Whip (12 page)

The big engines kicked in with growling, coughing rumbles, then broke into their throaty roar. To one side Goodman knew the B-17 was also churning into life as the four engines wheezed and banged into motion. Goodman knew the message they'd waited so long to receive had to be positive. The Australians had a PBY out there in the darkness, far to the north, and it had sent back a code that the weather was acceptable.

"This is the pilot. Call off your stations. I want everyone strapped in tight. Colonel Goodman?"

Lou Goodman cinched his straps just a hair tighter. "Goodman here. All set." One by one the other crewmen called in. The radio operator, turret gunner, side gunner. Six men in all in the twin-engined raider.

Goodman felt the brakes released and the B-25 dipped gently on its nose shocks. He stared through a side panel and saw a ghostly movement: Kanaga's B-17, trundling slowly out to the edge of the runway and lining up. There'd be no radio contact between the two aircraft until
after
the mission was flown. If the Japanese did no more than intercept radio communication on the aircraft frequencies at this time of night they'd flash the word to all major stations that the Americans might be staging a night mission, and then every damned antiaircraft position at Rabaul would be waiting.

Then the B-25 came alive, shaking and shuddering through every metal fiber, groaning and rumbling as the pilots locked the brakes. In his mind Lou Goodman went through the checklist with them. Mags right and left, holding high r.p.m. on the props, coming back on the prop controls to check propeller blade angles, the sound whooshing and hissing as the blades shifted through fine and coarse pitch. Then it was all done. He leaned forward as the B-25 rolled slowly forward, shaking from side to side on the uneven surface beneath them. They came easily to a stop, waiting.

In the darkness, peering through the glass, Goodman saw the ghostly blue flames of the B-17 engine exhausts increase in brightness. Rich mixture, props all the way forward, Kanaga was running her up to full power before releasing his own brakes. A single dull white light showed from the tail. They'd need at least that for aircraft separation on their way upstairs.

The exhaust flame and the small white light seemed to flow away from them. Long moments later a green light flashed three times from the far end of the runway, the signal from an observer standing to one side that the B-17 was off clean and climbing out.

The B-25 rolled forward, jerked to a stop. The throttles were going forward, then they were at the stops and the airplane was straining at its leash. Whip didn't bother telling the crew when they were going to roll. There was no mistake about it as he and Alex came off the brakes and the airplane surged forward, responding to the howling engines and whirling propellers. The acceleration pulled Lou back in his seat and he leaned forward to compensate for the motion. Other sensations rushed upon him now as the bomber accelerated, picking up speed swiftly, and he felt Whip coming back on the yoke just a hair to get the nose wheel out of the soft runway.

At this moment Lou Goodman had fled the known world and was plunging through a surrealistic tunnel, the dull red lights to either side of him rushing faster and faster at him and then speeding away, out of his peripheral vision. Finally they became a blur. He knew Whip was holding the bomber down longer than necessary, getting some extra speed — money in the bank — because of the night takeoff. If he knew his man behind the yoke he knew also Whip saw nothing of what Lou Goodman was watching, for Alex Bartimo would be on the rudder pedals, holding the B-25 aligned exactly down the runway, while Whip himself was on the gauges. When Whip lifted the bomber from the ground it would be a thundering crash into darkness and he would be flying for a while strictly on his instruments, his entire world no more distant from him than the gauges that presented him with the sight of an artificial horizon, a dial to show him his air speed, another to indicate course, still another to show his rate of climb as the earth fell away below, another to show their increasing altitude. He would let Alex attend to the gauges that showed oil pressure and temperature, cylinder head temperature. Alex would come back on the throttles, ease off the whirling speed of the propellers, attend to fuel tanks, coolers, flows, pressures. He would be the priest attending the power flow and lifeblood of the machine. The flaps had come up slowly, the gear had thumped into its wells, the engines were pulled back to something less than hammering thunder. The B-25 was in her element now, running straight and true, flying the curving, invisible line that would bring them up and behind the heavier machine with Kanaga and Anderson at the controls.

