Wingmen (9781310207280) (6 page)

Fred raised his
goggles up over his eyes and wiped the sweat from his brow. His
eyes burned from perspiration and the glare of the sun; his neck
and shoulders ached from the constant rubbernecking and the strain
of flying upside down and sideways most of the morning. It had been
just as he had expected: Higgins had shot him down about a dozen
times. After an hour, though, Fred had caught on to most of his
moves and could escape for maybe two minutes before the Exec found
his way on to his tail and clung there as though tied on. He had
never seen anyone fly like that before, not even Deadly Deal.

“Banger Leader,
estimate thirty-five minutes’ fuel remaining.”

“Very well, One
Three. That was a good workout. Take us back to the strip.”

“Roger.” Fred
caught a glimpse of a mountain peak in the distance, estimated
their position, and headed inland.

“Negative, One
Three. That isn’t the established return route.” The Exec’s plane
had glided in on his left wing and was waggling back and forth.

Fred looked
across the space between the two aircraft and saw the Exec remove
his oxygen mask. The older man made the sign for “follow me.” Then
he rolled off to the left. Fred sighed and followed him, wanting
only to get back on the ground and stretch his legs. The two
Hellcats cut through the scattered clouds and leveled off at three
thousand feet.

“Tallyho.
Targets at eleven o’clock low.” Fred looked and saw a five- or
six-story building in the jungle just off the beach. “It’s the noon
hour, One Three. We should catch a few bandits on the beach.” The
two aircraft slowed and dropped to a thousand feet, turned gently
in to parallel the sand and breakers. Then Fred understood.

The building
was probably a hospital; a dozen or so girls in bathing suits were
lounging around on the beach or splashing at the water’s edge.
Several waved as the two fighters passed over.

“Wouldn’t mind
meeting a couple of those in close-in combat.” The Exec banked to
get a better look.

“Message
understood, Banger Leader.” Even up here, thought Fred.
“Twenty-five minutes’ fuel remaining.”

“All right, One
Three.” Higgins sounded miffed. “Think you can find you way
back?”

“Affirmative,
Banger Leader,” Fred said, already beginning his turn toward the
heading of the airstrip. They made the flight in ten minutes,
neither offering a single word of conversation. Fred landed with
ten minutes’ of fuel in his tanks; this was a totally unacceptable
margin of safety for him. Duane landed with fifteen minutes’ worth,
which was twelve minutes more than he had had when he landed aboard
the
Enterprise,
a hunted, damaged carrier in the middle
of a hostile ocean, after the
Hornet
was hit. He could thus afford to be
a little blasé about the whole thing, and even enjoy a bird’s-eye
view of a little nooky while the needles were hovering around
“empty.” Fred Trusteau wondered what it was that caused most men to
do such ignorant things when it came to women.

“Pass.”

An explosive
thunderclap rattled the building. Torrents of tropical rain fell
outside the windows, pounded on the wooden roof, seeped in under
the outside door of the ready room. Fred looked at his cards
briefly, then folded them into a neat little pack which he set down
carefully in front of him.

“Pass.”

Three soaking
wet officers burst through the door and stood for a second,
dripping, cursing at the fates that had caused them to step from
the Navy bus moments before the downpour began. Fred looked at
Hammerstein, his bridge partner, and watched him study his hand. He
probably didn’t have anything worth bidding. Fred hoped the hand
would be passed out….

“Pass.”

Higgins poked
his head through the door at the other end of the room, surveyed
the scene, and said, “That does it for flying today, fellas. Smith,
get a haircut.” Higgins disappeared, banging the door shut behind
him.

One of the wet
pilots wrung the water out of his garrison cap. “Goddamn rain,” he
said.

“One
heart.”

Damn, thought
Fred, now Bagley will come in with a spade bid and Levi will go to
two hearts and we’ll play a nothing hand.

“Look, guys,”
said Fred, “Frank over there has at least ten points and three or
four of your hearts. You sure you want to play this one out?”

