Wingmen (9781310207280) (59 page)

At breakfast in
the wardroom, the twelve pilots of the first sweep ate together at
the same table in high spirits. The skipper came in last and was
welcomed by all but Duane Higgins, who got up and left before he
had finished his steak—only Fred seemed to notice that. The skipper
said he’d been back to sick bay to see Heckman, who was awake at
this ungodly hour and wishing the squadron well. It was a nice
touch, the skipper checking up on his men. It sat well.

“The Japs have
five airfields at Truk,” Jack was saying now, “scattered through
the various islands. Intelligence says they have a total of 185
aircraft there, maybe half of which are fighters. We’ll be coming
in with about eighty Hellcats with tactical surprise, so pickings
should be pretty damn good.”

A cheer went up
from the men, punctuated with several “Fuck Truks.”

“Attack
whenever you get the chance. We’re under no escorting constraints.
Just clear the air of Jap planes. And don’t get caught alone.”

Duane Higgins
stood by himself off to the side of the ready room, fingering the
heavy black pistol holstered under his left armpit. Fred and
Higgins had never been all that friendly, but recently the
executive officer had been positively rude. And now Higgins was
going in with the first sweep, instead of leading a subsequent
strike. Fred figured that either the skipper was cautious about
letting him lead another strike so soon after the disaster at
Kwajalein, or he wanted his best pilots in what would probably be a
monumental fighter battle.

“We’re making
the trip in at 180 knots, so we’ll have plenty of time over the
target. Rendezvous on command or at the latest at 8:30, and don’t
get caught alone…”

An enlisted
petty officer came into the ready room and handed Jack a cardboard
chart covered with crude airplane outlines and scribbles. “Okay,”
said Jack, “looks like we’re spotted in launch order with one
exception. Mister Higgins is still on the elevator with a couple of
SBDs in front of him. But they’ll work that out as they clear off
the deck. Check the chart on your way out, gents.” Fred glanced at
Higgins and thought that the uneven spotting of his fighter was an
omen, and he would be killed over Truk, or worse, captured by the
Japanese. It was nonsense, and he quickly felt ridiculous for
thinking it. But Higgins was still acting strange this morning.

“The time is
now 0615. Launch is at 0640. Don’t be late, gentlemen.” A
scattering of laughter swept the ready room and the briefing ended.
Fred sighed, resigned to the waiting, and took out his deck of
cards for another game of solitaire.

Duane Higgins
found his fighter in the dark without trouble. It was squarely on
the number three elevator with two Dauntless dive bombers parked in
front of it. He didn’t wonder how it had come to be that way; that
was not his problem. As the planes were launched in proper order in
front of him, the deck crew then would push the other two out of
the way so that he could taxi forward to the flight line. He
climbed up the wing root and lowered himself into the cockpit,
immediately making the radio connection and adjusting his parachute
pack until it felt moderately comfortable. Goddamn, but it was
dark.

He had known
the skipper for what seemed like a lifetime. How could he think of
him as anyone but the man whose life he had saved at Santa Cruz,
who had saved his life more than once at the ’Canal and Munda? Dark
shadows hurried around his aircraft. A faceless figure appeared
beside him and checked him out, tugging quickly at the straps, then
disappearing. An amplified voice boomed out: “Pilots, start your
engines.” Duane flipped the power switch. The instruments glowed.
He tapped the fuel gauges and the needles rose quickly to the
“full” position. He primed the engine and hit the starter
button.

The
ear-splitting roar of engines in front of him drowned out
everything, even the noise of his own engine as it caught,
sputtered, turned over, caught again, vibrated into steady running.
The r.p.m. indicator danced, fuel and oil pressure rose, cylinder
head temperature began to climb. Duane stood hard on the brakes and
revved the engine, satisfied that all was in order.

What had Jack
been trying to accomplish yesterday in the ready room? Did he
actually believe that a routine like the angry speech he had given
would help their chances on a mission like this? Duane cursed to
himself because he was behind most of the launch, and the exhaust
gases swirled around his plane and entered the open cockpit. Ahead
of him lighted wands began directing planes forward. He checked his
watch. It was 6:35, almost time to go.

Eleanor Hawkins
popped into his mind—incongruously at such a time. It disturbed him
to think he had won her without a fight, that Jack Hardigan didn’t
care whether he married her or not. That maybe he was even glad
Duane was doing it, to get her off his back, as if she weren’t a
good-looking, desirable woman. But maybe Jack didn’t find
any
woman
desirable. But that was as hard to believe as his finding Fred
Trusteau desirable. Duane had tried to imagine what the two men
could have been doing with each other in the darkened BOQ room, but
it was so bizarre that he couldn’t visualize it. How could that
same man be leading this fight of Hellcats toward the Japanese
equivalent of Pearl Harbor? It didn’t make a particle of sense.

They were
launching the first aircraft ahead of him. The rumble of engines
increased as the lighted wand circled, then fell as the Hellcats
accelerated down the deck and climbed into the air. Two, three,
four more fighters followed in rapid succession. Suddenly one of
the two Dauntlesses moved magically away from in front of him, and
Duane saw a man scamper under his wing and emerge with a chock. A
light wand directed him forward. He taxied slowly off the elevator
and stopped just short of the island. Two more aircraft roared down
the deck and took to the air, then it was his turn. The conical
wand bade him run his engine up. He ran it up to twenty-seven
hundred revolutions. The tail tried to rise in the whirlwind
produced by the propeller. He strained to hold the brakes down and
the stick forward. The instruments blurred in the vibration. Duane
leaned out and checked for the hooded deck lights, the wand snapped
downward, and he was off, snatched away by the thundering
engine.

