The Fly Boys Read online

  The Zeros scattered and began to climb. The P-38s climbed as well. The G-force flattened Steve against his seat back as the twin-engined P-38s rose like rockets, easily gaining the ceiling advantage over the Zeros.

  “Break into teams,” Wohl ordered. The P-38s broke into six pairs. “You’re on your own, hombres. Good hunting,” the major said calmly. “Gold, follow me in.”

  Steve followed as Wohl pushed his P-38 over into an attack dive toward a Zero that did a barrel roll trying to get away. Wohl expertly banked his aircraft in tandem with his target, and needed to fire only a single burst from the 20-millimeter cannon and four .50-caliber machine guns clustered in his fighter’s nose to open up the Zero’s burnished silver belly. Gutted, the smoking Jap fighter tumbled out of the sky.

  “Nice shooting, Major,” Steve said, thinking, When do I get my turn?

  “Just keep watching my back, old son,” Wohl murmured.

  All around Steve the sky was a hornet’s nest of activity as the P-38s tangled with the Zeros. The deep blue heavens became slashed with bold black brushstrokes of smoke as waxed Jap fighters plummeted to the sea. Steve remained dutifully glued to Wohl as the major went after another target. The Zero corkscrewed as Wohl hosed it down with tracer rounds. An instant later it cracked open like a seed pod blossoming into fire.

  Steve glanced into his rear-view mirror, and then craned his neck to check the blind spots behind him. He saw a pair of Zeros angling in. He keyed his throat mike. “Major, we got company—”

  “Tell you what, old son, you’ve been a good boy so far. Why don’t you have at ‘em? Over.”

  “Can I have ‘em both, Major?” Steve asked eagerly.

  Wohl’s laughter filled Steve’s headset. “Sure, old son.” He banked hard left, skidding steeply away as the lead Jap’s twin 20-millimeter cannons and a brace of 7.7-millimeter machine guns begin winking fire. “Take two, Lieutenant. They’re small.”

  The brace of Zeros were closing in fast as Steve worked his speed brakes and hauled back on his throttles and stick to roll up and over. The Zeros overshot him, streaking past still flying wing to wing. Steve leveled off and sighted in on the lead plane. He pressed his triggers. The staccato chattering of his quartet of .50s played counterpoint to the thudding of his 20-millimeter cannon. The gunfire reverberated inside his cockpit as his rounds hammered sparks from the silvery wings and fuselage of the Zero. The wounded Jap plane yawed in preparation for a desperate skid to safety, but then Steve’s rounds blew off its propeller. The crippled Zero slammed into its companion, and then both disappeared in a crimson fireball.

  “Two for the price of one! Well done, Lieutenant,” Wohl said. “Now come on back into position as my wingman.”

  Fuck that, Steve thought. He now had seven kills. There were still a half-dozen Zeros in the sky. With a little luck, he could get three more, to become a double ace. He keyed his throat mike. “Major, your signal is breaking up. Please repeat orders, over.”

  “I said get back into position as my wingman. Over.”

  “Major, there must be something wrong with my radio. I’m not receiving.”

  “Now you listen, you son of a bitch—”

  Steve turned down the gain until the major’s voice was barely audible. No way was he going to quit now. Maybe it was the fact that this was the first action he’d seen since being shot down, or maybe it was the ribbing from the other guys he’d just taken about how he’d been born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Whatever it was, Steve knew that he just had to wax a couple more tails. He realized that he would likely catch hell for it, but he was willing to take the heat later on in exchange for more kills now.

  Steve opened up his throttles and pushed his stick forward, chasing after a fleeing Zero skimming low over the sea. He quickly closed the distance between himself and his target. He was less than a hundred feet above and behind the Jap when he began firing, whittling away the Zero’s tail. What remained of the Jap fighter tore itself to pieces cart-wheeling across the surface of the sea.

  “Lieutenant Gold, this is Major Wohl. Return to position. I repeat—”

  Steve pulled up and began to climb, on the lookout for fresh meat as Major Wohl’s tiny voice continued buzzing in his ear like a baleful conscience. Steve ignored it. It had been a long time since he’d seen combat, and now it felt just too good to stop. A Zero darted across his nose and Steve instinctively kicked rudder to try a difficult deflection shot. He managed to rivet a generous burst into the big red circle painted on the Zero’s side, evidently cutting come of the Jap fighter’s control cables. The Jap pilot slid back his canopy and bailed out as his fighter fluttered out of control like a flame-singed moth.

