Wingmen (9781310207280) (51 page)

“Okay.” Higgins
sounded satisfied and watched as Jack flipped through the rest of
the miscellaneous files. “That’s fine,” he said when Jack finished
with those.

“Up here we got
the ‘In’ and ‘Out’ box. Sweeney brings the stuff in, mostly from
CAG, and takes out anything that has to be routed to someone else.
You have to make a little note and tell him what goes where, like
to CAG or the personnel jackets.”

“Okay.” Duane
was uncomfortable sitting there touching Jack, especially with
Trusteau in the room.

“This is my
‘Hold’ file.” Jack pulled it from the middle drawer from underneath
the two envelopes he had put there earlier. Duane saw Fred
Trusteau’s name on the top envelope. “I keep things in here that
are pending, or things that I’m waiting for more information on—you
know, things that can’t be done right now.” He took a letter from
the folder. “This is a request from the Bureau of Aeronautics for
an evaluation on the new ammunition canisters for the Hellcats. CAG
saw it first and sent it down to me. I’m waiting for the crew
chiefs to finish a report so I can send it back.” Jack put the
letter away in the folder and put the folder back in the drawer.
Again, Duane saw the letter with Trusteau’s name on it.

“I guess that
about does it,” said Jack. “Anything requiring action is either in
the ‘In’ tray or the ‘Hold’ file. I go through both of them every
day and finish up anything I can. It doesn’t pay to let things get
backed up.”

“Sure,” said
Duane. “I understand.” He edged his chair away from Jack until
their knees were no longer touching.

“Move that
chair back around,” said Jack. Duane looked relieved and did as he
was told, bumping into Trusteau but not apologizing. “Now,” said
Jack, as Duane reseated himself in front of the desk, “there’s
something that concerns all three of us.”

Duane leaned
forward. Fred stood as before, saying nothing.

“We received
word from the operations staff a little while ago. We’ve been given
the go ahead for the bat team ops.” Jack watched Fred’s face as he
said it, but there was no reaction.

“Bat team,”
said Duane. “That’s your night flying routine, isn’t it?”

“That’s
correct.”

“Then you’re
really going through with it?”

“Yes, we
are.”

“Sounds kind of
harebrained to me.”

Fred shuffled
his feet, maintained his silence.

“No offense to
you, Trusty,” Duane continued, “but if you have to do it, Skipper,
why don’t you pick someone with a little more time in the air?”

“No,” said
Jack, a little sharply. “Fred’s got excellent night vision and
depth perception. We fly well together. If anyone has to do it,
it’s us.”

“I’m sorry,”
said Duane quickly. “I didn’t mean to imply anything.”

Fred smiled,
looked down at his feet.

“The point is
this,” said Jack. “ Me and Fred and CAG will be spending a lot of
time in the air after dark. Daylight training will be left to you.”
Duane shrugged. “There’s more. The day after tomorrow is the first
briefing on the upcoming operation. I know enough to tell you this:
It’ll be another Tarawa-type affair. We’ll be making the first
strikes on the target. We’ll also be in range of Jap airfields the
night before the first sweeps. We have to expect an attack. If
there is, the bat team will be used. In that case, you will lead
the first sweeps over the target, not me.”

Duane’s face
brightened. “That’s all right by me,” he said.

“I don’t like
to see the squadron going in under anyone but me, but we don’t have
any choice.”

“Don’t you
worry,” said Duane. “Now you guys’ll know what it’s like to come in
when there’s nothing left to go after.”

“Any
questions?” asked Jack. He looked at Duane, then at Fred.

“No, sir,” said
Fred.

“One other
thing. I’ll announce this decision to the squadron when the time is
right. Is that clear?”

“Sure,” said
Duane.

“Yes, sir,”
said Fred.

“Okay.” Jack’s
voice lost its hard edge and he leaned back in his chair. “Fred,
stay for a few minutes. There’s something we have to go over.” He
nodded to Higgins. “Mister Higgins,” he said in dismissal.

