Wingmen (9781310207280) (58 page)

“Don’t want me
leading a strike again, huh?” The blood was rising to Duane’s
face.

“Not this
time,” said Jack.

“Why don’t you
just demote me to ensign and let me fly wing on one of the new
guys?”

“I thought I
was doing you a favor.”

Duane snorted.
“Thanks,” he said. “There’s someone else you can do a favor
for.”

“Who’s
that?”

“Why don’t you
make Trusteau a section leader? Or a division leader? I think he’s
ready for it.” By the look on Jack’s face, Duane could see he’d
touched a sensitive spot.

“Trusteau flies
wing on me,” said Jack.

“Hell, he’s got
five kills. All the guys look up to him.”

“Trusteau flies
wing on me. The matter isn’t open to discussion.”

“I know he
flies wing on you,” said Duane hotly. “What else does he do for
you, Mister Hardigan?”

“What do you
mean by that?” snapped Jack.

“I mean you and
he are pretty damn chummy when you’re off duty, after lights
out…”

Jack’s chair
crashed to the deck. His tight, white-knuckled fist hovered under
Duane’s nose.

“Get out of
here.” The command came from a throat rasping with barely
controlled rage.

Duane slid back
his chair and stood to go. He stopped at the door, as if to speak
again.

“Get out of
here,” Jack said again.

Duane left,
closing the door behind him. As he made his way through the
bustling passageways, to nowhere in particular, he kept thinking:
I didn’t even have
to mention that night at the BOQ. It’s true, by God, it’s
true
.

Fred Trusteau
sat in his chair and played solitaire while the tension in the
ready room, packed as it was by nearly all of the squadron’s men,
gathered like storm clouds. The ship was operating a two-plane CAP
and no ASW searches, a puzzling format considering how close they
were to Truk. By careful reasoning, he deduced that the wind was
wrong for flight ops and high speed along their direction of
advance at the same time. In the morning they had to be in position
for the launch of the dawn fighter sweep over the target, and since
they were making an amazing twenty-eight knots, any deviation from
the charted course, even for flight ops, could throw them seriously
behind schedule. So they operated a minimum of aircraft and kept
the rest on alert, ready for immediate action should the need
arise. But the need had not arisen, and the storm gathered.

The skipper had
been in and out of the ready room several times, never once
stopping to talk to him. Fred could see that Jack was seriously
agitated. He wore a scowl, talked in grunts, and seemed to avoid
anyone who didn’t have important business.

The skipper’s
irritation seemed to be catching. Just five minutes earlier Higgins
had broken up an argument between Rogers and Jacobs before it
reached blows. Higgins went back to a card game in the rear of the
compartment. Jacobs and Rogers sat and sulked. Fred dealt himself
another game of solitaire and listened to the conversations around
him; he kept an eye on the skipper sitting in the front row,
growling to himself over a bundle of papers.

Fred could hear
Schuster talking conspiratorially with one of the two new men, a
wistful youngster named Horace. Schuster was trying to sell the kid
one of the giant Japanese rubbers, complete with the line about the
Emperor’s personal pilots and their manly qualifications. Horace
wasn’t buying it, though not for the obvious reason. He kept saying
that after tomorrow he wouldn’t have any need for it because the
Japs never took prisoners.

Fred laid out
his cards in a pyramid—one at the top, two covering the one, three
covering the two, and so on, down to a line of seven at the bottom.
Then he began turning over cards from the remaining pack and
matching up cards that totaled thirteen—sixes and sevens, fives and
eights, fours and nines, threes and tens, deuces and Jacks, Aces
and Queens, Kings by themselves. He worked the pyramid down to the
point at which he could match no further without cheating, then
started over.

“Come on,” said
Jacobs to Bracker, “he’s here now, we can ask him.”

“No way,
fella,” said Bracker. “I don’t wanna ask the skipper.”

