Wingmen (9781310207280) (32 page)

Jennings had
chewed him out again the night before, catching him as he was
taking off his pants, turning down his bunk. CAG could make him
look so ridiculous, he thought, and for such little reason. This
time it was haircuts. Jack had spotted Brogan leaving the wardroom
a few hours earlier, and he obviously needed a haircut. Jack
intended to mention it to him. Why did CAG have to bring it up
then—the night before a strike launch—when Jack needed the sleep,
the time to himself? The only reason Jack could fathom was hatred:
The man hated him, probably wished him dead. What else could it
be?

They had gone
together then, through the darkened passageways of the carrier to
Brogan’s stateroom to find him and inform him that he needed a
haircut. And Jack had looked stupid again because he couldn’t find
Brogan’s stateroom in the maze of passageways and compartments in
the forward part of the ship. And when they finally did find it,
Brogan of course wasn’t there and no one knew where he was. So CAG
raised his voice in the corridor and informed Jack in front of
pilots of his own and other squadrons of just exactly what he was
to do about the situation. Jack found it enormously embarrassing.
Just the thought of the air group commander stalking through the
ship looking for pilots with long hair was harrowing.

Takeoff had not
gone well, either. A rain squall swept in just as they began the
launch, and the first aircraft, a Hellcat flown by Bigelow, had
gone off the deck at an angle and exploded on contact with the
water. Although he couldn’t be sure, the awful display of burning
gasoline flaring quickly in the dark and passing rapidly astern
virtually assured Jack that Bigelow was dead. He could only assume
that one of the destroyers in the rear would make a search. He had
been the third plane in the air and so had no idea how the rest of
the strike had fared. Looking back now, he could make out the
aircraft of Trusteau, Fitzsimmons, and Patrick—bulky shadows
weaving and bumping around in the dark. He could see no others. For
all he knew, they could be alone, heading for certain death at the
hands of scores of savage Zeros.

The sky was
turning a lighter shade of blue now, revealing piles of puffy
clouds clinging close to the surface of the ocean—probably they
wouldn’t be able to see the target until they were directly over
it. Jack checked his instruments and his heading, satisfied that
they would be there soon. It was almost comforting to be so close;
the sooner they arrived, the sooner they could leave. But why did
so many things have to clutter up his mind at a time like this?

Fred Trusteau
hung off his right wing like an ever-present specter, reminding him
of feelings he was unable to control. Just this morning, only
minutes before launch, he had stepped into a head to relieve
himself—a faithful prestrike ritual—and was confronted by a Dumb
Dilbert training poster hanging over the urinal. The poster showed
the fatuous trainee hopelessly lost over an empty ocean with a
setting sun, pondering his navigation notes—“Was that 320 or
230?”—while his cartoon plane wept great tears. Jack immediately
thought of Fred and the error he had discovered on the training
cruise battle problem. Fred had probably saved a number of lives
when he did that. That good, warm feeling had welled up and then
been pushed back down, with great effort. Now Jack had a vague
feeling that something was wrong. He looked out at Trusteau’s
number thirteen and the indistinguishable figure that sat in its
cockpit. It would go away, he was sure, in time. Everything would
be all right.

Far ahead of
them now, in the rapidly brightening sky, Jack caught a movement in
the air. Tiny specks flared like burning matches and began a long
slide toward the ocean, leaving barely visible streaks of delicate
smoke in the sky. He knew at once that another squadron had arrived
before them and that the surprise had been lost. He checked his
radio. It was on the correct frequency. He pressed his throat mike.
“Bogeys, twelve o’clock low,” he said, “close it up.”

He looked over
his right shoulder, surprised at how light the sky had become, and
saw quickly that all of his fighters were indeed there. They were
strung out for at least a mile, badly out of formation. Even as he
looked, though, they began to close it up. Trusteau’s Hellcat moved
inward and locked itself below, and to the right of his wing. The
helmeted, goggled figure in the cockpit looked up at him and waved
slightly. Jack turned back and scanned the sky, the clouds, the
ocean below. A movement below caught his eye and he quickly
identified the white brush marks of surf on coral reefs. They had
arrived.

Ahead of them,
the smoke trails drifted in the winds. The planes from the other
squadron had disappeared into the clouds below. Jack scanned
quickly from left to right, low to high, seeing no aircraft. Below
the formation, a triangular atoll appeared sporadically through the
clouds. This was Wake. There was a small fire burning on the main
island. Jack began a turn to the right to keep his flight over the
target, and the other fighters dutifully followed.

“Tallyho. Three
o’clock low.”

Jack recognized
the voice of Lieutenant Bradley. He turned immediately and saw the
rear division of four Hellcats begin a steep right turn and head in
unison toward the clouds below. He touched his mike button. “Banger
Two Three stay high. I’m heading down to take a look.”

“Roger one,”
came the reply. Brogan’s voice. The man who needed a haircut. Jack
pushed the stick to the right and forward, saw Trusteau and the
other two aircraft follow, and felt his speed build. The first four
Hellcats were tiny crosses against the cloudy backdrop as they
pulled down and away.

“There,” came
Bradley’s voice, “to the right. Three of ’em. Take the one on the
right, Jimbo.” The voice had an intense, concentrated sound to it,
a quality the radio could not mask. As Jack watched, two of the
blue Hellcats peeled off to the right and vanished into the
clouds.

