In Perfect Time (9 page)

He chuckled. “Aren’t you the little minx? Your words say no, but your body says yes.”

“My body says no!” She slapped his cheek, not as hard as she wanted.

With one arm firm around her waist, he rubbed his cheek
and raised a sly smile. “There. Now you can tell your girlfriends you tried to stop me.”

“Leave me alone!” She stomped hard, but her heel slid off the side of his shoe.

“So that’s how you like it.” He smiled, his grip tightened, and he backed her up, pressed her against the rocky cliff. “You know, it’s more fun when you give up the pretense and admit you want it.”

“I don’t. I don’t want it. I don’t want anything to do with you.” She tried to raise her knee to strike him in the crotch, but he had her pinned.

“All right, we’ll do it your way.” He ran his hand into her hair, almost tenderly. “I’ll pretend to be the dastardly villain, you pretend to be the damsel in distress, and I’ll ravish you. Sounds like fun.”

No. No, it didn’t. Her words swelled and blocked her throat.

Lord,
help
me.
The prayer dribbled out, useless.

10

Imphal Main Airfield, Imphal, India

“Hurry. Come on.” Roger beckoned the litter-bearers toward the plane. He didn’t like the looks of the clouds to the northeast, the smell of the wind, or the sense of plummeting barometric pressure. A thunderstorm was coming, and he needed to get the C-47 airborne.

Imphal lay at the northern end of the Manipur Valley, surrounded by high mountains—and by the Japanese. For two weeks, C-47s and C-46s had been supplying 170,000 troops trapped at the British base.

“Welcome aboard.” Pettas stood inside the cargo door and motioned a dozen healthy administrative personnel toward the folding seats in the front of the cabin. Ferrying out these “useless mouths” reduced the amount of supplies that needed to be ferried in.

A man lifted the foot of a litter to another worker crouched inside the plane. The litter tilted at a dangerous angle.

“Not like that!” Roger sprang forward and lowered the foot of the litter to the floor.

“Thank you, sir.” The British soldier on the litter saluted with a bandaged hand. “This is more dangerous than the front lines.”

“Sorry. We don’t have an air evac team.” Roger showed the native workers how to safely load the litter onto the plane, then how to anchor it in the web strapping.

He never had to do that in the Mediterranean Theater of Operations. In the MTO, teams of flight nurses and technicians could load a plane full of patients in ten minutes flat. The 803rd MAETS served in the CBI, but they didn’t fly the Imphal run.

Kay’s face flitted into his mind, and he couldn’t shake it free. Again. The dame might be dangerous, but she was an efficient and competent flight nurse. He could see her doing the tasks he was doing right now—buckling straps and making sure patients were comfortable—only a lot better.

Roger knelt and tightened a strap attached to the securing pole that ran along the floor.

A cry rang out. Across the aisle, the top litter teetered and slipped. Roger lunged and grabbed it just in time. “It’s not tight enough.” He worked the pole into the loop of strapping and yanked as hard as he could.

For the first time ever, he missed Kay Jobson. And for the third time that day, he felt an overwhelming compulsion to pray for her.

He did so as he worked. All mail was being held in Sicily for their return next week, so he didn’t know if she’d written or if she’d asked any questions. But he did know shame, remembered it with a knifing pain. That memory deepened his prayers.

Was that why God had chosen him? Why couldn’t the Lord have chosen a Christian man eager to get involved with the gorgeous redhead, a stronger man who wouldn’t be tempted like Roger was? Or a woman? Why didn’t God choose a woman?

“Okay, Coop. That’s the last of them.” Whitaker wiped his brow. “Now we can do our own jobs.”

“Yeah. Let’s get this bird off the ground as soon as we can.”

In the cockpit, Roger picked up his clipboard with Forms 1, C, and F. It would take him a good twenty minutes to fill them out the Army way, or he could do it in five his way.

