Omnibus.The.Sea.Witch.2012 (8 page)

Pottinger was in the left seat at that time, so I pointed it out to him. He merely stared, didn’t say anything. About that time Dutch Amme came down from the flight engineer’s station and announced that the temps were rising on the starboard engine.

“And we’re running out of gas. An hour more, at the most.”

I pointed out the island to him, and he had to grab the back of the seat to keep from falling.

In less than a minute we had everyone trooping up to the cockpit to take a look. Finally, I ran them all back to their stations.

That island looked like the promised land.

“Fighter!”

One of the guys in the blisters saw it first and called it.

“A float fighter.”

I rolled the trim over a bit, got us drifting downward toward the water. The elevator control cables had been damaged in the bomb blast. The trim wheel was the only reason we were still alive.

“He hasn’t seen us yet. Still high, crossing from starboard to port behind us, heading nearly east it looks like.”

After a bit, “Okay, he’s three miles or so out to the east, going away. Never saw us.”

The Japanese put some of their Zeros on floats, which made a lot of sense since the Zero had such great range. The float fighters could be operated out of bays and lagoons where airfields didn’t exist and do a nice job of patrolling vast expanses of ocean. The performance penalty they paid to carry the floats was too great to allow
them to go toe-to-toe with land or carrier-based fighters. They could slice and dice a Catalina, though.

“Shit, it’s coming back.”

I kept the Cat descending. We were a couple hundred feet above the water, far too high. I wanted us right on the wavetops.

“He’s coming in from the port stern quarter, curving, coming down, about a half mile …”

I could hear someone sobbing on the intercom.

“I don’t know who’s making that goddamn noise,” I said, “but it had better stop.”

We were about a hundred feet high, I thought, when the float fighter opened fire. I saw his shells hit the water in front of us and heard the fifty in the port blister open up with a short burst. And another, then a long rolling blast as the plane shuddered from the impact of cannon shells.

The fighter pulled out straight ahead, so he went over us and out to my right. He flew straight until he was well out of range of our gun in the starboard blister, then initiated a gentle turn to come around behind.

“Anybody hurt?” I asked.

“He ripped the port wing, which is empty,” Dutch Amme said.

“Good shooting, since he had to break off early.”

I was down on the water by then, very carefully working the trim. I didn’t have much altitude control remaining—if we hit the water at speed our problems would be permanently over.

I thought about turning into this guy when he committed himself to one side or the other. The island dead ahead had me paralyzed though. There it was, a strip of green between sea and sky. Instinctively, I knew that it was our only hope, and I didn’t want to waste a drop of gas in my haste to get there.

Perhaps I could skid the plane a little to try to throw off the Zero pilot’s aim. I fed in some rudder, twisted the yoke to hold it level.

And the lousy crate began sinking. We bounced once on a swell and that damn near did it for us right there. We lost some speed and hung right on the ragged edge of a stall. Long seconds crept by before we accelerated enough for me to exhale. By then I had the rudder where it belonged, but it was a close thing. At least the plane didn’t come apart when it kissed the swell.

Pottinger was hanging on for dear life. “Don’t kill us,” he pleaded.

On the next pass the Zero tried to score on the starboard engine, the only one keeping us aloft. I could feel the shells slamming into us, tearing at the area just behind the cockpit. Instinctively I ducked my head, trying to make myself as small as possible.

I could hear one of the waist fifties pounding.

“Are you gunners going to shoot this guy or let him fuck us?”

With us against the water, the Zero couldn’t press home his attacks, but he was hammering us good before he had to break off.

“He holed the right tank,” Amme shouted. “We’re losing fuel.”

Oh, baby!

“He’s streaming fuel or something,” Hoffman screamed. “You guys hit him that last pass.”

They all started talking at once. I couldn’t shut them up.

“If he’s crippled, the next pass will be right on the water, from dead astern,” I told Pottinger. “He’ll pour it to us.”

“Naw. He’ll head for home.”

“Like hell. He’ll kill us or die trying. That’s what I’d do if I were him.”

Sure enough, the enemy fighter came in low so he could press the attack and break off without hitting the ocean. He was directly behind, dead astern, so both the blister gunners cut loose with their fifties. Short bursts, then longer as he closed the distance.

Someone was screaming on the intercom, shouting curses at the Jap, when the intercom went dead.

I could feel the cannon shells punching home—the cannons in Zeros had low cyclic rates; I swear every round this guy fired hit us. One fifty abruptly stopped firing. The other finished with a long buzz saw burst, then the Zero swept overhead so close I could hear the roar of his engine. At that point it was running better than ours, which was missing badly.

I glanced up in time to see that the enemy fighter was trailing fire. He went into a slight left turn and gently
descended until he hit the ocean about a mile from us. Just a little splash, then he was gone.

Our right engine still ran, though fuel was pouring out of the wing. As if we had any to spare.

The island lay dead ahead, but oh, too far, too far.

Now the engine began missing.

We’d never make it. Never.

Coughing, sputtering, the engine wasn’t developing enough power to hold us up.

I shouted at Pottinger to hang on, but he had already let go of the controls and braced himself against the instrument panel. As I rolled the trim nose up, I gently retarded the throttle.

Just before we kissed the first swell the engine quit dead. We skipped once, I rolled the trim all the way back, pulled the yoke back even though the damn cables were severed, and the
Sea Witch
pancaked. She must have stopped dead in about ten feet. I kept traveling forward until my head hit the instrument panel, then I went out.

At some point I became aware that I was lying in sand … in shade … in wet clothes … with bugs and gnats and all manner of insects eating on me.

My head was splitting, so I didn’t pay much attention to the bugs, though I knew they were there.

I managed to pry my eyes open … and could barely make out light and darkness. I thrashed around awhile and dug at my eyes and rubbed at the bugs and passed out again.

The second time I woke up it was dark. My eyes were better, I thought, yet there was nothing to see. I could hear waves lapping nervously.

The thought that we had made it to the island hit me then. I lay there trying to remember. After a while most of the flight came back, the flak in the darkness, the Zero on floats, settling toward the water with one engine dead and the other dying …

I became aware that Pottinger was there beside me. He had a baby bottle in his survival vest, which he had filled with freshwater. He let me drink it. I have never tasted anything sweeter.

Then he went away, back for more I guess.

After a while I realized someone else was there. It took me several minutes to decide it was Hoffman.

“Are we the only ones alive?” I asked, finally.

“Yes,” Hoffman said.

The next
day, our first full day on the island, I was feeling human again, so Pottinger, Hoffman, and I went exploring. Fortunately, my head wasn’t bleeding, and the headache was just that, a headache. We had solid land—okay, sand—under our feet, and we had a chance. Not much of one, but a chance. I was still wearing a pistol, and all of us had knives.

We were also hungry enough to eat a shoe.

We worked our way east along the beach, taking our time. As we walked we discussed the situation. Hoffman was for going out to the plane and trying to salvage a survival kit; Pottinger was against it. There was a line of thunderstorms off to the east and south that seemed to be coming our way. Still hours away, the storms were
agitating the swells. Long, tall rollers crashed on the reef, and smaller swells swept through the lagoon.

Watching the swells roll through the shallows, I thought the wreck of the
Sea Witch
too far away and the water too dangerous. Then we saw a group of shark fins cruising along, and the whole idea of going back to the plane sort of evaporated. We certainly needed the survival kits; we were just going to have to wait for a calmer day.