“Time to go see Nixon,” Daisy said.
24
THE EXIT
When they arrived at work, Dunn was noticeably absent. Daisy slipped into the radio room, the break room and even cracked the door in Nixon’s office looking for him. Fluff looked happier than she had in weeks. “I hope he’s at home sweating over whether or not we got him on film.”
Rather than confront Nixon on the spot, Daisy slipped him a note that said they had an urgent matter to discuss, and could they meet in his office stat. Ten minutes later, he tapped her on the shoulder without uttering a word, then continued on toward his door.
“You three have something you want to tell me?” he said.
“May we sit, sir?” Betty asked.
He motioned toward the rickety chairs. “Be my guest.”
Daisy began. “Colonel Nixon, as you may or may not know, we’ve had some trouble with a thief stealing our lingerie from the clothesline while we’re sleeping. Last night we set up an operation to catch him in the act.” She produced the photograph, holding it for all to see. “I managed to get a photo of the man in question, sir. It was Lieutenant Dunn.”
“Give me that,” he said.
She slid the photo onto his desk. Nixon inspected the photo for some time, shaking his head. Fluff shot Daisy a look. He leaned back in his chair and looked over at the photo of him and his wife for what felt like five minutes. “I’ll take care of it. Now get back to your stations,” he said at long last.
It was a start, but nowhere near enough.
“There’s one other thing,” Daisy said, worried she might be pushing her luck.
“And what’s that?”
“Would you have a look at my filterer test score? I think it was graded incorrectly.”
She left out by Dunn.
“Why would that be?” Nixon said, shaggy eyebrows bunching together.
“Because I am certain that I aced it, and I think there was a mistake. I need to know for sure so that I can do my job correctly.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
Out in the hallway, Betty said, “He better do something about Dunn and your test or I’m going to raise hell.”
“I guess we just wait and see if he has a conscience,” Daisy said.
“And if he doesn’t?”
“Then we pay a visit to Nimitz.”
Fluff looked deflated. “Maybe I should just quit and everyone can just forget about this whole mess. I hate to put you all through so much trouble,” Fluff said.
“This is not your doing. This is Dunn. And we’ll make sure he does not get away with it.”
Somehow.
* * *
Dunn showed up two hours later with pink on his cheeks, as if he’d been out running or playing tennis—or drinking. He stayed on the far side of the room and spent a lot of time jotting down notes and avoiding people. Daisy kept waiting for Nixon to say something to him, but Nixon went on business as usual. Air traffic was higher than normal, so that kept the place humming. On several occasions, Daisy had to talk herself down from marching over and giving him a thick slice of her mind.
When she had all but given up hope, Nixon suddenly walked over to Dunn and nodded toward the office. Dunn followed like a naughty dog who had just eaten his owner’s new shoes. Betty gave her a sly smile. The two men had been gone for thirteen minutes and forty-three seconds, when a uniformed military police officer arrived at the door. Eyebrows raised around the room.
“Can you please direct me to Colonel Nixon’s office?” he asked Major Oscar.
Once the man disappeared into the office, Betty said, “I’d love to be a fly on that wall in there right now.”
“I hope this is what we think it is,” Daisy said.
Fluff looked hopeful. “It has to be.”
Moments later, the door opened. Dunn stepped out first—in handcuffs. Daisy stared in disbelief, heart pounding. In order to get out of the building, Dunn would have to march clear across the floor, passing the plotting table. Daisy stood. Then Betty. Then Fluff. And then Dunn put one foot in front of the other, moving within a couple of feet of the girls. His head hung, and there was no sign of that cocky demeanor he’d become so famous for.
“Good riddance,” Fluff said quietly, as he passed.
Nixon watched from his office. Daisy turned and gave him a small salute. He nodded and shut the door. At that moment, even though they were underground, Daisy could have sworn the clouds above parted and a huge ray of sun was warming the hillside.
