In Perfect Time (18 page)

“You’re so good with children.” Mellie set down her end of the bench.

“You are.” Kay straightened the bench.

“Nah, I’m a drummer.”

Mellie laughed. “Of course. I forgot. Well, if drumming doesn’t work out, you’d be an excellent teacher.”

“Hardly.” His voice came out low, and he headed for the next table.

Kay fetched another bench. An image of Mr. Warburton flashed in her mind. She’d never stayed at any school more than three months in a row, but she’d never forgotten the tenth-grade history teacher.

Big and loud, Mr. Warburton used to perch on the front of his desk and tell stories. In his classroom, history was more than terms and dates—it was real people in the sweeping arc of life, caught up in grand events. And he cared. The students responded.

“Little more this way.” Roger tugged a table to the side, face red.

Kay pictured Roger as that sort of teacher, the once-in-a-lifetime sort who could engage children and change lives. “I can see you as a teacher too. I really can.”

Roger scrunched up his face. “Hardly. Kids only like me because I’m an overgrown kid myself. I’m not a teacher.”

She frowned and helped Mellie carry a bench over to his table. “It’s more than that. You have a gift.”

He shot a glare at her. “I’m not good enough, all right?”

She almost dropped the bench on his toes. “Not—not good enough? I thought—I thought you were redeemed.”

He stared down at her with a look in his eyes she’d never seen before—a strange mix of shock and . . . insecurity?

Kay’s heart shriveled up. Deep down inside, he didn’t really believe he’d been redeemed, did he? And if he hadn’t been . . .

Roger blinked, and the insecurity vanished. “Not
that
kind of good. Just meant I wouldn’t be good at teaching. All those routines and regulations and stuff. I can barely fill out my forms right. Ask Elroy.”

“He does fine,” Mike said with his shy smile.

“Fine. Yeah. Those forms about kill me. Couldn’t do that for the rest of my life. Okay, the room’s back to normal.
Somehow we managed not to break anything.” He strode out of the room.

The shriveled-up feeling didn’t go away.

“Come on.” Mellie touched her arm. “Georgie and the other girls are waiting for us.”

“Yeah.” She walked with Mellie and Louise into the foyer.

“The children had so much fun with the art projects.” Georgie stepped forward, blue eyes dancing. “How was the soccer game?”

Mellie smoothed her hair and smiled. “The nuns will have a hard time settling our little soccer players down again.”

The ladies headed outside, and Kay hung back to walk with Vera and Alice. “Did you have fun?”

“How could we not with Shirley Temple herself in charge?” Vera rolled her eyes and trotted down the outside steps.

Alice hummed “On the Good Ship Lollipop” and did a little tap-dance move.

A sour taste filled Kay’s mouth. True, Georgie was cute and perky and curly-haired, but what had she ever done to hurt Vera and Alice? “She’s just trying to do something nice for the orphans. Don’t act so superior.”

Vera’s upper lip curled. “Aren’t you the one acting superior right now?”

“Because she
is
superior.” Alice batted her blonde eyelashes and pressed her hands together as if praying. “Forgive us, Sister Kay, for we have sinned.”

The sour feeling dribbled into Kay’s stomach.

Vera and Alice strolled on ahead of her, shaking their heads and laughing. They hadn’t invited Kay to go dancing for over a month.

Because of her faith, Kay no longer bridged the two factions. She’d joined one.

Vera and Alice had it wrong. The last thing she felt was superior.

21

Over the Mediterranean
August 15, 1944

Despite the cool night air in the cockpit, sweat tickled Roger’s upper lip. “You got it, Pettas?”

“Position Hoboken coming right up.”

“Good.” Hoboken was the last naval checkpoint before the French coast. Two thousand feet below, a ship guided the planes with Eureka radar beacons and Holophane infrared lights. Although Roger flew toward the end of the hundred-mile-long string of 396 C-47s, he was responsible for his flight of nine planes and for the twenty-eight British paratroopers in the cabin. He couldn’t afford to stray off course.

“Thirty-nine miles to the IP.” Mike Elroy swiped a hand over his forehead, then adjusted the throttles.

