“The Bull thinks they’re up to something,” said another pilot, a j.g. named Hank Drucker. “He wouldn’t have put out that Battle Order if he didn’t.” Several men nodded at that. If Halsey thought something, they were convinced it had to be true.

But Peterson remained unquelled and unconvinced. “I think he put it out just to keep us on our toes,” he said. “What the hell could the Japs do to us?”

“Halsey’s worried about submarines,” Drucker said. “One torpedo amidships can put a pretty fair crimp in your plans.”

“Yeah, but why would they do anything like that?” Peterson demanded. “It makes no sense. They couldn’t sink enough of our ships to hurt the Pacific Fleet very much-and then they’d be eyeball-to-eyeball with us, and we’d be all pissed off.”

“They’re already pissed off at us.” Lieutenant Carter Higdon had a Mississippi drawl thick enough to slice. Despite it, he was the brains of the squadron. When he was off duty, he was working his way through a beat-up copy of Ulysses. He went on, “We’ve cut off their oil. We’ve cut off their scrap metal. Somebody tried doing that to us, how would we like it?”

“I’d kick the son of a bitch right in the slats,” Peterson said.

“I think you just shot yourself down, Jim,” Drucker said, a split second after Peterson realized the same thing.

He got out of it as best he could: “But I’m an American, goddammit. Those slant-eyed bastards haven’t got the balls for anything like that.”

“Here’s hopin’ you’re right,” Higdon said. “But I reckon we’ll be steamin’ west for real before too long, get the war going in the Philippines or somewhere like that. If they don’t get their oil from us, where will they get it? Only other place is the Dutch East Indies-and if they go there, they’ll go loaded for bear.”