Sky Ghost (15 page)

Hunter’s stomach felt like it was made of lead. He leveled off and did a quick, terrifying count. There were just 70 bombers left. Forty-four bombers gone. Just like that. In less than two minutes. Twenty men per bomber. More than 800 killed. No parachutes, no crash landings. No survivors. Just a fiery death four miles up.

And that’s when Hunter saw some real heroism at work, fueled by alcoholic spirits as it may have been. Those bombers that remained made a wide turn, got back on course, and went over the city again, this time from the southeast. At exactly the right moment, they began dropping their ordnance loads. Now hundreds of big black iron bombs were raining down on Manchester, hitting the center of the city, which was now a growing ball of flame. The more bombs that went into the conflagration, the higher and more widespread the fire became. And now the surviving bombers, suddenly lighter as the titanic weights were gone from their bomb bays, rose up 2000, 3000, 4000 feet or more, like they were being pulled up on a string to the sun.

Then they formed up tight again, passed beyond the burning target, and as one, swung around west and made for the Irish Sea.

Hunter put the Mustang right on their tail. He was sucking on his oxygen mask now like there was no tomorrow. His uniform was bathed in sweat. He looked around the cockpit for a barf bag, his stomach gurgling, his brain screaming to make some sense of this very nonsensical situation.

He knew it would be a long ride home.

H
UNTER SET DOWN BACK
at Dreamland Base two hours later.

He’d thrown up twice on the return journey, an event that he had no recollection of ever happening to him before.

It didn’t help that he was exhausted. Six months of sitting in jail had obviously softened him up. After the nausea, exhaustion began taking hold again. He had to resort to holding his breath for two or three minutes at a time, just so he’d gasp for about five minutes afterwards and force oxygen into his lungs and thus keep himself awake and not puking.

It was still perpetual dusk when he bounced in. He taxied through some thick snow to the 2001st’s deserted flight line. The same dog-faced kid who’d served as his maintenance crew appeared out of the snow and choked off the Mustang-5’s wheels.

Hunter killed the engine and waited for the access ladder to be placed. He waited and waited and waited. Then he wiped the fog from his cockpit glass and saw the maintenance kid driving away.

Hunter just shook his weary head, popped the canopy, and climbed out on his own. He threw the puke bag into the wind and it disappeared in the gale. Then came a 10-minute trudge to the ops building. The bitter cold served him like a bucket of ice water in the face.

He went to the briefing hut and found only Major Payne waiting inside.

Payne barely acknowledged his presence as Hunter collapsed into the same chair in which he’d sat earlier this long day. The officer watched his wristwatch for 10 long minutes, again as if he expected more people to show up.

But of course, no one did. At exactly 1000 hours, he stood up and addressed his audience of one. Reading from a single sheet of paper, he said:

“I have been cleared to tell you that today’s operations against enemy-held territory have been deemed highly successful. More than seven targets were hit.”

Then he finally looked at Hunter.

“OK,” he said. “What did you see?”

Hunter told him just about everything. The Natters. The destruction of so many bombers. The 999th’s brave second bombing run. The only thing he left out was the sight of the booze and the unkempt airmen.

The officer took it all down. At the end of it, he just looked up. “That it?” he asked Hunter.

“Yes,” Hunter replied, truthfully.

“Had enough yet?”

Hunter was surprised by the question.

“No,” he heard himself say.

“OK,” Payne said. “Same time tomorrow. Dismissed.”

With that, Payne left the room.

It took Hunter another 10 minutes of trudging through the blinding wind and snow to make it to the officers’ club.

By the time he reached the front door, he was numb again. Nothing made sense here—well, not exactly anyway.

He recalled reading somewhere, at some time, about the pressures that pilots during his version of World War II had felt after flying bombing mission after bombing mission and seeing their comrades shot out of the sky and then the destruction they were causing below.

Many had to either block it all out completely or go nuts dwelling on it. Hunter was somewhat convinced that he was already nuts—living inside of some grand illusion. So he decided that he would have little trouble blocking it out. Plus, he was just too tired—and hungry and sober—to deal with it.

