Whip (21 page)

The cylinder head temperature gauge was closing in on the red zone and no one knew if the thing would hold together.

To compound matters they couldn't fly directly along the coastline, but had to veer out to sea. They could barely make out Cape Ward Hunt far to their right, and they had quiet prayers for the rain showers between their slow-moving formation and the land, for southeast of Cape Ward Hunt, along that coast, lay the Japanese airfield at Buna, and another slightly inland at Dobodura. Finally the extension of land containing Oro Bay came into sight and they found their first break in the clouds. Broken clouds, about seven-tenths. With the engine of Patillo's airplane still marginal, Whip, who had finally emerged from his stupor, elected to take a run due south, climbing steadily, where the Owen Stanley Range offered a shallow cut in the high mountains.

"Buck, you think it will help to dump some weight?" Whip called to Number Twelve.

"Ah, roger, Lead. We've been doing just that. Throwing everything over the side. It might help."

"Good deal, Buck. Let us know if anything changes."

A short burst of laughter. "You bet your sweet ass we will. Twelve out."

The Japanese had done more damage than they'd realized. In Number Five both Ted Ashley and Barney Page, the pilots, had been wounded, and their navigator, for Christ's sake, was doing the flying. Then, again, that wasn't so bad. Pop Yaffe was an old-time flier who could no longer pass the medical exams to qualify as a pilot, but he had more time than anyone else in the squadron with the possible exception of Muhlfield.

Jim Whitson in Number Six had a gunner more dead than alive, and there was no question but that both airplanes would have to go into Seven-Mile to get medical attention for their wounded. As for Buck Patillo there wasn't any doubt where he'd be landing with only one engine, and that was at Seven-Mile, with its longer runway and lower altitude.

They took moderate chop going through the clouds as they climbed, but even the crippled airplane under Patillo's control had it made. Somehow his engine was holding, giving him the power he needed to climb high enough to cross the ridge. Once he'd flown through that saddleback it was downhill the rest of the way.

The clouds thinned out beyond the southern flanks of the Owen Stanleys. It was a matter of clasping all the luck the men could gather to themselves and just hope they didn't run into any Zeros as they straggled for home.

Then they had Seven-Mile in sight, and everybody eased aside to give Buck Patillo all the room he needed. "I don't know if she'll hold together long enough to make it in," he radioed to Whip. "She's cutting in and out. I've got the field in sight and we're hanging in there."

Lou Goodman tapped Whip on the shoulder. "Can he bail out his crew?" Whip passed on the question to Patillo.

"Negative. My turret gunner's got a busted leg. He took a slug back there." Patillo paused. "The other troops have decided to stick with it. If one guy can't go, they say no one goes."

Goodman had listened to the exchange. "Damnit,
order
the other men to bail!"

Whip turned slightly in his seat. "They won't go, Lou."

Goodman's face was stricken. "I know, I know," he said quietly, as much to himself as to the other man. He loosened his belt, then threw it off entirely, half standing between Whip and Alex to get a clear view of what was happening.

He saw the first two bombers well ahead of them. Buck Patillo was playing it by the numbers, exercising every option available to him. A high, steep approach. All the extra air speed he could get to go along with the one faltering engine. Gear down as late as possible, keeping up the flaps until the last moment.

Pop Yaffe in Number Six was holding well behind Patillo. The old man with two wounded pilots on his hands was flying as well as anyone else in the outfit, and he too was playing it by the numbers, watching Buck Patillo ahead of him, giving him plenty of room, but in position to land at once to get medical attention for his wounded.

On the long final with one engine, in a crippled airplane, Buck Patillo lost his remaining engine. Lost it. Just like that. No one knew how or why or what were the reasons, for there might have been ten out of a hundred
why
it went. Something died inside that engine, or tore loose, or exploded, or flamed. No one knew and no one would ever know all the other things that might have happened because it happened too fast, when Buck was too low.

Pop Yaffe thought he saw a puff of smoke from the running engine, but he wasn't sure about that. It could have been something breaking away from the airplane, a piece of wreckage hanging on until that moment and letting go. Whatever. It didn't matter.

