The Divine Wind
Chapter I The Divine Wind—Part I
The man looked out into the deep and vast ocean. From his point of view, he looked out into the infinite body of wa- ter with a majestic horizon bountiful with cloud formations and a warm summer breeze warming his face from the gentle wind that blew across the sailboat in Long Island Sound. He was just a boy then back in 1915 when his father taught him how to sail and bestowed upon his son vast knowledge of the sea. His father told him about king Neptune and Poseidon and the laws of the oceans.
But that was then, and this is now, and the viewpoint has changed as he gazes off the bow of the naval destroyer in the mid- dle of Operation Iceberg off the shores of the main Japanese is- land of Okinawa. The water was deep this time. The water was filled with thousands of naval ships, and after four years of fight- ing he knew it was almost over.
His empathetic intuition alerted his subconscious, and he looked up into the sun. His pupils expanded as his super vision revealed twenty Japanese Kamikaze fighters bearing down on the fleet.
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He calmly grabbed the radio and relayed this message to the bridge of the destroyer.
“Kamikaze, kamikaze. Call general alarm battle stations.”
The clear skies lit up like the Fourth of July, and the antiair- craft fire blanketed the sky. I saw a flock of seagulls get mowed down and fall into the sea. Water became bloodred as a sinking transport ship on fire passed by as we were at full flank speed.
The column of smoke kept getting taller as we watched. Looked like it’d blot out the sun.
One of the boys handed me a pair of M13 binoculars, and I took my third look at the sinking ship over the past twenty min- utes. Well, I say sinking—it wasn’t sinking yet. Just burning.
I peered through the salt-encrusted lens for the third time in the past five minutes as another Japanese plane that had never hit the carrier went up in smoke and fire. There was movement, and I squinted; some of their crew were jumping into the sea, desperate to avoid the flames. Felt the hair rise on my neck as one of them, little more than a kid, looked almost right at me, his dingy overalls smoking, his sunken face slick with sweat. Then something—probably another plane—exploded on the ship, and the smoke swept him up.
We were too far to hear much, though. Mostly, all I could hear was the raucous singing of the fellas; they were still celebrating.
The USS Massachusetts had almost been kamikazed; not too far from our current position. Then the smoldering wrecks of two Japanese planes—or, as we called them, Zeros—bobbed in the waves. The only reason we were still alive was because air support had finally come through. If it had been a little later . . . well, who knows? There could’ve been more of us below deck with our guts in our hands. Or the whole ship could’ve been up in flames, just
The Divine Wind—Part I 3
like the Japanese carrier our air support had strafed and bombed to oblivion. A chill ran down my spine.
One of the more excitable lads yanked the binoculars from me, screwing them against his baby-blue eyes to stare at the sinking ship. He whistled as another explosion went off.
God, I needed a drink of rum about now.
Leaning back, I looked around. I was surrounded by soot-caked, happy faces bawling and singing in relief—they looked like kids who’d won the lottery. Well, I reckon that was accurate in a way. Half of them didn’t even have beards till last month, and now they’d just barely survived getting torched alive by the burning metal of an exploding kamikaze. They’d won the lottery, alright.
I had no clue how everyone else in the fleet was doing. That said, I knew that somewhere out there, Captain Fitzsimmons of the USS San Diego was probably frowning his way through the entire bat- tle, provided the stubborn bastard hadn’t swum out to sea to deal with the enemy himself. Everyone knew how stubborn he was, and I knew the man enough to know that it wasn’t an understatement.
A few other folks I knew were scattered through this godfor- saken mess, hopefully all still above the water. I looked around and saw dots of fire and smoke scattered across the horizon. The sky had turned gold—or at least a dull, sickly yellow. This wasn’t fighting weather, no sir—this was “stay inside and smoke” weather. Preferably with a bottle of something strong. Good, like twenty-five-year-old dark Royal Navy rum.
“Happy Easter,” came a voice. “And cheer up, you misera- ble bastard.”
Not the language you’d expect from a chaplain. He was a thin, angular man with eyes too big for his head and a tongue too quick for his profession.
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“I am cheering up,” I replied drily. “Look how happy I am.”
“Downright exuberant, Downey,” the chaplain said with the barest trace of sarcasm. “But you do have a reason to be.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Why’s that?”
“Well, you’ve got a promotion due,” said the chaplain with a thin smile. “Captain Winslow knows more, but from what I gather, the San Diego needs a commander. You’ve been nominated.”
I stood there, dumbstruck. At this moment, punching him didn’t seem completely off the table. Not him, but the news was the issue. It was a shocking promotion.
“Well,” I finally managed to say. “Why do they need me on the San Diego anyways? I thought Fitzsimmons was a one-man ad- ministration unit. She’s his ship.”
“He’s out cold, from what I gather—whether he’s sick or in- jured, who knows. But he’s out of action. On the other hand, the San Diego is most likely going to be seeing plenty of ac- tion today.”
True enough. I couldn’t imagine anyone involved in this mess would get through it unscathed. We’d been out on the fringes of the push so far, dealing with the final Japanese defensive attacks on the United States Seventh Fleet. But judging from the fire, flak, and smoke on the horizon, what we’d had so far might just have been the easy part. We might just have had it easy so far. Somewhere in that mess, I knew our boys and the Brits were en- during the assault of the Japs, who were descending on us with all the wrath of a cornered wolf.
“Any idea where we’re headed?” I asked the chaplain, wiping my suddenly sweaty palms on the railing.
“To regroup with the admiral, I believe,” the chaplain said be- fore following my gaze into the horizon. “Back at the Bunker Hill.”
