the sun on the east side of the building.  The coffee was good, and I was glad I had it because the sun's warmth immediately made me sleepy.

CHAPTER THIRTY

"Yes, sir.  I have Sergeant Pierce's wallet.  I found it at the explosion site and I picked it up because there's cash in it that belongs to Uncle Sam."

CHAPTER THIRTY

After dinner we retired to the couch, where we listened to the radio.  I tuned in KNX, "broadcasting from Columbia Square on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood."  Hearing KNX made me feel a little homesick.  Columbia Square is not more than a dozen blocks from my old office at Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

I opened the mug book and found Abe Yuta on the second page.  The photo was so out of focus and grainy it made the snapshot of Marjorie Yount I'd been carrying around look like a studio glamour portrait.  About all you could tell for sure from Mister Abe's photo was that he had two eyes, a nose, and a mouth in more or less the usual places.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

I told the woman driving the cab I wanted to go to 509 Northwest Polk Avenue.  She said, "Oh, the Pierce place.  You a friend of the Pierce's are you?"

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

I walked up a path to the front door of the Pierce's house.  There was no doorbell, so I knocked.  When a young woman with the same sort of clean-cut features as Russ and a white apron over her blue dress opened the door, I said, "Good morning.  My name is Johnny Spicer.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

I followed her down a hallway into what struck me as a typical farmhouse kitchen, even though I couldn't recall ever actually being in a farmhouse.  The telephone was a combination of old and modern, an upright candlestick instrument with a dial attached to its base.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

We rode to the airport in a spotless two-year-old black Ford convertible.  When we got into it, June said, "This is Russ's car.  He lets me use . . . I mean . . . ."

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Thursday, 26 March came and went with nary a B-25 on the horizon.  Around mid-morning on 27 March, however, they showed up in what seemed like droves.  Before long, impatient pilots had the McClellan flight line looking like rush hour in the Cahuenga Pass.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

He walked away patting his pockets.  He didn't find what he was looking for and turned back to me.  "Hey, Major, you got a light?"

I handed him my Zippo.  He lit his cigar butt and dropped my lighter into a side pocket of his leather flight jacket.  As he turned to leave, I said, "Colonel, that Zippo was a birthday gift from my fiancé.  If I show up without it, she's gonna come lookin' for you and the Japs will be the least of your worries."

He stopped short and looked me square in the eye.  He just stood there doing his best to intimidate me and I just stared back at him.  Finally, he grinned.  "Spicer, you're okay."

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

These ships were originally equipped with Norden Mark Fifteen units.  They're the ones with stabilized bombing approach autopilot systems.  For our application, those sights are worthless.  They were removed along with all of their mechanical autopilot linkages.  Instead we're using a bombsight that costs 20-cents a pop to build and were put together by one of our pilots, Captain Greening, in his spare time.  For our purposes his 'Mark Twain' bombsight is considerably more reliable than the Norden."

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

The hangar had a peaked roof supported by vertical I-beams of incremental lengths rising from several latitudinal girders spanning the width of the building.  The girder nearest where I thought I'd seen movement was equipped with a special catwalk for access to the lifting mechanism of a gantry crane which could be positioned to lift heavy aircraft parts and move them from one side of the hangar to the other.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

He spotted me and, hanging onto the chain with one hand, he reached into the right-hand pocket of his fatigue pants, intending to pull a pistol—a  Japanese eight-millimeter Nambu by the look of it when he got it out.  The pistol, however, got hung up in his pocket, and before he got it all the way out the thing discharged.  I heard the muffled pop and saw his right leg jerk.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

He climbed into the ship through the escape hatch in the cockpit canopy and dropped down through the crew boarding hatch in front of the bomb bay.  I had just enough time to spin in his direction and throw myself to the concrete floor before the Jap dropped to the ground in a crouch and we were face to face with no more than five feet between us.  We fired within a split second of each other.  At that range, neither of us was likely to miss.  We didn't.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Standing in a light foggy mist out near the end of a pier at Alameda Naval Air Station, I could see the Hornet and the escort vessels comprising Task Group 14.2 anchored about half a mile out in San Francisco Bay.  Despite the fog, I could also clearly see Doolittle's B-25s crowded together on the aft half of the Hornet's flight deck.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

The bombers began arriving at NAS Alameda from Sacramento on Wednesday, and by dusk Thursday, all sixteen Mitchells were aboard the Hornet.  At that point the carrier left the dock to spend the night anchored in the bay with two cruisers, four destroyers, and a tanker.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

After the bellman, an older fellow I didn't recognize, hauled my bag up to our suite, I parked the Dodge and sat outside on a bench near the lobby entrance.  I lit a Lucky and wondered if Jimmy, the young bellboy I was used to seeing at the Biltmore, might have enlisted.  Otherwise, I just stared out across the Biltmore's meticulously landscaped grounds at the Pacific Ocean.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

When Henson arrived, I introduced him to Eli and suggested what I always thought was the best item on the menu, the Fancy-Schmancy Hollywood Reuben.  It was a corned beef Reuben, the only true Reuben, taken up a couple of notches with marbled rye bread and a smear of yellow mustard.  For our sides, Gary and I both chose the German potato salad, which I noticed was now simply called "warm potato salad" on the menu board.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

After calling Susan I went to bed with my fingers crossed.  I was pretty sure there were 80 Army Air Force flyboys somewhere out over the Pacific Ocean who needed all the luck they could get.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

I walked over to Patmar's coffee shop and stopped in front of the newspaper rack outside the door.  The banner headline below the masthead was printed in bold three-inch letters.  It said, "TOKYO BOMBED!"

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Miss MacLure will be receiving the Secretary of War's Medal for Outstanding Public Service.  It's a medal for civilians who've gone beyond the call of duty in the service of their country.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

No, what concerned me about this particular truck was I'd seen somewhere else recently.  It, or one identical to it, was parked on West Hillcrest Boulevard in Inglewood, a block from Sally's house.  I wasn't positive it was the same truck, but it sure looked like it.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

The little business coupé was wounded, but not beyond repair.  I gave it a sympathetic pat on its crunched fender, and then drove back to the Catalina Steamship Terminal.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

I sat in front of a window in our fourth floor room at the Saint Catherine Hotel and watched the sleek Miss Catalina speedboat roar past the Avalon Casino while Susan changed the dressing on my shoulder.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

After arriving on the first boat over from Wilmington Sunday morning, Susan and I strolled through the exotic little town of Avalon and got slightly sunburned on the Saint Catherine Hotel's beach.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Checking into the hotel I learned that as of late August the SS Catalina steamer and her sister ship, the SS Cabrillo, will no longer be available for carrying passengers to and from the island.  Both ships were being pressed into service by the Navy to haul sailors back and forth across San Francisco Bay.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Further evidence of Catalina's transition to a war footing greeted us in the harbor when we arrived.  An angry looking navy-gray destroyer bristling with guns was anchored in the bay just fifty yards from the Avalon Pleasure Pier.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

"Really?  What kind of activities might those be?"

"The kind that involve lots of hugging and kissing and . . . ."

I pulled her onto my lap and kissed her for a long time.   When we came up for air, I said, "You mean like that?"

In a slightly breathless tone of voice, Susan said, "Yes, darling, exactly like that."