eject’?”
“And have you pull your chestnuts out of the fire and go back to the ship without your bombardier) They’d laugh me out of the navy.”
‘We damn near bought the farm.”
“Well, we didn’t. That’s what counts.” The bombardier put his head back in the headrest and closed his eyes.
Jake Grafton climbed down the ladder from the cockpit, holding on carefully with both hands. His leg felt wobbly as he followed the tall figure of Virgil Cole. Too spent to remain standing, he asked Cole to do the intelligence debrief and went straight to the ready room where he collapsed into a chair. After a minute he decided he needed a cigarette, so he moved enough to retrieve the packet from his left sleeve pocket.
When Lundeen came in he fell into the chair next to Jake’s. Grafton sketched out the Mig encounter. He was soon surrounded by half a dozen men who fire questions and laughed nervously at his answers.
“The Mustangs got that Mig,” Marty Greve said.
“‘Don’t let him get away!”‘ Lundeen shrieked. They all thought this was hilarious.
“Now I know how Jonah felt just before the whale swallowed him,” Jake said.
“And how did Cole do” Lundeen asked when the laughter faded.
“The fucking guy’s a tiger,” said Jake.
The nickname “Tiger” became firmly attached to the quiet bombardier. “It fits him,” Jake would say to his military friends with a smile.
SIXTEEN
When the movie started, Jake went down to his state room and undressed, then headed for the shower. The water felt good, and he was tempted to let it run while he soaped up but thought better of it.
Lathered from head to toe, he opened the taps again The water squirted, slowed to a trickle, then to individual drops. Someone, somewhere on the ship had secured the water. Jake sagged against the side of the stall. The soap suds on his body made little popping noises.
Back in his stateroom, he sponged off the soap wit water from the sink.
After he used his towel to mop up the puddles around him, _he put on clean underwear and sat down at his desk.
He held his hands under the light; they trembled like those of an old man.
He had paperwork to do but couldn’t summon up the energy or interest to do it.
He looked into the shadows of the room and thought of Callie. What was she doing tonight? Dancing with some congressman? Their worlds were so different. Someday he would take her to the hills of Virginia, where the air was clean and smelled of pine.
Back in Virginia, winter would have closed in. The trees would be bare, the leaves on the ground sodden after the late autumn rains. The cold would keep the squirrels in their nests until midday.
The game birds would be lying in their secret places, the deer curled up in theirs. He remembered the deer, so graceful, so cautious.
The does would jump from a bed beneath a laurel or pine bough, bound through the stark trees and perhaps pause at a safe distance and stare back at him, an intruder.
All would be still. The only sounds would be his breathing and his footfalls on wet leaves. He would find a stump or a log and sit with a cigarette or chew of tobacco. After a while the breeze -would chill him. It would come out of the north or west, a gentle wind that would drift through the trees and flow up the hollows, seeking the gaps in the hills. Eventually the gathering clouds-would thicken, and he would see a few lazily falling flakes, borne on the wind. He had sat through many snows in the forest, when the millions of airborne crystals would shrink the world to less than a hundred feet. In silence nature would transform a landscape. But soon the cold would seep through his clothing, layer by layer. He’d be forced to rise, to stamp his feet and swing his arms wide as his breath took form in vapor.
He relived the night’s mission again. Waiting for the engine to light as the Intruder approached the stall-that was the longest moment of his life.
Shutting the engines down had been a major mistake, the kind he had told Callie he didn’t believe he would make. The more he thought about the course of his life, the more he felt he was losing control. Worse yet, he wondered if anyone was really in control. Somebody had to be planning the war! But the targets were shit. Lives were risked and lost, changing nothing. And the war went on.
He pounded the starch out of a clean uniform and put it on.
He took his leather flight jacket from a hook near the door and, locking the door behind him, set out down the passageway thinking about party headquarters in Hanoi. Would Cole go? Would Steiger help them find it? That Cole . . . he’SAReal piece of work That was clear after the hop this evening.
But what if he says no? But he’ll say yes. Sure he will. But what if he doesn’t? He ran into Mad Jack in the passageway in front of the Sick Bay. “Why aren’t you in the ready room watching the movie, Grafton?”
“I’m not interested.”
“Rough hop tonight, huh? My prescription is a movie and a good night’s sleep.”
“Sure, Jack, sure. A few giggles and forty winks. Roger that.” Jake kept walking and didn’t slow until he had turned the corner.
Cole listened to Grafton, his face not revealing a clue to his reactions.
They had just finished a night tanker hop. The two men were alone, drinking coffee in the dirty-shirt wardroom. When the pilot finished, Cole asked, “Why do you want to do this?”
“We need to hit something significant, something that’ll convince them to talk seriously at the peace table.”
“Is there any such target?”
“There might be. Party headquarters in Hanoi. The leadership. There’s a chance it might work. I think it’s worth the risk.”
“What do you want me to go?”
“We need Steiger’s help with the planning material. I lost my temper with him in the wardroom before we went into port last time. Things are a little tense between us. I think he’ll help if we approach him the right way, but it’ll be chancy.”
“I’ll talk to him,” said Tiger Cole.
“If Steiger says no and tells somebody, your talking to him will be an affirmative act that could get you zapped the same as me.” Jake shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Anyway, you better think this through before you say a word to Abe. We could get courtmartialed for even suggesting we’re gonna bomb an unauthorized target.”
“The same risk you ran a few minutes ago when you started this conversation?”
“Yeah,” Jake said, flushing slightly.
Cole laughed, a sound like a gate creaking on rusty hinges. “The odds on the two of us dying in bed improve a lot if we’re court-martialed.”
An hour later there was a knock on Grafton’s stateroom door. Jake opened the door to Cole and Steiger.
“Abe has some questions he wants to ask you,” Cole said as the two men found seats.
“Did Cole tell me right? Do you really want to bomb Communist Party headquarters?”
“Yeah. That’s right. We want to kick them in the nuts for a change.”
Abe took off his glasses and cleaned them with a handkerchief. He took his time, inspecting them carefully to make sure they were spotless. Jake passed him a can of warm Coke. He opened it and took a long drink. “Why do you want to do this, Jake? Why take the chance someone will figure out it’s you who bombed the reds in Hanoi?”
The pilot rubbed his face with his hands. He looked at Cole, then at Steiger. “We have to kick harder. That’s all. We just have to kick them as hard as we can.”
“Are you two planning on making a career in the navy?” Steiger asked. The pilot shrugged. “Cole?” The
