The Fly Boys (6 page)

“Well, how do you feel
now
?” Erica demanded.

“Much better than I did fifteen minutes ago,” Gold admitted. He put his arms around her to give her a kiss.

He froze, staring at her.

“What?” she laughed.

“I was thinking about how you were swimming before.”

Erica nodded. “So?”

Gold grinned. “So, you’ve given me an idea about where we might have gone wrong with the XP-4.”

“That’s not
all
I gave you, bub,” Erica smiled. “I mean, I’d always
heard
that men thought with their—”

“It has to do with the angle of the wing,” Gold said, more to himself than to Erica. “An airplane meets something like the
same resistance in the air that you met when you were swimming. You created a wake—a vee-shaped wake—as you moved through
the water. An airplane forms something like a wake—of shock waves—as it moves through the air,” he continued, warming to the
subject. “The XP-4 had conventional straight wings. Now, if we redesigned the craft around a
swept-back
wing that could fit
inside
those shock waves, drag would be lessened to such an extent that …” He paused. “I need a pencil and paper.”

He gave Erica a quick peck on the lips, swam over to the edge of the pool, and hoisted himself out.

“Darling?” Erica called out gaily. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

“What?” Gold asked absently, standing by the deck chair. His head was full of sketches he was anxious to get down on paper.
“Oh, I’m sorry, honey,” he added quickly, focusing on her. “I love you,” he called out.

“You’re sweet,” Erica observed. “You also happen to be bare-assed naked.”

Gold looked down at himself. “Oops!”

Grinning foolishly, he grabbed his tangled robe and fumbled into it. Once he was decent he padded barefoot back toward the
house. There was a drafting table in his study. The more he thought about the new wing design, the more convinced he became
that it just might work.

Lieutenant Steven Gold smoked his first cigarette of the day slowly, meditatively. It was just a little after dawn. Steve
was in his tent, freshly washed and shaved and dressed in a fresh set of khakis.

The insects were setting up an unnerving metallic racket in the high grass beyond the base perimeter. The occasional screech
of a jungle bird sounded like somebody being tortured. The tent’s vent flaps were open, but no breeze was stirring. Steve’s
cigarette smoke rose straight up through the humid air to collect in a miniature fog against the ridgepole and green canvas.
He could feel the temperature rising. His khakis wouldn’t be fresh for long.

The day had started out badly an hour earlier, when some goddamned bug had bitten him on the ankle, shocking him out of a
sound sleep. He’d rubbed some spit onto the swelling bite as he swore loudly and freely. There was no one around to disturb.
The pilot who’d had the tent’s other cot had been shipped out with two broken legs after he’d cracked up his airplane.

Steve was sorry the guy had been hurt, but didn’t particularly miss him. He didn’t mind being alone. He’d been here six weeks,
but he hadn’t yet made any new buddies, although it had been great to renew his friendship with his squadron commander, Major
Sam “Cappy” Fitzpatrick.

What Steve did mind was the boredom of the daily routine on this sweltering hunk of volcanic rock in the middle of the Pacific.
Santa Belle was a Marine-held island, which meant that the Marine VMF fighter squadrons got to hog all the action, while the
single Army Air squadron on the base had to be content with practicing takeoffs and landings in its shiny new P-47 Thunderbolts.

Steve liked flying his Jug, although he’d reserve final judgment on the airplane until he’d taken it into combat.
If
he ever got to see combat again. He was thinking he’d made the wrong decision when he’d agreed to join this so-called elite
fighter squadron. If he was going to be kept out of the fighting, he might as well have gotten himself reassigned to Henderson
back on Guadalcanal, where life was at least reasonably comfortable. On Santa Belle he had only the bugs and the stinking
hot climate to distract him from his boredom.

The Marines had endured a long, bloody struggle to wrestle away this pesthole of an island from the Japanese. As soon as the
shooting had slowed, the Seabees had arrived to clear away the rusting wreckage of enemy fighters and bombers, and repair
the ruined runways. The Seabees barely had time to finish laying down steel mesh over the first sandy airstrip when the dark
blue, gull-winged Marine Corsairs began landing.

