End of Enemies

36

Though the end of the war was still a year away, by the early summer of 1944, America’s island-hopping campaign had already obliterated Japan’s forward bases and the Allied forces were steadily tightening the noose on the Japanese Empire. Destroyed or bypassed were the island fortresses of Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Rabaul, and dozens of other atolls standing between the U.S. advance and the Japanese mainland.

By mid-June, two months after Truk’s airfields and lagoon were decimated by the Hellcats of Task Force 58, Vice Admiral Kelly Turner’s amphibious landing forces were swinging north. Blocking their way were the Marianas and Saipan, the headquarters of Japan’s Central Pacific Fleet.

Unlike Truk, however, the Marianas could not be bypassed. Doing so would leave Nimitz’s flanks exposed and deprive the allies of Saipan’s airfields, which they needed to launch B-29 bombing raids on the mainland. Consequently, the Japanese high command knew Saipan and the Marianas would bear the full fury of U.S. forces, and they had been preparing for it since February of that year. Clinging to what had become their standard of battle, they chose to fortify not only Saipan but every island, atoll, and rock they had captured since 1941.

One such island, Parece Kito, situated roughly 350 miles northwest of Saipan, had begun its fortification in March of 1944. Here, as before, Japan had not learned from its previous battles with the U.S. American commanders had no interest in forward naval bases. They wanted homes for their bombers, and Parece Kito’s four square miles of jungle and mangrove swamps did not fit the bill. Even if Nimitz had hand-delivered this information to Tokyo, however, it would not have mattered, for the empire’s defense strategy was based as much on stubbornness as it was on sound military planning. Not a scrap of ground was to be yielded. Not a palm tree, not a spit of sand.

And so by June of 1944, Parece Kito was home to a regiment of Japanese Marines, a sprawling underground bunker complex, and an interwoven system of eight-inch gun batteries designed to decimate any landing force trying to enter its lagoon.

Alas, the guns never fired a shot in anger.

They and the troops remained on Parece Kito, unused and ignored until the end of the war thirteen months later, when the island’s commander received word of the Empire’s surrender. The closest it had come to seeing an invasion force were three overflights by U.S. Navy PBYs, whose photos convinced Nimitz to bypass the island and let it wither on the vine.

Six weeks after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a dozen ships arrived at Parece Kito, took aboard the demoralized Japanese troops, and transported them back to internment camps in Japan. The guns were destroyed in place, and the bunker complex was sealed, an overnight ghost town.

It was to this island, over fifty years later, that Walter Oaken was sending Briggs Tanner and Ian Cahil on the trail of Tsumago.

After reaching the airstrip outside Iyo, they had boarded the charter plane awaiting them, and three hours later, they touched down at a rural airstrip on Okinawa. They were cleared through customs without incident, and Tanner assumed that either Takagi had not yet contacted the Okinawan authorities or Oaken had pulled some of his own strings. They found a secluded phone booth and called Oaken.

“I wish we had Tsumago’s helm data to confirm it, but this is about as close as we’re going to get,” Oaken began. “The log listed Tsumago as sailing eight times in the last six months, average duration three days, give or take twelve hours.”

Armed with the ship’s cruising speed of twenty knots and the longest time she’d been gone (eighty-five hours), Oaken had multiplied the two figures and halved the answer, leaving a maximum one-way range of 950 miles. With the shipyard at its center, the arc encompassed eastern China, Korea, Taiwan, all of Japan, and a good-sized chunk of the Pacific Ocean, including thousands of tiny, uninhabited islands.

Oaken checked all the major ports in Korea, China, and Japan for record of Tsumago’s docking. He found nothing. Like her sister ship Toshogu, Tsumago was a ghost. So why, he asked, wouldn’t Takagi use similar methods to hide her existence and destination? It was the right question.

Like Toshogu, which had been purchased by Skulafjord Limited, a secret subsidiary of Takagi Industries, Tsumago had been purchased by yet another secret Takagi holding called Caraman Exports, among whose many offshoots was a company called Daito Properties. Daito openly owned real estate in Taipai, Malaysia, and Sumatra. It was one of Daito’s buried holdings that interested Oaken, however, namely a small 100-acre island in the Philippine Sea called Parece Kito.

“It has no real value,” Oaken explained. “No mineral deposits, no tourist attraction… nothing. But it does fall into the nine hundred-mile arc, and it’s in the middle of nowhere.”

“How much trouble did Takagi go to keep this place secret?” Tanner asked.

“Lots. If I hadn’t been looking for something specific, I wouldn’t have found it.”

Tanner looked at Cahil, who said, “We either check it or go home.”

Briggs didn’t feel like going home. “How do we get there, Oaks?”

Oaken’s itinerary sent them on a flight from Okinawa to the Bonin Islands and finally to Asuncion Island in the Marianas, where he’d arranged a charter boat for the final 300-mile leg. It had taken a tripled fee and a substantial deposit to convince the owner of the company, Mr. Privari, to let them captain the boat themselves.

At dusk, fully fueled, supplied, and seventeen hours behind Tsumago, they sailed out of Asuncion’s harbor and turned northeast. The weather was hot and sunny, with a mild easterly breeze. Tanner breathed in the salt air and was suddenly glad to be at sea. The past few weeks had taken its toll, and he hadn’t noticed how tightly he was wound. It felt good to be in the middle of the wide-open nowhere.

