Honorable Enemies

Chapter 7

When the dessert dishes were cleared and the movie began, Steve gave Susan Nakamura a fleeting look. She was sitting by herself across the aisle, reading reports from a stack of papers she had retrieved from her briefcase. The three of them would wait to discuss the incident at Pearl Harbor until they had complete privacy.

Susan looked at Wickham and subtly motioned to the seat beside her, then neatly stacked her reading material on the foldaway tray. Her soft brown eyes narrowed and sparkled.

He secured his tray and moved into the seat next to Susan. "He went to sleep," Steve said in a low voice, "like he'd turned off a switch."

She leaned around him and glanced at Callaway. "He's the only person I know who could sleep through an earthquake."

"He doesn't waste any time," Wickham observed and fastened his safety belt. Ensconced in his seat, Steve turned to the alluring young woman. "So, you promised to tell me all about yourself."

She gave him a questioning look. "What would you like to know about me?"

There was an awkward moment before Steve made the adjustment to her straightforward style of conversation. "Actually, at the risk of sounding too forward, I'd like to know everything about you. It's not every day that I meet a Japanese-American who happens to be an FBI agent."

"You mean a Japanese-American FBI agent," Susan said patiently, "who happens to be a woman."

He swallowed and looked her straight in the eyes. "You're right, but you'll have to admit that's not something people in my line of work see every day."

"I suppose that's true."

"What made you decide on a career in the FBI?" Steve inquired innocently.

She turned slightly sideways to face him. "It's a long and boring story."

Steve could see that she was masking something that was very painful. "I didn't mean to upset you."

Susan relaxed her facial muscles and gave him a wide smile. "It's okay, believe me. I don't normally talk about it, but if you're really interested…"

"I'm really interested."

"When Pearl Harbor was attacked," she began without any sign of emotion, "my parents were newlyweds. They didn't have much money, so they were living with my mother's parents in East Los Angeles. Shortly after the war started, the FBI took my parents and grandparents right out of their home and placed them in a temporary war-relocation center."

Tilting her head, she stared absently out the window at the puffy white clouds, then pulled the shade to block the bright sunlight. "The relocation center was a section of converted stables at the Santa Anita racetrack."

Steve closed his eyes for a second and slowly let his breath out. He could only imagine the terror and degradation the innocent Japanese-Americans had felt.

"The saddest part about the internment," she continued, turning her head to look into Steve's eyes, "was that no one tried to sort out who was spying for Japan and who wasn't. If you were of Japanese extraction, you were guilty, period."

Maintaining eye contact, Steve gave her a soothing nod. "I know, and it wasn't fair, but we—"

"Many of the Japanese-Americans were kindhearted," she quietly interrupted, "loyal U. S. citizens, including my grandparents."

There was a long silence as Steve began to understand why Susan had been compelled to join the FBI. He suddenly had the clear impression that she was reading his mind.

"Sometimes," she said steadily, "when an organization does something so grotesque to innocent civilians, you want to challenge the system, to join the organization and rise to the top so you can work toward seeing that it never again happens to anyone, regardless of race or creed."

Susan quietly sighed while a nagging protest tore at her nerves. "I know that sounds idealistic, but I really believed that I could make a difference."

"And now?"

"Well, I suppose I've matured over the years," she conceded. "I realize now that I can't single-handedly change the system, but I still like to think that I've made an impact — in some small way."

She noticed the uncomfortable, almost grim look on Steve's face. "I didn't mean to get so serious."

"I'm sorry, Susan. I was just trying to imagine what your family must have gone through — the humiliation and absolute loss of pride and dignity."

"It was beyond belief," she replied sadly and looked down for a moment. "For years I lived with the psychological scars that my parents tried to conceal under a facade of smiles and happy talk. They pretended, for the sake of their children, that everything was wonderful, when deep inside they were living in mortal fear that a man with a badge might knock on their door at any moment."

Struggling to find the right words, Steve studied Susan's delicate hands and thin fingers. "How long was your family kept in the relocation center?"

"Almost four years," she answered sadly. "From December 1941 to September 1945. I'll never forget the dates.

"Actually," she continued, gathering her composure, "they were moved from the stables at the racetrack to another retention center — concentration camp is a more fitting description — in Amache, Colorado. They lived in cramped, partitioned compartments in rows of wooden barracks surrounded by sagebrush and barbed-wire fences."

Lost in her thoughts of the past, Susan looked down at the floor and recalled the afternoon her mother and grandmother unknowingly revealed the family's dark secret that had been kept from the children.