* * *
With Dunn gone, Daisy was able to concentrate on plotting again, and Fluff had returned to her usual bubbly self, flitting around the room, checking in on everyone and infusing the place with her magic. Major Hochman, who had been working in the field, replaced Dunn. All the gals were thrilled. Early on, he’d made an impression with his kind nature and Southern twang. He was patient, polite and brilliant. Half of the WARDs developed schoolgirl crushes on him, and Fluff was not immune. Fortunately, Hochman was happily married and spoke often of his wife, Jean, who brought them freshly baked coconut macaroons on a regular basis.
Time moved slowly for Daisy, who was on pins and needles with any news out of the Pacific, where an operation was supposedly taking place, and also still anxiously awaiting a response from her mother. Mail was unpredictable these days, so she had no idea if Louise had even received her letter. If only they could speak face-to-face.
“You should confront him,” Betty told her one day.
“I wanted to wait and hear what my mom had to say first. Montgomery is not a reasonable man, and he dislikes me already. I want to be armed with information when I go there.”
“Finding the horse would help,” Betty said.
“I realize now none of this is about losing Moon. I think he wants me out of his life because I remind him of my father. Nothing I could do would win him over. Nor would I want to.”
“He is Walker’s father.”
Daisy threw up her hands. “Why does it all have to be so complicated? My life before this was hard, but at least it was simple and predictable. Work, take care of Mom, dive.”
“Would you really trade Walker for simple and predictable?” Betty asked.
Daisy still didn’t think Walker was hers to trade, but she knew the answer.
* * *
On May 12 they moved from Little Robert to the new Information and Control Center. With everything hush-hush, the WARDs were told only two things: that they’d be able to walk to work, and that the place was code-named Lizard. It was good news after months of riding in the back of that stuffy truck and breathing exhaust, or navigating slippery wooden planks across the mudflats, in blackout conditions.
At 0700, Major Hochman and Major Oscar met everyone from their shift in front of the banyan tree at the end of their street and herded the women up the road. Daisy had never heard so many mynah birds in her life. Slanted sunlight spilled through the clouds, forming scattered pieces of rainbow. A typical spring morning, with weather that couldn’t make up its mind. Daisy felt the same way.
“You have to wonder why they call it Lizard,” Fluff said as they walked.
Betty chuckled. “I bet I could guess.”
“If there are lizards in there, I’m rebelling.”
Over the course of the past months, it had become increasingly clear that Fluff had an aversion to geckos. Whenever she saw one in the house—and there were plenty—she ran the other direction or asked Daisy or Betty to usher the filthy creature outside. Daisy loved geckos. As it turned out, so did Blanche.
A little over five minutes later, they arrived at the foot of a rocky hill. Hochman and Major Oscar stopped and waited for everyone to catch up.
“Don’t tell me we’re going to have to climb this mountain every day to get to work,” Thelma said loudly.
&nbs
p; Hochman smiled, smooshing together his freckles. “You won’t be going over—you’ll be going in it.”
Major Oscar walked straight up to the rocks—which upon closer inspection had a large metal door carved into them—and pressed. The door gave way, revealing a well-lit tunnel that sloped downward and away from where they stood. “Welcome to Lizard, ladies. Watch your heads on the entry.”
They stepped in. After thirty yards or so, the tunnel opened up into an enormous room. Freshly inked outlines of islands and grid lines and code names stood out against the shiny white board, which was considerably larger than the last one. There was also a giant grid with O‘ahu in the center up on the wall.
Fluff spun around, taking it all in. “Well, I’ll be!”
“We must have done something right to have earned this,” Betty said with a big grin.
Major Oscar showed them their new snack room, which had an L-shaped bar and full kitchen. You could even purchase snacks from a young private manning a cash register. Several radio and equipment rooms branched out from the main plotting room, with an interceptor room solely to plot US fighters sent out in pursuit of unidentified flights.
