Fortunes of War Read Online Free PDF

America had oil, so it didn’t suffer as badly as Japan did. And the oil was flowing again. All in all, life in America was very, very good. And David Herbert Hood had the extreme good fortune to be riding the crest of the wave, presiding at the world’s greatest party. His popularity was at a historic high; the nation was prosperous and at peace…. He would go into the history books with a smile on his face, children would read his biography in grade school for the next century, at least, and…Japan was about to invade Siberia.
    The president stared gloomily at the lights out there in the night. He had this feeling that, for some reason just beyond the edge of the light, mankind had been enjoying a rare interlude of prosperity and peace. They certainly hadn’t earned it.
    The emperor…murdered. My God! The man was the benign symbol of all that was best in the Japanese culture. And they cut off his head!

    Captain Jiro Kimura sat on the small balcony of his flat, staring between apartment and office buildings at Mount Fuji and drinking a beer. Although he was looking at Fuji, in his mind’s eye he saw Pikes Peak, stark, craggy, looming high into the blue Colorado sky. “The Peak of Pike,” his fellow cadets had called it, back when they were students at the U.S. Air Force Academy.
    It was in his second or third year that three of his friends convinced themselves, and him, that they should run up the mountain. And back down. They tried it the second weekend in September, a Pikes Peak marathon, thirteen miles up and thirteen down.
    Jiro Kimura smiled at the memory. What studs they had been back then, whippet-lean, tough as sole leather, ready to conquer the world! They actually made it to the top of the mountain and back down. Still, the last few miles going up, the pace was not what anyone would call a run. Not above twelve thousand feet!
    Although that weekend had been almost twelve years ago, Jiro could recall the faces of those boys as if it were yesterday. He could see Frank Truax’s shy, toothy grin; Joe Layfield’s freckles and jug ears; Ben Franklin Garcia’s white teeth flashing in his handsome brown face.
    Garcia had died six years ago in an F-16 crash, somewhere in Nevada. They said his engine flamed out and, rather than ejecting, he tried to stretch a glide. That sure sounded like Ben Garcia, “the pride of Pecos, Texas,” as they called him back then. He had been tough and smart, with something to prove, something Jiro Kimura could never quite put a finger on. Well, Ben was gone now, gone to wherever it is God sends those driven men when they finally fall to earth.
    Truax was somewhere in the states flying C-141s, and Layfield was getting a master’s degree in finance.
    And Jiro Kimura was flying Japan’s top-secret fighter plane, the new Zero.
    His wife, Shizuko, came out onto the balcony with another beer. “Colonel Cassidy will be here soon,” she said, a gentle reminder that he might wish to dress in something besides a T-shirt and shorts.
    Jiro smiled his thanks.
    Bob Cassidy. He had been a major back then, a young fighter pilot at the Academy for a tour. He had been commander of Jiro’s cadet squadron. He took a liking to the Japanese youngster, who had nowhere to go for weekends or holidays, so he took him home.
    Cassidy was married then, to Sweet Sabrina, as he always called her.Never just Sabrina, always with the adjective before her name, and always with a smile. Sweet Sabrina…with the long brown hair and a ready smile…
    She and the boy died in a car wreck two years after Jiro graduated. Cassidy never remarried.
    He should have married again, Jiro Kimura told himself, and he involuntarily glanced through the open door at Shizuko, busy within.
    Perhaps Cassidy had never found another woman who measured up to Sweet Sabrina. Perhaps…
    Ah, if only he could go back. If only he could go back and relive those days, go back