Roger pulled out the load calculator and got to work. What was wrong with the military? They cared more about numbers than about the real men those numbers represented. Was it more important for the boxes to be filled in or for these soldiers to arrive safely at their destination, not struck down in enemy territory by a thunderstorm? Fifteen minutes could mean the difference between life and death.

“Ah, forget it.” He skipped ahead and did it his way. He’d fill in the numbers later for Veerman’s sake. Not now. Not with those black clouds forming over the mountains.

He leaned into the radio compartment, where Pettas sat at his desk with his radio sets and navigation charts. “You ready?”

“You bet. Let’s get out of here. I get the jitters knowing we’ve got Japs on all sides.”

Whitaker entered from the cabin. “Plane looks great, all passengers secured.”

Roger thanked his aerial engineer, took his seat, put on his headset, and contacted the tower. “We’re clear,” he said to Elroy.

The copilot held the preflight checklist and called down the list. They checked the hydraulics and fuel and flight controls and everything else. Roger liked shortcuts, but not when it came to actual flying.

He gave the thumbs-up to the ground crewman, who rotated the propeller on the right engine three times.

“Clear!” Roger called.

After the ground crewman backed away, Roger positioned his finger over the ignition button on the electrical panel over the windshield. “Start engine.”

He pushed the button while Elroy worked the wobble pump beside his seat to raise fuel pressure. The engine roared to life. They repeated the process with the left engine.

Roger scanned the gauges—all looked good. After the tower cleared him, he taxied onto the narrow runway. He and Elroy ran up the engines, finished the final checks, released the brakes, and throttled forward. The plane sped down the runway and lifted into the air.

“Landing gear up.” Roger released the latch, and Elroy turned the lever.

He had to build altitude and fast. In less than twenty miles, he’d be over enemy territory, and the Japanese ground troops loved to take shots at the C-47s. Thank goodness they didn’t send up too many fighter planes. The Tenth Air Force bombers and fighters did a great job keeping the Japanese occupied.

Sure enough, as soon as he passed south over the hills rimming the valley, pops rang out. The left wing jerked.

Roger gritted his teeth and guided the plane higher. Everything looked fine—flight controls operational, no loss of fuel or oil.

At his cruising altitude of five thousand feet, he made the final power reduction and trimmed the aircraft.

“Coop!” Whitaker’s voice rang over the interphone. “Bad news.”

“What is it?”

“Zero coming in at nine o’clock high.”

Roger’s heartbeat slowed to a stop. A Japanese Mitsubishi Zero. The same nimble little fighter plane that wreaked havoc at Pearl Harbor.

A C-47 was a workhorse, an airborne truck, stable and sturdy and dependable, but not built for dives and rolls and the acrobatics needed to evade attack.

“What are we going to do, Coop?” Elroy’s brown eyebrows bunched together over his wide blue eyes.

The beat returned, but faint and defeated. “We’re going to pray. Nothing else we can do.”

Italy

The more Kay struggled, the more Hal laughed. He honestly thought the whole thing was a game, thought every no meant yes.

“Oh, baby, this is going to be so much fun.” He unzipped her skirt.

Kay tried to zip it again, but his hands moved to her chest. She couldn’t win, couldn’t gain control. Her throat clogged shut, and her eyes moistened.

Oh no. She wouldn’t cry. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

If only she could break free, but the harder she fought, the tighter he held her.

What if . . . ?

The idea was so strange, so counterintuitive.

Lord,
help
me.
The prayer felt stronger now, straighter, as if bound for heaven itself. A few deep breaths, and she decided. It was her only chance.

“Oh, Hal.” She wrapped her arms around his neck, gave herself completely to his kiss, and let his hands go where they would.

He moaned and came up for a grin. “That’s more like it.”

“Mm-hmm.” She kissed him, played with his hair, and unbuttoned his shirt. “Want to go for a swim?”

He startled and looked her in the eye. “A swim? It’s only sixty degrees today.”

Kay gave him her most flirtatious look and traced a squiggly line down his breastbone. “Don’t tell me you’re chicken.”