That would soon change, he promised himself.

With that one thought in mind, he went through the OC door.

The place held a few more people this time, maintenance and logistics officers from what Hunter could see. Barely a head turned when he came in. He made his way to the bar, ordered a triple whiskey and the hot meal of the day. It was beef stew again; the bowl was the size of a small trough. He took the food and booze to the same corner table and began to feed.

About halfway through his meal, the lights at one end of the hall dimmed. Someone came out and put a microphone on the small stage in front of him. A spotlight appeared, focused on the back wall, and then took on a red tint. The microphone squealed, then a tall, affable guy walked calmly out on the stage.

“Welcome to today’s matinee performance,” he said into the mike in a deep tenor. “I’m Colonel Crabb…”

The man’s announcement stopped Hunter in mid bite.
Colonel Crabb?
Why was that name familiar? He took a closer look at the man. He was in a uniform, but it didn’t look too regulation, even in this crazy place. It was a cross between an Air Corps colonel’s dress blues and a very tacky tuxedo.

His hair too looked a little off the books. It was swept back and highly moussed. He was holding a conductor’s baton in one hand, a glass of something in the other.

“We have a great card of entertainment for you today,” the Colonel said, as many of those in the chow hall moved their chairs closer to the stage. “The first number is called ‘Dance of the Fawns.’”

There was polite applause from the crowd. It seemed like they were familiar with the piece.

Hunter swigged his drink. ‘Dance of the Fawns?’ What the hell could this be?

A small jazz band was assembled in the corner. On a cue from the Colonel’s baton, they struck up a 12-bar blues theme.

Then the curtain opened to revealed a stage decorated with the tackiest sets possible. A cutout tree. A crayon-colored bush. Blue aluminum paper as a forest stream. Then four dancers tiptoed on to the stage. They were young, nubile teen-age girls. They were dressed in layers of silk and satin, and as the music struck up, they began dancing. There was little sense to the movements, little effort to keep in time. But the main objective of the dance was aimed at their disrobing. Bit by bit, the girls peeled off the layers of silk scarves and satin skirts, and soon they were simply naked.

The band hit a flourish and the girls took a bow and pirouetted off the stage, to be replaced by four more. This quartet pranced out and began disrobing in exactly the same way.

It went on like this for an hour. The audience was absolutely entranced. The girls were all beautiful, if dangerously young. The music was intoxicating. In the corner, occasionally accompanying the band on the congas, was Colonel Crabb. Lording over it all, one of the naked girls propped up on his lap, a smile of satisfaction creasing his face.

He looked so familiar…

He moved only after the lights dimmed, and the girls from the eighth dance left the stage. Marching up to the microphone, now with two young girls, one on each arm, he tapped the microphone and said: “And now a word from our sponsor.”

At that point, a couch was brought up to the stage. Two more girls appeared, sat on the couch, slowly disrobed each other and engaged in 20 long minutes of sensual, highly erotic kissing and touching.

At the end of the segment, the Colonel reappeared and held up a sign over the heads of the lip-locked girls.

It read: Fly United…Airlines.

The audience applauded, the girls left the stage, and Crabb announced the second interpretive ballet of the show: “The Eight Temptations of Lolita.”

The audience applauded again. Hunter ordered another triple whiskey. The day’s events began slowly washing away.

What a strange, strange place he’d found himself in…

H
UNTER STAYED IN THE
officers’ club for many, many hours, getting drunk, watching Crabb’s “culture revue.”

When he could no longer see straight, he stumbled to the 2001st officers’ barracks, selected the first bunk he came to, and fell asleep.

Thankfully, he did not dream…

He woke up the next day cold and sore. His stomach felt like it was turned inside out. He looked around the barracks—it was a long Quonset hut containing at least 200 beds—and found that it was indeed very empty.

