Wingmen (9781310207280) (31 page)

“Any word yet
on where we’re going?” Jack asked Higgins.

“Not
officially,” said Duane, “but it has to be somewhere important. Six
flattops,” he said. “We got six carriers with us this time.”

“I know,” said
Jack. “I saw them on the way in. Any casualties since I left?”

“The airplanes
are in good shape. Schuster had a blowout when he landed this
morning but it’s all right now.”

“Anybody
hurt?”

“Nah. Hughes
came down with appendicitis about a week ago. Doesn’t look like
he’ll be ready for the strike if it’s within a week or ten days.”
Higgins leaned against the bulkhead near the door and looked around
as he talked. He had noticed immediately the unspoken tension that
sprang up the instant Fred had seen him and Jack. He could draw no
conclusions yet, but he did notice that the Skipper’s wingman
couldn’t sit still now. His foot was twitching and his fingers
drummed nervously on his magazine. “And we got a new LSO, too. Guy
named Asper.”

“Experienced?”
(The skipper was ignoring Fred purposely, with effort.)

“Nothing
operational. Seems pretty good, though.”

“What happened
to Harden?”

“Fell into the
gallery deck and broke his ankle.” Higgins laughed. “Clumsy
fool.”

“Has the first
briefing been scheduled yet?” Jack concentrated on his executive
officer, anxious to get back into the swing of command, eager to
know what had happened since he had left. The presence of Trusteau
in the same room caused him a momentary twinge, but on the long
flight out to the task group he had prepared himself for this
meeting by telling himself repeatedly that Fred was just another
pilot—a valuably trained, highly motivated pilot, yes, but in the
end, just another man with whom Jack could be friendly and perhaps
close. It could go no farther. After all, Fred could be gone
tomorrow, like so many others who had crossed Jack’s path.

“Tomorrow
morning at nine, in the wardroom,” Duane was saying.

“The
wardroom?”

“Yeah. The
whole air group’s invited this time.”

“That’s
good.”

The two barbers
finished with their customers at the same time, both sweeping off
the sheets with practiced flair and shaking the clippings to the
deck. Fred climbed down first and started for the door, but he
couldn’t avoid confronting the Skipper, who was heading for the
chair Fred had just vacated. As they passed, Fred had to stop and
move aside for the Skipper. Both were careful not to touch. In that
short interlude, their eyes inevitably met and Fred said, simply,
“Sir,” and nodded. Then he left as quickly as he could, relieved to
see Jack again but anguished at being virtually ignored by him.

Duane watched
the ensign leave and made a mental note to the effect that, yes,
there was something odd between the Skipper and Fred. He moved over
to lean against another bulkhead so he could talk to Jack. One of
the other officers took the second chair; now both barbers were
working again. “One of the crew chiefs missed movement,” Duane said
to Jack.

“Which
one?”

“Pullet.
They’ll probably give him a special.”

“That’s too
bad. He was a good man.”
Just another pilot
, Jack thought.
Remember. Just another
pilot
.

“Come on,” said
Brogan sharply, “get your mind on the game.” The backgammon board
occupied the little desk in the cubicle used for combat debriefing,
in the forward section of the ready room. Brogan had just thrown
the final roll of the dice and moved his last two men home. Fred
still had four markers on the board, two of them in the first
table. “Some player you are,” said Brogan, “after all I taught
you.” He gathered up the dice and swiftly moved the men on the
board back to the starting positions. “Let’s try it again. Come
on.”

Fred sat half
in and half out of the debriefing cubicle. He was perplexed.
Tomorrow was the first day of two days of strikes on the
Japanese-held island of Wake. Tomorrow they were going into combat
for the second time. And all Brogan could think about was how well
he was teaching Fred to play acey-deucy. The ready room was crammed
with men in flight gear and in regular uniform. A dozen
conversations filled the compartment; the noise level ruled out
careful meditation.

“Not another
one?” sighed Fred.

