Possibly she had the word wrong, but everybody understood when she yanked open the wooden hatchway to the bunker beneath, which had been dug out of the clay some weeks before. Sam had shown her, the first day. It was damp and primitive, nothing but dirt floor and no lights, but it afforded some cover from the bombs that now made the whole building shudder, made such a racket it got into your head so you couldn’t think. Explosion after explosion, each one louder and bigger, so you knew they were getting closer. Irene thought she could hear the rat-a-tat of a gun, in between the blasts, and she hoped to God it was the Republican antiaircraft guns and not the German strafing.

She kept on shooing children down the ladder. There was only the faintest light to see them. The last one scrambled beneath the floor of the hangar, and Irene set her foot on the ladder, but she couldn’t force herself down. She thought, Someone’s missing, I’m sure there’s somebody missing, that can’t be all of them.

She called out and heard nothing except the mad detonation of bombs, the roar of aircraft engines, all of which had grown so loud they drowned out the sound of the guns. Irene ran frantically around the hangar, looking beneath airplanes, behind wheels, in corners, but she couldn’t see a thing, only shadows that might or might not be objects, might or might not be a terrified child. It was just too dark. She thought she heard a whimper. She stood still and closed her eyes. The hangar rocked around her. She turned left, took four steps, and stumbled over a small, warm, sobbing body.

“There you are,” she said, although she couldn’t even hear her own voice. She scooped up the child—he was so light, like a bird, underfed and hollow-boned—and carried him in her arms toward the hatchway, from which the tiniest light drew. She set the child on the top step of the ladder and gave a small push, yelled down below that there was another one coming, and then the whole world turned as bright as day, as hot as the sun, as a bomb dropped right on the southeast corner of the hangar, fifty feet away, and detonated.

Hanalei, Hawai’i

November 1947

It would be romantic and fitting, I suppose, to tell you that Lindquist and I fly to Ki’ilau by moonlight inside the Rofrano Sirius that sits at the back of its hangar, shrouded in camouflage netting. But when we arrive at the airfield, Lindquist makes no move to the hangar that harbors the world’s most famous airplane. We take the company ship instead, the one we flew a few weeks ago, when we went on our picnic.