“Come on, trade
with me. I want first crack at them Nips this time.” Jacobs was in
the second strike, escorting the bombers. Bracker was a member of
the sweep.

“I won’t do
it,” said Bracker. “I don’t want to, anyway.”

“Why not?
Everyone says it’s supposed to be a suicide run.”

“Who says the
second strike’ll be any better? I just want to get it over with as
soon as possible.”

Fred began
matching thirteens again and worked the pyramid down to three cards
at the top before he was stymied. The skipper had heard that
exchange, he was sure. He set up another hand.

“Hey, Trusty,”
said Patrick, sitting in the chair next to his. “How do you spell
‘funeral’?” He was writing a letter.

“F-u-n-o-r-a-l.” Fred took out a King and matched the Jack of
hearts, the familiar Jack of hearts, with the deuce of clubs.

“Thanks,” said
Patrick.

“Don’t mention
it.”

Bagley and Levi
came into the ready room from outside, dangling their flight gear,
talking about the LSO.

“That jerk,”
said Levi, hanging up a Mae West. “Three goddamn wave-offs. He must
be blind as a bat.”

“Nah,” said
Bagley. “Just a grounded flyboy. Jealous of the fighter
pilots.”

“Tell you
what,” said Levi. “I’d trade with him in a second right now. After
tomorrow he probably won’t have much of a job.”

Fred glanced
up. The skipper had heard that one, too. Bagley and Levi continued
undressing, then settled comfortably into their chairs. All the
pilots were here now. The tension was palpable.

“Aw, shit,”
said Duggin loudly, “we don’t stand a chance. The Japs’ll make
mincemeat out of us.”

“Now all pilots
except the duty section stand down from flight quarters,” said the
address system. “Now all pilots except…” The remainder of the
message was drowned out by the noise of pilots rising, stretching,
talking, heading for the door. Almost immediately another voice, a
very harsh one, stopped them in their tracks. It was the skipper.
The storm had broken.

“Take your
seats, gentlemen,” said Jack Hardigan. He blocked the path to the
ready room entrance.

Since Fred was
in the duty section, he hadn’t moved, but he noticed that Higgins
had somehow been closest to the door and thus was now closest to
the skipper. The men found their ways uncertainly but quickly to
their seats. Higgins merely sat in the one nearest him. The skipper
tossed the bunch of papers into his chair—a move that eloquently
displayed his displeasure.

“Mister Duggin.
Stand up,” he said.

“Sir?” said
Duggin in a high voice.

“I said stand
up!” The last words rang out like artillery shells. Duggin got
shakily to his feet. For a moment silence hung like a shroud.

“Mister
Duggin,” said Hardigan, “if I hear you just one more time,
one more
time
, make the slightest remark downgrading the fighting men
in this outfit,” a pause for emphasis, “I will have you in hack so
fucking fast it’ll make your head swim.”

Fred felt sweat
on his upper lip but made no move to wipe it off. Around him he
could feel, could sense the eyes of the other men moving, looking,
each man glad he wasn’t in Duggin’s shoes.

“Do I make
myself clear?”

Duggin broke
the almost hypnotic gaze the Skipper had leveled on him and looked
down at his feet. He mumbled something.

“I can’t hear
you,” said Jack in a voice that cut right to the heart of everyone
who heard it.

“Yes, sir,”
said Duggin clearly, still studying his shoes.

“Sit down,”
said Jack.

Fred exhaled,
unaware that he had been holding his breath since the exchange
began. The skipper was very mad—so mad he had sworn, something Fred
had never heard him do in front of the men. And if he’d only been
pretending to be mad, he should be nominated for an Academy
Award.

The skipper
glared at them for a long moment with dark eyes that shone like
polished rocks. His forehead glistened.

“What the hell
do you want?” he began. “What in the name of God do you expect?” He
paused at the end of each phrase, as if to choose his words
carefully. “You fly the best goddamn fighter in the world. You’ve
spent more time in training than any pilots in history. You’ve got
the best food, the best mechanics, clean sheets, and stewards to
make your goddamn beds every morning. What in hell do you want? Do
you want the Japs to surrender? Just like that?” He snapped his
fingers.