“Come on,” said
Brogan. “It’ll take your mind off things.”

“My mind isn’t
on ‘things.’” Fred picked up the dice cup, shook it once, twice,
then sat it back down on the table. He didn’t feel like playing
another game.

“Aw, shit.”
said Brogan, leaning back in his chair and pushing the board
aside.

Fred could say
nothing. In a curious sort of way, there wasn’t very much on his
mind; the threat of combat held no fear right now. His thoughts,
meager as they were, he thought wryly, swam through a sea of
numbness and sank into nothing. He looked and saw his hand still
holding the dice cup; he tried to move it and found he couldn’t. It
just sat there as though welded to the table, immobilized. There
was something hiding just below the conscious level of his mind; he
knew it was unpleasant but for the moment it had been forgotten.
What could it be?

He had felt
this way since the day of the first briefing. All the pilots had
gathered in the wardroom right after breakfast; the dishes had been
cleared away save for coffee cups and ashtrays, the serving doors
to the galley closed up, the stewards conspicuously absent. The
male spirit of camaraderie in the face of impending danger was very
much in evidence. Then the briefing officer and one of his aides
had dramatically swept the cover off the great easel in front of
them, and the pilots had leaned forward to see the map. It showed a
single little atoll called Wake. The feeling that they were part of
something great had gripped everyone, it seemed, but Fred. He had
just felt numb; probably he would have felt the same had the map
shown the island of Honshu.

Wake was
something they could get their teeth into, the briefing officer had
said; it was something the Japs had taken from us at the start of
the war. As the vital statistics of the enemy base were reeled off
(fighter strength, radars in operation, search patterns flown
through the area, airfields, installations, guns, and on and on)
Fred couldn’t help wondering if one day the map actually
would
show
Honshu. And then he wondered if he would still be alive to see that
day. And would anyone really care if he wasn’t?

“Look,” Brogan
was saying, “you gonna play or not?” Then Fred heard his own voice
saying, “No.” Simply “No,” with no explanations. Explanations were
too hard to find right now. He let his mind slip further down, down
toward the unpleasant something that lay submerged there.

“Listen up,”
someone was saying. That voice. That was it. “Quiet,” it said,
controlled and strong, deep and resonant. It was the skipper’s
voice. Lieutenant Commander Jack E. Hardigan. “E” for Errol, as in
Flynn, only without the pencil-thin mustache. It was going on, and
he, Fred Trusteau, the skipper’s wingman and holder of the
seventeen-minute record, had already missed part of the speech.

“…submarine.
It’s official now. They just sent word. There will be a
lifeguarding sub.” Other voices, indistinct and babbling, broke in,
but the skipper’s voice swept them aside. “Hold it down.” A space
of relative quiet. “The sub will be stationed to the southeast of
Wake at a distance of about eight miles. That’s southeast, in the
direction of the arrowhead. If you’re going down, follow the
arrowhead of the island and get as far from the reef as you can.
Stick together. Like glue. If you see someone else going in, mark
the position on your map and get word back to home base. They can
get word to the sub and he can be picked up. Okay?”

Fred found
himself turning now, turning to get a look at the skipper standing
in the front of the ready room, surrounded by rapt faces.

“We’ll go over
all this in detail tomorrow morning at prelaunch. I’ll answer all
your questions then. Till then, I want to see all you flyboys in
the rack getting some sleep time. You’ll need it. Now get to
it.”

He was a good
man, the skipper was, thought Fred. Such a good man. He cares for
his men like they were his own….

“Look, fella,”
said Brogan. His voice had a cutting edge to it, and he reached
over the table and grabbed Fred by the front of the shirt, pulling
him over the playing board, close to his face. “I don’t know where
you’re at right now, Trusty, and I don’t give a shit. If you’re
worried about the next couple of days, you better drop it. I ain’t
shitting you, Trusty. You drop it. Nothing’s gonna happen to you
’cause you fly wing on the old man and nothing happens to him.
Ain’t nothing gonna happen to me ’cause I haven’t beaten every one
of the suckers in this air group at acey-deucy, and by jolly Jesus
I intend to before I buy it. Now wake up and play it, fella.”

