Wingmen (9781310207280) (37 page)

“A good dinner
is a lot more than just food,” said Eleanor. She brushed back a
strand of hair in a way that made Duane long for the chance to hold
her, stroke her neck and arms, entwine his legs in hers.

“I think you’re
paying me a compliment,” he said. Her perfume wafted enticingly
about him. He was thinking that she was the most perfect woman he
had ever known.

“You are an
officer and a gentleman,” she said, not seriously, but it made
Duane think of the original reason for asking her out.

The dinner had
been most enjoyable, true. But he couldn’t get Eleanor to talk
about Jack, or, at least, about Jack and her. The way she spoke of
him—when she did—indicated that they were good friends. What he
could not get her to reveal, no matter how carefully he camouflaged
the question, was whether they were romantically involved. But here
we are now, he thought, alone on a deserted beach, with a blanket
in the back seat. If she goes for me, he reasoned, then she isn’t
Jack’s any longer. He put a hand behind her, on the hood of the
car.

“It’s nice
here,” he said.

“You mean right
here, right now? Or Hawaii in general?”

“Both. I mean,
it’s so…I mean I bet it looked just like this a hundred years
ago.”

“Oh, aside from
a few pillboxes, a roll or two of barbed wire,” she said—and it
seemed strange to Duane to hear her use such words—“I imagine it
did.”

Duane pulled
back his arm and took her by the hand. “Let’s go for a walk,” he
said and started to pull her from the car.

But she
resisted, gently. “No,” she said softly, “not tonight.”

“Okay,” he
said, genuinely disappointed. He leaned back against the car, but
continued to hold her hand. “Don’t sound so dejected,” she said.
“There’ll be other nights.”

Although he
couldn’t see for sure, he felt her smile as she said it. He leaned
over and kissed her on the cheek. “You’re fantastic,” he said.

“So I’ve been
told.” She broke loose from his hand, and for a second Duane
thought she was going to get back into the car. Instead she put her
arms around him and kissed him full, long, on the mouth. Then she
turned her head, and he felt her draw in her breath and sigh
deeply, as if in relief.

“I needed
that,” she said.

“Yes,” was all
Duane could say.

She pulled
away. “I know it’s not really late, but I think I should be getting
back.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll drive.”
She let him walk her around the car and open the door for her; she
started the engine while he climbed in the other side.

“You don’t
trust my driving?” Duane asked.

“Truthfully,
no.”

“I fly the
hottest fighter plane in the world and you don’t think I can drive
a car?”

“Truthfully,
no.”

Duane laughed
out loud. Inside he was thinking that Jack, if he still wanted
Eleanor Hawkins, would have a fight on his hands. But his instincts
told him that there would be no contest for the hand of this
wonderful woman. And that was not as it should be. It was
perplexing.

Eleanor drove
Duane to the gates of the naval station, and Duane caught a boat to
Ford Island. There he chanced to stop at the Officer’s Club and
found Jack and Fred engaged in a hotly contested game of
acey-deucy.

Fred leaned
back into the thick leather cushions of the booth and watched as
Jacobs took out three dollars and tossed them across the table.
Seconds earlier Fred bore off his own last man, while Jacobs still
had two on the fence and one in the starting quarter. Still, that
particular game had been closer than some. Of the twenty-two games
he had played since early afternoon, seven or eight had been utter
routs, embarrassing runaway victories. Twenty members of the
squadron had played him. All went down in defeat and handed over
their three dollars. Two—Schuster and Bracker—had won their first
games and received five dollars, but went on to lose their second.
It was magical. It was amazing. And Brogan had been right:
One-quarter of his knowledge had made Fred a rich man—fifty dollars
richer to be exact. He thought briefly, not sadly, of buying a
wreath for Brogan and casting it into the sea the next time they
went out, but decided that even Brogan would consider that an
outrageous waste of hard-earned cash.

“What’s going
on here?” The big voice boomed out of the darkness and caught Fred
by surprise. He knew who it was even before several voices called
out his name. Why did the Skipper have to show up right in the
middle of one of those ridiculous escapades Fred got himself
involved in? He tried to shrink back into the leather cushions, but
it was no use. Jack pushed his way through the crowd of pilots
until he stood in front of the playing table.

“Hi, Skipper,”
said Fred. “Welcome back.”

“It’s good to
be back,” said Jack. He looked around at the circle of faces and
down at the backgammon board. “How much did you trim off these poor
guys?”

Fred pulled his
hand out from behind him, where he had hidden it as soon as he
heard the skipper coming. There was a great wad of cash in it.
“It’s really less than it looks like, Skipper,” he said.

“How much?”

“Fifty dollars
even.” Fred could not lie, or even stretch the truth with the
skipper.

“Not bad for an
afternoon’s work. You buying the drinks?”

Fred grinned.
“For you, Skipper, yes. But not for these other suckers.” Fred
climbed out amidst boos and hisses, and the whole crowd descended
on the bar.

It felt good,
so good to have the Skipper talking to him like that. He bought a
drink for Jack and one for himself. “Sir.” he said, holding up his
glass in a little toast, and they touched their glasses before
drinking. For just a second their eyes met, and Fred could see no
guardedness, no dislike there. It was like old times—old times only
several months before.

“Hey, Trusty,”
said Jacobs. “What about the skipper? You haven’t beat him
yet.”

“The skipper
doesn’t count,” said Fred.

“You said
everyone,” chimed in another voice.

“What about it,
Trusty?”

“The skipper
doesn’t count,” he said again.

“What do you
mean, I don’t count?” asked Jack. “You think I don’t know how to
play the game?”

“Oh, no, sir.
It isn’t that.”

“Well, what is
it?”

Fred
hesitated.

“Well?”

