The Great Alone (103 page)

“Is there something I can do for you, Lieutenant?” he asked.

The officer advanced another two steps, then halted. “Are you Mr. Ace Cole?”

“That’s right.”

“Is this your aircraft?”

“It is.”

“It is my duty to inform you that the Army is exercising its emergency powers and taking over your aircraft for military use.”

“What!” The reaction exploded from him. Of all the things he had braced himself to hear, this was not one of them.

“The Army is commandeering your airplane.”

“To do what with it?” Ace demanded.

“That’s Army business, sir.”

“That’s my plane. I make my living with it, and that makes it my business.”

“When the emergency is over, the plane will be returned to you, Mr. Cole.”

“What emergency? And in what condition will it be? I’ve seen some of your Army pilots. I’m telling you right now, nobody flies that plane but me.” Ace punched a finger against his chest to emphasize the point.

“The Army will compensate you for any damages to your property,” the lieutenant assured him.

“Oh, no, you don’t.” Ace shook his head. “If you need planes, then you damned sure need pilots. I’ve probably got more experience flying in this country than a whole squadron of your Army boys put together. If you need this plane, you’ve got it, but I’m gonna fly it.” He swung toward Billy Ray. “Get this plane gassed up and ready to go while the lieutenant and I go talk to somebody in charge.”

“Ace.” Billy Ray motioned for him to come closer. Ace walked over and Billy Ray turned his back on the soldiers and whispered, “If you don’t want these engines to run when you come back, they won’t run.”

Ace glanced at the Eskimo’s craggy, lined face and carefully hid a smile. “No.” He laid his hand on the man’s shoulder. “I want those engines roaring strong as a bear when I come back.”

“You got it.” Billy Ray grinned.

When Ace volunteered his services to the lieutenant’s commanding officer, they were gratefully accepted. He soon learned that his plane wasn’t the only one the Army commandeered that night. They had taken over nearly every aircraft that had crossed into the territorial border, including forty-six commercial planes belonging to United, Northwest, and several other airlines. The Army had in its possession a fleet of some fifty-five planes—everything from Lodestars, Ford trimotors, and gooneybirds to Army C-53s, not to mention a small collection of bush planes.

At a briefing that night, he learned of the Army’s intentions. The scope of it stunned him. What they proposed seemed not merely a logistical nightmare but a virtual impossibility. But the impossible had always intrigued him. He hated to count the number of times he’d landed where he’d been told a plane couldn’t land.

Two PBY patrol planes had picked up a large Japanese task force on their radar screens, steaming to the northwest in the Bering Sea between the Pribilofs and St. Lawrence Island. CINCPAC Intelligence at Pearl Harbor had intercepted a coded Japanese message which suggested the Japanese were planning to invade the western Alaska mainland, probably at Nome. The Army intended to airlift in the necessary troops, munitions, and supplies to defend the western coast. Speed was of the essence, since no one knew when the Japanese might strike. A massive airlift of this nature had never been undertaken before, but that didn’t seem to faze the Army.

Ace called Trudy that night from Merrill Field. “Hi, Babe. Thought I’d let you know I was back.”

“It’s about time. What’s going on out there? Matty just called to say she’d talked to Billy Ray. He said some Army people dragged you off.”

“They’ve got some flying they want me to do for them. Some supplies and equipment they need rushed to one of their bases double-quick.” It was difficult to sound casual when inside he was all eagerness to take part in this monumental effort. “I’m not sure how long it will take. It’ll probably be several days before I’m back, depending on the weather. Don’t get worried if you don’t hear from me for a while.”

“You aren’t turning around and flying right back out?” she protested. “Ace, you haven’t had any sleep. What about dinner? Aren’t you coming home?”

“No. I’ll grab something to eat here and catch a couple hours’ sleep while they’re loading the plane.”

There was a hesitant pause on the other end of the line, then Trudy spoke, sounding resigned. “All right. But you be careful, Ace.”

“I will.” He glanced around first to see if anyone was listening, then added, “I Iove you.”