“Watch it,
Hermy. Stick in there.”

“Holy Christ,
look at that bastard burn.”

Wispy shreds of
ragged white began to whip past Jack’s cockpit; then the great mass
of cumulus leaped up and engulfed his plane. He glanced for his
wingman, saw only cloud. He flew for long seconds in the unreal,
cotton-candy world of zero visibility; then suddenly they were in
the clear again, bursting into bright sunshine, blue water
sparkling a mile below them. Far ahead and below, a moving tangle
of toylike airplanes twisted and turned. As he watched, one of them
flamed brightly and fell like a stone toward the water.

“I can’t cover
you, Brad.”

“Hey, Rube,
come on down.” Bradley again. “There’s more here than we can
handle.”

Jack watched
the approaching dogfight, concerned with covering his rear. He was
about to call for Brogan, but Trusteau’s voice interrupted.
“Bandits, two o’clock high.”

Jack searched
quickly, found three dark green, square-winged fighters plunging
from the clouds, heading for the same fight he was. “Let’s take
them, guys,” he said. “Two Three come on down. We need you.”

He corrected
his course to the right to close the three enemy fighters—they were
Hamps, he thought, clipped-wing Zeros—checking as he did so that
his three wingmates were still with him. Trusteau clung there like
a shadow, imitating his every move with tight precision. That was
good, very good. Jack adjusted his goggles. His face was slippery
with sweat. It was time to ply his chosen trade.

The dogfight
off Wake was short but appallingly violent. To Fred it bore no
resemblance to the stories of gallant, skillful fighter pilots
jockeying for position and saluting the fallen vanquished. It was
much more a question of who shot first and had someone upstairs to
cover his tail. When he spotted the three Hamps diving toward
Bradley’s division, he knew he would have a chance to score a kill.
All the ugly thoughts of dying were gone; now he had a job to do,
something he had been trained for. It was tremendously exciting to
be doing it.

The three Hamps
appeared not to notice the Hellcats closing on them from their own
left and above, but Fred could see that they were rapidly walking
up on the lower Hellcats led by Bradley. They flew in a small
backwards V, as though it were standard practice for a wing leader
to have two wingmen, unlike Fred’s service, where it was one for
one. The lead Hamp had a wide orange band around his fuselage,
forward of the tail. Fred caught a movement out of the corner of
his eye and turned to see Patrick and Fitzsimmons pulling away,
moving to the right to trap the enemy fighters between them and
Fred and the skipper. That was good. They had them now. A few more
seconds…

The lead Hamp
was firing; little flashes of light were jumping from his wing
edges and smoke was trailing behind. The Hellcats in his sights
began turning and diving frantically. And now the skipper was
firing, too, although Fred felt sure they were still out of range.
He looked through his gunsight, and yes, they were still far away,
too small to fill the sight ring. The skipper’s tracers leaped
across his field of vision, and suddenly the Hamps were turning,
too, away from them, to the right. One of the wingmates was slow to
turn and fell out of formation. The Hellcats ate up the distance
and caught them on the water, when they could dive no more.

The first to
die was the straggler who had fallen out of formation. Patrick and
Fitzsimmons jumped him as he turned hard to the right, and the
shells cut a swath through the water, then chopped the Hamp almost
in two, knocking off a wing and sending the wreckage spinning
crazily into the sea. The lead Hamp with the orange band continued
straight, keeping temporarily out of range. But the remaining
wingman turned as if panic-stricken, to the left. That allowed Fred
and the skipper to catch him. Fred could see immediately what was
happening. He opened the distance between him and Jack by swinging
wide to the right.

It was a wise
move. The Hamp, still turning to the left, saw the skipper and
frantically went to the right. He entered Fred’s gunsight, and Fred
squeezed the trigger, not really thinking he could make any hits.
The shells tore into the water in front of the Hamp and he weaved
back to the left, like a doomed sparrow, right into the skipper’s
guns. The deadly concentration of gunfire hammered the little
fighter into the sea. It struck the top of a wave like a skipped
stone and bounced, scattering debris into the air, caught a wingtip
in the water and cartwheeled in, throwing a geyser of spray into
the air higher than Fred was flying. Fred dodged the geyser,
looking for the third and last Hamp. He was rewarded by the sight
of a burning, falling plane and two Hellcats circling above
him.

“Whooee
doggies.” It was Brogan. “The cavalry has arrived.”

Fred found the
skipper climbing and circling, and latched himself onto his right
wing. Brogan and his wingman disappeared below. Fred began to
breathe easier and thought:
So this is what it’s all about
. He noticed
an odd smell, a chilly sensation. His flight suit was absolutely
drenched with sweat.

“All Banger
aircraft rendezvous,” said Jack through his throat mike. He and
Trusteau had climbed back to their original altitude well above the
cloud cover over Wake. None of the other Hellcats of his squadron
were in sight yet, but he knew they would show up soon. The
rendezvous point and altitude had been chosen well in advance. He
hoped passionately that all ten would make it back. He had seen
aircraft going in, but only from a distance. Some of them might
have been his. One, at least, he didn’t have to worry about:
Trusteau had clung to his wing with professional tenacity all the
way through the short tangle that had ended in the death of the
three Hamps.