Wingmen (9781310207280) (49 page)

“Hey, hey,”
said Duane. He picked up the bottle of Black Label. “Fancy
digs.”

“The real Santa
Claus came last night,” said Fred. He sat up and threw the sheet
back. Duane saw he was wearing shorts and it made him breathe
easier for some reason. Fred picked up his package and looked at
the postmark.

“A bible,” said
Jack, taking a small book out of a wad of tissue paper. “With a
steel plate.” He opened the cover and read aloud, “Trust in the
Lord but give Him all the help you can.” Jack laughed. “From my
nieces.”

“No wonder we
got them by Christmas,” said Fred. “They’re postmarked
September.”

“I’ll leave you
two with your new toys,” said Duane.

“A flying
scarf,” said Fred. He pulled a snowy white silk scarf from the
middle of a pile of brown wrapping and tissue paper. “Just call me
the Baron.”

“You guys come
on down,” said Duane from the door. “We’ll be having breakfast at
9:30 sharp.”

He closed the
door and they heard him pounding on the next door down. Fred
dropped the silk scarf to the bed and looked at Jack. Jack set the
little bundle of paper and bible on the bed and smiled back at
Fred. “Merry Christmas,” he said.

“Someone should
write a book,” said Jack.

They were lying
together in the darkened room, with only moonlight to see by. It
created a ghostly gray luminescence instead of real light and made
the shadows seem only more black and impenetrable.

“A book?” asked
Fred. He was on his back, one hand under his head, the other under
Jack’s shoulder.

Jack rolled
over on his side and propped his head on his hand. “A book,” he
said.

“What
about?”

“The war. All
this.”

“Not us?”

“History,
Killer, history. We’re making history and don’t even know it. All
these carriers, these air groups. Someone ought to write it all
down.”

“I suppose,”
said Fred. He reached for the night table and a pack of cigarettes.
There was only one left; he lighted it, dragged once, and offered
it to Jack.

“We’ll be
heading back out pretty soon,” Jack said, taking the cigarette.

“How soon?”

“CAG let it
slip when we had that meeting yesterday.”

“Loose lips,”
said Fred. “When is it?”

“Second week in
January.” Jack handed the cigarette back to Fred.

“I don’t
suppose he let slip where.”

“His lips
aren’t that loose, or else he doesn’t know. But I think we could
guess if we put our heads together.”

“If we put our
heads together,” said Fred, “I don’t want it to be for the purpose
of figuring out where we’re going next.”

“I wouldn’t
mind staying here for a while.”

“Me,
neither.”

“But all good
things…” Jack ran his fingers through the hair on Fred’s chest,
then suddenly bent his head to place his ear there. “I can hear
your heart,” he announced.

Fred reached
up, with the cigarette still in his fingers, and stroked Jack’s
beard with his thumb. Suddenly he laughed. “That piano player,” he
said.

“Yeah,” said
Jack. “Didn’t know a single Christmas song.”

“How do you say
‘Jingle Bells’ in Hawaiian?”

“Niki naka huki
luki,” said Jack. He rolled over on his back, laughed loudly.

“Hum a few bars
of the Hallelujah Chorus, boys, and I’ll fake it.” Fred shook with
repressed mirth, reached over, and put the cigarette out in an
ashtray on the floor.

“You’re going
to have a scar there.”

“Where?”

“Right here.”
Jack touched the healing cut above Fred’s right eyebrow. The ugly
scabs had come off only two days before, leaving a tender pink
cleft in the tight skin.

“That’s okay
with me,” said Fred. “A little scar is better than the
alternative.”

Jack took a
deep breath and let it out in a long sigh. “When we get back out
there,” he said, “you stick to me.”

“All right,
Skipper.”

“I mean it.
Stick like glue and do what I do. No more killer-type heroics.”

“Whatever you
say.”

“I mean it.”
Jack was very serious.

“I will.” Fred
edged closer to Jack until they were touching down the length of
their bodies, “I promise.” He squeezed Jack’s thick forearm,
feeling the muscles there. “These two days sure went by fast,
didn’t they?”

“Too fast.”
Jack rolled up on his side so he could look at Fred’s face. “I hope
you enjoyed yourself.”

“More than
anything in the world. But.”

“But what?”

“They’re not
over yet.”

Jack smiled,
lowered himself on top of Fred, and spoke in his ear, “I know,” he
said.

Fred felt the
weight of the older man press him into the bed and hugged him with
all his strength. He drew a long, trembling breath. “God, you feel
good,” he said.

And Jack
whispered into his ear, “I’ve never felt better in my life, Fred.
Never.”

“A bat team?” Fred
sounded very polite, but Jack knew he was dreadfully uncomfortable
sitting in the hot Sunday morning sunshine on Ford Island.

“That’s what
they called the first team. I see no reason to call ours anything
different,” Buster Jennings said.

The three men
were attired in crackly-stiff tropical whites. They sat in
white-painted iron chairs around an iron filigree table of a style
most often found in Victorian gardens. Beside Fred, in the fourth
and last chair, was a full captain from the task group operations
staff. A hundred yards from the little group was a cluster of gray
buildings. which included the base chapel.

“The key to
their whole operation,” Jennings continued, “is that first snooper.
As far as we can tell, it’s always a Betty. They have the fuel
capacity for five or six hours on station. They find the task group
in the dark or just before sundown—they might even be using a radar
model—and the snooper stays out of range and shadows until the
complete strike shows up. He helps them form up by dropping strings
of float lights in the water. They point out the direction and
course of the group. Then he goes high and does the number with the
flares. That’s the way they got the
Lexington
last month.” Jennings paused and
tried to harden his voice. “They get better at it every time they
try; they circle out of range and come in low so radar can’t get on
in time to shoot. We don’t use the flattops’ guns at all because
the flashes would give away their positions. Maneuvering throws off
their aim, but it doesn’t kill Japs.”