“I love you, too.”

In the sub-Arctic daylight of dawn, Ace supervised the loading of the assigned cargo into his plane. A sergeant stopped to check his manifest as two soldiers lifted a crate and shoved it inside the cargo door.

“Wait a minute. Take that back out,” the sergeant ordered.

“Leave it,” Ace said.

“Sir, you’re already eight hundred pounds over capacity.” The sergeant started to show him the tonnage total listed on the manifest.

“Sergeant, I’ve been
twelve
hundred pounds overweight before and still taken off. Take my word that I know how much this plane will carry and still fly.” He smiled as the sergeant hesitated. “The idea is to get as much there as fast as we can, isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir. But if you don’t make it there, my ass’ll be in a crack.”

“And my body’ll be in the wreck.” He took the clipboard from the sergeant and signed his name to the manifest, then handed it back to him. “Believe me, Sergeant, I’m more worried about my ass than yours. Slide it in, boys,” he told the soldiers.

They waited, but all the sergeant said was “Good luck,” and walked away.

All up and down the flight line, planes of every description were being loaded with supplies, munitions, anti-aircraft guns, and combat troops armed with enough ammunition to last for three days and food for ten. “Operation Bingo,” the Army called it. Ace thought the name was appropriate. It was like pulling numbers out of a barrel cage, putting kernels on a square, and waiting for the right combination—and hoping they would get it in time to win.

Once the twin-engine plane was loaded and the cargo secured, Ace and his co-pilot, Skeeter Olson, strapped themselves into the cockpit seats and waited for their turn to take off. As the heavily loaded plane lumbered down the runway, Ace coaxed it off the ground and let it fly straight and level a few feet off the runway to increase airspeed, then put it into a slow climb.

As they achieved sufficient altitude, Ace put the twin into a shallow bank and turned it to a west-northwesterly heading. “You know, don’t you, that this thing should never have been able to get off the ground,” Skeeter muttered.

Ace just smiled and reached down to adjust the trim. In the distance, he could see the airliner that had taken off ahead of him. Most of the other civilian pilots in the planes had never flown this six-hundred-mile air route from Anchorage to Nome. There weren’t any accurate maps of the region, no emergency facilities, and no search-and-rescue operations. The Signal Corps was hastily setting out to build radio stations along the route, but it would be several days before they would be in operation. In the meantime, they were all on their own. Some were bound to stray off course and become lost, or develop engine problems and be forced down on some frozen lake. Ace hoped he wouldn’t be among them.

Near the Kuskokwim Mountains, Ace noticed a bank of dark clouds stretching across their path. “Better go back and make sure that cargo is lashed secure,” he advised his co-pilot. “It looks like it’s going to get a little rough.”

“Roger.” Skeeter unbuckled his belt and started to climb out of his seat. “What are we carrying back there, anyway?”

“Don’t ask.”

Within minutes, Skeeter was back. Ace throttled the engines back a little as they encountered their first strong turbulence, then stole a glance at his co-pilot’s white face. “Everything tied down tight?”

“Yeah.” His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed and turned to stare at Ace. “Those are live shells back there in those crates.”

“Were you expecting the Army to lob rocks at the Jap bombers?” Ace mocked.

Skeeter didn’t say anything as he faced the front again and stared out the cockpit window. “Shit,” he murmured. “We’re flying a fucking bomb.”

Ace said nothing. They were entering the clouds, and at the moment he had his hands full holding the aircraft steady. Unable to climb above the clouds and unwilling to fly under them with mountains all around, Ace chose to fly through them.

For more than an hour the twin-engine plane battled through the weather front, buffeted by strong winds and fluctuating undercurrents that bounced them around until their teeth rattled. The plane groaned and shuddered like a coatless old woman on a cold night.

“Jeezus, when are we gonna get outa this shit?” Skeeter gritted his teeth to keep them from clattering together.

“Do you wanta see if we can get above it or under it?”

“Above it.” Skeeter didn’t even have to think about his answer. “With that load back there, I don’t want to go down till we get to Nome.”

