write down information from the charts to feed into the navigation attack computer, While the pilots cut up large charts and put together a small strip chart of the route which they’d carry in the cockpit, the bombardiers, applying the skill acquired through countless hours of practice, would sketch predictions of what they believed the target would look like on the radar screen, given the planned angle of approach and altitude. Because the aircraft would approach the target at 500 knots, over 800 feet per second, the bombardier would have only a moment to pick it out from among the hundreds of objects that reflected radar energy and cluttered the scope. A mistake here meant that the bombs would strike in the wrong place, and the whole mission would be for nothing.
McPherson had been a wizard with the scope, Jake remembered. He had had an uncanny ability to pick out a building or checkpoint from a confused glob ground clutter. The problem wasn’t the bombing, Jake thought, but the unimportance of the targets assigned “Well, at least it won’t go on much longer,” Sammy said, breaking into his thoughts.
“What do you mean?”
“Haven’t you heard? Kissinger just announced ‘Peace is at hand.” It was on the closed-Circuit television last night. The war’s almost over.”
Jake felt as though he had been punched in the stomach.
“Oh, shit,” Sammy said. “You and Morgan were flying when they announced it. Didn’t anybody tell you?”
“No.” It was a whisper.
“Christ, man, I’m sorry. I am really sorry.”
THREE
Both fire-warning lights glared a brilliant red,the plane was out of control. The hydraulic gauges still showed plenty of pressure. The nose slammed up and down with an evil perversity, and the machine roll left. He jammed the stick full right, but the left roll continued. He looked at Morgan. His head was gone. Blood spurted in little fountains from the stump of his neck. The canopy glass was gone on the right side, and the wind howled through the cockpit. The stick was firm, yet the plane did not respond. His body slammed back and forth as the G forces and wind tore at him With the altimeter racing down, he fumbled for the ejection handle between his legs. It wasn’t there! His hands went to the primary handle over his head, but it too was gone!
He couldn’t tear his eyes from the wildly spinning altimeter. Maddened by the roar of the hurricane wind, he screamed.
The scream woke him. The darkness and the pain were real. Unable to orient himself, he fought the sheets. One fist struck the bulkhead, and the pain sobered him. He fumbled for the bunk light switch.
He kicked the sheets aside and put his feet on the floor. Sweat covered his brow. He lit a cigarette with trembling hands. ‘Three o’clock in the morning. Sammy Lundeen was flying somewhere over North Vietnam. Morgan McPherson was in a body bag in the ship’s morgue.
He had drunk too much bourbon. His head throbbed and his hands still shook. He levered himself upright and fumbled for some aspirin in the medicine cabinet. He wet a face towel and lay down again with the cool cloth on his forehead. He left the light on. He needed the light.
He concentrated on the sounds of the ship working in the seaway. Metal rubbing on metal, the great weight of the ship rolling ever so gently back and forth as it met the swells, the rhythm of movement. He could also hear the sounds of men and machinery. From the engineering spaces below his room came the ringing of hammer blows. He silently cursed the fellow with the hammer, some boilertender, no doubt, delicately adjusting a precision instrument.
But his mind kept coming back to the flight, obsessively. That bullet that got Morg could have smacked me instead, he thought. Two inches lower and it would have gone under his chin and got me in the ear. Smack. I wouldn’t even have felt it. Just smack: then nothing.
The silent scream started. He felt his guts heave. Stop. Stop! You think about this stuff too much and you’ll be cold meat, just like McPherson.
He rolled out of the bunk, grabbed his towel, and went down the passageway to the showers. Water was being conserved because of recurrent problems with the ship’s evaporators; a notice posted on the door announced that showers were permitted only from 0600 to 0700 and again from 1800 to 1900. Jake ignored the sign. He tried the shower faucets, found they worked, and stood for ten minutes under the tap. Fuck the navy!
And fuck the asshole who can’t keep the goddamned evaporators working!
He dressed in a clean khaki uniform. Before he put on the trousers, he rammed his fist down each pant leg to break up the starch. He went by the ready room decided he wasn’t in the mood for people, and wandered up to the hangar deck. Aircraft 505 was on Elevator two. Two mechanics, on a work stand along side the fuselage, were replacing the damaged canopy pane. One of the men, a first class petty officer who Jake knew by sight, turned toward him.
“Too bad about Mister McPherson.”
Yeah, too bad.
“Not another bullet hole in this whole airplane Mister Grafton. We spent half an hour looking to see if they hit you anywhere else.”
The pilot just nodded and went on. He walked out onto a sponson on the port side amidships. The only light came through the open hatch from the hangar bay, Two large capstans stood ready to take the lines when the ship tied up portside to a pier. Jake heaved himself up on one. He could see the lights of a destroyer frigate several miles away - The wind was heavy with the smell of the sea.
After a half hour or so he went back inside the skin of the ship and climbed the ladders to the 0-3 level, the deck above the hangar bay and immediately below the flight deck. Instead of salt air, he smelled paint and the lubricating oil on the hatch hinges. Following a maze passageways, he located the junior officers’ bunkroom where McPherson had lived.
The door was open. Two navy-gray steel footlockers sat on the floor on one side of the eight-man bunkroom Little Augie Odegard and his bombardier, Joe Canfield, were packing clothes and personal effects into the lockers.
“How’s it going?” Jake muttered as he took a seat on the bunk opposite the pilot.
“Packing out Morg’s stuff. Rotten job,” said Little Augie. “It all has to be packed up so they can ship it home to his wife when we get to the Philippines in three days.” This duty always fell to the roommates of the dead or missing, which was why the two men who made up a crew were not allowed to live together in a double stateroom.
Canfield sat at McPherson’s desk going through the letters, magazines, and souvenirs that McPherson had accumulated in the last six months.
Canfield’s nickname was Big Augie because he was two inches taller than his diminutive pilot and the men bore a remarkable resemblance to each other, even though the pilot was white and the bombardier black. “Morg was squeaky clean, Jake. Not even a porn mag or a letter from an old girlfriend. Man, whoever has to clean out my desk is going to get an eyeful reading my stuff.” He opened another envelope, verified it contained a letter from Morgan’s wife, then replaced the letter in the envelope and added it to a large pile that would eventually go in one of the steel boxes. “Finding out how squared away Morg was is having a beneficial effect on my morals.”
“He was a good guy , Jake said.
‘Sure going to miss him.” Little Augie eyed Jake with a raised eyebrow.
“So how’re you really doing, shipmate?”
“Doing okay. The skipper gave me the night off, but I’ll be on the flight schedule tomorrow.”
“Only a few more days before we go to Subic Bay, Big reminded them.
“I’m just going to lay around the pool and drink gin and tonics,” Little Augie said.
“This time of year it may rain like hell.”
Jake watched the two men work. Little Augie meticulously folded the uniforms, underwear, and civilian clothes before putting them in the boxes. When Morgan McPherson’s personal effects were gone and the paperwork done, the men of the squadron would have finished burying him. When would Jake get him buried?
“Do you guys think the war is about over?”
