Battleship Read online

  Hopper was more than happy to oblige.

  He took one more breath, and then charged. The ball was sitting there waiting for him, inviting him. The goalie was prepared to obstruct him, expecting Hopper to try to get the ball to one side of him or the other.

  Screw that. Hopper knew exactly what was going to work. Why go to one side or the other of an obstruction when you can go through it, and exact a bit of revenge at the same time? Send Nagata and his people a message that they couldn’t get away with that kind of crap.

  The kick was perfect. He sent the ball spiraling directly, and with full force, at the goalie’s face. In Hopper’s mind, the goalie stood there with a stunned expression, caught completely flat-footed. The ball smashed directly into the target, knocked him flat and sent him sprawling to the ground. It rolled past him into the net. The crowd went wild, the game went into overtime, the Americans won, and a triumphant Hopper was hoisted onto his teammates’ shoulders and paraded around the field.

  In reality, however, the goalie judged the ball perfectly. Rather than flinch, he reached up and caught it on the fly. The solid thump of the soccer ball into his hands was the death knell of the Americans’ hopes as the game ended with the victorious Japanese swarming onto the field, pounding one another on the back in triumph.

  Hopper stood there, staring, his jaw twitching as his mental image of what would happen crashed up against what had actually transpired. Nagata, of course, chose that moment to step in near him and say, just softly enough for only Hopper to hear, “So predictable.”

  Hopper had never wanted to punch someone in the face as much as he did Nagata at that moment. The fist of his left hand curled up tightly and he turned to face him. But the Japanese captain was no longer there; he was crossing the field and, projecting dignity and control, joining his teammates in celebration. Instead there was Beast, patting him on the back, and Tompkins, and Stone shaking his head consolingly, saying “Good shot,” “Good try,” and all the other useless condolences that are typically offered when things simply don’t go the way you wanted them to.

  Nor did it help that they were patting him on the shoulder, which was throbbing like a son of a bitch. He tried not to wince from it and didn’t even come close to succeeding. Just like you didn’t come close to succeeding in tying the game.

  Stone stepped closer to his brother. “At least you demonstrated mild self-control,” said Stone. “You didn’t beat up the Japanese officer. Well done.”

  Hopper wondered if Stone knew that he’d nearly lost control and belted Nagata into the middle of next week. In my defense, he had it coming. Somehow he didn’t think that that excuse would have flown with his brother—or, for that matter, with anybody else.

  It didn’t matter, though. Nothing mattered as far as Hopper was concerned, because there was Sam, his beautiful Sam. His beautiful Sam. She would comfort him, she would speak kind words to him, she would say all the right things. She would—

  All business, Sam skipped over sweet nothings and instead inspected his right shoulder with practiced confidence. “On your back,” she said briskly.

  “Right here? In front of everybody?” He lay down slowly. “All right, honey, I’m game…” As a couple of his teammates snickered, he gestured for her to lie on top of him while he moved his pelvis in a suggestive manner.

  Sam was clearly not amused. She reached down, grabbed his wrist, and put a foot in his armpit. “It’s gonna hurt,” she warned him.

  “You always hurt the one you—” He didn’t get the rest of the sentence out. Instead he let out a startled shriek that was higher-pitched than he would have liked as Sam pulled hard and snapped the shoulder back into place. He lay there for a moment, gasping in pain. Then slowly he sat up, growling as he flexed his arm. It was still sore as spit, but the agony was subsiding.

  “Damn, that’s fun.” Sam sounded far more entertained by it than he thought she had any right to be.

  He rubbed his shoulder, making as big a show of it as possible, his face twisted into a mask of exaggerated pain. As he got to his feet, he said with a growl, “Evil woman.”

  Then he charged her.

  With a delighted shriek, she turned and ran, Hopper chasing her off the field. She was running as fast as she could. He wasn’t. He caught up with her anyway.