Then he broke
his stance and turned his back on them. He picked up the wooden
pointer leaning against the status board in the front of the room.
He faced the pilots again, and the pointer carved out a swath of
air, like a sword. It struck sharply against the back of a chair.
“I’ve listened to your bitching for a week and I won’t listen
anymore.” He flexed the point like a riding crop, and it broke with
a snap. “I won’t ask, or request, or suggest—anymore. You can
consider this an order, gentlemen.” He held the two pieces of wood
in his right hand and stabbed at the air. “Every pilot who leaves
this ship in the morning will come back aboard with at least one
confirmed kill or he’ll stand in front of me tomorrow evening and
tell me in detail why he didn’t. Is that clear?” He waited in
silence for several seconds, then bellowed, “Is that clear?”

A smattering of
voices hesitantly replied, “Yes, sir.”

“I can’t hear
you!”

“Yes, sir!” The
ready room resounded with a single voice. Jack Hardigan looked up,
as if for divine guidance, then back at his pilots. “I’ve spent one
year, gentlemen, twelve months, trying to turn you into fighter
pilots. I didn’t invest that much of my time just to have a whining
bunch of momma’s boys call themselves Fighting Twenty. Truk.” Jack
swung the arm with sudden violence and the pieces of pointer
clattered into the corner. “Fuck Truk! If you think the Japs at
Truk are going to give you a hard time, you haven’t reckoned living
with me if you blow this mission. And if you blow this mission,
gentlemen, you know where to lay the blame. Not on me. Not on the
aircraft. Not on the goddamn stewards. But on yourselves. No one
else.” He looked one more time at thirty unmoving, scarcely
breathing men, then strode to the door.

Duane Higgins
stood suddenly in his path, but Jack pushed up to him, face to
face, his head shaking slightly as if it were difficult to control
himself any longer. “Don’t cross me,” he said to Higgins, just loud
enough for the entire squadron to hear, and was gone.

The skipper’s
footsteps had faded away in the passageway outside before the
numbing spell began to wear off.

“He’s right,
you know,” Bagley said simply.

Higgins bolted
through the door and disappeared.

Slowly,
quietly, the rest of the pilots pulled themselves to their feet and
shuffled out. When all were gone except the four pilots of the duty
section, Fred got up and carefully gathered up the skipper’s
papers. He straightened the pile and left them in the chair. Then
he sat back down, dealt himself another hand of solitaire, and
began matching the thirteens.

Fred Trusteau sat
suited and ready in his chair, marveling at the change that had
come over the men of Fighting Twenty. They were as hot for combat
as he had ever seen them. Again and again he would hear repeated
the skipper’s remark from his now-famous pep talk: Fuck Truk. Jack
Hardigan was in front of them now, giving the final briefing in as
businesslike fashion as was possible. Much of the information he
was giving was repetitious—course, speed and altitude to the
target, expected opposition, launch time—but most of the details
reflected the urgency of the moment.

“Two miles on
the launch heading will be a can with a white truck light. Do a
standard group grope to the right and join up by divisions. We
still stay at one thousand feet until thirty miles from the target,
then circle twice to fifteen thousand. We’ll be over the target at
7:45.”

There were no
surprises, only a comforting sort of security in routine practices.
Fred took it all in and wondered…

He wondered how
everyone had changed so since yesterday. Patrick—of his three
bunkmates the only other fighter pilot—was up before reveille. He
woke Fred with his shaving and humming and told him that he wasn’t
writing home until he got back that afternoon and could give his
parents the news that he had his first kill. Fred lay in his rack
until Patrick was finished with the sink, then as he was brushing
his teeth, Patrick casually remarked, without malice, that Fred
didn’t know how to spell. They went to breakfast together.