Duane accepted
it without a word, bumping Fred again as he left, again not
apologizing. Fred lowered himself into the chair.

“I’m not sure I
know how I feel about all this, Skipper,” he said.

“Please,” said
Jack. “Do me a favor. Right here, right now, call me Jack.”

“Jack.” Fred
said it softly, studied the other man’s face as he did so.

“Thank you.” He
opened the desk drawer and took out the envelope with Fred’s name
on it. “I want you to have this,” he said, and he handed it across
to him. Fred stood to take it, then sat back down, looking
carefully at the sealed flap, the handwritten name.

“It’s from
you,” he said.

“Yes, it
is.”

“Should I open
it?”

“If you want,
but I can tell you what’s in it.”

“Okay,
Jack.”

“It’s a will.
Keep the envelope sealed. If you read it, put it in a new envelope.
Keep it in a safe place. Don’t take it flying with you.”

“Yes, sir.”
Fred looked down at the envelope, turning it carefully,
quizzically, in his hands.

“There isn’t a
lot I can call my own. I left a worthless piece of land to my
mother. That leaves a savings account—I put the number and current
balance in the will. If anything happens to me, it’s yours.” Jack
folded his hands in front of him on the desk, squeezed the fingers
tight until a knuckle popped. “I’m sending an exact copy to the
family attorney. Sweeney witnessed both copies, but I didn’t let
him see who was in it.”

“Okay,” said
Fred. “I appreciate the thought, Skipper. Jack. But I don’t think
I’ll ever have to use it.”

“Look, Fred. If
you don’t want to go through with this bat team thing, you don’t
have to.”

Fred opened up
his shirt and slipped the will in next to his T-shirt. “The way I
see it,” he said, “you and I won’t get sunburned anymore.”

Jack smiled.
“That’s a good point. I’m sure it’ll bring dozens of volunteers
fighting for the chance to qualify at night landings.”

“No doubt.”
Fred sat quietly for a moment, knowing he should leave but not
wanting to. “Do you know where we’re going, sir?”

“Yes. A place
called Kwajalein.”

“Roi-Namur?”

“The same.”
Jack pointed a finger at Fred. “Don’t tell a soul, you hear?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ve got
enough trouble without having a general court-martial on my
hands.”

“At least we’re
not going to Tokyo.”

“Tokyo?”

“Hill heard
some scuttlebutt.”

“How’s he doing
with the Diary?”

“As well as can
be expected.”

“He’s your
responsibility, Fred. You train him.”

“Yes, sir.”
Fred stood up. “I guess I better get back to the library.”

“Try to get
some sack time this afternoon. You may need it.”

“Okay, Jack.”
He reached the door.

“There’s a
pretty good movie on tonight,” said Jack.

“
Casablanca
. Bogart’s in
it.”

“Let’s go see
it together.” Jack looked up and Fred smiled.

“My pleasure.”
Fred closed the door behind him, leaving Jack sitting at an empty
desk, his hands knotted in front of him.

Hill was still
sitting alone in the library when Fred came back. He was surprised
to see that Hill had indeed finished the entry for the twenty-first
and was halfway through the one for the present date. But it was
obviously a struggle for him. Fred sat beside him, taking out the
envelope from his shirt and laying it on the table.

“What’s that?”
asked Hill.

“None of your
business.” Fred read through Hill’s first entry. “You spelled
‘course’ wrong.”

“Well, how the
hell do you spell it?”

Fred pointed
across the small room to another table. “That book over there is a
dictionary. It’ll tell you how.”

As Hill looked
up the word, Fred smiled to himself, savoring the satisfaction of
being able to call the Skipper by his first name, in private, when
no one else could. He ignored Hill’s whining insistence that he
couldn’t find a word in the dictionary that he didn’t know how to
spell in the first place. Fred was thinking that Jack was worried
about the bat team ops and maybe even feared for his life. That was
okay, he thought, because
he
knew everything would be all right. Butch O’Hare
might have been lost doing it, but then he had not had Fred
Trusteau, the Trusty Killer, for a wingman.

