Wingmen (9781310207280) (27 page)

There was a
noise at the door and a Marine came in. “Lieutenant Commander
Hardigan?” Jack looked up, surprised. “This is for you, sir,” He
handed Jack a single sealed envelope with “Lt. Comdr.
Hardigan—Impt.” written in ink on the outside. Jack thanked the
man. Meanwhile, the lieutenant finished with Woody’s copy and moved
mechanically to Boom’s. Jack opened the envelope, turning so that
Buster Jennings, who was now talking with the briefing officer,
wouldn’t see. His heart leaped when he saw the page of the
instruction. There was a note with it. “Skipper—Sweeney had this
with him in the squadron office. Do you need it? Fred T.”

What timing,
thought Jack. He crumpled the note into his pants pocket and
slipped the errant page to the back of the instruction. No one took
any notice.

“If I may,
sir?” said the crew-cut lieutenant. He took the little booklet from
Jack’s hands and began his check.

“You know,
Lieutenant,” said Jack, “you ought to get something better than
staples to bind these things. That back page is coming off
there.”

The lieutenant
squinted through his glasses at Jack. “I’ll pass your suggestion
along,” he said.

“Milk run,”
said Boom loudly. “It’ll be a pushover. They won’t know what hit
them.”

“Just be
careful not to get yourself expended,” said Heywood.

“Yeah,” said
Jack, “that’s worse than getting shot down.” How could he thank
Trusteau? A seventy-two hour pass? A promotion to j.g.?

“What did that
Marine want, Hardigan?” CAG asked. They were leaving together,
passing the Marine himself.

“Nothing,” Jack
said.

“Must have been
something.”

“One of my men
was working on a plane report. He thought it might be important for
the briefing, so he had the guard deliver it.”

“You tell your
man not to interrupt a closed briefing again,” said Jennings
officiously.

“You bet,” said
Jack. They passed a drinking fountain and Jack stopped to get a
drink, letting CAG walk on ahead and disappear. “You bet,” he said
again, and went in search of Fred.

“I owe you
one,” said Jack to Fred as they paced the flight deck. The sun was
sinking into the sea—a gaudy display of tropical splendor they’d
learned to take for granted by now.

“It was
nothing. Really,” said Fred.

“It was
everything. It saved me from a very embarrassing moment. That
goddamn Sweeney. You have to watch him every second.”

“I told him not
to say anything about it. I don’t think he will.”

As they plowed
through the wind toward the bow, they passed a single fighter
spotted for launch on the single starboard catapult.

“I don’t
suppose I can count on you not to have read that page,” Jack
said.

“That was the
first thing I did,” said Fred. “I couldn’t resist.”

“Then I suppose
you know where we’re going.”

“No, sir. That
part wasn’t in it. All I remember is the code name: Fastfoot.”

“Even that’s
more than you should know. Until tomorrow, anyway.”

They walked on
in silence, reaching the very end of the flight deck, which curved
smoothly, suddenly, into nothingness. Under the overhang below them
was a forty-millimeter mount, sailors hunching there to escape the
wind. Jack and Fred turned mechanically and began to walk back
again.

“Marcus
Island,” said Jack. “Ever heard of it?”

“Marcus?
Never.”

“Minami Tori
Shima. That’s the Japanese name for it.”

“That’s where
we’re going?”

“Don’t tell a
soul.”

“No, sir. I
won’t. I promise.”

“But there’s
something I don’t understand.” Jack stopped and gazed out at the
horizon. The rapidly failing light showed the boxy shapes of two
more carriers, as well as battleships, cruisers, destroyers. “All
this power, these carriers, these planes—and all we’re going to do
is raid the place. Marcus isn’t even very big.” Jack turned and
started walking. “I mean, if we wanted to take the island, you
know, land the Marines and all that, it might make some sense.”

“Admiral Berkey
called it a training strike.”

“Admiral
Berkey? When did you talk to Admiral Berkey?”

“Back before we
pulled into Pearl. He even told me when we were going to sail, more
or less.”

Jack chuckled
aloud. “You’re amazing,” he said.

“No,” said
Fred, “really it makes sense. We’ve got four carriers in this force
alone. That’s more than we’ve ever had in one place at the same
time. And there’s two or three more back in Pearl that aren’t ready
yet. No one seems to know how it’s going to work having all these
flattops in the same force. So we try them out on something
small.”

“You sound like
a staff officer.”

“And who knows?
Maybe the Japs’ll think we really want to take the place and send
in a couple of thousand troops and a bunch of planes they could use
somewhere else.”

“I’ll write a
letter to Admiral Nimitz recommending you for flag aide.”

“Would you do
that?” He sounded genuinely surprised.

“You want me
to?” asked Jack, enjoying Fred’s naiveté.

“No, sir.
Really, I like it here.”

“You do,
huh?”

“More than
anything,” Fred said intensely.

They walked on
in silence for almost a minute, coming abreast of the island. Jack
had been almost embarrassed by the way Fred had said, “More than
anything.” He angled off toward the island and belowdecks with Fred
dutifully following.

“What’s the
movie tonight?” Jack asked.

“
The Public Enemy
. James
Cagney. Good picture.”

“Want to take
it in?”

“Yes, sir.
Sure.”

“I’m treating.
I’ll even buy you a cup of coffee.” They reached the hatchway just
as a seaman arrived to close it down for the night.

“That’s very
generous, Skipper.”

