Line of Fire

by W. E. B Griffin

  "What the hell?" Stecker replied. He had not been napping. He had been sound asleep.

  " `You too can learn to fly,' " Pickering read solemnly.

  " `For your country, for your future."

  "What the hell are you reading?" Stecker demanded.

  "Whether you're sixteen or sixty,' " Pickering continued, " ìf you are in normal health and possess normal judgment, you can learn to fly with as little as eight hours of dual instruction."

  "Stecker snatched the Life magazine from Pickering's hand.

  "Jesus, you woke me up for that?" he said in exasperation, throwing the magazine back in his lap.

  "We have begun our descent," Pickering said. "If you had read and heeded this splendid public service advertisement by the Piper people, you would know that."

  "Where the hell are we?" Stecker said, looking out the window.

  "I devoutly hope we are over New Jersey," Pickering said.

  He picked up the magazine, found his place, and continued reading aloud:" Ìn the future a huge aviation industry will offer great opportunities to pilots of all ages. Visit your Piper Cub Dealer. He will be glad to give you a flight demonstration and tell you how you can become a pilot now."

  "Will you shut the hell up?"

  "It says right here, `flying saves you time, gas, and tires." How about that?"

  "You're making that up."

  "I am not, see for yourself," Pickering said righteously, holding up the magazine.

  Stecker did not look. He was staring out the window.

  "I see water down there," he announced.

  "And clever fellow that you are, I'll bet you've figured out that it's the Atlantic Ocean."

  "You're in a disgustingly cheerful mood," Stecker said.

  "I have visions of finally getting off this sonofabitch, and that has cheered me beyond measure. My ass has been asleep for the last forty-five minutes."

  "And your brain all day," Stecker said triumphantly, and then added, "There it is." Pickering leaned across him and looked out the window. The enormous dirigible hangar at Lakehurst Naval Air Station rose surrealistically from the sandy pine barren, dwarfing the eight or ten Navy blimps near it, and making the aircraft-including other R4Ds-parked on the concrete ramp seem toylike.

  The Naval Aviators here are at war, Stecker thought. Every day they fly Navy blimps and long-range patrol bombers over the Atlantic in a futile search, most of the time, for German submarines that are doing their best to interrupt shipping between the United States and England.

  "How'd you like to fly one of those?" Stecker asked. "A blimp?"

  "Not at all, thank you. I have had my fucking fill of the miracle of flight for one day." It was about 1300

  miles in straight lines from Pensacola, Florida, to Lakehurst, N.J.

  Using 200 knots as a reasonable figure for the hourly speed of the Gooneybird, that translated to six and a half hours. It had taken considerably longer than that. There had been intermediate stops at the Jacksonville, Florida, Naval Air Station; at Hurtt Field, on Parris Island, S.C.; at The Marine Corps Air Station, Cherry Point, N.C.; the Norfolk NAS, Va.; and Anacostia NAS, Md.

  They had taken off from Pensacola at first light, just after four A.M. It was now nearly four P.m., or actually five, since they had changed time zones.

  "I mean, really," Stecker said.

  "Not me. I'm a fighter pilot," Pickering said grandly.

  "Oh shit," Stecker groaned.

  The Gooneybird flew down the length of the dirigible hangar, then turned onto his final approach. There was the groan of hydraulics as the Gooneybird pilot lowered the flaps and landing gear.

  "You know, it actually rains inside there," Stecker said.

  "So you have told me. Which does not necessarily make it so.

  "It really does, jackass."

  "Another gem from R. Stecker's fund of useless knowledge," Pickering said, mimicking the dulcet voice of a radio announcer, "brought to you by the friendly folks at Piper aircraft, where you too can learn to fly." With a chirp, the Gooneybird's wheels made contact with the ground.

  "The Lord be praised, we have cheated death again," Pickering said.

  "Jesus Christ, Pick, shut up, will you?" Stecker said, but he was unable to keep a smile off his lips.

