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  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  ACKNOWLEDGMENT

  PROLOGUE

  BOOK ONE

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  BOOK TWO

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  BOOK THREE

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  57

  58

  59

  60

  61

  BOOK FOUR

  62

  63

  64

  65

  66

  67

  68

  69

  70

  71

  72

  73

  74

  75

  76

  77

  78

  79

  80

  FICTION BY DAVID HAGBERG

  Desert Fire

  Copyright Page

  This novel is for Dominick Abel and

  Tom Doherty. It’s nice to be believed in,

  and even nicer to have such friends.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENT

  Special thanks to Robert Roningen,

  my friend and weapons expert, for vetting

  the manuscript. His help is appreciated.

  PROLOGUE

  HIROSHIMA

  AUGUST 6, 1945

  THE ELECTRIC LIGHTS DANGLING FROM THE HOSPITAL WARD ceiling paled to nothingness in the morning sun streaming through the tall windows. A man dressed in what appeared to be a uniform, but without any insignia of rank or unit, stopped at the swinging doors and forced himself to look back. The hospital was nearly full just now, and all but two of the beds in this ward were occupied. An old man sat, head bowed, beside the last bed on the right. He held the hand of the dying old woman beneath the covers. The man in the uniform looked at them, he suspected for the last time, then turned.

  A floor nurse seated at the desk smiled consolingly, but she said nothing. There was no shame or dishonor in dying well. And the old woman in the last bed on the right was accomplishing her dying in an orderly, quiet, dignified fashion. She was well respected in the Red Cross Hospital because of it.

  Isawa Nakamura pushed through the swinging doors and walked out into the corridor where he hesitated a few moments longer. The windows looked downtown, toward the prominent dome of the Industrial Promotion Hall. It was a little after eight, and he was still early for his appointment. No use, this morning, being early. He would gain face by arriving one or two minutes late.

  Life was for the living. The dead were not to be forgotten, but time just now was becoming terribly important to those who were going to survive. And if nothing else could be said about Nakamura, he was a survivor. As a child he and his brother had been ice skating on a pond at their family retreat near Sapporo on the northern island of Hokkaido when the ice broke and he went in. His brother jumped in after him and pushed him out of the icy water. Instead of running the mile or so home for help, Nakamura went to the nearby shelter hut where he changed into dry clothes. When he came back to the pond his brother was gone, drowned, so he calmly walked home to report the tragedy. A great many people had died that year of influenza, which was brought on by a chill. No use taking a chance.

  At thirty, Nakamura was one of the rising stars in the Japanese industrial-technical revolution. A self-taught electronics engineer, he was as ruthless with his body as he was with his mind. At five-foot-four he was a compact, well-muscled man with deep-set obsidian eyes and jet black, luxuriously thick hair. Given six months he and his people could develop a small, powerful radar that could be installed in fighter aircraft, giving the Japanese airman the decided advantage.

  Given a year, the air force would be flying jets, which along with radar and new developments in rocket armaments and guidance systems, could turn the tide.

  It would depend on the spirit of the people. If they were willing to defend the homeland on the beaches, in the hills and forests, and in the cities, street by street, house by house, it might buy them the development time. But only just.

  There was no time for the dead or dying because Japan would surely lose the war unless the living—all the living—dedicated themselves to the struggle.

  He looked again toward the swinging doors. It had been the matter of the estate that had brought him down here. As soon as his mother and father were dead he stood to inherit money and land. He wanted to see with his own eyes the state of their health. She was dying, and his father didn’t look well. The strain of her death would probably kill him within a month or two.

  He’d also come down to meet with the colonel of the Hiroshima Defense District, who fancied himself a businessman, and who was willing, for a price, to supply Nakamura’s firm with the needed copper wire and gold leaf for switch contacts. Both metals were virtually impossible to obtain these days.

  “Isawa-san,” someone called for him in a small voice at the end of the corridor.

  He turned in irritation as Myeko Tanimoto, dressed in a crisp white and red flowered kimono, held up a delicate little hand for him. She traveled as his secretary. In reality she had been a maiko, which was a geisha in training, until Nakamura bought her from the school. At fifteen, she was a perfectly formed porcelain doll. But she frightened easily, and just lately she had begun to get on his nerves.

  “Return to the car and wait with Kiyoshi,” he said as she hobbled in tiny steps toward him.

  “There has been another air raid signal, Isawa-san. Didn’t you hear it?”

  “It is like the others last night. There is nothing this time. You heard the all clear.”

  “But it is said that they have seen B-san. Three of them to the northeast over Lake Biwa.”

  “They will bomb some other city. It is their rendezvous point. Now return to the car, Kiyoshi will be getting worried.”