In the dark
confines of the island, Jack stopped suddenly. He touched Fred on
the shoulder. “Seriously,” he said. “I owe you one.”

Fred looked at
Jack as well as he could in the darkness and shook his head. “Sure,
Skipper,” he said. “Whatever you say.”

“Well, I say,”
said Jack, laughing, roughing up Fred’s neck, “they don’t call you
Trusty for nothing.” And the two men headed down and aft to the
wardroom, had some coffee, and watched
The Public Enemy
, with James
Cagney.

A red-goggled Fred
Trusteau sat in the cockpit of his Hellcat and tried not to be
nervous. The cavernous interior of the hangar deck stretched ahead
of him almost, it seemed, into infinity. A forest of folded
wingtips and unmoving propellers obstructed his view of everything
except the two fighters in front of him. Their engines and his,
too, produced a maelstrom of wind and noise and vibration that made
thinking a difficult project.

Four Hellcats
were warming up in the hangar deck this morning, the day of their
first combat mission as VF-20. Four others were warming up on the
flight deck above Fred. It was Fred and the skipper, Fitzsimmons
and Hughes who together formed the first division of the squadron
and one-half of the fighter force that
Ironsides
was due to launch for
Marcus in a few minutes.

Fred shuddered
slightly as he recalled how, minutes earlier, after a thorough
briefing in the ready room, the eight pilots had trooped to the
flight deck expecting to find their aircraft ready and waiting,
only to discover that their Hellcats were still on the hangar deck
because of some confusing oversight that he still didn’t
understand. While the minutes ticked away toward the time when they
had to launch in order to be over the target at the break of dawn,
deck officers and pilots, plane pushers and crew chiefs, staff
officers and air officers, shouted, cursed, exchanged angry phone
calls, got enraged, became confused, gave contradictory orders,
lost their tempers—until now, when it was decided that the first
four fighters could warm up on the hangar deck and could be sent
aloft with their engines running in time for the launch.

When it came
right down to it, thought Fred, they had no choice. Men’s lives
would depend on their timely arrival over Marcus. Recriminations
would flow freely when the strike was over. Perhaps careers would
suffer. So the four Hellcats warmed up on the hangar deck.

The lights
above him blinked once. Fred glanced over his gauges, satisfied
that everything was all right. A young mechanic appeared at the
side of his cockpit, tugged at the straps, checked the buckles that
held Fred in place, touched Fred’s legs, shoulders, and arms like a
nervous mother hurrying her son off to his first day in school. The
mechanic gave a thumbs-up to someone to the side of the aircraft
and hung on to the edge of the cockpit. The lights went off
completely now, and Fred stripped off the goggles and handed them
to the mechanic. The young man gripped Fred’s shoulder in a
friendly squeeze and was gone.

The Hellcat
suddenly shuddered and began to move backward. Fred knew by that
that they had already moved the Skipper’s plane, directly behind
him, to the elevator, and sent him aloft. There was a slight bump.
The plane stopped moving. Fred looked up. There in the huge square
hole of the elevator, he could see the brilliant, white tropical
stars. The square grew larger and larger, the air fresher and
cooler. Suddenly he was on the flight deck. Jack’s fighter, marked
by a single blue light beneath its tail, hurtled off the deck.

Shadowy shapes
moved around Fred, and a single red wand popped into existence in
the hands of some invisible deck officer. Taxi her forward, said
the wand. Fred released his brakes and increased his throttle,
rolled the Hellcat forward. Hold it there, said the wand. Fred
stood on the upper portion of the rudder pedals and felt the plane
hunker to a stop. Run her up, said the wand.

Fred stood on
the brakes with all the strength he possessed and increased the
throttle smoothly all the way to the stop, feeling the cyclonic
power of the engine lift the tail into the air. Then he leaned all
the way to the left and found the hooded deck lights that told him
where the deck was, and where it wasn’t. In that brief interval,
before the wand snapped downward and he released his brakes, he had
time only to think that despite the chaos of the launch, he was
ready for whatever would come ready because the only man among them
who had kept his temper and remained calm through it all would be
flying there in front of him. Go, said the wand, and Fred flew away
into the night.

Jack checked
over his left shoulder and saw Fred’s Hellcat blotting out the
stars, hanging off his left wing like a great amorphous shadow. He
liked having Fred out there—just as if he were an old, tested
friend rather than the untried rookie he was. But despite Fred’s
youth, despite his inexperience, he flew with a confidence in his
aircraft and his abilities that was just this side of jauntiness.
It was pleasing to watch, and Jack knew he was dependable, too.

Looking over
his right shoulder, Jack could see the other two elements of the
first division, Fitzsimmons and Hughes. But the other division
taking part in the first wave was not visible against the black sky
and ocean. Those fifteen harrowing minutes prior to the launch came
back to Jack and he smiled. Something like that was bound to happen
on the first combat mission. It always did. But they had been
flexible enough to make it work, and the first division was winging
its way to Marcus. Even if the rest of the sweep was not right
behind him, even if they had been delayed slightly, they would
still reach the target at about the same time. Then all of them
would be cutting through the skies over the target at eighteen
thousand feet, protecting the six Avengers that would come in low
to lay incendiaries on the airstrips as illumination for the
bombers from the other two carriers. Jack wondered if they had
radar, and if they would have time to get fighters to their
altitude. Something tickled Jack’s side. His flight suit was soaked
with sweat. Just like old times.