The bomber fell off on one wing, a great metal bird mortally wounded, bereft of its ability to remain in the sky. It whirled about crazily, only once, and then it smashed into the ground and exploded.

That was all. Just that sharp drop of the wing, the wild whirling tumble, and the huge ball of flame and wreckage geysering outward in all directions. There was nowhere else for Pop Yaffe to go, so he kept boring in, and the shock wave of the blast rocked the B-25

as it passed overhead and everyone inside had that gruesome moment of smelling the upwelling smoke and fumes from the airplane that was even at that instant incinerating their close friends.

Pop Yaffe brought in the B-25, fighting back tears, his leathery old face working fiercely as it sought to contain his emotions. He swallowed hard and rode the bomber down to earth, the wheels rocking gently on the soft runway. By the time he shut down the engines the meat wagon was waiting to remove Ashley and Page. By the looks of the two pilots there hadn't been a moment to lose.

Or to win. First Lieutenant Ted Ashley died twenty minutes later.

Pop Yaffe went off somewhere to cry it out.

"Don't tell
me
how to fight my goddamned war! We did everything we were supposed to do out there today, damn you… We were told we'd find barges and we found three destroyers and two troopships and… and, you fat son of a bitch, we sank those troopships and we sank two of their goddamned destroyers and left the other son of a bitch a hulk and —"

Whip Russel sucked in air, his eyes blazing, the muscles in his cheeks twitching. He was possessed of maniacal anger, throwing his arms about, gesturing constantly, his body trembling with the rage that seemed to fill him as quickly as it burst free. He glared at Colonel Lou Goodman who stood by the mouth of the cave they used for operational headquarters on Kanaga Field. The men were off to mess or sleeping or just sitting and staring vacantly into space. Except these two, and they were hammer and tongs at one another.

"You know, I just don't believe you. I mean, what the hell has got into you? Lou Goodman, the man with the smarts, the genius in creating new airplanes out of wreckage. The man who
understands
, for good Jesus' sake!" Whip stopped in midstride, almost stumbling, his own inertia threatening to carry his body forward despite his stopping. The blazing glare was still there in his eyes. He was furious and puzzled and angry and upset, and everything that had happened today was bad enough, I mean, Jesus, what happened with Psycho, and
then
with Buck Patillo and his whole crew, and, and now
this
…

"You sound just like you've come from MacArthur's headquarters," Whip said, trying to scowl and sneer at the same time. It came out in an angry, defiant mask that seemed a stranger to Lou Goodman. "I mean, for Christ's sake, you
flew
the mission out there today! You
know
what we did."

He pointed to the paper Lou held by his side. "That's your message from FEAF, isn't it?

Shit, yes, don't show it to me, I know what the hell it says. Twenty-two out of thirty barges, right?"

Goodman nodded.

"And it has a couple of things to say about those enemy troops out there, doesn't it?" He sucked in air. "Well, doesn't it,
goddamnit
!"

Goodman gestured idly with the paper. "You know it does, Whip, but —"

"Don't
but
me! Think of what that paper says that your message boy copied down.

Think
about it! Intelligence estimates, what, Lou? The Japs had four to five thousand troops on the water today, right? And we sank their troopships and we sank twenty-two barges and we killed somewhere between two and four thousand people and sank four ships and… and" — he forced himself to slow down — "and how many fighters? How many Zeros, Lou? Fourteen? Or maybe it was fifteen or even more because we shot the shit out of a couple of them that might never make it home again, right?"

Again that lunging motion, that sudden sweep, the unexpected turnaround, like a ball bouncing off an invisible wall in the middle of the cave. Energy rampant, turning the very air blue and crackling all about him. Then, with shocking effect, the shouting evaporated, the voice under control, but much more intense than before. If a snake could talk it would have this coiled intensity, the words stabbing air like a flicking, forked tongue.

"Think about more than the numbers on that paper, Lou.