Standing at the helm, he accepted a bottle of beer from Cahil.

“So what do we know about this rock?” Bear asked. “Are we talking Club Med or Guadalcanal?”

“You didn’t catch Mr. Privari’s lecture on Parece Kito’s delights?”

“Uh-uh. What’d he say?”

“In the water, razor sharp coral, sharks, and poisonous fish; ashore, dysentery, malaria, saber grass, vines as strong as steel cable, snakes, and giant lizards.”

Cahil froze with his beer bottle halfway to his mouth. “You’re kidding me.”

“Nope. And I quote: ‘Don’t drink the water, don’t eat anything that grows on the land, and don’t breathe the air too deeply.’”

“Takagi’s own little tropical getaway. Suits his personality.”

Tanner smiled. “How long till we get there?”

Cahil checked the chart, made some calculations. “At this speed, fifteen hours give or take.”

Cahil’s estimate was near-perfect. Early afternoon the following day, they spotted Parece Kito on the horizon, a hump of green rain forest surrounded by the churned white line of the reef. They circled to the opposite side of the island and followed the shore until the lagoon came into view.

“Big,” Cahil muttered, peering through the binoculars. “Great natural harbor.”

“Any sign of her?”

“Nope. Looks deserted. The beach is pristine. Doesn’t look like anybody’s walked on it since the war.”

Tanner took the binoculars and scanned the island. According to Oaken, the Japanese forces had razed most of the jungle in preparation for the invasion, but it had returned with a vengeance. So dense was the canopy that he found it hard to distinguish individual trees. It would be dark as night inside. If Takagi was hiding something, this was the right place.

“Hop on the prow, Bear.”

With Cahil leaning over the water and calling out hazards, Tanner steered through the outer reef, turned parallel to shore, and began circling the island. Soon the beach tapered to a ribbon about three feet wide. Trees dangled over the water and scraped the hull. After ten minutes, Cahil called out, “Port bow, Briggs. We’ve got ourselves a back door.”

Tanner saw it: a creek, about twenty-five feet wide, almost overgrown by jungle. It looked more like a tunnel than the mouth of a river. He throttled back and nosed the bow toward the opening. Cahil signaled a halt and lowered a sinker into the water. “Fifteen feet,” he whispered to Tanner. Something about a jungle, Briggs thought, that encouraged whispering. “Plenty of draft.”

Tanner eased them forward. Within seconds, the jungle swallowed them.

After half a mile, the creek widened into a small lagoon. Tanner cut the engines and let the boat glide on its own momentum. Cahil crawled back into the cabin and held a finger to his lips. He pointed through the windshield. What little sunlight found its way through the canopy was no brighter than moonlight, but the object of Bear’s attention was unmistakable: an L-shaped pier, made of rough planking and bamboo pilings. Not more than two years old, Tanner thought.

He realized his heart was pounding. “Grab the boat hook,” he whispered. “We’ll push our way in.”

As quietly as possible, they eased the boat to the bank and secured the bow to a tree. With Tanner in the lead, they jumped ashore, found a narrow game trail, and started walking.

Not far from the pier they found a trail leading into the forest. The foliage at the path’s edge was freshly trimmed.

“Here, Briggs,” Cahil called, crouched a few feet away. Tanner joined him. “Pretty heavy foot traffic.”

There were dozens of overlapping footprints; beside them were parallel ruts in the dirt. “A cart of some kind,” Tanner said.

Cahil grinned. “Natives taking their bananas to market?”

“Doubt it.”

They started down the trail. Traveling in the open was against Tanner’s better judgment, but hacking their way through the jungle would be not only noisy; but it would consume precious time.

Cahil was walking point when the trail abruptly opened into a clearing. He ducked down. Tanner scuttled forward and peeked through the foliage. Sitting in the middle of the clearing was a helicopter.

“Sikorsky UH-60,” Cahil whispered. The 60 could carry eleven men.

“Let’s take a look around,” said Tanner. “I’ll meet you back here.”

Five minutes later, they were again crouched on the trail. With a cat-and-canary grin, Bear showed Tanner a pair of .45 pistols. “Found them under the pilot’s seat.”

Tanner hefted one of the guns, glad for it. Several times in the past weeks he’d wished for a weapon, but in the real world, spying and guns were a bad mix. “I found another path across the clearing,” he said. “Looks like a lot of recent traffic heading inland.”

“Let’s go,” said Bear.

Almost immediately, the new path took a sharp turn to the right. Tanner stopped, halting Cahil in midstride. Tanner turned, studying the edge of the trail. Something there... Suddenly it snapped into focus: They were standing beside a low concrete wall, its facade overgrown with foliage. He mouthed bunker to Cahil, and they backtracked until they found a path that led them to a clearing.

The bunker was enormous, roughly the size of a football field. Its exterior was so interwoven with vines that only patches of stonework were visible. Spaced at intervals along the walls were huge gun ports; between these, machine gun slits. Briggs tried to imagine what the Marines would have faced here and found himself applauding the Allies’ decision to bypass Parece Kito.

They settled into the underbrush and watched. The jungle squawked and buzzed around them. After fifteen minutes, nothing had moved.

“Shall we?” Bear finally asked.

Tanner nodded. “Let’s go find out what Mr. Takagi’s hiding.”