In Danger's Path (47 page)

“You will there be met by a Navy aircraft flying what was described to me as the Pensacola—Norfolk—Washington round-robin. I wonder where the hell that term came from?”

“I don't know where it came from and I have no idea what you're talking about.”

“You will be transported on silver wings to the U.S. Naval Air Station, Pensacola. From there you will be transported back to Charleston on Monday next, presumably on a similar pair of round-robin wings, with your estimated time of arrival here fifteen thirty hours.”

“Are you going to tell me what this is all about?”

“The flag officer commanding said Pensacola Naval Air Station, one Rear Admiral Sayre, spoke with our beloved commander, Captain Horace J. Johnson, early this afternoon. The Admiral requested, your schedule here and physical condition permitting, that you be allowed to visit the said Naval Air Station, Pensacola, round-robin transportation to be furnished, over the weekend. Our beloved skipper, who has never been known in thirty years of Naval service, most of it on shore behind a desk, to ever have said no to an admiral, was pleased to grant the Admiral's request.”

“I'll be damned!” Jim said.

“What's this all about?” Bolemann asked.

“I can only guess,” Jim said.

He had a sudden chilling thought.
Jesus, is Martha behind this? That seems unlikely. But on the other hand, what happened in the San Carlos was important to her. It was not a casual roll in the hay. She told me that she had fantasies, after Greg got killed, about me coming home to comfort her, and that she “died all over again” when she heard I was KIA
.

And she is, after all, Daddy's Darling Daughter
.

“
Daddy, Jim is bored out of his mind at that hotel in West Virginia. Is there any way we could get him here for the weekend?
”

“Guess away. Curiosity consumes me,” Bolemann said.

“When I was down there before, he…”

“I gather you are personally acquainted with the Admiral?”

“When his daughter got married, I was the groom's best man,” Weston said. “And General McInerney called him about this idiotic pilot retraining. Anyway, he was going to talk to me about what's going to happen when I get to Pensacola when some admiral showed up…”

“It's amazing, isn't it, how these admirals tend to fuck up the best-laid plans of mice and men? Even those of other admirals?”

“…and he couldn't do it. Either he wants to do it this weekend, or he wants my advice on how to teach people how to fly.”

So instead of getting to talk to the Admiral, I took his daughter out, and then to bed, which is probably number one on the List of 100 Really Dumb Things I Have Done Since Turning Twelve
.

Jesus, does
Admiral Sayre
see me as a suitable replacement husband for Greg Culhane?

Oh, my God! Why couldn't you keep your pecker in your pants?

“Sounds logical,” Bolemann said.

“That's all I can think of,” Weston said.

He finished his martini and looked around for the waiter to order another.

[THREE]
Municipal Airport
Charleston, West Virginia
0855 19 March 1943

Weston was surprised to see a Consolidated Catalina PBY-5A turning on final to land at Charleston. It was a Navy airplane, and therefore very likely the one Admiral Sayre had ordered to pick him up at Charleston. But he would have expected that a Douglas R4D—a transport, not a long-range reconnaissance aircraft—would be used for Pensacola—Norfolk—Washington round-robin administrative flights.

Whoever was flying it, Weston judged professionally, knew what he was doing. The landing was a greaser.

The last Catalina he himself had been in was the one he'd flown from Pearl Harbor to Cavite in December 1941, shortly before he had been “without prejudice” taken off flight status and transferred to the 4th Marines. Then he saw that
PENSACOLA NAS
was painted on the vertical stabilizer, leaving little question that it was “his” airplane.

And then came another surprise. When the plane taxied up to the passenger terminal, he recognized the pilot, Major Avery R. Williamson, USMC.

The last time I saw him, I smelled of booze
.

When Major Williamson climbed out of the Catalina, he was saluted with parade-ground crispness by Captain Weston.

“Good morning, sir,” Weston said.

Major Williamson's salute was far less crisp.

“I think I should tell you, Captain,” he said, “that I had planned to spend the day—after rising at a reasonable hour, say 0900—afloat on beautiful Pensacola Bay, alone with the sea, the sky, and my wife, who I see damned little of these days.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Instead of flying—since 0500—that ugly airplane at a hundred and fifty knots to Asshole, West Virginia, if you take my meaning.”

This is not an unscheduled stop on a round-robin; Williamson was sent here especially to pick me up
.

“Yes, sir.”

“But on the other hand, Captain, when a lowly major is asked by a rear admiral—one of the good rear admirals—if he is willing to render a service, what is one to do?”

“Sir, I had nothing to do with this,” Weston said.

“Yeah, I know, Weston,” Williamson said. “And I owe Charley Galloway a couple of big ones. So we will make the most of this unfortunate situation. After I visit the gentlemen's rest facility, you will buy me a cup of coffee and tell me how much you know about PBY-5A aircraft.”

“Yes, sir.”

“It was put to me—not in so many words, of course—that the Admiral would not be displeased if you acquired some bootleg time at the controls of that ugly beast.”

“I've got about twelve hundred hours in one, sir,” Weston said.

“In the left seat?” Williamson asked dubiously. The pilot sat in the left cockpit seat, the copilot in the right.

“Most of it, sir,” Weston answered. “I was rated as an instructor pilot in it, sir.”

“I didn't know that,” Williamson said. “Where are your flight records?”

“They went up in smoke on December seventh, sir.”

