Whip (30 page)

"She'll never last an hour," Mac announced.

The destroyers weaving in and out of thousands of panicked soldiers in the water got their dose from the thirty-one other B-25s.

They were still mopping up that night. The B-17s were out with heavy bomb loads, looking for burning ships. If it burned they could see it and if they saw it they went after it. Slowly, methodically, from well under ten thousand feet, without Zeros to bother them.

It was the greatest victory they'd ever known. All fourteen troopships were either sunk or in sinking condition; none were under way from their engines. Nine destroyers had gone down and the B-17s were out looking for the remaining three.

The price they paid was heavy in lives, but on the statistical ledger it was a lopsided win.

Eighteen planes had gone down — two B-25s, one B-17, three B-26s, one A-20, one Beaufighter, seven P-40s and three P-39s. No Hudsons were lost. The P-38s didn't lose a plane.

All told, the fighters and bombers wiped more than seventy Zeros from the sky. No one knew exactly how many.

It was over, but there was still unfinished business. General Spaulding called in the pilots of the eleven B-25 gunships, the five Aussie Beaufighters that could still fly. The A-20s had taken a beating and only fifteen were in condition to get back into the air.

Thirty-one killers.

And they had hell in store for them.

30

It was wrong. All wrong. What the hell was going on here? They moved into the big tent at Seven-Mile that General Spaulding had been using for briefings. You couldn't miss the armed guards around the tent. Not just at the entrance but completely around it.

There was only the briefest order to get to the special briefing. Grim-faced men, confused themselves, going after certain pilots. Not all the pilots, Whip noticed. He recognized the replacements that had been assigned to the 335th before Kanaga Field was wiped out.

Gunship crews. None of the glass-noses in here.

Before General Spaulding stepped onto the raised platform the tent flaps were closed, and two armed guards took up position
inside
the tent.

Spaulding's face was grim, his lips pressed tightly together. His conversation didn't make sense. Tired and bone-weary as Whip was, still rigid deep within himself at knowing his own outfit was no more, he couldn't help marveling at the
insanity
of what he was hearing.

Weather conditions… a weather report, for God's sake!

"Winds in the strike area remain light and variable… sea calm… excellent conditions still prevail… water temperature high…"

Hold one
, his tired brain rattled at him. Some of the words had begun to penetrate.
Water
temperature
… Without realizing the change in his posture Whip was now sitting bolt upright, the aching muscles and burning eyes forgotten, all his intensity thrown into listening. He clung to every word. The old man himself was running with the ball. No subordinates, no lackeys.

"We estimate there are anywhere from three to five thousand survivors in the sea… some lifeboats, but mostly rafts and debris… plus what barges and other vessels the Japanese have sent from all neighboring islands… to pick up those men… not that far from shore… temperature and winds make it clsar… survival factor high…"

The words hammered in his head.

"Most will make it… can't let that happen. Several thousand Japanese troops landing on the north coast… shift the whole balance… can't let that happen… must not permit this to happen…"

Whip knew what was coming. It twisted a giant knot within his belly.

His whole frame of mind, his attitude, the position he had taken on everything, including death and life; less than a day ago, for God's sake, it had all been turned upside-down on him. It had taken him hours to understand how utterly weary he was within himself, how dangerously low the spark was burning. He had struggled for objectivity, had wondered in awe about killing taking over everything in his heart and his mind and his soul.

Psycho and Arnie Kessler and Mule and Irish and the Greek; oh, Christ, was the list really that long? Ted Ashley and Jim Whitson and McCamish and that… Octavio Jordan's face swam briefly before his mind's eye and he thought he would retch. He fought it down and he wrestled with his thoughts.

He had accepted the change.

Goddamnit, they couldn't do this to him! Not now… Jesus,
not now
.

He was hearing what he had always wanted to hear, the granting of the free hunting license, the permit to kill, to lust with murder, wanton and brutal killing, the enormous scythe of the gunship under his hands.

A killing machine and freedom to use it. Not against one plane or one ship or a runway, but against
men
, hundreds of them, thousands of them, the stinking Japs before his sights and his guns. Oh, he'd wanted this until it had been a fury beating its death wings inside him, and he'd justified that sort of burning desire to slaughter because of Melody, and that moment, when he realized that for weeks she had never been in his mind, and all those people who might still be flying with them if he hadn't pressed, pushed, hadn't anviled them between his kill lust and the enemy…

That's when he had quit. Smyth pulled the plug on him and Whip hadn't found anger.

He'd come to grips with himself and he
had
gone out there — goddamn them all to hell!

— and
said
goodby to that twin-engined brute in which he had lived all these months, and now, oh, the sons of bitches, the filthy rotten bastards, to do this now —

"There is not a man in this world I would ask to do this." The general's voice droned on; the cackle of death in every word. "Only one man may bear this responsibility and that man is myself. I must, therefore, make this a direct order, but I will hold it against no man who tells me, alone, after this briefing, that he will not or cannot do what you must do."

