Wingmen (9781310207280) (35 page)

“Yeah, but
where else are you going to find one of these?”

Duane closed
his eyes again, thinking that maybe they were taking the kid for a
ride, but what the hell. It was taking the kid’s mind off the death
of Bigelow, who had come aboard the same time he had. The two had
been good friends. In this business, maybe it was better…

Duane opened
his eyes. Something nagged at the back of his mind. Without moving
his head he surveyed the compartment full of men and found who he
was looking for. Trusteau was sitting at the debriefing table,
working away with pen and paper.

The War Diary.
Trusteau was writing something in the Diary, copying from what was
probably a first draft of a long entry. As Duane watched, Trusteau
stopped writing, put the pen down, folded his hands in front of
him, and stared at the bulkhead opposite. His face was as blank as
the bulkhead. Duane looked across the ready room and found the
skipper.

Jack was
sitting in one of the front row chairs, leafing through a stack of
papers. His brow was furrowed in thought, even though he was
flipping through the papers far too fast to be absorbing any of the
information on them. Duane looked back at Trusteau.

Trusteau had
stopped looking at the bulkhead. He was looking at the skipper. Not
a casual glance. An unmoving, unblinking stare. Jack had to
notice.

Duane’s eyes
moved again, and yes, the skipper was looking back at Trusteau. All
around them, the men of the squadron talked, got up, sat down, did
the things men at ease do with each other. But the skipper and his
wingman were off somewhere else, somewhere very private. They held
the stare for at least half a minute. To Duane all the life in the
room seemed to recede into the distance; all the sounds became
muted. Then it ended, suddenly. Trusteau turned back to his book
and his writing. The skipper, as if coming to some important
decision, straightened the papers on his knees, stood, and strode
from the room.

It’s none of my
business
, thought Higgins. He closed his eyes.

“Okay.
Twenty-four bucks.” Bradley and Schuster closed the deal with
Patrick, and the condom changed hands. It was all right, even if
Patrick eventually found out what the rubber was really for.
Bradley and Schuster would play innocent, saying that that was what
the Intelligence people had told them, and Patrick would still have
a hell of a souvenir to show the people back home. Some of the
people, anyway.

Higgins opened
his eyes. Trusteau was gone; the little desk was empty.

It’s none of my
business
, he thought.
But I’ve got to find out
.

“Hi.” Eleanor Hawkins
sidled up behind Duane Higgins and playfully pinched the back of
his neck. Duane, surprised, set his drink on the bar in front of
him too quickly and spilled some. He turned on his bar stool.

“Well, hello.”
His first feeling was mild annoyance. A first date shouldn’t be
that intimately casual. Besides, Duane didn’t like to be surprised.
But then, as she swung up onto the stool beside him in her full,
swishing skirt, without waiting for him to stand or assist, he was
moved by her breezy smile.

“So how are the
flying navy men these days?” Eleanor crossed her legs and leaned on
the bar with one elbow, letting her skirt fall where it may—just
over her knee. Her low-heeled shoe touched the cuff of Duane’s
pants leg.

“Better than
ever,” said Duane. He signaled the bartender. “You look
gorgeous.”

“The Royal
Hawaiian,” said Eleanor. “Isn’t this a bit fancy for an afternoon
cocktail?”

“Only the best,
for the prettiest girl in town.”

“You mean the
only
girl in
town. There aren’t many of us left around here these days.” The
bartender stopped in front of her.

“Gin and
tonic,” she told him, and turned back to Duane. “I was surprised
when you called,” she said.

“Why, if I may
ask?”

“Oh, I don’t
know…I guess, I don’t really know you that well.”

“But you
came.”

“Yes, so I
did.”

“And I’m glad
you did.”

They stopped
talking for a second and looked into each other’s eyes. The
bartender set a tall, frosted glass in front of her. She picked it
up, took a sip, set it down.

“Well,” she
said.

“Well,” said
Duane, not looking away. “I still think you’re gorgeous.”

“You can’t fool
me,” she said. “I was married to a navy man. After you’ve been out
on the bounding main for a few weeks, anything in skirts would look
gorgeous.” She said it with a touch of playfulness in her voice,
and accentuated it with a raised eyebrow, a hint of a mischievous
grin.

“Not true.
Anything in skirts would be merely beautiful. You’re gorgeous.”

“Say it often
enough and I might start believing you.” She took another sip, then
asked suddenly, “How’s Jack?”

“He didn’t come
back with us,” said Duane, draining his glass and letting the ice
cubes rattle to the bottom.

“What?”
Eleanor’s voice raised an octave in pitch and carried across the
wide, darkened bar. A couple in a booth on the far side and several
officers at the bar turned and looked.

“Oh,” said
Duane. “Bad choice of words. Sorry.”

“You mean he
did
make it
back.”

“He flew off
the day before we came in. Right now he’s out with another carrier
shooting landings with a bunch of Marines and those new Corsairs.”
Eleanor visibly relaxed. “He’ll be back in a week or so.”

“You scared me
for a moment.”

“I’m sorry. You
like him a lot, don’t you?” Duane watched her closely. This was one
of the things he wanted to find out, and the subject had come up
sooner than he had hoped.

She thought for
a moment, looking into her drink and touching the top ice cube with
her index finger. “Yes,” she said at last, looking decisively at
Duane. “He’s a very good friend. A close, dear friend.”

Her tone, and
her choice of words, her emphasis on those words, told Duane a
great deal about Jack Hardigan. He decided to press on. “He’s a
good friend of mine, too. You might say he’s my best friend.”

“You’ve known
him for a long time?”

“Long enough.”
Duane held up his empty glass to catch the bartender’s
attention.

“And how long
would that be?”