He released
Fred’s shirt and Fred sank back into his seat. He became aware
again of the roar and rumble of voices in the ready room, and he
knew no one had heard what was just said. He picked up the dice
cup. “You’re wrong,” he said.

He saw Brogan
open his mouth to speak but heard instead another voice. It was
loud and insistent. “Come on, guys. We got everybody here now.
It’ll only take a second.”

Fred put down
the dice cup and looked.

“Jesus H.
Christ,” said Brogan. He pushed back his chair and stood. “Come on,
Trusty,” he said, all traces of toughness gone now from his voice.
“Let’s do it for the suckers and get back to the game.” He pulled
Fred up by the arm and they went to stand up against the wall with
the other pilots.

“Where’s the
skipper?” someone asked.

“You guys in
front, down on one knee. That’s good.”

“Push it
together. Push it together.”

“Let the
skipper in. There you go. Okay, Trusty, here you go. Hold it up.”
Fred found himself, not unwillingly but hardly aware of what he was
doing, standing against the status board in the front of the ready
room, holding a painted wooden plaque—next to Jack Hardigan. An arm
reached around him and grasped his shoulder, pulled him close.

“That’s good,
guys. Turn the plaque more this way, Trusty.” Fred looked down at
the squadron insignia—the suitless Jack of hearts brandishing a
sword, and the skipper’s name emblazoned on it. He glanced at the
skipper, realizing that it was his arm that held him. He looked
away. A flashbulb popped and brilliant colors danced in front of
his eyes.

“Don’t move
guys. Just one more.”

Again the
flash, then the crowd of men pushed and broke apart and the arm
left his shoulders. Without looking around him, Fred made his way
back to the debriefing cubicle, laying the insignia on the table
next to the backgammon board. He picked up the dice cup.

“Now you’re
talking, fella,” said Brogan, sitting down and eagerly pulling up
close to the board.

“Sure,” said
Fred. Everything was perfectly clear to him now, as if it had all
been illuminated by the exploding flashbulbs. To die tomorrow might
be a good thing—a way out. He wanted to say something dramatic,
like they did in the movies. Something like, “I just have a feeling
about this one, Smitty,” or, “One of us isn’t going to make it back
tomorrow.” But he knew Brogan would think him very foolish, so all
he said was, “Roll them dice.” And he rolled them.

Jack glanced over his
shoulder, in the direction of his ten fighters; beyond them, light
on the horizon and the fading stars told him dawn had arrived.
Looking back to the southwest, in the direction of flight, he
searched hard for a sign of the target but saw nothing more than
ocean and sky. He settled his mind once more into the routine of
waiting for the action he knew would come.

The premission
briefings meant so little now, Jack thought. The entire air group
had gathered in the wardroom to hear a lieutenant commander point
to a map of Wake Island and say: “Here is your target. Destroy it.”
That was fine, Jack thought. A force of six carriers could
certainly do a great deal of damage to a small island like Wake.
But what then?

He remembered
the stirring, shaky-knees speech that an admiral named Spruance had
given prior to their epic mission at Midway: “You, gentlemen, are
quite possibly all that stand between victory and defeat for the
forces of our country…” And another, read over the address system
by the captain of the
Enterprise
: “On August seventh, this force will
recapture Tulagi and Guadalcanal Islands which are now in the hands
of the enemy.” Apparently this mission to Wake was to be another
Marcus Island operation—a raid and nothing more. It angered and
confused Jack to think that in the coming clash (and he knew there
would be opposition) aircraft and pilots might be lost just so that
the brass back in Hawaii would have a better idea as to how many
carriers could operate in a single task group. The entire affair
sat wrong with Jack, even though he knew it was wrong to question
orders, even to himself. A vindictive air group commander did not
make things any better.