  “May I remain here with you?” Myeko asked. She had stopped halfway along the corridor. A nurse came out of one of the wards, looked at her, then at Nakamura, and left.

  “Do as I say,” Nakamura told her.

  “But I am frightened …”

  “Obey!” Nakamura roared.

  Myeko stumbled backward as if she had received a
physical blow, then, lowering her head, she turned and hobbled back to the stairs the way she had come.

  Dr. Masakazu Saski came to his office door, a disapproving scowl on his deeply lined face. “What is the trouble here?” he demanded.

  “There is no trouble, sensei,” Nakamura said. “But I wish to have a word with you about my parents.”

  The doctor’s eyeglasses were perched on top of his head. He flipped them down and peered myopically at Nakamura. “Who are you?”

  “Isawa Nakamura.”

  “Ah, the young lion.” The doctor shook his head. “Come in then,” he said, and he turned and disappeared into his office. Saski had a bad reputation for being overly Western in his brusque, to-the-point manner. But he was a good doctor and he worked cheaply.

  The doctor’s office was small, and in complete disarray, with medical supplies, journals, books and files scattered everywhere.

  “You want to know how your mother is doing,” Dr. Saski said gruffly.

  “She does not look well.”

  “No. Neither is your father. Both of them will be dead within a few months. Your mother soonest, I should think.”

  “What is wrong with them?”

  “Age. Heartache. They talk about your brother almost all the time.”

  “I see. What are you doing for them?”

  “Keeping them comfortable … and together. Something you could do, Nakamura. It would free up valuable space here.”

  “I have no time …”

  “You could hire a nurse to care for them. You are young and wealthy. For that matter your parents have money, and property. They speak often of their place on Hokkaido. From what I understand it has not been visited since your brother’s accident. They would like to go there now, to die and be at peace with their son.”

  Nakamura said nothing.

  “Surely you can understand this, Nakamura-san. You have a wife and children of your own in …”

  Nakamura slapped an open palm on the doctor’s desk. “There will be time after the war for holidays. I will hear no more of this.”

  “The war is over, you young fool,” Dr. Saski said, harshly. “All that is left is for the profiteers. And later, the gallows. The Americans will not honor seppuku. Perhaps it would bring more honor to your family to commit hara-kiri now.”

  “The war is not over until the Emperor Tenno concedes defeat, a move he will never make.”

  “Or until we are all destroyed.”

  “I could have you shot for treason.”

  Dr. Saski snatched up his telephone and held it out to Nakamura. “Call your military friends, Nakamura-san. Call them now, if you are not a coward. But let me tell you that the great empire is gone. Up in flames with our cities. Tokyo is in ruins. Soon we will join her. Maybe sooner than you think. So it doesn’t matter. Go ahead and call your friends in their high places. Maybe they will come down to deal with me. Maybe they will tell you to go away. Who knows. I am willing to see. Are you?”

  “Perhaps I will kill you myself.”

  “You are certainly capable of it.”

  Nakamura suddenly had no idea what he was doing here, wasting his time like this. Yet he found himself wondering about the doctor. He didn’t understand the man. “You would rather die than fight back?”

  For the first time Dr. Saski’s expression softened. “We speak of being Japanese. There is no honor left in it. Believe me, I have seen as much as you, maybe even more. The misery, the starvation, the wounds, the open, festering sores. Where is the honor, Nakamura-san? I ask you.”

  Nakamura felt as if he were standing at the very edge of an extremely dangerous precipice. If he made the wrong move he would fall over and plunge to his death. By sheer dint of will he stepped aside, away from the doctor’s desk. The sunlight streaming through the windows across the hall illuminated the room. “You are no Japanese. You are nothing but scum.”

  “I am not a murderer … like you.”

  “Bastard …” Nakamura said, when a tremendous flash lit up the corridor at his back, as if someone had let off a gigantic photographic bulb.

  There was no noise, but Dr. Saski’s eyes turned an opaque white almost instantly, and he staggered backward.

  Instinctively Nakamura, who’d survived a number of bombing raids on Tokyo, dove for the floor, protecting his head with his arms. His first thought was that the Americans had dropped another Molotoffano hanakago—what the public called Molotov Flower Baskets, which were cluster bombs. But this flash was much too bright. And there was no explosion.

  Nakamura started to raise his head when a huge shock wave hit the hospital as if a loaded freight train going full tilt had slammed into the building’s foundation. Window glass flew through the open office door like pellets from a shotgun’s barrel, slicing Dr. Saski’s face into ribbons. In the next instant the desk lifted up on unseen hands and fell on top of the doctor.

  Ceilings and walls were falling with horrible grinding crashes, and moments or seconds later people began to scream.