  KUHIO BEACH, LATER THAT EVENING

  The throbbing in Hopper’s shoulder had more or less faded to nothing as he sat on the beach next to Sam, the water gently lapping against the shore. Kuhio Beach was adjacent to Kapi’olani Beach Park, and this late at night, the beach was largely deserted. The Pacific Ocean was smooth as glass, and the full moon reflected down upon it, making it seem as if a giant yellow eye was staring up at them from the depths of the waters.

  Sam was holding a bottle of wine and was sipping from it. A blanket was spread out beneath them and a gentle breeze was causing her long hair to flutter. They had forgone glasses from which to drink the wine and instead were simply passing the bottle back and forth.

  Handing the bottle to Hopper, Sam said, “So… big day tomorrow.”

  Slowly he lowered it and tried to smile. Unfortunately, all he could manage was a grimace. Sam noticed it and her expression darkened. “Hopper… are you ready for this? I mean, are you sure you’re ready for this?”

  “I’m ready,” he said, a little faster than he really needed to. As a result he didn’t sound quite as confident as she would have liked and he would have wanted.

  She rested her hand on his shoulder and the concern upon her face was palpable. “You suuuure?”

  Hopper heard the challenge in her voice. She wanted the truth, and he had to take a long, hard look into himself. As it turned out, he liked what he saw. More specifically, he liked it in relation to her. “Never more sure,” he said with growing confidence.

  She studied him, not looking totally convinced. “What are you going to say?”

  There was a long pause as his mind raced. Truthfully he didn’t have the faintest idea. The fact was that he had been trying to put off the conversation even in his mind, opting for that oldest of strategies: if you ignore something, it will go away.

  It didn’t seem to be working this time. Instead Sam was becoming increasingly annoyed. It was clear she was having serious doubts that he was intending to follow through on what they’d discussed. Well, she discussed it, for the most part. You just listened. Finally he said, “I’m just gonna ask him. Man to man.”

  “With what words?”

  “My words: ‘Sir, I love your daughter. More than anything in this world, and I’m asking you for your permission…’” Then his voice sputtered and died, like a deflating balloon running out of air.

  Sam prompted him to continue. “Permission…?”

  “He’s gonna knock me out.” Oh yeah. Man to man. That sounded… manly.

  “Permission…?” she said again.

  “Can we go swimming?”

  She was relentless, though. At least she gave him the next word. “Permission to…?”

  Hopper desperately wanted to be anywhere else than where he was at that moment. He was wearing a light shirt and his bathing trunks, and Sam had on her bikini beneath a loose T-shirt and shorts. Why were they sitting here, dwelling on a dead-end conversation, when the ocean was beckoning? “Please can we go swimming?”

  “Finish the question. Then we can go swimming.”

  Clearly she wasn’t about to let up and—his back against the metaphorical wall—he was forced to admit what was truly on his mind. Very softly, so much so that she could scarcely hear him, Hopper looked down at the blanket on which he was sitting. “I think he’s gonna say no.”

  “Hopper.” She sounded so disappointed in him. “Don’t you think he wants me to be happy?”

  “Yeah, but I’m pretty sure he’s not gonna give a crap about my happiness.”

  “He’s going to have to, because you’re what makes me happy.”

  He took that in, and even though there was a co
ol breeze coming off the Pacific, he still felt suffused with warmth. He stared fixedly forward, as if her father were standing directly in front of them and, with a formal tilt of his head, said, “May I please have permission to marry your daughter. The most beautiful and the best thing to ever happen to me.” He turned back to her, waiting for approval, hoping it would be forthcoming.

  She took his chin in her hand and kissed him. “I love you.”

  “Can we please go swimming?”

  As an answer, she jumped to her feet and started shedding her clothing, stripping down to her bikini. She then sprinted into the ocean, with Hopper bounding in right behind her.

  He’s gonna kill me. That certain conviction went through Hopper’s mind, taking some of the fun out of splashing about in the water with his intended, the love of his life, the woman he’d nearly wound up in jail for. From that day to this one, he’d never been able to look at a chicken burrito again. But what did burritos matter when he had a beautiful woman like this in his arms?