When the
accelerative forces released him, Duane searched vainly for a
horizon to fly by, couldn’t find it, and turned to his instruments.
He climbed at a shallow angle to five hundred feet and began
looking for the rendezvous light. In a minute it appeared
reassuringly, and he flew directly over it, turning right, and
climbing slowly. Tiny, starlike lights were moving against a
background of real stars, and he knew he had found the main body.
He moved in cautiously, constantly checking his artificial horizon
to make sure he was in the proper attitude. He joined up on two
Hellcats he hoped were the other half of his division. Moments
later another dark shape glided in on his left and edged into a
wing position. A few more minutes of circling and they were ready.
As if on signal, the white turtle-back lights they had used to join
up were extinguished, and the whole formation turned ponderously
onto the heading for Truk.

The twelve
Ironsides
fighters leveled off at one thousand feet in tight formation,
without the aid of radio. Duane accepted the fact casually, without
thinking of the difficulty involved. It was what they were trained
to do, so they did it. What concerned him now was the coming fight.
Maybe it was better the skipper had brought him along on the first
sweep; they were sure to find opposition and the ugly blot against
his record from Kwajalein could be expunged. He didn’t care now if
Jack Hardigan went to bed with left-handed, cross-eyed gorillas. He
would show him, and his ace-hero wingman Trusteau, that he could
fly and fight as well as or better than both of them put together.
Duane Higgins settled his body and mind and grimly composed himself
for combat.

The first
intimation that something was wrong came to Jack just as the sky
was beginning to brighten. They were climbing steadily as planned,
and the encircling reef of Truk Lagoon was plainly visible ahead of
them. But just as they were reaching fifteen thousand feet, Jack
noticed Fred Trusteau, on his left wing, gesturing frantically and
pointing over his shoulder. Jack looked back, straining hard to see
into the eastern sky, and was shocked to find only emptiness. The
four aircraft of Division One—he and Fred, Hughes and
Fitzsimmons—were quite alone. He turned back, rubbernecked rapidly
in all directions, but the others were nowhere to be seen. He
looked across at Fred and shrugged exaggeratedly, implying that
there was nothing he could do about it. Fred’s masked face nodded
agreement, and the four Hellcats flew on toward the enemy. Jack
checked his clock. It was 7:40. The lagoon, the humpbacked green
islands of Truk itself crawled across the face of the dark sea
until they were directly below. Spotty clouds, brightened by the
first rays of the sun, drifted across the target. Jack led the
division in a wide circle to the left, thinking they were a few
minutes early, that surely the rest would be along shortly.

Higgins. It was
Duane Higgins again. Although he didn’t want to judge Duane before
knowing all the facts, Jack still realized that his Exec had been
leading the Second Division, and the Second Division led the Fifth.
It was quite possible that they had become separated as they
climbed to altitude in the dark and passed through clouds on the
way up.

But nothing
could change the way Duane had acted for the past two days. His
veiled accusation about himself and Fred left Jack feeling very
cold.

“Bandits.” The
single-word transmission caught him by surprise, made him jump.
“Nine o’clock low.” It was sharp-eyed Fred. Jack looked to the left
and found the enemy—Zekes, still far away but climbing straight for
them. He counted five, nearly invisible against the backdrop of
dark green island and early morning shadow. As he looked, several
more, strung out behind as if they had just taken off, straggled
into view. And Jack knew that if Duane and the rest of the squadron
didn’t show up soon, they’d be outnumbered at least two to one.
Their best choice now was to attack without delay, while speed and
altitude were on their side.

“Let’s take
’em, guys,” he said. “One fast pass, then take it back up. Stay
together.” He leaned the stick over and started down, still looking
for the rest of his squadron. His speed increased quickly and he
checked on Fred, satisfied that Fred would follow him anywhere.
Fitzsimmons and Hughes moved away to get flying room, then went
down, too.

Nose high, the
Zekes struggled for altitude. Jack figured they could flame a few
before the rest closed in and forced them back up. It would be
extremely dangerous, almost certain death, to get below that many
enemy fighters, even though the Hellcats could outclimb the Zekes
without difficulty. He lined up the head formation, three greenish
brown planes in a backwards V. His speed climbed to 350 knots.
Black puffs of antiaircraft explosions began to spot the sky around
him. A messy explosion boiled up on one of the islands below. The
battle was being joined.

The leading
Zeke was turning toward them, still climbing, and his wingmen were
following. It would be a head-on pass at extreme speed. Jack
checked on Fred again, centered the rapidly closing target, and
squeezed off the first burst. Then suddenly he’d passed through the
enemy formation. Without being able to observe the results of the
pass, he pulled up and around in the tightest turn he could manage.
Enemy planes, islands, water, and sky flashed before his eyes until
he could haul the fighter around and level it. He had time to see a
Hellcat (was it Hughes?) twisting tortuously to stay on the tail of
a Japanese fighter, while another Zeke twisted after the first
Hellcat and another Hellcat followed the second Zeke. But he had no
time to watch.