Goodman loosened his belt and leaned forward, straining to see that dull white light.

There was always the danger they might collide with the Flying Fortress, and a single mistake could be the final one for them all. "Colonel, you see anything?"

That was Whip calling from the cockpit, enlisting every eyeball available. Goodman strained to see. Almost at the same moment he felt the rolling lurch that went through the entire airplane. They were in the wake of the B-17, feeling the air that twisted back from the whirling propellers and the vortex spilling off the wingtips. Almost at the same time —

"I've got him, Whip. Just about eleven o'clock and slightly above us."

"Great, Lou. We're locked on."

Navigation lights, red on the left wingtip and green on the right, flicked into being. A moment later the same lights appeared ahead of them as Kanaga received word from his tail gunner that the B-25 was behind them and had given the signal. All lights save the dull white light at the very tail-end position of the B-17 went off now. From this point on Whip and Alex Bartimo would have to fly formation position, to the right and slightly behind the heavy bomber. There would be no conversation, no other signals, for with every passing moment they were getting deeper and deeper into Japanese territory.

The minutes settled down to routine. Goodman eased from his seat and went for the thermos jug to pass hot coffee to the two men in the cockpit. They were going for eight thousand feet, away from the islands, away from Japanese ground positions. Eight thousand at night wasn't too high; they wouldn't need oxygen and they were high enough to clear anything that might loom up out of the sea.

Then they were above scattered clouds. Goodman estimated their height below at three thousand feet beneath their own level. A half-moon came over the horizon, seeming to loft itself through the sky with a purpose. Moonlight scattered off the clouds and they were in a ghostly world of dull, snow-cold illumination. It helped enormously in their navigation, for even in that baleful glow reflecting from a barren world a quarter of a million miles away they saw the long silver on the ocean and the small islands providing reference points. It was an added bonus. Above them the stars crowded darkness, and in the B-17 the navigator was peering through his small plexiglas bubble, shooting the stars with his instruments. This was a blessing — the weather had broken right for them.

It was a long haul. In the blessed cool air of their altitude Goodman stacked his parachute against the side of the glassed-in nose, wedged his body as comfortably as noise and vibration and metal would allow and fell asleep.

The presence of another body in the nose compartment brought Goodman instantly awake. Opening his eyes he stared up at Alex. No words passed between them for a moment. The increased cry of the wind, the sound of the engines, the changing pressure told it all to the colonel. They were on the way down.

"Colonel, if you need to take a leak, now's a good time. We're going down pretty fast."

Goodman nodded. Alex was right. A full bladder during a night bombing run could get pretty hairy. As he relieved himself he had to brace his body against the side of the nose.

They were picking up some turbulence as they dropped lower and lower. Goodman went back to his seat, belted himself in, leaving enough slack for easy movement.

"This is the pilot. Charge your guns."

Goodman felt a strange thrill sweeping through him. His blood ran faster and he knew he was breathing hard. Not, he was grateful to see, with too much fear, but with an abundance of growing excitement. Well ahead of them, in the now brighter moonlight, he could see the coastlines of both New Britain and New Ireland. They'd make a fast run on the deck due north through St. George's Channel and come around in a wide sweeping turn to the left, cutting to the east, to set up their punch into Simpson Harbor.

Everything happened now with a rush. Kanaga was pouring the coal to the Fortress, getting all the speed he could out of the big bomber without beating his engines half to death. The faster B-25 had no trouble staying with the B-17, but Whip began to ease his plane more to the right, giving greater clearance between them.

Then they were committed. The land to their left fell away as the shoreline curved sharply, rising hills and lower mountains barely silhouetted against that moonlit sky.

Goodman watched the B-17. Everything would happen according to what Bill Kanaga did. This was his show, he was the seasoned veteran here, and Whip, for all he knew, was the student following the master.