  Besides which, there were always tacos. And enchiladas.

  They swam and kissed under the full moon, and concerns about her father departed from his mind to become problems for another day.

  “Hopper.” It was Sam’s voice, and there was a shaking. She was shaking him. He didn’t want to be shaken. He wanted to sleep some more. “Hopper!” she said, more insistently this time, shoving him around so violently that he felt as if there was an earthquake underneath the sand…

  The sand? We’re still on the beach? If we’re on the beach, why is it so bright out…?

  That was when his mind began to piece together the truth. They had fallen asleep on the beach, wrapped in the overlarge blanket. Night was gone and the sun was much higher in the morning sky than it had any right to be, considering he was supposed to be elsewhere at this very moment.

  “This is bad,” he said.

  Instantly they scrambled to their feet, gathering their belongings, stumbling in the sand as they did so. At one point Hopper lost his footing, tumbled against Sam, and they both wound up falling down onto the sand again.

  “You better get it together, Hopper!”

  He nodded in hurried agreement as he pulled on his shirt. Sam was hastening to get into her shorts and succeeded in shoving both of her legs into the same pants leg, cursing like—appropriately enough—a sailor as she extracted her left leg and started over, bouncing on her right foot as she endeavored to maintain her balance.

  With all this frantic hurrying and the fact that he was probably going to be late as a result, Hopper had to think that perhaps the timing of the intended request for the hand of the admiral’s daughter might leave something to be desired. “Maybe we should put it off till next month?” he ventured.

  He didn’t have to explain to her which “it” he meant. “No way,” she said. By this point she had managed to get all her body parts into the proper sections of her clothing and was sprinting toward the Jeep they’d driven out there. He caught up with her and then passed her effortlessly. Hopper leaped into the driver’s seat, yanked out his keys, fumbled for a moment with them before shoving the right key into the ignition and turning it. For a moment the engine failed to catch. Dead, dead, I am so dead. Then it miraculously turned over. He gunned it, tearing out of the parking lot so quickly he nearly left Sam behind. As it was she barely had time to leap into the passenger’s side before the Jeep took off.

  Just another day in Paradise, he thought.

  PEARL HARBOR

  It was unusual for a Navy band to preform a full version of “To the Colors,” the haunting bugle piece that was typically played at times such as the flag being lowered at the end of the day on a base. However, it was occasionally played in circumstances where there were going to be honors to the nation more than once. At least Hopper supposed that would be the case here as the Jeep Hopper was driving hurtled into the parking lot adjacent to the USS Missouri. The Jeep screeched to a halt and Sam and Hopper clambered out. One would never have guessed that, barely two hours ago, they’d been two disheveled people on a beach. Yet now here they were, one hasty plane ride from Honolulu to Oahu later, after changing and primping en route while squished into the island jumper, much to the amusement and entertainment of the pilot.

  Hopper was looking every inch the Navy officer, attired in his crisp white uniform. As for Sam, she was exquisitely attired in a black Chanel dress, her hair as coifed as she could make it under the circumstances.

  The Missouri, sometimes referred to as “Mighty Mo” or “Big Mo,” was a proud Iowa-class battleship with an impressive history stretching back to the Second World War. She had been involved in such naval endeavors as the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa before eventually being decommissioned in the 1990s and transformed into a museum ship. She overlooked the remains of a vessel that hadn’t been fortunate enough to serve in the Allied efforts—the Arizona, a Pennsylvania-class battleship that had performed ably during World War I, but was sunk years later during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. When the vessel went down, she took eleven hundred lives with her. Her remains were still at the bottom of the harbor, but a memorial had been built in her stead, straddling her hulls.

  As Hopper and Sam moved as quickly as her high heels would let her, they passed a cheesy gift shop outside the entryway to the Missouri, selling every battleship-themed souvenir that anyone could imagine. Hopper considered the fact that before joining up—even with the Navy background of both his father and brother—he wouldn’t have given a crap about the relentless merchandising of a proud vessel. Now it bugged the hell out of him, but there wasn’t much of anything he could do about it.

