Jake told the gunners to hold their fire. The 37-millimeters had a range of about ten thousand feet, which wasn’t very much. The lead Japs were coming in low and fast, with other planes in long lines higher up and behind them.

“Now,” he yelled, and both guns opened up with a roar that was extremely satisfying. They were fighting back, and it felt good, damned good.

“What’re they going for?” Simpkins asked through the din. “Hickam’s pretty well shot over already.”

Jake agreed that it didn’t make sense unless they were going to make an additional strike on the ships in the harbor. However, if the smoke from the Ford Island area was any indication, they’d been pretty well shot up also. So what was the target?

Then he remembered the large cluster of oil storage tanks behind him. They were the target, not Hickam, and not the ships.

A Jap fighter peeled off the main group and lined up on them, daring Jake’s guns to shoot him down. The plane couldn’t have been twenty feet off the ground as it streaked toward them. Lights twinkled on the plane’s wings, and seconds later the ground around Jake’s guns was churned up by a storm of bullets.

Jake ducked and tried to claw into the earth while dust and debris covered him. In all his years in the army, today was the first time anyone had shot at him, and he didn’t like it at all. He whimpered and heard others crying and screaming. Then he heard a voice a lot like his own moaning in fear.

The plane was gone. He raised himself and looked around. One of his guns was destroyed, although the sergeant continued to fire the second at Jap bombers who were high overhead and out of range. They passed, and he saw their ghastly bomb loads tumble down onto the fuel tanks.

For a second there was silence, and he hoped they’d missed, but then the tanks began to explode in fiery bursts of oil that rolled into the sky. They were a couple of miles away, and he could still feel the heat. God help anyone near that inferno, he thought.