Thirty-nine miles to the French coast. Roger ran the numbers in his head—less than seventeen minutes until he crossed into enemy territory.

Today the Allies would open a fourth front against Nazi Germany. The forces from Normandy streamed east toward Paris, the Soviets marched west through Poland, the Allies in Italy pushed up through Pisa and Florence, and today the US
Seventh Army would land in Southern France near St. Tropez, not far east of the major ports of Toulon and Marseille.

Operation Dragoon.

“Passing over Hoboken,” Pettas said on the interphone.

“Thanks.” Roger flipped off the amber downward recognition lights meant to protect them from Allied naval fire, but now likely to draw enemy fire.

The amphibious landings were scheduled for 0800, with the first paratroopers jumping at 0330. The clock read 0441, and Roger was scheduled to make his drop at 0505.

He scanned the instruments and checked his grip on the control wheel.

Lord,
don’t
let
me
mess
up.
The lead position was a great responsibility with dozens of lives at stake—and it was an honor. Just this week, Major Veerman had praised his improved reliability and said he might be able to put in a good word with his brother.

Roger’s heels tapped a pattern on the floor. Finish his thousand-hour combat tour, fly stateside for the duration of the war, then audition for the Veerman band. A gift.

“You
have
a
gift.”
Kay’s words speared through his head, but she was wrong. He might have a way with kids, but teaching was entirely different.

He could still see her as she said it, lowering one end of a bench, hair falling into her face, a soft smile pushing up her pink cheeks.

Man alive! He never should have gone to the orphanage.

Roger tumbled his gum around in his mouth and fixed his mind on his instruments. Looked good. A crescent moon barely illuminated the scattered clouds above and the land ahead.

The land looked—he squinted—pale and puffy? Oh swell. The meteorologists had been concerned about fog over the drop zone. They got it right. “Fog,” he said.

Elroy leaned forward as if six extra inches would improve visibility. “Oh great.”

“Pettas, here’s hoping your toys work. We’ve got fog over the shore.”

“The Rebecca radar hasn’t picked up a Eureka beam from the drop zone yet.”

“It’s early, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.” The radioman’s voice crackled. “Hope Veerman’s radar works.”

Roger peered ahead at the dark planes in their
V
formations silhouetted against the pale gray fog ahead. In the lead of the serial of thirty-six planes, Veerman’s navigator had an SCR-717 set which distinguished land from sea, so they’d know when they crossed the coast at the harbor at Agay.

Elroy fiddled with the oil mixture. “Sure hope the Pathfinder teams landed all right.”

“Yeah.” The first men to jump carried Eureka beacons, lighted panels, and other navigational aids to guide the rest of the planes to the drop zone.

Was it his imagination, or did the stream of planes bend slightly to the west? “Pettas, are we close to the IP?”

“Yeah. Dead reckoning says we should be there in two minutes.”

Elroy nodded. “I’ll count it down.”

While Elroy ticked off the seconds that would determine whether twenty-eight men lived or died, Roger made sure everything was ready. Oil and fuel mixture, manifold pressure, heading, altitude, airspeed.

His gum turned stiff and flavorless, and he clamped it between his molars.

“I’ve got it!” Pettas shouted in the interphone. “I’m picking up the Eureka.”

Roger lifted his earphone away from his head. “And we’re picking you up—loud and clear.”

“Sorry, Coop.”

He grinned. “That means the Pathfinder team landed safely. Hallelujah.”

Elroy tapped Roger’s upper arm. “We should be at the IP.”

“The boys ahead of us agree.” Roger waggled his wings and then put his plane into a descending four-degree turn to the left, following the stream of troop carriers. Since the IP was only ten minutes from the drop zone, he rang the bailout bell.

He and Elroy worked together to ease back the throttles, their hands coordinating from months of practice. Had to get down to fifteen hundred feet and 110 mph.

Spots of light flashed in the fog below. The Nazis had discovered them.

Roger drew in a deep breath, reassured by the weight of the flak vest. First time the Twelfth Air Force had ever issued them to troop carrier crews.