Hammerstein
looked up in surprise. “ How’d you know that?”

“Well?” Fred
prodded.

Levi rolled his
eyes and tossed his cards into the center of the table.

“You watch the
way he sorts his cards,” said Bagley, gathering the cards into a
deck and starting to shuffle.

“Hey, listen to
this,” said a pilot who had his feet propped up on the chair in
front of him. “Says here, ‘On board an escort carrier en route to
landings in North Africa, brave fighter pilots pass the time in
their ready room by engaging in a songfest.’” The man was reading
from a tattered copy of
National
Geographic
, and he paused between some words and
mispronounced others. Bagley dealt the cards. “‘Later in the same
day, these men flew off in their fast and sturdy aircraft to engage
enemy forces around the port of Dakar, no doubt carrying in their
hearts the ambition and desire to help make a world where they
could sing their songs under peaceful skies, and not in the ready
room of a ship bound for enemy waters and combat.’”

“Horseshit,”
said one of the wet pilots.

“Come on,
guys,” said the reader. “Let’s have a songfest.”

“Horseshit,”
said the wet pilot.

“You got
something against peaceful sentiments?” asked the reader.

“Pass,” said
Bagley, folding his hand without enthusiasm. Fred finished
arranging his cards and counted up his points. It came to
twenty-three—the biggest hand he ever remembered having.

The door at the
other end of the room opened now, and the Skipper came in, carrying
a clipboard with a thick bundle of papers on it. Unlike the
listless pilots in the room, he wore a tie and his black hair was
neatly trimmed and combed, his trousers had a sharp crease, and his
shoes gleamed. A chorus of voices produced a ragged “Afternoon,
Skipper.”

“Scuttlebutt
has it that you’re gonna learn to fly one of these days, Skipper,”
said Brogan, one of the old timers.

“Only if the
sun comes out,” said Jack Hardigan, stopping beside Hammerstein and
patting him on the shoulder. “Your call just went through, Frank,”
he said pleasantly.

“Jesus Christ,”
said Frank. He slapped his cards down on the table and headed for
the door. “Thanks, Skipper,” he called, his voice echoing down the
hall.

Fred closed his
eyes and sighed. “I knew it was too good to be true,” he said. “I
get the first good hand of the game and now we can’t play it.”

Jack leaned
down and picked up Hammerstein’s cards. Fanning them with one large
hand, he scanned them once, closed them up, and said, “Pass.”

“Oh, boy,” said
Fred.

“Pass,” said
Levi.

“Four hearts,”
said Fred.

“Pass,” said
Bagley.

“Six hearts,”
said the skipper, still standing, and reading from a page somewhere
near the middle of the stack on the clipboard.

“Pass,” said
Levi.

“Pass,” said
Fred.

“Pass,” said
Bagley, tossing out the first card.

Without a word
Jack turned Hammerstein’s cards over, spread them with a single
movement of his left hand, and started back across the room.
Halfway to the door, he stopped and turned. “You guys doing
anything tonight?”

Levi and Bagley
shrugged.

Fred said, “Not
me, Skipper.”

“Twenty
hundred. My room at the BOQ. Bring your own booze.” He reached the
door and disappeared.

“I’ll be
damned,” said Fred.

“He’s a good
bridge player,” said Levi.

Tricks began
falling and were raked into Fred’s corner of the table.

“Bridge,”
snorted Lieutenant Brogan from across the room. “You ladies ought
to play acey-deucy. Now there’s a man’s game.”

“He wouldn’t
say that with the skipper in the room,” said Bagley.

“Neither would
I,” said Fred. He busied himself with the play, winning all but the
last trick. “Penny a point?” he asked.

Duane Higgins
met Jack Hardigan in the hallway outside the ready room and
followed him into the squadron office. He made himself comfortable
in the padded armchair and lit a cigarette. Jack sat down and
buzzed for the yeoman, who appeared moments later, looking as
harried as ever.