It was a warm spring day in Oakland when Susan's oldest sister discovered the awful truth. Sitting quietly under the open kitchen window, Betty Nakamura heard the two women alternately crying and talking about the atrocities of the detention camp.

Susan was six years old when she found out how her grandfather escaped the utter humiliation of being imprisoned in the wartime camp. He committed suicide by hanging himself with a strand of wire. Susan's grandmother awakened to find her husband dangling from a parallel beam that supported the pitched roof over their 8-by-10-foot room.

After a moment's hesitation, Susan glanced at the movie screen, then turned back to Steve. "At any rate, after enduring years of blazing heat and numbing cold, with hot dust storms in the summer and freezing blizzards in the winter, and suffering the embarrassment of sharing one bathroom with scores of other people, my family was finally released from Amache after the war ended."

Wickham frowned and shifted in his seat. He felt uncomfortable, as if he were prying. "That's when they moved to Oakland?"

"Yes. There was an American-owned company advertising jobs for the Japanese who had been detained in the wartime camps, so that's where my folks headed."

Susan paused. She liked talking about the close-knit family she loved, but it still hurt. "My father got a job with the company and my grandmother moved in with them. My parents, who were afraid to even take a day off for seven years, finally decided it was safe to have children by the early fifties. I was the last of four daughters."

Steve cast a quick look at Susan's attractive face, noting the soft eyes. "That must have been about—"

"Nineteen-sixty," she answered frankly, "and I'll fast-forward from there."

He started to protest and Susan gently shook her head. "I grew up in a pleasant middle-class neighborhood in Oakland, attended the University of California-Berkeley, and you know the rest of my story."

Steve was intrigued, but decided against asking her any more personal questions. "Marcus said that the Bureau is going to provide a car for us."

"That's right," she replied, casting a glance at Callaway, "but you'll need to take a taxi to your hotel. Our people will pick you and Marcus up at seven-thirty tomorrow morning."

"Aren't you going with us?"

"No. A friend is meeting me at the airport, and I'll be staying at my home."

Steve grinned and let his gaze linger on her eyes. "I look forward to working with you."

Susan laughed in her polite way. "The pleasure is all mine. After what I've heard about your exploits, this should be an interesting experience."

He laughed and then excused himself and walked to the rest room in the first-class section, noting that the elderly Japanese man was not on this segment of the flight.

"Japan Air Sixty-Two cleared for the stadium visual runway two-four right approach."

The seasoned Japanese copilot keyed his mike and spoke with a slight accent. "Japan Air Sixty-Two cleared visual two-four right approach."

On its fourth trip from Tokyo, the shining new 747 descended and passed over the Santa Monica navigational fix at 7,000 feet. Continuing eastbound, the captain banked to the right when they reached the Memorial Coliseum and Sports Arena.

The crew methodically went through their landing checklist while the airplane descended to 3,500 feet slightly east of the Harbor Freeway. Delayed three hours by a mechanical failure in the number-four engine, both pilots were fatigued and silently cursed the smog while they strained their tired eyes to locate the other airplanes in the busy skies over Los Angeles.

Sitting near the tail of the airplane, Mrs. Mayumi Fujitake surveyed the city and the sprawling coastal plain between the San Gabriel Mountains and the blue Pacific Ocean. On her first visit to America's motion-picture capital, the elderly great-grandmother was also enjoying her first ride in an airplane.

Her husband, Shozo, a more experienced air traveler, was still dozing as the 747 entered a shallow bank to intercept the final approach course to the runway.

Sweating profusely while he listened to the portable aircraft radio, Granville Penner sat in the back of the Chevrolet high-top conversion van and opened another lukewarm beer. When Japan Air Lines Flight 62 had not arrived on time, he waited approximately twenty minutes and then walked to a convenience store to call the airline.

After learning the new arrival time, the drug dealer with a felony record and two trips to the slammer bought a six-pack of Old Milwaukee and returned to the van.

The scintillating high from the crack cocaine was wearing thin, and the beer was giving him a throbbing headache, but Penner didn't care about the pain. Not today. He had $20,000 stuffed in his pockets and the promise of another $30,000 if he successfully completed his assignment. The money would be more than enough "talking cash" for a sizable down payment on a new burgundy Cadillac El Dorado and an extended vacation in New Orleans, the city where he was born and first went to jail.

Penner's newfound friend, a self-described affluent Japanese businessman, simply wanted the convicted rapist and burglar to use a .50-caliber machine gun to shoot a few holes in a Japanese airliner. Penner wondered why the small man with the gold and diamond Rolex wanted him to shoot at a Japanese airliner, but, then again, Penner never questioned motives when money was in front of him.