Since then, the Seabees had branded onto the steamy rain forest a half-dozen more interlocking runways, interspersed with
oases of palm trees, antiaircraft gun emplacements, and earth-banked protective revetments for parked planes. The bulldozers
were still busy. The base would be a work in progress for some time to come. Everybody was still living out of tents. The
only relatively substantial buildings were “Polly’s Pit,” the barracks dive where the off-duty Marine officers did their drinking,
and the big, barnlike hangars for the Marine squadrons of Corsairs. Cappy Fitzpatrick’s single Army Air Force squadron of
P-47 Thunderbolts was making do under open-sided canvas awnings. The squadron’s combination operations and ready room was
comprised of a couple of Nissen huts shoved together wth the center walls removed.

Steve caught a whiff of freshly brewed coffee. He listened intently, and heard the clatter of pots and pans that meant the
squadron’s mess was coming to life. The Army pilots and squadron ground personnel were all bivouacked —read that, segregated
from Marine personnel—in the same area of the base. The squadron had its own supplies, followed its own rules, and more or
less lived in an uneasy truce with the Marines who controlled the island. There’d been a couple of brawls between the webfoot
and Army enlisted men, but that was to be expected. Mixing branches of the service was like mixing cats and dogs.

Steve stubbed out his smoke in a sand-filled ration can. He made sure that his silver first lieutenant’s bars were pinned
to his shirt collar, and silver wings were affixed just above his left breast pocket flap. He put on his billed, tan cotton
flight cap with a first lieutenant’s bar pinned to the crown, and grabbed his .45 in its shoulder holster off his footlocker
at the end of his cot. There were still Japanese ground forces hiding out in the island’s jungle interior, and the base had
experienced some trouble with enemy sappers trying to infiltrate by night and snipers during the day. Marines guarded the
base perimeter, but all personnel were nevertheless required to carry sidearms.

Steve adjusted the shoulder holster’s harness and left his tent, heading for the mess. He hadn’t gone more than a few paces
before the sweat began rolling out of him, soaking his shirt. He stopped to remove his cap and mop his brow with his handkerchief,
and that’s when he saw it.

It was a large canvas tarp stretched like a billboard between two poles at the entrance to the Army encampment. Neatly painted
in bright white paint on the olive green tarp was:

Here by the lair of Army Air

On patrol their Jugs make loud dins;

But when it comes to a bout,

These guys never put out;

Marines call them the Vigilant Virgins
.

Several of the pilots and a bunch of the squadron’s ground personnel were all staring up at the thing, grumbling about it,
as Steve walked over. Lousy rhyming aside, this was one hell of an insult to the squadron, Steve thought furiously.

And it hurt all the more because it was true.

The insult was painted on both sides of the tarp so that everyone could see it. It must have gone up sometime during the night.
Steve hadn’t noticed it earlier on his way to the latrine, but he’d been pretty much walking in his sleep.

“Anyone know if the major’s seen this?” Steve asked.

“I don’t think so,” one of the other pilots said. He was a captain named Crawford.

Steve nodded and turned to a corporal. “You go get the major.”

“Jeez, Lieutenant, you know how the major likes to sleep late,” the corporal complained.

“Get him, dammit!” Steve exploded.

“Okay, Lieutenant, calm down,” the corporal said as he took off. “
I
didn’t put the thing up.”

“Take it easy, Lieutenant,” Crawford said.

A group of Marines were passing by. They were on their way to guard duty. They were wearing helmets, camouflage-printed jungle
suits, and carrying M-1 carbines, Garands, and Thompson submachine guns. The Marines paused to read the tarp and made a point
of laughing as loudly as they could, before sauntering on.

Steve waited until the webfoots were out of earshot and then turned to Crawford. “See that, Captain? The Marines think we’re
shit!” He turned to a couple of enlisted men. “You two get this tarp down, and burn it.”

“Just hold on there.”

Steve turned around. “But Cappy—”

“But nothing, Steve,” Major Sam “Cappy” Fitzpatrick mumbled sleepily.

He was in his thirties and short, but broad-shouldered and muscular. He had curly black hair, a mustache, and dark eyes. Just
now those eyes were bloodshot, and he needed a shave. His olive-drab T-shirt had large, dark sweat rings under the arms, and
his khaki shorts were grimy. He was wearing a cotton, peaked bill cap displaying his gold oak leaf, and a revolver slung on
his hip in a tan leather, gold-tooled western-style rig that matched his cowboy boots.