“Let’s flip a coin,” Ace suggested. “Heads we go up; tails we go down.”

“Jeezus, Ace, your goddamned father was a gambler all right, but I don’t see why you have to take after him.” His voice wavered with the shuddering vibrations of the plane. But he removed the coin Ace always kept in the ashtray and gave it a feeble toss into the air. He couldn’t catch it and the coin dropped to the floor.

“Call it as it lays,” Ace said, not taking his attention from the instrument panel.

He heard Skeeter swear under his breath, then announce, “Heads it is.”

“Liar.” Ace eased the nose of the aircraft down. “We’ll go down to four thousand and see if we can’t find a break in the clouds.”

“God damn it, Ace, you couldn’t see that coin.”

At forty-four hundred feet, Ace spotted a hole in the clouds and flew through it, then leveled out at two thousand, where the cloud layer was thin and scattered. Below them was a body of water dotted with ice floes.

“Do you have any idea where we are?” Skeeter demanded.

“Unless we were blown farther off course than I thought, that should be Norton Sound below us. Can you see the coastline to the north?”

“Yeah. You figured we were flying over water all the time, didn’t you?” Skeeter accused. “How come you didn’t tell me instead of lettin’ me sweat like that?”

“There was always the chance I was wrong.” Ace swung the plane north and followed the coastline until he spied the town where he was born, perched beside the sea.

The airfield sat on the northeast side of town, across the Snake River. A strong crosswind was blowing as he made his final approach for landing. He tipped a wing to the wind, crabbing to hold his course down the center of the runway. At the last minute, he leveled out. An instant later, the plane’s wheels touched the runway. He cut power on one engine, but kept the windward engine running to steady the plane in the strong wind while it finished its landing roll and slowed down. Another plane was coming in as he taxied off the runway.

Within an hour, his plane was unloaded and refueled and they were in the air again, heading back to Anchorage for another load. Ace made three trips to Nome that day. In all, the fifty-five planes made a total of a hundred and seventy-nine trips, transported nearly twenty-three hundred combat-ready soldiers, twenty anti-aircraft guns, and tons of supplies and equipment. Within twenty-four hours, the troops were dug in at Nome and their guns were in position.

Ace flew for three more days, shuttling in supplies and equipment. The airlift continued, on a reduced scale, for three more weeks. The welcoming party was ready to greet the Japanese, but they never came. And the patrol planes couldn’t find the task force that was supposed to be in the Bering Sea.

Despite the anticlimax, Ace knew the experience was one he’d never forget. He’d been part of something that had never been attempted before and had helped to make it a success. Maybe he was too old to be a soldier, but he’d done his bit for the war.

Inga Blomquist paused in the kitchen doorway, the coffeepot in her hand, and studied the pair still seated at the dinner table. Both rested their arms on the table and leaned slightly forward, their heads turned so they could watch each other while they talked. They were so wrapped up in one another they were completely oblivious of her presence. Inga liked the picture her daughter, Lisa, and Steve Bogardus made. She hoped that it meant that Lisa was at last going to forget about Wylie Cole.

For a time this spring, it had seemed as though she had. Twice she had gone out with Steve. Then all that fuss about the Japanese attack on some Aleutian Island had erupted, and Lisa had gotten all upset and worried that something was going to happen to Wylie. She had started feeling guilty about the dates she’d had with Steve.

Sometimes she wondered why Lisa couldn’t see how lucky she was that a man like Steve Bogardus was interested in her. He would make such a good husband. But at Lisa’s age, she, too, had been blinded by sentiment. No woman should marry her first love. On the day she and Jan were wed, if she had known about the years of struggle and hardship and hunger that awaited her, she would never have married him. Jan Blomquist had been poor, but she had been so young that she thought money didn’t matter, that it was enough they were in love—but it wasn’t. She hadn’t always complained. She hadn’t always been unhappy and resentful. Many times she had wanted to explain that to Lisa, but she had never been able to find the right words.