Fred cleared
his throat. “Is that why there wasn’t any flak during our
interception last month?” he asked.

“No,” said
Jennings. “The truth is, they faded at about four miles. Since we
had no provision for having our own aircraft up after dark, other
than IFF, it’s a wonder some trigger-happy sailor didn’t open up
and shoot both of you down.”

Jack watched
Fred wrinkle his brow and sit back with crossed arms, obviously
dissatisfied with the answer. Jack had been aware of the danger at
the time, but he had never mentioned it to Fred. The night
interception was one of two things they never talked about. (The
other was the stay at the Moana a week before.)

“The bat team
works like this,” Jennings continued. “We launch a radar Avenger
and two F6s, either just at dusk or whenever the snooper shows up.
They join up and the FDO vectors them out to the snooper. The
Avenger uses its radar to find the Jap in the dark, then he puts
the two Hellcats on him and they splash him. The snooper’s the key:
With him gone, they don’t have their ringmaster. They have trouble
finding the group. No one drops any flares. Maybe we leave the team
up, and they take out a few of the main strike and that really
confuses them. It has to work.” He added the last with a note of
defiant finality.

“Nothing has to
work,” said the staff captain. “Remember what happened the first
time they tried it.”

“It worked,”
said Jennings. “They broke up the bastards. They didn’t even
attack.”

“They were
lucky and the Japs were unprepared,” the captain said
matter-of-factly. “Just like Mister Hardigan and Mister Trusteau on
their little midnight adventure. And look what it cost.”

Jack enjoyed
watching Fred’s reactions to the captain’s opinions. He tapped a
foot in impatience, cracked his knuckles loudly, raised his
eyebrows in polite surprise. Obviously no one had told him about
the first time a bat team was used.

“For the
record,” asked Fred, “could you tell me what happened?” He directed
the question to no one in particular, as though he were unsure who
would answer it.

CAG harrumphed
and crossed his arms. “Nothing happened that shouldn’t have. We
lose pilots all the time.”

Jack leaned
toward Fred and rested his elbows on his knees. He clasped his
hands in front of him. “The
Enterprise
tried it,” he said. “They didn’t
join up right away, but the Avenger got two of the Bettys. Then
when they tried to join up using landing lights, the Japs spotted
them and got away. Later the skipper of VF-6—he was one of the
fighters—suddenly left the formation and no one ever saw him again.
They think the Avenger’s turret gunner mistook him for a Japanese
and killed him.” He watched Fred take a sharp little breath and
release it. Then he eased back into his chair.

“Butch O’Hare
was worth ten Jap Bettys,” said the captain. “For that matter,
anyone of you here is worth more than a few enemy planes when we’ve
got a hundred five-inch and four hundred forty-millimeter barrels
in every task group. What you’re proposing is that we order all
ships to hold their fire while a couple of blind fighter pilots try
to shoot down twenty or thirty hostile torpeckers in the dark.”

“We don’t have
to shoot all of them down,” said Jennings. “Or even half of them.
It’s all a matter of timing, getting the snooper first.” He was not
giving in easily.

“You said
yourself they’re getting better at it. How can you be sure they
won’t send out two snoopers next time? If you do get one lone Nip,
how do you know for sure that one was the snooper?”

“All those guns
didn’t save the
Lexington
,” said Jennings. “Now she’s in dry dock
and won’t make it for the next push.”

“We’ll have to
make and distribute changes in the Op Plan,” said the captain, “so
that some of your flyboys can play hide-and-seek with enemy bombers
while the boys on my cruisers and battlewagons sit around and pick
their teeth. Why do you think they built the
Oakland
? To look pretty?”

From the brief
smile that crossed Fred’s face, Jack could tell he found the remark
amusing. Both pilots knew the
Oakland
well. She was a hybrid cruiser
built for one purpose: to shoot down attacking aircraft. A
veritable forest of five-inch barrels adorned her upper levels;
every other open topside space was jammed with smaller forty- and
twenty-millimeter mounts. When she opened up it was awesome.

“It
can
be done.
It
will
work. All we need is a chance.” Jennings pounded a chubby fist on
the wrought-iron table.

The staff
captain merely stood. “It’s too bad I don’t have final say,” he
said. “But I’m forwarding your suggestions recommending
disapproval. There’s too much at stake. You’ll have word before we
sail. Good morning, gentlemen.”

The captain
turned and strode away. In the silence that ensued, Jack heard
church bells ring. This reminded him that it was Sunday, a
nonflying day—and he and Fred were in here in trop whites listening
to two higher-ups debate whether or not they would risk their
lives.

“That tears
it,” said Jennings. “That bastard carries weight with the ops
staff.”

“Should we keep
up the night flying?” asked Jack.

“Sure,” said
CAG. “But don’t let the rest of your boys slack off.”

“They’re in
good shape,” said Jack. He was passing on Duane Higgins’ opinion
since Higgins had much more chance to observe their performance.
The nightly flights and the daily burden of paperwork were
effectively cutting off his own contact with the rest of the men.
It disturbed him.

“Well,” said
Jennings, standing to go. “Join me in some late breakfast?” He
spoke to Jack, ignoring Fred.

Jack looked
quickly at Fred and saw that amused little smile out of the corner
of his eye. “I’ve already eaten,” Jack lied. “Besides, I usually
use this time to catch up on the paperwork.”

“Suit
yourself,” said Jennings. He jammed his hat onto his head in one
nervous gesture and walked away in the direction of the Officer’s
Club without another word.

“I’m sorry,”
said Jack.

“What for?”
asked Fred.