  “Damn, I never ever saw anybody shoot like that,” Steve heard Major Wohl blurt out.

  He was about to acknowledge the compliment when he remembered that his radio was supposed to be broken. Next victim, Steve thought, feeling evil. Just one more and he’d be a double ace.

  He looked around for a target, but the dogfight was over. All twelve P-38s were still flying, but the sky was cleared of Zeros. Oh well, being able to paint four “meatballs” on the side of his airplane was better than nothing, Steve thought. The honor of becoming a double ace would have to wait until next time.

  “Let’s go home,” Major Wohl said.

  Steve breathed a sigh of relief. The major didn’t sound too pissed. Maybe his cutting loose like he did was going to turn out to be okay.

  The flight back to Tobi passed quietly. Steve was one of the last to land. As he taxied his P-38 past the palms and sandbagged machine-gun emplacements, he saw Wohl talking to the operations officer, Captain Mader. As his plane approached the hangars, the two officers both paused in their conversation to look in Steve’s direction.

  Neither man was smiling. Steve guessed that the shit was going to hit the fan after all.

  Wohl went stalking off, and Mader was climbing up on Steve’s wing even before his props had stopped turning.

  “What kind of crazy stunt did you pull up there?” Mader demanded as Steve raised his canopy. “I’ve never seen Wohl so hot.” Mader was a pudgy, moon-faced man with light brown hair and military-issue wire-rimmed eyeglasses.

  “The major was just probably beside himself with joy,” Steve said. “I just waxed four Zeros.”

  “No shit? Congratulations, I guess,” Mader said reluctantly. “But whatever you did up there, Wohl ain’t too happy about it. I’m supposed to check out your radio and get your gun camera film developed. You’re to report to his office pronto.”

  Steve glumly nodded. “I’ll just change out of my flight suit.”

  The sunlight glinted off Mader’s specs as he shook his head. “The major said pronto, Lieutenant.”

  (Two)

  Steve Gold stood at rigid attention while Wohl, seated behind his desk, scowled at him. The major’s telephone rang. Wohl snatched up the receiver. “Hello? Yeah, Mader! What have you got?”

  Major Wohl’s office occupied the rear half of a plywood hut with a canvas roof. The walls were painted light green, and were taken up with filing cabinets, silhouette identification charts of enemy planes, and a large map of the Pacific theater of operations. On the wall behind Wohl’s beige metal desk was a grouping of framed reproductions of Frederic Remington prints: grizzled, bearded cowpokes were chasing Injuns across the prairie and otherwise generally having themselves a high old time back in the Old West. Steve wished he could join them. That son of a bitch noncom who sat out front shuffling papers for the major had kept Steve waiting while Wohl showered and changed and had himself a bite to eat. Now Steve, tired and hungry, was standing at attention in his sweat-soaked overalls, stinking of gas and cordite fumes, his .45 in its shoulder holster a chafing burden against his ribs, as the major continued talking on the phone.

  “Yes, Captain,” Wohl said. “I understand. Just as I thought! And what about the gun camera film?”

  The major was in his midthirties. He had pale blue ey
es and thick brown hair which he wore in a waxed brush cut. His face was colored by the sun, except for where the rays had been blocked by his flight goggles. The pale circles were like a mask around his eyes and made him look like a raccoon.

  As the major listened to what Mader had to say, he glanced murderously at Steve, who was careful to keep his eyes front, studying his reflection in the Remington prints’ glass.

  Standing six feet tall and weighing one-seventy, Steve knew he was almost too big to fit into a fighter’s cramped cockpit. He kept his weight down—and kept himself strong —with calisthenics and by not eating much, which was no big sacrifice considering the quality of front-line chow. There wasn’t much he could do about his height, except grin and bear it when he had to fold up like a pocketknife to tuck into his fighter. Fortunately, his concentration was such that he forgot about his discomfort and everything else except waxing the enemy once he was in the air.