Do you know, do you have
any
idea, what a couple thousand troops means when you're trying to kill them
on the ground
? What the hell is it with you?
Really
, I mean." The ferocity began building up again in his eyes. "Aren't you even going to answer me, for shit's sake!"

"Yes," Goodman said, nodding. "I'm going to answer you, and I have a few things of my own to say. Your job is to go after the major targets. Ships, large groups of men, ground installations, airfields; whatever. It is not to make a grandstand play and fight Zeros.

Because sooner or later the Japs will tumble to you, they'll know we're a high-button outfit. For quite some time we're liable to be one of a kind. We're now the deadliest force this part of the world has ever seen. And we can hurt the Japanese and hurt him bad, so long as you're stopped short of going crazy and fighting him on his own terms, just the way he'd like you to fight him. Every time you take on his bully boys in those Zeros, Whip, you're playing into his hands. If you shoot down thirty Zeros for every bomber you lose, and you lose six airplanes, you've given the enemy a tremendous victory, because losing those six B-25s might just let most of a convoy get through to where it was going in the first place. And those kinds of odds, Major, they
stink
."

Whip pursed his lips and stared up at the colonel. "You, ah, think it would have been better if we'd run today? From the Zeros, I mean?"

"Better,
and
a hell of a lot smarter. All you had to do was pull up into the clouds. The Zeros could never have touched us. And we wouldn't have lost two planes and their crews."

"Don't you think I feel inside me what happened today to Psycho, to — "

"That isn't the goddamned issue and I'll thank you to stay the hell off it, Major."

Whip threw up both hands and shrugged. "Okay, okay.

Let's cut the deck, then. I take it you don't want me or this outfit taking on the fighters?"

"That's the size of it. You cut your way through them if you have to, but you don't play tin soldier games when you
don't
have to."

"I don't buy it, Lou."

A silence hung heavily between them. "I could make it a direct order, Whip."

"Uh huh. You could. But I don't think you will."

"You never know."

"You do know where you can stick that kind of order, don't you?"

Lou Goodman's face was rock solid. Nothing showed, no sign, no clue. His eyes were dark glass. Finally he shook off the cold anger that had gripped him. "There's always something else."

Whip's voice was flat, toneless. "Would you really do that, Lou? Go to General Smyth or maybe even Whitehead, or beyond him, say, all the way to MacArthur? You could do that, I know. Go to the top man and make him choose between me and thee?"

"Shit, no, Major. I don't play the game that way and you know it."

Whip faced him. "Then how would you play it, Colonel?"

"I could always remind you of the man with whom I shook hands, the man who gave me his word."

Goodman threw the message to the cave floor and walked out.

21

They flew three missions with no more than eight bombers going out each time. The B-25s needed rebuilding to some extent, repairs almost everywhere. Waiting for the desired strike force of at least eleven bombers, which met the carefully prepared combat maneuvers of Major Whip Russel, would have meant no missions at all.

Each combat strike drew Whip further from the intensity that had lashed the 335th into shape as the best bomber force of its size or kind in the southwest Pacific. There had been the overwhelmingly successful victory against the enemy attempt to land heavy troop reinforcements in New Guinea. Then, his falling out with Lou Goodman, the delayed but inevitable crunch of
knowing
that Psycho was gone forever and finally the delays in getting his treasured strike force back into the air as a single team; all these brought on a slow metamorphosis from vibrant combat leader to a man who brooded more than his pilots could remember. He had lost none of that vital driving force, none of his fierce living of life. Lou Goodman had typed him weeks before:
wolverine
. But open ferocity was giving way to smoldering anger.

Only Lou Goodman saw the fretful chaining of psychic energy within the man about whom all their lives turned. Fortunately, they had not had to cross swords again on the matter of tactics of the Death's Head Brigade. It took two days for the outfit to lick its wounds, and the same weather front that gave such low ceilings over their last combat area now offered its reprieve in heavy rain over their home base. It gave Goodman the opportunity to prove that his runway draining at Kanaga Field worked, and they knew that they would no longer be operating from a quagmire. Whip managed a Silver Star for Psycho, but even he fretted over what he called a tinsel epitaph for so dear a friend.