Japanese planes still buzzed overhead. Here came a fighter, low, flames winking on and off as its machine guns shot up the U.S. column. “Get down!” people were shouting. “Hit the dirt!”

Fletch was damned if he would, even after a bullet slammed into a man less than ten feet away with a noise like a baseball bat hitting a watermelon. The luckless soldier clutched at himself and crumpled. Fletch yanked the.45 from his belt and banged away at the Jap. He had about as much chance of hitting the speeding fighter as he did of taking wing himself, but he gave it his best shot.

Infantrymen started firing at the enemy, too. That actually gave him a little hope. Put enough lead in the air and it was liable to do some good. Meanwhile, though, the handful of enemy planes were cutting the column to ribbons. Bombers pounded it from on high, while the fighters swooped low to strafe again and again. At every pass, men died and vehicles caught fire.

Somebody not far away moaned, “Where the hell are our airplanes?”

“You stupid asshole!” Fletch pointed south, toward the funeral pyre of Wheeler Field. “Where the fuck do you think they are? This has got to be the worst sucker punch in the history of the world.”

A bomb screamed down, louder and louder. With artillery fire, it meant the shells were headed right for you when the sound behaved like that. Armitage didn’t know if bombs worked the same way, but he didn’t want to find out by experiment, either. Now he did throw himself flat, a split second before the bomb burst.

Blast picked him up and slammed him down again like a professional wrestler. It tried to tear his lungs out through his mouth and nose. Dazed, he tasted blood. Concussion could kill without leaving visible injury. As he staggered upright again, he realized that had almost happened to him.