“You really
think we’re going to Truk?” asked Hill, looking up from the
dictionary.

“No, I
don’t.”

“Well, where
are we going then?”

“Beats the shit
out of me,” smiled Fred.

Despite the fact that
he would lose over fifty dollars, Duane Higgins would have another
reason to regret playing in the poker game this particular evening,
the night before the first strikes on Kwajalein. He entered the
game after the evening meal, when most of the other pilots were
retiring to their staterooms and trying to sleep. He told himself
that a good night’s sleep was only marginally more important than
the game. It was beginning to look like he wasn’t going to lead the
first sweep after all, which was scheduled for 0500 hours next
morning. They were well within range of enemy reconnaissance
aircraft, but there had been no alarms. He had skipped up to combat
and asked about contacts, and was told that a weather front was
moving in and there was little chance they would be spotted or
attacked that night. On his way to the game site—a line stowage
compartment near the bow—he had stuck his head into the skipper’s
stateroom. The skipper was undressing for bed, so Duane said good
night and hurried on. If things went right, he would play until
maybe twelve o’clock, sleep until four, when the scheduled GQ would
sound, then lay around the ready room until the afternoon strike
and catch a few z’s there.

Duane came to
the passageway outside the line stowage space and nodded to an
apparently uninterested first class petty officer who acted as the
game’s security agent. He let himself in through the watertight
door and found four other players stacking bills in neat piles. One
was shuffling a new deck of cards on an upturned reel of silky
nylon line. The lieutenant commander from Disbursing was there, as
was Chief Carmichael, a lieutenant from the torpedo squadron, and a
chief from the Medical Department. Duane cut the deck and sat down
on a great bundle of manila hemp. He laid his bankroll on the edge
of the reel as the first cards began to fly.

“Goddamn
flyboys,” said Carmichael. The first card was down, the second up.
The players automatically shelled out the ante and the high card
upped the bet. The third card caused Duane and the disbursing
officer to fold.

“What’s the
bitch, Chief?” asked Duane.

Carmichael
clamped down hard on an unlighted cigar and ignored the fourth card
that landed in front of him. “When the fuck are we supposed to
sleep?” He dropped a couple of bills into the pot, watched the last
card come, looked at it, then raked the pot to his side of the
reel. “We fuckin’ work all day pushing those goddamn turkeys around
up there—” A new hand of five card stud began to grow. “—four
fuckin’ o’clock in the morning till after dark, and now they
fuckin’ got us working all damn night, too. When the fuck are we
supposed to sleep?”

“Back off
there, Chief,” said Higgins. He looked casually at his two up
cards, his single hole card, and folded. “I don’t give the flying
orders.”

(He was not
entirely pleased with the situation either. For the last four
nights they had gone to flight quarters after the moon had set, to
launch the strange combination of CAG in a radar Avenger and the
Skipper and Trusteau in their Hellcats. They would stay in the air
for two or three hours. After the second night, they had allowed
the rest of the pilots to turn in, but the flight deck crew and
numerous other involved parties had to remain on station until they
came back. Sleep was lost; spare time was bitten into. People were
pissed off about it.)

Having said his
piece, the chief quit his complaining and concentrated on the game.
Duane folded the next two hands, bet the succeeding one on a high
pair, and lost to a low three of a kind. He folded the next. It was
not a good night for poker.

“What about
that briefing?” asked the torpedo pilot. “Wasn’t that
something?”

“You bet,” said
Duane.

Chief
Carmichael muttered under his breath and chewed the cold cigar.

“I got a line
of latrines as my secondary,” laughed the other pilot. “We’re
really hitting them where it hurts the most.”