“Are you going to be flying with us?”
“I’m flying copilot for a while. They told me Deets has malaria.”
“You know Cats, huh?”
“I don’t know a damn thing about flying boats. I figure I can learn, though.”
Hoffman wasn’t thrilled, I could see that. If I were him, I would have wanted experienced people in the cockpit, too.
Oh well, how tough could it be? It wasn’t like we were going to have to land this thing on a carrier deck.
HOFFMAN!
This ensign wasn’t just wet behind the ears — he was dripping all over the deck. Our new copilot? He looked like he just got out of the eighth grade. What in hell were the Zeros thinking?
That wasn’t me you heard laughin’, not by a damn sight. It wasn’t very funny. This ensign must be what’s on the bottom of the barrel.
It was like we had already lost the war; we were risking our butts with an idiot pilot who thought he could win the war all by himself, and if it went bad, we had a copilot who’s never flown a seaplane — hell, a copilot who oughta be in junior high — to get our sorry asses home.
I patted those fifties, then crawled aft, out of the bow compartment, before I embarrassed myself by losing my breakfast. There seemed to be a tiny breeze through the cockpit, and that helped. That and the sunlight and the feeling I wasn’t closed up in a tight place.
There were lots of discolored places on the left side of the fuselage. I asked Hoffman about that. He looked vaguely surprised. “Patches, sir. Japs shot up the Witch pretty bad. Killed the radioman and left waist gunner. Mr. Modahl got us home, but it was a close thing.”
Hoffman went aft to get out of the airplane, leaving me in the cockpit. I climbed into the right seat and looked things over, fingered all the switches and levers, studied everything. The more I could learn now, the easier the first flight would be.
Everything looked straightforward … no surprises, really. But it was a big, complicated plane. The lighting and intercom panels were on the bulkhead behind the pilots’ seats. There were no landing gear or flap handles, of course. Constant speed props, throttles, RPM and manifold pressure gauges … I thought I could handle it. All I needed would be a little coaching on the takeoff and landing.
The button on the pilot’s yoke that fired the fifties was an add-on, merely clamped to the yoke. A wire from the button disappeared into the bow compartment.
I gingerly moved the controls, just a tad, while I kept my right hand on the throttles. Yeah, I could handle it. She would be slow and ponderous, nothing like a Dauntless, but hell, flying is flying.
I climbed out and stood on the float watching the guys finish loading and fusing the bombs. Three men were also sitting on the wing completing the fueling. I climbed up the net to the tender’s deck and leaned on the rail, looking her over.
Modahl came walking down the deck, saw me, and came over. He had sort of a funny look on his face. “Okay,” he said, and didn’t say anything else.
He leaned on the rail, too, stood surveying the airplane.
“Nice plane,” I remarked, trying to be funny.
“Yeah. Commander Jones says we can leave as soon as we’re ready. When the guys are finished fueling and arming the plane, I think I’ll have them fed, then we’ll go.”
“Yes, sir. Where to?”
“Jones and I thought we might as well run up to Buka and Rabaul and see what’s in the harbor. Moon’s almost full tonight — be a shame to waste it. Intelligence thinks there are about a dozen Jap ships at Rabaul, which is fairly well defended. We ought to send at least two Cats. Would if we had them, but we don’t.”
“Buka?”
“No one knows. The harbor might contain a fleet, or it might be empty.”
“Okay.”
“Tomorrow morning we’ll see if we can find Joe Snyder.”
“Where was Snyder going the night he disappeared?”
“Buka and Rabaul,” Modahl replied, and climbed down the net to check the fuses on the weapons.
TWO
While the other guys were doing all the work, I went to my stateroom and threw my stuff in the top bunk. Another officer was there, stripped to his skivvies in the jungle heat. He was seated at the only desk writing a long letter — he already had four or five pages of dense handwriting lying in front of him.
“I’m the new guy,” I told him, “going to be Modahl’s copilot.”
He looked me over like I was a steer he was going to bid upon. “I’m Modahl’s navigator, Rufus Pottinger.”
“We’re flying together, I guess.”
I couldn’t think of a thing to say. I wondered if that letter was to a girl or his mother. I guessed his mother — Pottinger didn’t strike me as the romantic type, but you can never tell. There is someone for everyone, they say.
That thought got me thinking about my family. I didn’t have a solitary soul to write to. I guess I was jealous of Pottinger. I stripped to my skivvies and asked him where the head was.
He looked at his watch. “You’re in luck. The water will be on in fifteen minutes. For fifteen minutes. The skipper of this scow is miserly with the water.”
I took a cake of soap, a towel, and a toothbrush and went to to visit the facilities.
POTTINGER:
I’d heard of this guy. They had thrown him out of SBDs, sent him to PBYs. I guess that was an indicator of where we stood on the naval aviation totem pole.
The scuttlebutt was this ensign was some kind of suicidal maniac. You’d never know it to look at him. With flaming red hair, splotchy skin, and buckteeth, he was the kind of guy nobody ever paid much attention to.
He also had an annoying habit of failing to meet your gaze when he spoke to you — I noticed that right off. Not a guy with a great future in the Navy. The man had no presence.
I threw my pen on the desk and stretched. I got to thinking about Modahl and couldn’t go on with my letter, so I folded it and put in in the drawer.
Modahl was a warrior to his fingertips. He also took crazy chances. Sure, you gotta go for it — that’s combat. Still, you must use good sense. Stay alive to fight again tomorrow. I tried to tell him that dead men don’t win wars, and he just laughed.
Now the ensign had been added to the mix. I confess, I was worried. At least Harvey Deets had curbed some of Modahl’s wilder instincts. This ensign was a screwball with no brains, according to the rumor, which came straight from the yeoman in the captain’s office who saw the message traffic.
In truth I wasn’t cut out for this life. I was certainly no warrior — not like Modahl, or even this crazy redheaded ensign. Didn’t have the nerves for it.
I wasn’t sleeping much those days, couldn’t eat, couldn’t stop my hands from shaking. It sounds crazy, but I knew there was a bullet out there waiting for me. I knew I wasn’t going to survive the war. The Japs were going to kill me.
And I didn’t know if they would do it tonight, or tomorrow night, or some night after. But they would do it. I felt like a man on death row, waiting for the warden to come for me.
I couldn’t say that in my letters home, of course. Mom would worry herself silly. But Jesus, I didn’t know if I could screw up the courage to keep on going.
I hoped I wouldn’t crack, wouldn’t lose my manhood in front of Modahl and the others.
I guess I’d rather be dead than humiliate myself that way.
Modahl knew how I felt. I think he sensed it when I tried to talk some sense into him.
Oh, God, be with us tonight.
I sat through the brief and kept my ensign’s mouth firmly shut. The others asked questions, especially Modahl, while I sort of half listened and thought about that great big ocean out there.