“Cappy, let’s get that thing down!” Steve insisted.

“I told him not to get so upset,” Crawford announced smugly.

“Everybody shut up and let me think,” Cappy sighed. He looked around, bellowing, “Where’s my coffee!”

“Here, sir!” The corporal who Steve had sent to fetch Cappy was hurrying toward the major, carrying a tin mug.

Cappy took the mug, sipped at it, and winced. “I wouldn’t half mind this goddamned war if I could at least have a cup of decent
coffee. Who’s got a smoke?”

Crawford leapt forward, a pack of Luckys appearing like magic in his hand. Cappy plucked a cigarette out of the pack and allowed
Crawford to light it for him.

“That’s better,” Cappy said to no one in particular. He took another sip of coffee. “Now then, Steve, what’s got you so hot
under the collar?”

“I don’t like being insulted like this,” Steve replied. “I’m fed up with taking shit from these Marines.”

“Did you ever stop to think that by blowing your stack you’re giving the Marines exactly what they want?” Cappy asked.

“I hear what you’re saying. They want a reaction and I’m supplying it.” Steve shrugged. “I guess I don’t care. It’s all just
getting to me. I’m fed up with not getting the chance to prove to these webfoots that they’re wrong about Army Air. And I’m
fed up with not being able to shoot at anything other than a towed target. We were sent here to underscore the fact these
sailors and Marines aren’t single-handedly winning the war in the Pacific. Well, if Army Air is gonna be in on it, we’d better
start doing our part.”

“Soon as
I
think we’re ready,” Cappy declared. “I’m the one who makes that decision, and I’m not about to let a bunch of wisecracking
Marines goad me into making that decision prematurely.”

“You’re making it sound like we’re a green squadron,” Steve complained.

“We
are
green,” Cappy said.

“Every one of us is an ace!” Steve exploded. “Hell, some of us are double or triple aces—”

“But with the exception of you and me, none of us have flown together,” Cappy pointed out. “And all of us have gotten our
experience in different airplanes. I’m not risking this unit in combat until every one of us is up to speed with his Jug and
with the other men.”

“Yes, sir.” Steve sighed.

Cappy looked at him and grinned. “Don’t worry, Steve. Don’t be so impatient. Trust me, this squadron is going to wax Tojo
like he ain’t never been waxed before. Okay?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And don’t worry so much about what other people think,” Cappy added. “You’re an ace. You should have proven yourself to
yourself
by now.”

“Okay, Cappy.” Steve felt uncomfortable having Cappy say stuff like that to him with other guys listening.

Cappy must have sensed his embarrassment. “Good.” He nodded and then abruptly turned away to study the tarp. “Vigilant Virgins
they called us, huh?” he chuckled heartily. “I kind of like it.”

“That insult?” Steve asked in disbelief.

Cappy nodded. “You know what? I believe that we’re gonna leave that up.”

“You can’t be serious.” Steve was appalled.

“I’m never serious, kiddo, but I always mean what I say. Vigilant Virgins … Vee Vee … the Vee Vees—No!” Cappy snapped his
fingers. “The
Double
Vees ….” He grinned triumphantly. “I like it.” He looked around. “Anyone seen Sergeant Wallis this morning?”

“Sir, I saw him in the mess when I went to get your coffee,” the corporal volunteered.

Cappy nodded. “See if he’s still there. Tell him I want to see him pronto.”

“What do you want with Wallis?” Steve asked. Sergeant Wallis was Captain Crawford’s crew chief. He was a burly, balding guy
who was always chewing on the butt end of an unlit stogie.

“He worked in an automobile body shop before the war,” Cappy said. “He knows about painting vehicles and stuff like that.
He and I have been knocking around a few ideas for a squadron insignia, but we haven’t been able to come up with anything
good.” He paused. “Until now.”

Steve’s eyes flicked to the tarp and then back to Cappy. “Oh, no….” he murmured sorrowfully.

“The Double Vees, the Vigilant Virgins,” Cappy repeated. “Yeah…. Thanks to our web-footed friends, I think we’ve finally found
our squadron insignia.”

“Aw, Cappy,” Steve implored.