“I don’t want
to have to beat you, too.” Fred looked away. That
was
how he felt. He knew he
could beat the skipper, and he didn’t want to.

“We’ll just see
about that.” Jack grabbed Fred’s arm and pulled him toward the
booth and the acey-deucy game. “I’ll give you one chance to back
out,” said Jack, and a few of the pilots laughed. “I mean I’ve
played a few games of acey-deucy in my time,” he continued.

Fred offered
him a dice cup. “Thank you, sir,” he said, “but I’ll take my
chances.”

They piddled
for first roll. Fred won, and the game was never even from that
point on. Fred rolled doubles time and again, acey-deucy several
times, and moved his blockades steadily around the board. It was
over in ten minutes. Jack looked perplexed.

“You’ve got a
lot of company,” said Schuster, standing right behind him.

“That’ll be
three dollars, Skipper,” said Fred. He accepted the money with
polite thanks and stuffed it into a pocket. “I guess that about
does it,” he said, looking around. “Any more takers?”

“He did it,”
said Jacobs.

“Did what?” It
was Higgins. The crowd parted, and the executive officer came to
the table.

“Hello, Mister
Higgins,” said Jack.

“Skipper,” said
Duane. “I didn’t know you were in yet.”

“Pulled in
about an hour ago.”

“Trusty’s the
acey-deucy champ of the whole squadron,” said Jacobs.

“You don’t have
to play him,” said Schuster, “but it’ll count as a win for
him.”

“Three will get
you five,” said Jack, getting up from his seat across from Fred.
“And you might as well get your money out before you sit down.”

Duane looked
down at Trusteau, who shrugged noncommittally. It irritated him to
see the ensign sitting there like a champ, a victor over him when
they hadn’t even played. He sat down.

“Don’t count
your money yet, hotshot,” he said.

And the final
game began. But Fred finished off Duane easier than he had Jack
Hardigan, and the first official acey-deucy championship of
Fighting Twenty came to an end, with Frederick Trusteau the
undisputed champ. That night, on the boat back to the
Constitution
, Duane
noticed that Jack and Trusteau sat together in the stern of the
liberty boat, talking about a marine major and his bunch of
paper-tiger pilots.

And up until
the announced sailing date for the Tarawa offensive a week and a
half later, a confused Higgins could see that whatever tension had
existed between the skipper and his wingman before was certainly
gone now.

26 October 1943
:
Commander Buster Jennings, USN, Commanding Officer AG-20, arrived
aboard today after two weeks in the base hospital for treatment of
exposure and minor wounds suffered when he ditched off Wake Island
on the fifth of this month. Lieutenant Commander J. E. Hardigan,
Commanding Officer VF-20, is back aboard after temporary duty on
board U.S.S.
Belleau Wood.

10 November 1943
: Task
Group 50.2 sortied from Pearl Harbor this day, including carriers
Constitution
,
Enterprise
,
Belleau Wood
, and
Monterey
. To this date, the target
area has not been announced.

The islands of
Micronesia are insignificant in matters of world population and
economy. For the purposes of war, however, they became vitally
strategic points. The lives of thousands of American and Japanese
military men was not too high a price to pay for their seizure or
defense.

The central
Pacific campaign began in November, 1943, with the capture of
several islands in the Gilberts chain, an action American planners
were certain would provoke a strong naval reaction from the enemy.
But it was not to be. The dead end struggle in the upper Solomons,
resulting ultimately in the encirclement and reduction of the
Japanese stronghold at Rabaul, had proved so costly to the Japanese
that they finally committed their last trained carrier air groups
to its defense. These air groups were virtually destroyed by the
meat grinder attrition there. And thus it was that when the prows
of hundreds of American warships swung around and pointed to an
atoll named Tarawa, the decisive engagement of fleets that both
sides sought so eagerly was postponed to an uncertain date in the
future.

J.E. Hardigan,
Commander. USN (ret.),
A Setting of Many
Suns:
The Destruction of the Imperial Navy
[The Naval
Institute Press, 1962], p. 141.

“Okay, gentlemen, if
we could settle down here and give me your attention, we’ll get
this road on the show. Wait till you see what we got for you guys
today. Lotsa big things happening and some bigger things in the
making. Before we’re through here, all you guys are gonna be aces
and heroes and that’s no joke. Okay. What I have here is a map of
the islands of Micronesia. Colorful places where the girls don’t
wear no shirts and the breezes keep the grass skirts from hiding
too much. Up here we got the Marshalls and down here the Gilberts.
Now you gotta have a doctorate degree in linguistics to pronounce
the names of some of these islands, but I’m gonna give it the old
college try, anyway.”

Jack Hardigan
leaned back in his chair and glanced at his pilots, sitting
seriously around the great green tables in the wardroom. The whole
air group was there this evening, along with the captain and the
ship’s XO, while the briefing officer, a full commander, began the
first briefing on the upcoming operation. He had a giant map
fastened to the bulkhead behind him and carried a pointer of the
kind favored by briefing officers: it was a good three feet long,
tapered like an arrow, with a small metal cap on the business end.
Jack was mildly amused by the man’s sense of humor. Apparently the
operation was not going to be all that difficult.

“On twenty
November—that’s six days off for you fighter jockeys—the jarheads
are gonna land on and take from the Japs the islands of Betio and
Butaritari in the atolls of Tarawa and Makin respectively. That’s
Makin,” he pronounced it muck-in, “and it rhymes with man’s
favorite sport, if you know what I mean. Here they are right here.
Now what part, you may ask, are we going to play in the grand
scheme of things? Well, that’s what I’m here to let you know, and
as soon as I get my notes together and all you guys light up one
more cigarette and get yourself another cup of coffee, I’ll tell
you.”