“If I were you, Weston, and you still want to fly fighters, I'd keep the twelve hundred hours and IP rating in the Catalina to myself. They just put out a high-priority call for experienced Cat drivers for some classified mission, and most of us are scurrying for cover.”

“Thank you, sir,” Weston said. “I want to fly the Corsair.”

“Don't go so far as dumping the bird on our way back to Pensacola, but on the other hand, don't mention to anyone that you've got IP status and that much time in one.”

“What kind of a classified mission?” Weston asked in simple curiosity.

“They didn't say, and I didn't ask,” Williamson said.

The copilot, a Navy lieutenant, and the crew chief, a chief aviation mechanic, climbed out of the Catalina. Weston recognized the copilot. He was Admiral Sayre's aide-de-camp.

Weston wondered how the two of them had planned to spend Saturday before Admiral Sayre “asked” them to fly up to Asshole, West Virginia, in the Catalina.

“While it is true, of course, that any landing you can walk away from is a good landing,” Major Williamson said, as Weston applied the brakes and prepared to turn off the runway at Pensacola, “that wasn't too bad, Captain Weston.”

It was the eighth landing he had made in the Cat between Charleston and Pensacola. The others were touch-and-goes at an Army Air Corps training base near Midland City, Alabama, a little over one hundred miles from Pensacola.

“Thank you, sir.”

“So far as I'm concerned, you've just passed your flight check for recertification as pilot-in-command of, and instructor pilot for, PBY-5A aircraft.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Unfortunately for you, I'm going to have to make a record of that. I'll try to see if I can't get Flight Records to lose it for a while—there's a Marine sergeant who works there who owes me a couple of favors—at least until after General McInerney finds the eight unfortunate volunteers he's looking for.”

“Thank you,” Weston said, meaning it.

Admiral Sayre's aide drove him to Quarters Number One.

Mrs. Sayre and Martha—who was wearing white shorts and a T-shirt—came out to the drive to welcome him. Very warmly.

He was very careful to kiss Martha with slightly less passion and intimacy than he kissed Mrs. Sayre.

“You got here just in time,” Mrs. Sayre said. “We're having a few people over for shrimp and hamburgers, and when we heard you had to make a precautionary stop at Midland City, I was afraid we were going to have to drive up there to get you.”

“Major Williamson let me shoot some touch-and-goes,” Jim said.

“That's what Daddy said they were probably doing when he told you not to worry,” Martha said, and turned to smile dazzlingly at Weston. “How did you do?”

“Okay, I guess,” Jim said. “Everybody was able to walk away from the airplane.”

Martha and Mrs. Sayre laughed dutifully.

“Major and Mrs. Williamson will be here,” Mrs. Sayre said. “Together with some other people the Admiral wants you to meet before you actually report for duty.”

“That's very kind of you,” Jim said.

“Don't be silly. You're like family.”

“
Like family” is one step shy of “family
,” he thought,
which I strongly suspect is next on everybody's agenda. I have been adjudged to be a suitable replacement for Greg Culhane
.

Why am I surprised?

Admiral and Mrs. Sayre are intelligent, perceptive people, and if Martha is telling the truth that until me she hasn't been interested in any man since Greg got killed—and I think she is—they've seen this and have naturally been concerned about it
.

And here comes Greg's best friend, back from the dead, delivered right into their laps, and Martha comes back from the dead herself
.

How the hell am I going to get out of this?

The first step on what may turn out to be a very long journey is to keep my hands off her, and my pecker firmly tucked in my pocket
.

“Martha will show you your room, and then come out on the patio,” Mrs. Sayre said. “Where you can admiringly watch the Admiral make his world-famous grilled shrimp.”

“Even funnier than that,” Martha said, “is watching people pretend to like them.”

“You should be ashamed of yourself!” Mrs. Sayre said.

Martha led him inside and to one of the bedrooms. “Remember this?” she asked.

He shook his head, “no.”

“This is the room where Daddy puts people he likes,” she said. “It has its own bath.” She walked to the bathroom door and opened it. “Everybody else gets a guest room with the bathroom down the hall.”

“I'm flattered,” he said.

“Are you going to kiss me, or what?” Martha asked. “I thought Mother made it perfectly clear we were to have a minute or two alone.”

“Of course,” he said.

I will kiss her as a friend. No passion whatever. Maybe I can send her a subtle message
.

That noble intention lasted until he felt the pressure of her breasts against his abdomen and her tongue against his lips.

The next thing he knew, she was pushing him away. They were both breathing heavily. Martha leaned against the wall and pulled her brassiere back in position over her breasts.

“For a moment, I was afraid you weren't glad to see me,” she said.

“Don't be silly!”

“I don't know what we're going to do,” Martha said. “But I'll think of something. Now go wash the lipstick off your face.”

“Yes, ma'am,” he said.

“And as much as I hate to say this, I think it would be a good idea if you closed your fly.”

[FOUR]
United States Submarine
Sunfish
159° 33” East Longitude 25° 42° North Latitude
Pacific Ocean
0705 20 March 1943

There were four officers in the tiny wardroom of the
Sunfish
when the chief of the boat, Chief Boatswain's Mate Patrick J. Buchanan, pushed the curtain aside and wordlessly, with raised eyebrows, asked permission to enter.

“Come on in, Chief,” said Lieutenant Commander Warren T. Houser, USN, the
Sunfish
's skipper. Houser was a stocky man in his late thirties who wore his blond hair in a crewcut.