He located a coffee machine, made a pot, and drank half of it. Looking through the empty barracks, he saw each bed was made, corners tight. Each had a pilot’s cap placed squarely on the pillow and a pair of boots down at the foot. Hunter laid his hand on the bunk next to his. It was ice cold. Then he turned around to the bunk he’d slept in and saw a pilot’s cap on the floor and a pair of boots under the bed—just where he’d drunkenly thrown them the night before.

A shiver went through him. He’d slept in the bed of a dead man.

Thus began his second day in Hell.

He found the shower, and stood underneath the spigot for 20 long minutes, waiting for warm water that never came. Then he dried off and returned to his bed. He found a storeroom, and from it he took a new package of clothes, from the thermal underwear on out. Everything was colored light green.

He found a yellow duty roster that had been pinned to a board near the front door of the barracks. It was the daily assignment for the 2001st. It was long enough to hold at least 200 names. His was the only one on it.

There was a bomber mission taking off from one of the other Circle bases in less than an hour. He had to get briefed and get airborne to ride shotgun for them in less than 30 minutes.

The last thing he noted was that his rank had been penciled in as that of a lowly flight officer. Hunter understood this to be somewhere way below second lieutenant and barely above sergeant.

Though he wasn’t sure exactly what his rank had been in his previous life, he was sure it was higher than this.

Payne was waiting for him once again in the big briefing room.

It was empty, like before. Again the officer barely acknowledged Hunter’s presence. It was as if he himself would die just by setting eyes too long on Hunter. Maybe that was his experience, Hunter thought. Payne seemed like a good officer, stuck in the most gruesome position possible. Hunter looked at the gallery of dead pilots and wondered how many Payne had known personally.

Probably all of them, he thought.

They ran through a quick mission film—the target today was the city of Laxey Bay on the Isle of Man. One hundred and thirty-three bombers would attack a power plant on the island, one which supplied a lot of electricity via undersea cables for Occupied England and Ireland.

Payne was as brief as he had been the day before. When the mission film was over, he looked about the room and then his eyes rested on Hunter, sitting in the same seat as the day before.

“Any questions?” he asked.

Hunter just shook his head no.

What was the point?

“OK, then,” Payne said. “Good luck…and good-bye.”

With that, the briefing officer slowly walked off the stage, leaving Hunter with the distinct impression that Payne didn’t expect to see him alive again.

Hunter walked back out into the snow and wind and cold again and was surprised to see that it was actually a little brighter this morning.

It gave him an opportunity to see more of the base. There were 18 hangars in all, laid out in a box with streets running like latticework between them.

Some of the hangars looked as if they’d been worked everyday until recently—tire tracks and oil-stained snow outside the now-locked doors being the clue. But there was a small group of aircraft barns at the rear of the place that didn’t look as if they’d been used in years. In front of one of them, the snowdrifts were as high as the hangar door itself.

Hunter’s mind flashed a message for him: Something strange was sitting in one of those barns. Something that might turn out to be very helpful to him someday.

The snow picked up again and all but short visibility became lost. Head down, Hunter fought the gale for another few minutes until he finally found the flight line.

Only one plane had been dragged out onto the preflight area, of course. The same Mustang-5 he’d flown the day before.

The same dopey maintenance kid was there too, eyes barely open, snot frozen to his nostrils. He looked at Hunter oddly as they met at the plane’s access ladder.

“Going up again, huh?” he asked with a long, noisy sniff.

Hunter ignored him. It was too cold to chat. He began his preflight walk-around.

“I heard it was rough up there yesterday,” the kid persisted.

Hunter was manually working the flaps, knocking pieces of ice from between the control surface hinges.

“Is it ever any other way?” he replied to the kid, trying to nip the inane conversation in the bud.

He completed the walk-around and then climbed up the access ladder. This time the kid came up the ladder and helped him strap in.

“I’ve seen a lot come and go,” he said, sniffing and belting him at the same time.

“Mostly go…” he added ominously.

Hunter finally turned to him. “Hey kid, what is it with you? You want me to put you in my will? You want my boots or something?”

The kid was startled. He wiped some of the frozen snot from his nose.