“No, but it’s—”

“We’ll have to warm each other up afterward . . . somehow.”

Light grew in his eyes. “All right then.” He reached for her blouse.

“Oh, I’ll do that.” Kay fiddled with the waist buckle on her jacket. “Not a man in the world has been able to undo this thing.” Because she’d never given any man the opportunity.

“Faster this way anyhow.” Hal backed up, ripped off his shirt, and undid his belt buckle.

Kay dipped her head as if concentrating on her jacket but watched Hal’s feet out of the corner of her eye.

Standing at bat, one perfect moment hung in the air right after the pitcher released the ball. Swing too early or too late and you missed. But when you swung at the perfect moment, the ball soared out of the park.

Kay’s fingers tensed, her feet dug into the sand, and her breath came hard but steady.

Hal lowered his trousers, leaned over, raised one knee.

The perfect moment.

Kay bolted and scrambled up the rocks.

“Hey! Kay!” A thump on the sand, a curse. “Where are you going?”

“Away.” Rocks scraped her feet and hands, her stupid skirt bound her knees, but she didn’t stop until she reached the road. She grabbed a fist-sized rock and whirled around.

Hal lay on the sand in his skivvies, trousers tangled around his feet. “What on earth?”

She brandished the rock at him. “If you lay your sleazy hands on me one more time, I’ll bash your skull in.”

“Ah, come on, Kay. We were just having fun.” He got up to his knees.

She didn’t want to find out if he’d turn violent. She ran for the jeep, but the key wasn’t in the ignition. Her shoes—little good they’d do her. She could run faster barefoot than in high heels.

Down the road she ran, legs pumping as hard as the skirt allowed, feet screaming from pain. Would he chase her down? First he’d have to put on his pants. That bought her a minute or two.

The village lay in sight. A strange sensation heaved in her chest, and a sob burst out.

She’d accepted Hal’s invitation so she could regain control.

A sharp pain in her foot, and she collapsed to her knees. She had no control. None at all. It was all an illusion.

11

Over India

“Gotta hit the deck.” Roger shoved the control column forward, and the plane went into a dive.

He had a plump plodding aircraft and no guns. His only chance was to reduce the Zero’s maneuverability by skimming the treetops. An Allied fighter plane or two would also be nice.

“Hope the passengers are secured,” Elroy said.

“Better they get banged up than shot up.” Roger spoke into his interphone. “Whitaker, station yourself at the astrodome, call out what you see.”

“Okay. Not sure how much good that’ll do.”

“Better than nothing.” And nothing was what he had. Fighters had cockpits with full visibility, bombers had guns facing all six directions, but cargo planes had useless little passenger windows.

“I see him,” Whitaker said. “He’s following us.”

“Position?”

“About seven o’clock high. Can’t tell how far away he is.”

Elroy fiddled with the mixture controls. “Airspeed two hundred mph, altitude two thousand.”

Pressure built in Roger’s eardrums, and he longed for chewing gum. Maximum airspeed was 255, and the plane was
supposed to fall apart at 300. But Zeros could fly at 350, no problem.

He huffed out a breath. What else could he do? He had to push the plane to its limits. And himself too, for the sake of the other twenty-one men on board.

“Two hundred ten. Two twenty. One thousand feet.”

The needle shimmered and worked its way from the yellow zone to the red zone. The jungle zoomed up below, sprawled over steep hills. Evasive maneuvers would be tricky.

“He’s firing!”

Roger banked the plane to the left, pulled up a bit so he wouldn’t go into a spin. The tail buffeted. He must have been hit. “Where is he, Whit?”

“He passed us up, turning around. Looks like he’s coming in again from the front.”

“There he is!” Elroy pointed up, to about two o’clock.

“Okay.” Roger eyed the sharp ridge ahead. “Watch him. When he opens fire, I’m putting her in a dive.”

“Oh boy. This isn’t what I signed up for.”

A laugh escaped Roger’s pressed-tight lips. “Ain’t that the truth.”