“Long enough to
know he wouldn’t mind if I asked you to have dinner with me
tonight.”

There. He had
done it. Now she knew that he wanted to know her better, that he
wanted to be a bit more intimate.

Eleanor twirled
her glass slowly in the puddle of cold water that had formed under
it. “I think you’re right. He wouldn’t mind if you asked me to
dinner.”

“Okay. Here
goes: Can I buy you dinner tonight?”

“I don’t think
Jack would mind if I accepted either,” she said slowly.

“Then you
will?”

Again, she
thought for a second, looking at Duane quizzically, as if trying to
find some hidden motive, some reason other than the obvious fact
that she was an available, attractive woman, and he a man.

“Yes,” she
said. “I’d be pleased to accept.”

Duane reached
over and touched her on the hand. They linked fingers.

“Thanks,” he
said. “We’ll have a good time.”

Eleanor smiled.
“I’m sure we will.”

The barkeep set
Duane’s drink in front of him. He picked it up. “Drink to it?” he
asked.

Eleanor picked
up her gin and tonic. “Here’s to us,” she said, and they clinked
glasses and sipped together. Duane watched her eyes, then followed
the curve of her face and neck down to her lovely breasts.
Jack, Jack
,
he was thinking,
how could you ever let something like this get
away?

The carrier’s
name was the
Belleau Wood
and like nearly all of the carriers
then in the fleet she was brand-spanking-new. Something about the
cramped, pitching flight deck made Jack Hardigan very uneasy; it
seemed incredibly small compared to the
Constitution
. The tiny, button-like
island was further forward on this ship than on the ship he was
used to, and there was no deck edge elevator.

He had flown
over in his Hellcat and come aboard the day before
Ironsides
had docked in
Pearl Harbor. That afternoon the entire squadron of Avengers had
flown off, taking him as a passenger and dropping him off at Ewa
Field on Oahu. There he had given a one-hour, supposedly refresher
lecture to a squadron of marine pilots; then they had all flown
back to the
Wood
in Corsairs. That evening he had learned that
three-quarters of the Marines had only the bare minimum of training
carrier landings and that the ship derived its name from an
auspicious marine engagement of the Great War in France. This
seemed to please some of the marine pilots. To Jack it only
reinforced the belief that the only auspicious marine engagements
were those in which most of the participants died.

Jack could
think of many days in his life that were better than the days he
spent on the
Belleau Wood.
Comforted by the fact that he would
only have to spend three, or at most four, days there, he was
nonetheless irritated to discover that the regular air group
commander had assigned both him and the marine squadron commander
to the same stateroom. From their first meeting ashore only hours
before, the marine C.O. had been snootily amazed that a navy pilot
could tell
his
men anything at all about flying, especially
someone with such little time in Corsairs. Jack realized that the
C.O. was good when he saw him in the air; but somehow the man had
missed or avoided combat duty from the first days of the war and
had no kills to his credit. He had made only two or three carrier
landings in his life, and that had been years before, in a Buffalo,
an obsolete fighter that had been pitted in combat against the Zero
with sad results.

The commander,
on the other hand, turned out to be a man Jack had flown with in
the days before the war, and Jack was sure they would hit it off.
But it was not to be.
Belleau Wood
’s CAG was a nervous, harassed man, sure
that he was going to be stuck permanently with the marine fighter
squadron. Thus, on the second day of the cruise, he put Jack in
front of the Marines in the absent Avengers’ ready room, where he
lectured the bored group on shipboard routine and carrier air
doctrine. Jack was not pleased. He wondered more than once how he
had been selected for this duty. He was infinitely glad that it was
temporary.

The Corsairs
were as unpredictable and dangerous as ever. On the third day of
operations, one of the new young pilots missed the last wire,
bounded high in the air, and came down on the other side of the
crash barrier. A dozen parked planes—Corsairs and Hellcats equally
mixed—cushioned his fall. Even though there was no fire, Jack’s
aircraft, with its colorful insignia, had its right elevator
surface nicked off by the windmilling propeller of the errant
Corsair. When the pilot climbed out he was laughing like an idiot.
And in the staterooms that evening, Jack could hear them all
laughing and joking about the incident still. It made him long for
the friendly, sensible crew of the
Constitution
.

On the fourth
day of operations, Jack nearly lost his temper. In the morning he
was in the midst of a lecture on Combat Air Patrol and radar
direction when he realized that a small group in the rear of the
ready room weren’t listening to him. They were, in fact, giggling
and whispering among themselves like schoolchildren. Jack stopped
talking and pointed to one of the young pilots, who was still
stifling a laugh. “You,” Jack said.

“Me?” he
said.

“Stand up,
Mister.”

The pilot sat
up straight in his seat and glanced around the room to find the
Marine C.O. He made no move to stand.

“I said stand
up,” Jack said. There was no mirth in his voice.

“Now wait just
a minute.” It was the marine C.O. half-rising from his seat near
the front of the room.

Jack turned on
him. “Stay out of this, Major.” He turned back to the pilot. “Get
off your butt.”

The pilot, a
first lieutenant, squared his jaw and stood. He was a good head
taller than Hardigan. The room was suddenly very silent. “Yes,
sir
,” the
pilot said. His face was red.

Jack let him
stand in silence for a good part of a minute. When he spoke, his
voice was icy calm and clear. “You may think you’re the hottest
thing in the air since the Red Baron, but I don’t give a damn what
you think. When you’re in my classroom, you will afford me the
courtesy you are required to show every senior officer, and that
means keeping your trap shut until I require you to speak. Is that
clear?” Inside Jack was boiling. It was as if all the frustrations
of the last three days had come to a head and this man standing in
front of him was personally responsible for all of them.