  He had always been big for his age. His size had always made him seem older than he really was. These days, so did his profession. His blond hair was cropped to brush-cut length, but worn unwaxed so that it fell forward, flat on his skull. His skin had been burnished by the sun, and the long hours spent scanning the sky from his cockpit had etched squint lines on either side of his hawk’s nose, at the corners of his narrow slash of mouth, and around his brown eyes.

  Steve snuck a glance at Wohl. The major had picked up a pencil and was jotting notes to himself as he sat with the telephone receiver cradled between his shoulder and ear. The beige enamel paint had begun to blister and peel off Wohl’s desk due to the tropical heat and humidity. The major was absently picking at the marred finish, stripping off paint curls and dropping them to the muddy plywood floor as he continued talking to Captain Mader.

  “Set the projector up. I’ll want to view Lieutenant Gold’s film. I’ll be over in a few minutes.” He hung up and glared at Steve. “Mader says there’s nothing wrong with your radio.”

  Steve resisted the urge to shrug. “I guess it got better, Major.” He allowed himself a ghost of a smile, just to test the waters.

  “You think this is funny, Lieutenant?”

  The ghost of a smile took a powder. “No, sir.”

  The major jerked his thumb over his shoulder toward the Remington prints. “You-all think that you’re one of them ornery Old West gunslicks who didn’t need nobody? You think you can charm your way out of the fact that you disobeyed my orders in a combat situation?”

  “May I speak frankly, sir?”

  “Go ahead.” Wohl’s eyes were just about bulging out of his head, he was so mad. He was scratching at his desk as if it itched.

  “What I think, sir, is that since I shot down four Japs, the major ought to be congratulating me and putting me in for a promotion and maybe a medal, not chewing out my ass,” Steve concluded, remembering at the last possible instant to add, “sir.”

  If flashing eyes were machine guns, Wohl would have been scoring direct hits, blowing Steve out of existence. But then the major closed his eyes for a second and took a deep breath. As he exhaled it seemed that the anger and tension went out of him. He gestured toward a straight-back chair against the wall. “Drag that over and sit down, old son.”

  Steve did as he was told.

  “You want a drink?” Wohl asked, opening a desk drawer.

  “Anytime, sir.”

  Wohl brought out a bottle of gin and two glasses. Steve’s heart sank. He was a bourbon man, and failing that, rye whiskey or scotch. He hated gin, especially straight up, but there was no way he was going to further antagonize the major by refusing what he figured was a peace offering.

  Wohl poured two fingers into each glass, and slid one across the desk toward Steve.

  “Thank you, sir,” Steve said. As Wohl knocked back his drink, Steve, forcing himself not to gag on the smell of juniper berries, flung the gin against the back of his throat and swallowed it down, shuddering.

  “Another?” Wohl asked, reaching for the bottle.

  “No, sir! Thank you, sir.”

  The major nodded and put the bottle away. “Now then, let me run through this with you from the beginning. First off, you-all did shoot down four Jap fighters. Your gun camera film confirms this, and I eyeballed you making that one incredible shot when that bandit crossed your flight path. Congratulations on some fine shooting and flying. Just about the finest I’ve ever seen.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Steve said. The gin was rolling around like a ball of mercury in his empty belly.

  “But I’m still very pissed off with you.”

  Steve nodded distractedly. That wallop of gin combat-patrolling his gut was making him feel like he was going to upchuck. “Sir? Excuse me, sir. May I smoke?”

  “Go ahead,” Wohl drawled.

  Steve pulled out a rumpled package of Pall Malls and a battered, nickel-plated lighter. He extracted a cigarette, smoothed out the worst of its hooks and bends, and lit it. He inhaled deeply. The tobacco seemed to settle his stomach.

  “You suggested that instead of raking your ass over the coals I should put you in for a promotion. No way would I do that, Lieutenant.”