  There was a skinny, bespectacled tour guide lecturing a group of tourists who were studying the various gifts, some of them expressing annoyance that they weren’t being allowed to take the usual tour on the vessel, arguing that—after all—that’s what it had been built for. The tour guide, who was wearing an unspeakably tacky hat in the shape of a foam battleship (available for $5.99 in the gift shop), was busy explaining that, first of all, the Mighty Mo was reserved today for a special ceremony, and second, yes, the ship was now a museum, but that wasn’t what it had been built for. Hopper rolled his eyes at the stupidity of some people. He started to slow and, as if she were reading his mind, Sam pulled on his hand to make sure he didn’t get dragged into the middle of something.

  “The USS Missouri was the final battleship to be completed by the United States,” the guide was telling them, “before being decommissioned and replaced by a more modern fleet of vessels, known as destroyers.”

  “What’s the difference between the two?” asked a kid.

  “Well, destroyers are lighter and faster and fire different weapons.”

  Whoa, what—?!

  Hopper stopped short, jerking Sam to a halt as well. Before she could do anything such as, for instance, talk sense into him, Hopper pulled away from her and turned to the guide. “That’s what you’re telling ’em? That’s bullshit!”

  Sam visibly blanched, as did a couple of old women. The men looked surprised, and a grin split the face of the kid, probably because he liked hearing grown-ups curse.

  “Hopper—!” said Sam warningly.

  “I’m coming,” he said, but it was perfunctory, his attention entirely on the boy. “Battleships: dinosaurs. Destroyers: awesome!”

  Sam put her hands on her hips in a manner that indicated he wasn’t going to be getting any anytime soon… if ever. “Are you kidding me right now?”

  “I’m coming.” He didn’t mean it any more the second time than he had the first, and he continued addressing the kid, grabbing tiny gray plastic models of the two types of boats from the souvenir stand. He held up a little battleship in his left hand. “Battleships: designed to take hits like a floating punching bag.” Then he held up the right. “Destroyers: designed to dish it out like a freakin’ Terminator!” He thrust the small destroyer toward the kid, whose eyes were round and goggled.
“We’ve got Tomahawk cruise missiles, sea-skimming Harpoons, torpedoes like there’s no tomorrow…”

  “Awe-some…!” said the kid.

  “Yeah,” said Hopper, nodding, feeling much like a kid himself. “That’s what I’m talking about.”

  “Hopper!”

  The kid glanced toward the annoyed Sam. “Your girlfriend’s hot.”

  “Get your own,” said Hopper. “Gotta go.”

  He hurried over to Sam, who glared at him as they started running. “Everyone’s waiting and you’re talking about boats?”

  “We were also talking about how hot you were.”

  “You were not!”

  “Swear to God.”

  “Oh. Well… okay, then,” she said, slightly mollified.

  The deck of the Missouri was filled with naval officers from an assortment of countries. The United States, Japan, Great Britain, Australia, South Korea, India and more were all represented, and flags from each of the nations were fluttering in the morning breeze. Having left Sam to find a spot in the audience with the families and other guests, he threaded his way through the assemblage of naval officers, looking to find his friends while trying to make sure he didn’t draw any attention to himself.

  He finally located Stone and slid in next to him. His brother kept his attention focused on the podium up front, but said out the side of his mouth, “Nice of you to show up, lieutenant commander.” He was big on invoking Hopper’s rank and getting formal when he was pissed off with him. It was Stone’s way of letting Hopper know that he was annoyed, not to mention underscore their difference in rank and reminding him who was in charge. “You ready for this? Or would you like to sleep in and we’ll just do the war games without you?”

  “Hey, at least I’m here. I made pretty good time considering I woke up on the wrong island this morning,” he whispered back.

  “The wrong island? Which one? Gilligan’s?”