“What’s the
good word?” Higgins asked the yeoman, a little man with glasses,
named, predictably, Sweeney. Sweeney handed a stack of
correspondence to the skipper.

“Nothing much
happening these days, sir,” he said to Duane.

“Typed
error-free with two copies,” said Jack, giving a hand-written
letter to the yeoman. “Then knock off for the day.”

“Yes, sir,”
said Sweeney, and he started for the door. Then he stopped and
said: “Scuttlebutt has it the
Enterprise
is headed for a yard period in
the States. Most likely Bremerton.”

This was a good
piece of information. Not overly dramatic (like the previous week’s
rumor that Nimitz was heading for Tokyo again with all his
carriers) or improbable (like the more recent one that said the
Army was testing a fighter that could hit four hundred miles per
hour in straight and level). The thinking man would conclude that
if the brass could release a heavy carrier for a yard period, then
the next big push would not be for a while yet.

“No word on
Ironsides?”
asked Higgins. Jack appeared to be working diligently but was
actually listening closely to what the yeoman had to say.

“They’ve got
one of the main boilers torn all to pieces and the requisitions for
fresh meat haven’t even been begun yet. We couldn’t sail in less
than two weeks if we had to.”

“Very
interesting,” said Higgins, looking absently into his own cloud of
smoke. Sweeney left and closed the door behind him. “Jack,” said
Higgins.

“What’s on your
mind?” asked Jack, scratching away with a thick fountain pen.

“Oh, nothing
much.” A smoke ring slipped out of Duane’s mouth and drifted
through the air over Jack’s head.

“There must be
something.”

“I was just
wondering when the hell you’re going to get in some serious flight
time on the new birds.”

“Duane.” Jack
stopped writing and looked at his Executive Officer, whom he never
called by his first name in front of other people. “This entire air
group has just been reorganized. We just got new fighters. New
flight crews. New pilots. One is under arrest and three are
missing. Fitness reports are due tomorrow. That’s just the tip of
the iceberg. Don’t hound me about flying. When I get things squared
away, I’ll put some more time in. Until then, don’t worry, okay?”
Jack began writing again. Outside, the rain slackened and the
lightning and thunder moved off over the mountains.

“Okay. I’m
sorry I brought it up.” Duane swung one leg over the arm of the
chair and began tapping his foot maddeningly against the side of
the desk.

“Duane,” said
Jack, “is there anything else you want to discuss? I’m kind of
busy.”

“I was just
wondering if you might like to take an evening off, you know, maybe
hit the beach, like we used to.”

“As a matter of
fact, I
was
planning on leaving a little earlier tonight.”

Duane’s face
brightened and he swung forward in his seat. “I know this place
downtown,” he said, “and it’s strictly off limits to the Army
pukes. They got a floor show where this broad really peels it
off.”

“I was planning
on a few games of bridge with three men in the BOQ. You’re welcome
to come along if you like.”

Higgins dropped
his foot to the floor and stood up heavily. “No thanks, Jack. I
don’t feel like cards.”

“By the
way.”

“Yeah.”

“How’s Trusteau
in the air?”

“Good. A little
cautious maybe, but he’s good. Maybe if he had a little instruction
from the top dog in the group…”

“Mrs. Hawkins
is throwing a party next Saturday evening. I want six couples
besides myself to go along. Arrange that for me, will you?”

“Sure,
Skipper.” Duane reached the door.

“Duane?”

“Yeah,
Skipper?”

“CAG’s coming
through in the morning. Update the training sked on the bulletin
board and take down the acey-deucy skeds, okay?”

“Sure, Skipper.
Anything else?”

“Not at the
moment, Duane. See you in the morning.”

The door opened
suddenly, bumping Duane’s foot, and Sweeney came through. Excusing
himself to the lieutenant, the yeoman huddled over the skipper’s
desk, and the two men launched into an earnest discussion of the
Squadron War Diary. Duane shook his head a little sadly and
left.