Daisy felt a certain measure of comfort knowing they were in an underground bunker, but the cool and thick air would take some getting used to. The smell of paint lifted off every wall and surface. After they put away their helmets and gas masks, Hochman and Major Oscar brought them back to the main room. The balcony stretched across one whole wall, and Nixon and several of the liaisons were setting up desks and testing equipment.
“Sir, I have your first shift ready to go,” Hochman told him.
Nixon addressed them solemnly. “Morning, ladies. I wish I had better news to greet you with, but word has come in from the Coral Sea that we’ve lost one carrier, and another is badly damaged. There are conflicting reports, but the word is also that the Japanese have suffered heavy losses. Far more than we have.”
The room swayed. All the excitement of seeing their new digs quickly fell away.
“Can you give us any more than that?” Peg asked.
“We’re having a full briefing this afternoon, so I should know more tomorrow.”
Daisy could not wait for tomorrow.
“Please sir, can you at least find out which carrier before then?” she asked.
There were three carriers out there, they knew that much from radio reports. The Yorktown, the Lexington and the Enterprise. Nixon nodded. “I’ll see what I can do.”
Meanwhile, Hochman walked them through the new equipment and changes in protocol and showed them where to find spare markers and pokers. It felt like moving from a tree fort in the yard into a real house. But Daisy heard only two out of three words he spoke.
Just before Hochman finished, Nixon came to the edge of the balcony and held up his hand. “I have another announcement.” He looked straight at Daisy. “Miss Wilder is being promoted to filterer as of today. Please congratulate her on the highest test score, which was apparently read wrong. She’ll be helping to ensure plots are accurate, so we need to get her up to speed.”
Cheers sprang up around the room. Fluff and Betty surrounded her in a group hug, with Fluff whispering that Nixon had almost redeemed himself. Lei came up and pinned the red bar with a blue stripe on her collar. Thelma did not look thrilled. And yet all Daisy could think about was the damn carriers.
Betty tried to reassure her. “Just because we lost a carrier does not mean we lost all the men aboard.”
Sinking an aircraft carrier was no easy feat. Which meant it must have been some fierce battle. Which also meant aircraft loss. In this war, pilots were expendable. Everyone was expendable. And with each passing day, casualties accumulated on all sides. What would it take to win? she wondered.
Being a filterer meant working side by side with Thelma. Not a great prospect. Ever since their conversation about Daisy’s father, Thelma had mostly left her alone, for which Daisy was thankful. She supposed everyone had a limit of coldhearted meanness.
In a side room, Major Hochman sat Thelma, JoAnn and Daisy down and explained the new IFF—Identification Friend or Foe—radar that would be installed in US aircraft assigned to combat. “The genius of the new device is that it picks up our radar beams and sends back a strong echo that shows up on oscilloscopes here on the ground. So we know instantly if the aircraft is one of ours.”
“Whoever came up with that should get a big fat medal,” JoAnn said.
He then closed the door, pulled up a chair and sat down backward on it. “Now, Nixon is going to have a talk with y’all soon, but I want to warn you about another possible raid on Pearl Harbor. The boys at Hypo are saying somewhere between May 15 and May 20. Which means you ladies are going to have to step up your game.”
Three days.
“Will our carriers be back by then?” Daisy asked, though she was pretty sure she knew the answer.
“No.”
“That leaves us as sitting ducks again, doesn’t it?” Thelma said.
“Not exactly. This time, we’ll be waiting,” Hochman said.
Three minutes before the end of their shift, while Daisy was calculating the accurate bearing of a flight with readings from Opana and Kawailoa, Nixon came over. “Carrier down is the Lexington, most men survived. Yorktown was torpedoed but is still afloat. Enterprise was en route and did not engage. Will that help you sleep better?” he said to Daisy.
“Affirmative. Thank you, sir.”