The last curving edge of land fell away. Simpson Harbor lay between volcanic mounds and tree-lined shores, but no one looked any more at real estate. Ahead of them, metal reflecting dully under that God-blessed moon they hadn't expected, lay an enormous fleet of ships: cargo and troopships and destroyers and cruisers and barges and tankers and whatever else the Japanese had moved into the harbor.

Water seemed to flash in a terrifying blur directly before the B-25, and in the thundering, pounding rush only scant feet above the waves, Goodman marveled at the sight of the big Fortress with her propellers hurling back a stream of spray. Four running, rushing lines streaking the water as if an invisible brush were being dragged along the sea.

The Japanese came alive with a fury. One moment the world was dark, all blacked out, the ships clinging to the darkened mantle of the night. The next instant dazzling flares arced into the sky, pointing in the direction of the thunder rushing into the heart of Simpson Harbor. Yet, they had made their approach with little warning, and even in the light of those flares it would take the Japanese precious moments to galvanize into action the full fury of their massed antiaircraft weapons on the ships and along the shoreline.

The flare staggered Goodman, streaking across the entire harbor, highlighting the B-17

in an eerie silhouette, a strobe effect brought on by the propellers.

The fireflies came next. Goodman sucked in his breath, disbelieving the sight. Glowing coals, tiny spatters of lights, a fantasy of curving patterns drifting lazily upward from the forward darkness; spears and blobs and diamonds and teardrops and globs, glowing, burning brightly, and Goodman, both hands clutching the fifty-caliber machine gun, forced himself to understand that the weaving of glowing light was Death. They were the tracers of machine gun bullets, of cannon shells, of everything the Japanese had that could fire solid and explosive projectiles in their direction. The moment they —

The B-25 rocked sharply and Goodman felt a wild stab of fear. The helplessness of
his
own position, stuck there in the glass nose of this hurtling machine, with half of the goddamned Japanese navy shooting at
him
… it was almost too much. Here he was, surrounded by a greenhouse, horribly unsubstantial, and they were doing their best to kill
him. Screw everyone else
, he thought, as the sense of nakedness to death tore away even his psychological protection,
I'm the one who has to get out of this thing alive
.

He laughed suddenly at his own idiocy, even as he realized the sudden sharp rocking motion had been the airplane taking a hit in the right wing. Those glowing fireflies arcing so lazily toward them; the tracers had struck, smashed into the bomber, and Goodman had a fleeting fear of the fuel tanks erupting. He dismissed it from his mind even as he chided himself for stupidity; if the tanks had gone he wouldn't be thinking about it.

They swept forward with a howling rush that exhilarated him. Of a sudden Whip Russel and Alex Bartimo and everyone else in the B-25 was a million miles away, and Lou Goodman was alone in a great plastic bubble with a machine gun in his hands, hurtling forward into the teeth of a powerful armada, twisted in a world of darkness and eye-stabbing lights, and Death had become a happenstance stranger about whom he no longer gave a damn. Death was incidental, Death might or might not come, but sure as hell he wasn't invited to the party. If he crashed the gate, so be it.

Goodman hunched forward, fingers tighter on the handles of the machine gun, startled suddenly to realize he hadn't had a thing at which he might shoot. Almost as if reading his mind he heard Whip's voice in his earphones.

"Goodman, we're closing in. When we get within range of anything out there, hose 'em down."

"Yes, sir."

My God, here was the colonel saying "Yes, sir" to the captain. Well, who was top dog right now? It sure wasn't the fat colonel in the greenhouse, squeezing the firing handles just short of blazing away.

It didn't take long. It was all happening so fast it seemed unbelievable. The darkness and the shattering of all that black did that to you. Changed your sense of time reeling by.

Whip took her down right above the waves, cutting the margin to the closest he dared.

He'd have to pull up later but the lower they stayed right now the less of a target they made. He held the yoke in those gentle-strong fingers, his feet riding the rudder pedals.

He watched the glowing lights, instinctively easing rudder, sliding the B-25

with-surprising gentleness from one side to the other, trying to slip inside those curving fireballs to stay away from the mass of steel and lead and explosive he couldn't see. The movements were instinctive, automatic.