Why
the hell didn't you ask me to do this only two days ago? I would have gone gladly, I
would have rushed into the sky with my guns charged, lusting to kill. Why not two days
ago? Why now? Why
?

He heard no more. He heard the words but they had no meaning, no thrust, no importance, because his mind was shut out, and nothing was more terrible to him now than knowing that he would go out there and he would do what the general would not ask them to do, but would play conscience-critic and give them a direct order.

Which they did not have to obey.

Alex refused.

He made no speech, pleaded with no man, offered argument to not a soul. When he heard the mission he stood by his bunk and looked strangely at Whip and said, "No,"

and he walked from the tent, and Whip Russel never again saw this man he had come to love as a brother.

But
he
went.

And he hated himself because he knew there was no need.

Not for
him
.

31

There was no way to miss. God had his cruel streak. They couldn't have missed if they wanted to. And after the first few moments there were few of them who still had the stomach for it.

They were everywhere in the water, heads bobbing, hanging to packing cases, to hatch covers, to life rings, clinging to rafts, holding to ropes from lifeboats, swimming, struggling; men who'd kicked away their shoes, tied knots in their trouser legs and made air pillows of them so they might not fill their lungs with salt water and drown.

To each side of his gunship Whip saw the men. The greatest concentration was before him. He eased back on the throttles, he slowed her down. He glanced to his left. Ten more gunships, the new silvery airplanes and the remainder of the Death's Head Brigade. How that name had come home to them!

He looked to the right. The A-20s and the Beaufighters were going in now, setting it up.

He wondered what they were thinking, those souls in the water, and as he wondered what they wondered, his thumb was moving almost as if it were a living creature unto itself, an appendage of death, caressing the gun tit. For an instant Whip thought of what his gunship must look like, those great curving teeth and —

He squeezed. In the first burst he knew he had killed more than a hundred men.

They didn't just die, the massed firepower of the fifties blew them apart. Grisly pieces of flesh and bone spattered and bounced and whirled through the air.

He walked rudder, the hammer scything through water, tearing into bodies, shredding and mutilating and ripping and tearing and chopping.

The ocean took on its ghastly red hue.

Pieces of flesh floated on the sea.

Was that screaming he heard? Could he hear those cries above the thunder of his engines?

The kid next to him, the copilot riding this mission as a volunteer, puked.

Whip eased into a climb and brought her around again, and saw the brilliant flashes of guns and cannon from the other gunships, the Beaufighters and the Havocs, and the great blades of death whirred again and he went down.

For the first time ever he closed his eyes when he squeezed and the hammering, bucking roar of the guns seemed a thousand miles away.

Death whipped forward in its giant hose and the ocean churned and exploded in froth.

He couldn't take any more and this time he simply held down on the gun tit while the fifties became overheated and began to glow and then thank God he was out of ammo.

They left thousands of men behind them.

No one knew how many were dying, leaking their life into the water; they had been hacked, punched, cleavered, and the sharks came to feast.

The kid next to Whip — he didn't even know his name — couldn't throw up anymore.

His body shuddered in dry-heave spasms. Finally he turned to Whip, his eyes pleading.

Whip found his voice. "Go to hell," he said.

32

"There's nothing to say, is there?"

Whip shook his head. "No… no, there isn't, Lou."

A hand rested briefly on his shoulder, pulled away. "Let me know where you end up."

"Sure. I'll do that."

"Damnit, Whip, I'm not just talking words!"

He looked up from the dust. "I know that. Christ, Lou, I didn't mean to —"

"Oh, shit. I know what you mean. I'm sorry, kid." Lou Goodman looked across the runway. They were waiting at the B-17 for Major Whip Russel. The living, flying legend who walked slightly stooped because his belly was filled with barbed wire.

They walked together toward the waiting bomber, and they stopped a short distance away. Something tried to fight its way out from both of them. They shook hands. The words didn't come. Whip turned away, started off. He seemed to stumble, stopped, turned around.

"Lou?"

"What is it, Whip?"

"We had to do it, didn't we?"

Goodman nodded. "We had to."

"Do you think it will help to… make it end sooner, Lou?"

"God knows it should, Whip."

"God don't know shit. He wasn't out there. I was."

"Then maybe only you can answer the question."

His eyes went wide. "Only me answer —" Whip's voice broke off in a harsh laugh.

"Lou, uh, no one knows what will… I mean, if something happens to me, would you? I mean — "

"I know. Melody."

"Yeah. Melody."

"You know I would. No matter what. But somehow, Whip, I think you're going to make it."

Whip sighed. "Maybe you're right, Lou. I mean, how can you kill a man who's died inside, right?"

"Does it hurt, kid?"

"It hurts, Lou."

"Then you're alive."