A head poked up from the open hatch and a flat voice called out, "Sunny Joe! That you? Man, am I glad to see a friendly face."
The voice belonged to Bartholomew Bronzini.
Chapter 18
On the morning of December 24, Radio Free Yuma went on the air.
Radio Free Yuma was a lawyer named Lester Cole with a ham radio set in his den. He put out a call to all stations listening on his band. A dentist in Poway, California, acknowledged his QSL.
"We've been invaded," Lester Cole said tightly. "Get word to Washington. We're cut off. It's the Japanese. They've pulled another Pearl Harbor on Yuma."
The Poway dentist thanked Lester for his entertaining story and signed off with a curt "Out."
Lawyer Cole-as he was known to friend and foe alike-had better luck with his second call. He happened to get an Associated Press stringer in Flagstaff. The stringer listened to his story without interruption.
At the end, Lawyer Cole told the stringer, "You can check this out. We have no phones, no TV, no radio."
"I'll get back to you. Out."
The AP stringer confirmed that Yuma was incommunicado. He put in a series of calls to the state capital. No one in Phoenix could explain the problem. The stringer didn't repeat Lawyer Cole's wild invasion story. Instead, he returned to his ham set and tried to raise Cole.
There was no answer.
Clarence Giss didn't look at it as betraying his country. Yuma was under curfew. He dared not set foot outside his house because they were shooting anyone caught out-of-doors. Giss lived alone. The way he saw it, America hadn't done much for him. His social-security disability check wasn't even enough to stock his refrigerator properly. Giss had been on disability since a bad acid trip in 1970 made it impossible for him to hold a steady job. As he had explained it to his caseworker, "My foot flips out right regularly. I can't work."
So when the Japanese rolled in and shut down Yuma, Clarence Giss just settled back to wait. Who knew, maybe things would improve. They couldn't get any worse on only $365 a month.
He stopped thinking that when the APC rolled down the streets blaring a warning in Japanese.
"A man is broadcasting his radio," the amplified voice thundered. "This man wirr surrender himserf or one house on every street wirr be set on fire."
Clarence Giss didn't want to lose his house. He also knew that the man who owned the only ham set in the neighborhood had once beat him good on a vandalism charge. He also had a feeling the Japanese didn't intend to let anyone out before they set their fires.
But most of all, Clarence Giss was out of beer.
He stripped off his sweaty undershirt and attached it to a mop handle with a rubber band. Giss waved his makeshift white flag out a window and waited for a response.
Presently an APC pulled up and two Japanese came to his door. They pounded on it with their rifle butts. "I know who's doing the broadcasting," he told them through the door.
"Terr us name."
"Sure thing, but I want something in return."
"What do you want?"
"A beer."
"Terr us name and we wirr bring you biru," he was told.
"His name's Lester Cole. He's a lawyer. Lives six or seven houses down, this side of the street."
The soldiers humped down the street at top speed. Clarence could hear them break in Lawyer Cole's door all the way up the street. There came a pause. Then a shot. Two. Two more. Then silence.
Clarence Giss was shaking when the soldiers returned to his door. He opened it a crack. One soldier shoved a can of Buckhorn through the crack.
"Here," he said, "biru."
"Much obliged," Clarence said hoarsely.
"Maybe we can do business again sometime." The soldiers went away and he returned to his living room, where he popped the pull-tab. Clarence Giss took a short swig and started crying uncontrollably.
The beer was warm.
When the AP stringer finally gave up on reaching Lester Cole, he thought long and hard. He decided that the transmission was not a hoax. He called his boss.
"I know it sounds insane," he said after he finished relating his story, "but there was something in the guy's voice. And I haven't been able to raise him since."
"Did you say Yuma?"
"Yeah. My atlas puts it near the border."
"Something came over the wire about a funny TV transmission from Yuma," the AP desk man said slowly. "Sounded like filler-story material. Hold up. It's on my desk here somewhere. Here it is. Get this. Station KYMA went off the air yesterday, along with two other Yuma stations. Now KYMA is back, showing what looks like war footage. Executions. Hangings. Bizarre snuff-film kinda stuff. It's been going on all day. People have been watching it, thinking it's some kind of grisly movie, but there's no plot. It's just atrocities."
"What do you think?"
"I think I'd better boot this upstairs. Back to you later. "
The networks had the story of the weird TV transmission by noon, Pacific standard time. They broke into regular programming with footage videotaped off network affiliates in Phoenix. An entire nation watched in shock the sight of foreign troops occupying an American city. That it was a city hardly anyone outside of Arizona had heard of, or could place on a map, didn't matter. Most Americans couldn't find Rhode Island if it were outlined in red. They watched as fellow Americans were hunted through the streets and bayoneted to death. Footage of the Ziffel family gunned down as they were trimming their Christmas tree was seen in all fifty states. The capture of MCAS Yuma and Luke Air Force Range was shown in all its grisly spectacle.
Among the viewers was the President of the United States. His face looked like dried white clay even though everyone else in the White House Situation Room was sweating. The Joint Chiefs of Staff were clustered behind him.
"This is the worst thing that could happen, Mr. President," Admiral Blackbird said angrily. "Now the whole world will know."
"What could they want?" the President said half to himself. "What do they hope to gain from this?"
"If the world sees this," the admiral continued, "then we'll look weak. If we look weak, then some aggressor nation could see this as an opportune time to strike. For all we know, this could be a diversionary action."
"I disagree," said the Secretary of Defense. "Every reconnaissance flight, every surveillance satellite shows the world situation to be quiescent. The Russians are on standdown. The Chinese are minding their own business. And our supposed allies, the Japanese Self-Defense Forces, are not mobilized."
"I've spoken with the Japanese ambassador," the President said, turning from the screen to face the Joint Chiefs. "He assures me that his government has nothing to do with this."
"We can't exactly take an assurance like that on faith," Admiral Blackbird sputtered. "Remember Pearl Harbor."
"Right now I'm thinking of the Alamo. We've got an American city held hostage. They're slaughtering people indiscriminately. But why? Why broadcast it?"
Admiral Blackbird drew himself up stiffly. "Mr. President, we could debate the whys until the next century, but we've got to knock out those transmissions at their source. They're practically commercials for American military impotence. The loss of prestige will be incalculable. "