Granville "Big G" Penner figured that shooting a few rounds at a plane wasn't any crazier than some of the other things the Japanese did, like the guy who converted a lime-green eighteen-wheeler into a plush motor home, complete with sunken spa in the roof of the trailer.

Besides, Penner reasoned, he hadn't fired a machine gun since his days in the Army. He had always liked the feeling of power that a weapon gave him, and this would be a piece of cake since it was only two blocks to the warehouse where they would dismantle the van and bury the weapon. Easy money.

Parked next to a vacant storage facility, east of the San Diego Freeway, Penner was in an excellent position between the two sets of runways at Los Angeles International. He had recounted his money and was daydreaming about the new Caddy when he heard JAL Flight 62 check in with the control tower. Startled into action, Penner turned up the volume control on the transceiver and prepared to swing the doors open and slide the tripod-mounted machine gun outside.

"Japan Air Sixty-Two," the clear voice replied in a routine, businesslike manner, "two-four right, cleared to land, wind two-two-zero at eleven."

"Japan Air Sixty-Two cleared for the right."

Penner crushed his cigarette on the floor and started scanning the sky for the big Boeing with the JAL logo. He rechecked the machine gun and the short belt of ammunition. He didn't have many rounds, so he had to make each one count.

The 747 was descending and slowing to the final approach speed as it passed near the Hollywood Park Race Track.

Mrs. Fujitake nudged her sleeping husband, then nudged him again when he didn't respond.

"Shozo, wake up. We're about to land."

"What?"

"We're landing," she said excitedly.

The retired chemical engineer grunted and slowly opened his puffy eyes. The sour taste in his mouth was a disgusting reminder of the raw sashimi and hot sake he had consumed during the long flight from Tokyo.

"Look at the ocean," she said with a rush of enthusiasm and pressed her face to the window. "We have to go to the beach!"

Shozo yawned and stretched his arms over his head. "After we get some sleep."

"Is that all you can think about when—"

Her response was cut short when she saw the streaks of reddish-orange tracer rounds curve upward and strike the left wing. The pyrotechnic bullets, combined with the incendiary rounds interspersed in Penner's ammunition belt, ripped into the fuel cells and ignited the raw fuel.

Penner was initially shocked when he saw the bright tracer rounds move steadily upward and strike the wing. A second later he was paralyzed when he saw a flash of yellow flames, followed by a steady stream of fire along the side of the aircraft. He had planned to put a few holes in the plane, not set it on fire.

"Shit!" Penner muttered when he realized that he'd been set up. Instead of scaring someone, the Japanese businessman wanted the airliner to crash.

Panic overcame him and he shoved the machine gun into the van and hurriedly slammed the door. He could hear the aircraft radio as he scrambled into the driver's seat and quickly started the engine.

"Japan Air Sixty-Two, you're on fire! Repeat! Japan Air Sixty-Two is on fire! Do you copy?"

Penner recognized the tower controller's voice.

"Sixty-Two copies!"

"We have the equipment rolling!" the controller exclaimed as he saw the first truck leave the fire station.

Penner yanked the transmission into drive, floored the accelerator, and screeched around the side of the building, then stomped on the brakes and came to a grinding halt.

Mesmerized, he watched the nose of the 747 dip lower as flames engulfed the fuselage and tail of the stricken airliner. Penner took one last look and jammed the accelerator down, hoping that the plane wouldn't crash.

Ashen-faced, Mayumi and Shozo Fujitake held each other close and tried to be brave. Chaos had erupted throughout the cabin, and the flight attendants were yelling for everyone to brace themselves for a crash landing.

Dutifully, the Fujitakes quietly followed the instructions and listened to the shrieks and cries from the other passengers. They momentarily grasped hands and then resumed the emergency position.

Seconds later, while traveling much faster than the usual landing speed, the Boeing jumbo jet slammed onto the runway and collapsed the left main landing gear. The engines on the left wing dug in, slewing the aircraft toward the edge of the runway before they were ripped from their mounts.

Trailing a long streak of fire, the JAL 747 skidded and bounced across a taxiway and runway 24 Left before bursting into a huge fireball. With the tail consumed by the billowing conflagration, the airplane shuddered to a halt as the forward evacuation slides began to pop out and inflate.

Of the 281 people on board, 67 died from burns and smoke inhalation, including the Fujitakes.

When he returned to the warehouse, Granville Penner was shot to death by his gap-toothed Japanese employer. After the small man recovered the $20,000 from the drug addict, an accomplice tossed Penner and the machine gun into a three-foot grave inside the building, then filled the hole with cement. When the man with the disfigured ear was finished, the final resting place of "Big G" Penner looked like the rest of the floor.