  Nakamura pulled himself upright, scattering pieces of wood and glass and papers that had fallen on him, and staggered over to where Dr. Saski lay beneath the heavy oak desk. Blood streamed from hundreds of slashes on the doctor’s face and chest, and his eyes were bleeding, both corneas milky white. He was still alive, but it was obvious he would bleed to death unless he got help soon.

  “Can you hear me, sensei?” Nakamura shouted.

  Dr. Saski grabbed for Nakamura’s shoulder with his one free hand. “What was it? A bomb?”

  “Yes, I think so. Are you in pain?”

  “My patients.”

  “You are in no position to help them now. You must save yourself. I will see if I can lift the desk off you.”

  “No,” Dr. Saski cried, desperately clutching Nakamura’s arm. “You must help organize the evacuation before there is fire.”

  “Don’t be a fool. There is nothing to be done for them.”

  “Damn you, Nakamura, they need your help.”

  Nakamura pried the doctor’s fingers from the material of his jacket and backed away. Scrambling to his feet he went to the corridor door. Everything was different. A big section of the floor above had collapsed, dumping beds and bodies in a bloody heap all tangled with wooden beams, boards, glass, electrical wires and plumbing pipes and even surgical equipment, bottles, bandages and other debris.

  None of the window frames held any glass, and the scene outside toward the center of the city nearly a mile away was unbelievable, like something out of a nightmare. A hellish cauldron of smoke and fire in dozens of unreal colors rose straight up into a gigantic column the top of which was lost in billowing clouds of dust.

  This was no cluster bomb. It was something else. Tearing his eyes away from the fantastical scene outside, Nakamura looked back in at the doctor. Japan had lost the war. There was absolutely no doubt of that now. Afterwards, when the Americans occupied the homeland, there would be war trials. Those who had fought hardest and with the most bravery for Japan would be the first to go to the gallows … as Dr. Saski had predicted.

  Evidence would have to be gathered. There would be witnesses, even from his own factory where he had used Korean slave labor since 1938.

  There would be no extenuating circumstances. Isawa Nakamura would be found guilty as charged: Crimes against humanity.

  “I pleaded with him to help save my patients, but he ignored me, running away to save himself instead.

  “He came to visit his parents, but not out of some filial duty. He came to see how long it would be before they were dead. He wanted the inheritance, you see.”

  More people were screaming and moaning. A woman’s voice came from beneath the pile of rubble in the corridor. “Tasukete! Tasukete!” Help! Help!

  Nakamura went back to the doctor, his shoes crunching on the broken glass.

  “Nakamura, is that you?” Dr. Saski cried.

  Nakamura looked down at the doctor for a moment or two. He could d
efinitely smell smoke. The hospital was on fire. There was no doubt of it.

  “Can’t you hear them crying for help, Nakamura? You must help them. They will die otherwise.”

  Nakamura picked up a long, dagger-like shard of glass from the floor, and kneeling down beside Dr. Saski, blotted out the screams of the dying and helpless. Life was for the living, and he intended to live. At all costs.

  “Nakamura!” Dr. Saski rose on his free elbow.

  Nakamura grabbed a handful of Dr. Saski’s hair, yanked his head back, and with the shard of glass hacked through the man’s carotid artery, and windpipe, blood spurting everywhere, before he reared back.

  The doctor struggled desperately for a full minute before he took a last, gurgling gasp and his head thumped back on the floor.

  The glass shard had cut deeply into Nakamura’s hand. Tossing it aside he bound up the wound with his handkerchief and hurried out into the corridor. It was very dark, almost as if night had fallen. Looking through the gaping windows he could see that the sky was completely covered with swirling masses of dark clouds and dust.

  He was confused. There’d only been the one flash. One bomb. But how could it have done so much damage?

  Much of what he could see of the city was gone; either flattened by the blast or burning furiously. There seemed to be fires everywhere. And the street directly in front of the hospital was choked with debris. He’d been saved because he’d moved away from the open doorway at the last moment. He’d been lucky. Those caught outside would not have fared so well.

  For the first time he remembered that he had a car waiting for him. Kiyoshi Fukai, his driver, was downstairs with Myeko. He had sent her back outside just before the bomb. They were both outside, exposed.

  Nakamura was suddenly angry and frightened. He did not want to be stuck in Hiroshima. And without a car and driver it would take them days to make it home to his wife and children and business. There was too much to be done, too many records to be destroyed before the enemy landed, too much to be dismantled and hidden, for him to be delayed.

  Sprinting down the corridor, he scrambled over piles of debris and beds and bodies, mindless of the cries for help, panic suddenly rising inside him. The Americans had targeted Hiroshima for some reason. They had bombed it once, they would almost certainly bomb it again. He had to get away before the bombers returned.