  “But—”

  “Shut up,” Wohl said wearily. “Just sit there and smoke your cigarette and listen. You were my wingman. A wing-man’s sole purpose in life is to sit like a fucking boil on his leader’s ass, watching his back while he does the shooting. A wingman needs to be reliable, because if he isn’t reliable, he’s going to cause his leader to be distracted worrying about him, and a distracted fighter pilot is a dead one. A wingman needs to be disciplined. He’s flying so close to his leader that he’s got to respond in an instant to his leader’s moves. If he doesn’t, he’s going to get shaken loose from his leader, or worse yet, crack into him. Finally, a wingman has got to have willpower. The willpower to deny himself personal glory on behalf of the greater good. He’s got to be able to say to himself, ‘Okay, maybe I’m not going to get any kills, but my leader will, and by watching his back I’m serving the greater good of the squadron?’” Wohl paused.

  “Major, I don’t see what all this has to do with me being denied a promotion. I mean, okay, so what if I played the lone wolf up there? I’m alive and well to tell about it, so what’s the beef?”

  Wohl stared hard at Steve. “You really have no idea what I’ve been talking about, have you?”

  “Sir, with all due respect, maybe what you’ve been talking about doesn’t apply to me. Rules were made to be broken, if you’re good enough to get away with it.”

  “You don’t think you have limitations, Lieutenant?”

  “Not in dogfighting, sir,” Steve grinned. “If you’ll pardon me saying so.” He was careful to keep his tone respectful so Wohl wouldn’t misunderstand. He didn’t feel he was being arrogant. Just truthful.

  “Reliability, discipline, the will to see beyond one’s self-interest to the greater good,” Wohl ticked off the attributes on his fingers. “Those are the same qualities an officer needs. By your insubordination today you proved to me that you don’t have those qualities, Lieutenant. You’ve got everything it takes to be a superb fighter pilot. You’ve got none of what it takes to shoulder the responsibility of being in charge of other men. That is why I will not put you in for a promotion.”

  Steve struggled to control his temper. He couldn’t help thinking that a lot of this was just sour grapes; that the major was merely jealous of his air combat skills. “Sir, I personally don’t see it that way, but I’m sorry I’ve disappointed you. I sincerely apologize for not fulfilling your expectations, sir.”

  “You just don’t get it,” Wohl repeated. He looked tired. “Ah, fuck it. I tried, right?” he sighed. “What the hell, you’re only nineteen. You probably think you’re going to live forever. I was nineteen once, believe it or not, but when I was nineteen I was jerking sodas and trying to wax co-eds, not knock Jap fighters out of the air….” he trailed off, shaking his head.

  “Sir, I’m kind of en
joying the war,” Steve shrugged. He stubbed out the remains of his cigarette in the tin ashtray on the major’s desk. “I guess I’d rather dogfight than anything.”

  Wohl seemed not to have heard him. “Lieutenant, this was the first chance I’ve had to see you in action. Now that I have—I’m going to look at your film in a few moments, but it’s not going to show me anything I don’t already know about you—I want to talk to you about your future.”

  “Sir?”

  “I want to transfer you out of this squadron.”

  Steve was appalled. “Begging the major’s pardon, I said I was sorry for what just happened. Look, I promise that it won’t happen again—”

  Wohl held up his hand. “Slow down, old son. This isn’t a punishment I’m talking about. It’s … well, I guess you’d have to say that it’s a kind of reward. There’s a new, elite fighter squadron being formed. It’s going to be the only Army Air Force unit based at Santa Belle.”

  “Where’s that, sir?” Steve asked.

  Wohl stood up and went to the map on the wall. He pointed to a brown dot near New Georgia Island in the Solomons chain. “Santa Belle is a hot area, Lieutenant. It’s only recently been taken from the Japs by the Marines.”

  “I don’t get it, sir,” Steve said. “If the webfoots are holding the island, they’ll have their own fighter squadrons there.”

  “Command doesn’t explain everything to me, Lieutenant,” Wohl scowled. “I do know the Army doesn’t like the idea of the Navy and the Marines getting all the limelight for the Solomons campaign. This elite squadron will represent our branch of the service during the push to close the ring around the Jap stronghold of Rabaul.”

  “Sounds like a public relations stunt to me,” Steve scowled.

  “I guess it is, in a way,” Wohl agreed. “But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. For instance, the Army is going to equip this new squadron with its latest fighter, the Republic P-47D Thunderbolt. The 348th at Lae has just gotten some of them,” Wohl said. “You might have seen them flying. They’re calling the P-47 the Jug.”