A crack rocked the plane.

“Elroy, do a check. Pettas, how’s our heading?” He had to keep them on target.

“Half a tick to the right,” Pettas said.

Roger adjusted his course and eyed the fog below. The drop altitude of fifteen hundred feet was much higher than usual due to high terrain features, and he didn’t want to meet one of those terrain features face to face.

Elroy shifted in his seat. “Everything’s fine. Don’t think we took any damage.”

“Good.” He definitely didn’t want to meet the Nazis face to face. In the pocket of his trousers, he carried a clicker, issued to all the crewmen today to differentiate friend from foe if they crash-landed. The brass expected minimal losses since the Germans focused on the Allied threat in northern France. “Minimal” might make the generals happy, but not the man testing his clicker behind enemy lines.

“Two minutes,” Pettas said.

Roger flipped on the red light and raised the flaps. Back in the cabin, the Brits would queue up, do a final check, and prepare themselves.

Those men would be using their clickers today. And their guns.

“Altitude fifteen hundred, airspeed one eleven.” Elroy wiped one hand on his trousers.

Roger eased the left throttle back and the right throttle forward.

“Signal’s nice and clear,” Pettas said. “We’re on course. Thirty seconds.”

Ahead and below, parachutes blossomed and sank into the fog.

Roger stuffed his gum into his cheek and willed his muscles still and steady. He had to amount to something today. For the sake of the men in the back, he had to.

Pettas ticked off the seconds, and Roger’s hand rose to the light switch on the overhead panel.

“And . . . now!”

His thumb froze in position.
Lord,
please.
Please
let
them
live,
let
them
do
their
job.

He flipped the switch from red to green, flung the men from friendly to enemy territory, from safety to danger.

Slowly the plane lightened and lifted, emptied of twenty-eight men laden with gear.

“All right, Coop.” Whitaker spoke on the interphone back by the cargo door. “They’re out, every one of them. All clear.”

“You know, I’ve never been to France.” Roger chomped on his gum. “Who wants to do some sightseeing?”

Pettas cussed. “Are you joking? Get us home.”

Elroy laughed. “Would Coop ever joke? Never.”

Roger turned the wheel to the right and drew it closer to his chest. “We’ll come back another day.”

No joke this time. Once the Americans had secured the beachhead and built an airstrip, they’d fly in supplies.

Roger finished the 180-degree turn and adjusted his rate of climb so he’d reach the return altitude of five thousand feet.

What next? Running cargo from Rome to Toulon? How about medical air evacuation? Would the ladies of the 802nd stick to the Rome to Naples route, or would they join the men of the 64th TCG? Maybe he’d get his wish and he wouldn’t fly with Kay anymore.

The flak vest pressed hard on his chest. Yeah, that had to be what he felt. He couldn’t be disappointed, could he?

He checked his heading, airspeed, altitude—state of mind. Yeah, he was disappointed at the thought of not working with her, not seeing her.

More than anything, he wanted to spit out his stale gum. Shelby was right—he shouldn’t have gone to the orphanage. Shell had declined. As a married man, he kept his distance from women to avoid temptation. A wise policy Roger had followed until lately.

But Kay and her friends had pleaded on behalf of the children. Did she know kids were his weak spot?

Worse, the kids softened him and stole away his defenses. And there was Kay, playful and sassy, bumping against him, making him want to grab her around the waist and stop the game with a good long kiss.

Roger rapped his hand against the control wheel.

The plane dipped, and Elroy shot him an alarmed look.

“Sorry. Forgot something.” Yeah, forgot his brain, forgot his common sense, forgot all the lessons he’d learned the past decade.

He was tumbling into territory almost as dangerous as the land below. Not just for him, but for her. She already had to
fight off one lecher recently. She shouldn’t have to fight Roger off too. Or worse—what if she didn’t fight?

Roger grimaced. Somehow he had to get some distance again.
Lord,
please
let
us
go
our
separate
ways.
I’ve
done
my
bit.
Now
pull
me
off
the
assignment.

The flak vest pressed hard.

22

Sisteron, France
August 22, 1944