She caught Thelma looking at her, but put her head down and kept working. Nixon’s words were a reprieve—for the moment. Another chance to breathe. If the Enterprise had been en route, where was she now? This war was nowhere close to being over, and the nail biting was torturous. Betty had been right—falling for a pilot was a bad idea.
25
THE BEACH
They did not have to wait long to find out more about the anticipated attack. Two days later, Nixon briefed the WARDs that the Imperial Japanese Navy was amassing battleships and carriers in its home waters, presumably to launch another assault. But now, instead of Pearl Harbor and Hawai‘i as the main target, intel leaned more toward the Aleutians or possibly Midway atoll.
“However, we can’t rule anything out. The entire Second Fleet has been silent for days now, which is never a good sign,” Nixon said.
Daisy would have never imagined this life for herself. Speaking in code, the ability to recite names of half the ships in the Imperial Japanese Navy, and conversing with pilots with ease. But the fact that she hadn’t seen a horse in weeks, or swam in the ocean, added an extra layer of strain. Which was why she invited the girls to spend a night at her beach house on their next day off—a Sunday. Who knew when they might get another chance.
They had no trouble finding kitten sitters, as every WARD on their block would show up at any hour of day or night for a visit. Most of the kittens were already spoken for, including one named Twinkletoes who had a tendency to spring into the air when she was the least bit excited. Daisy had claimed her for her own.
Betty packed a picnic basket and a cooler with bread and Spam, dill pickles, apple bananas and ginger ale. Fluff threw in a bottle of wine. With rations the way they were, only certain foods were available on any given day. Lei, their regular supplier of hard-to-find items, was too busy at home to join them. Daisy suspected there was more trouble with George.
Before they even hit the pineapple fields, Fluff said, “Yesterday, I had a nice conversation with Cheerio, and there’s something about him that just seems so adorable. Can you help me find out more about him?” Fluff said, leaning forward from the back seat. Cheerio was a new Oscar who had all the girls talking.
“Have you not learned anything?” Betty said.
Fluff sighed. “One bad experience is not going to sour my opinion of men in general. I still have hope.”
“Keep the hope, bu
t avoid men we work with.”
Daisy couldn’t help but add her two cents. “I know what you mean about Cheerio, though. He always has something sweet or funny to say, and he seems genuine. Did he mention the bird to you?”
“Yes! What kind of man does that?” Fluff said.
Last week on a call, every time Cheerio tried to give the reading, a loud squawk erupted in the background. He kept saying in a voice like a warm blanket, “Easy there, mate.” When Daisy asked about it, he told her he’d rescued an injured seabird and was nursing it back to health at the Wai‘anae Radar Station.
“Still. Keep it professional. You know they don’t like us getting chatty with the Oscars,” Betty said.
Fluff ignored her. “Do you think there’s a way to meet him in person?”
“Short of going out there and visiting the station, no. And look what happened with our last visit,” Daisy said.
Fluff rolled down the back window, letting in the fresh morning air. “Don’t you ever wonder what the Oscars all look like? Some of them sound so manly, like radio announcers, and others sound like someone’s kid brother. I would love to get a bunch of mug shots and have to match the face with the voice,” she said.
Fluff had graduated from filling out chits for each flight to taking readings, and she was very efficient at her job. Everyone moved along at their own pace, and though Fluff was not so mechanically inclined, her verbal skills were outstanding. “What if you went through all this trouble to meet him, and then discovered he was a real dog? Then what?” Betty asked.
She sat quiet for a while and then said, “Getting to know a man before you know what they look like could be a godsend. That way, you’re basing everything on personality. And personality is what matters most in life.”
“A noble idea,” Betty said.
“And a true one.”
“What kind of name is Cheerio anyways? It sounds British,” Betty said.
Fluff shrugged. “I got the scuttlebutt that the other guys started calling him Cheerio since he uses the word so much and always signs off saying cheerio. I guess it stuck.”
Radar Girls Page 23