  They taxied to the transient ramp at one end of the dirigible hangar. A two-story concrete block there was dwarfed by the building behind it.

  The plane stopped. The door to the cockpit opened, and a sailor, the crew chief, went down the aisle and opened the door.

  He was wearing work denims and a blue, round sailor's cap. A blast of hot air rushed into the cabin.

  He unstrapped a small aluminum ladder from the cabin wall and dropped it in place.

  Pickering unfastened his seat belt, stood up, and moved into the aisle. When the other passengers started following the crew chief off the airplane, he started down the aisle.

  "Put your cover on," Stecker said. "You remember what happened the last time."

  "Indeed I do," Pickering said. It wasn't really the last time, but the time before the last time. He had exited the aircraft with his tie pulled down, his collar unbuttoned, and his uniform cap (in Marine parlance, his

  "cover") jammed in his hip pocket.

  He had almost immediately encountered a Marine captain, wearing the wings of a parachutist-Lakehurst also housed The Marine Corps' parachutists' school-who had politely asked if he could have a word with him, led him behind the Operations Building, and then delivered a brief inspirational lecture on the obligation of Marine officers, even fucking flyboys, to look like Marine officers, not like something a respectable cat would be ashamed to drag home.

  Dick Stecker, who'd listened at the corner of the building, judged it to be a really first-class chewing-out.

  He'd also known it was a waste of the Captain's time and effort. It would inspire Pickering to go and sin no more for maybe a day. He had been right.

  If I hadn't said something, he would have walked out of the airplane again with his cover in his pocket and his tie pulled down.

  When Stecker got off the plane, he found Pickering looking up like a tourist at the curved roof of the dirigible hangar.

  From that angle it seemed to soar into infinity.

  He jabbed him in the ribs.

  "I'll go check on ground transportation. You get the bags." Pickering nodded.

  "Big sonofabitch, ain't it?"

  Stecker nodded.

  "It really does rain in there?"

  "Yes, it does," Stecker said, and then walked toward the Operations Building.

  There were a corporal and a staff sergeant behind the counter with the sign TRANSIENT SERVICE

  hanging above it.

  Wordlessly, Stecker handed him their orders.

  "Lieutenant," the corporal said, "you just missed the seventeen-hundred bus. The next one's at nineteen-thirty."

  "That won't cut it," Stecker said. "Sorry."

  "Excuse me, Sir," the corporal said politely, turned his back, and gestured with his thumb to the sergeant that the Second Lieutenant was posing a problem.

  The sergeant walked to the counter.

  "Can I help you, Lieutenant?"

  "I'm on my way to the Grumman plant at Bethpage, L.I. I need transportation."

  "Yes, Sir. The way you do that is catch the bus to Penn Station in New York City. And a train from there. You just missed the seventeen-hundred bus, and the next one is at nineteen-thirty."

  "If I wait for the nineteen-thirty bus I won't get out there until midnight."

  "Sir, you just missed the bus."

  "We're scheduled for an oh-six-hundred takeoff, Sergeant. I am not about to get into an airplane and fly to Florida on five hours sleep. If you can't get us a ride, please get the officer of the day on the telephone," Stecker said.

  The sergeant looked carefully at the Lieutenant's orders and then at the Lieutenant and decided that what he should do was arrange for a station wagon. This was
not the kind of second lieutenant, in other words, who could be told to sit down and wait for the next bus.

  "I'll call the motor pool, Sir. It'll take a couple of minutes."

  "Thank you, Sergeant."

  "Yes, Sir."

  Dick Stecker was less awed with the sergeant-for that matter, with The Marine Corps-than most second lieutenants were. For one thing he was a regular; the service was his way of life, not an unwelcome interruption before he could get on with being a lawyer, a movie star, or a golf professional.

  More important, he was a second-generation Marine. He had grown up on Marine installations around the country and in China. While he and Pick Pickering both believed that there were indeed three ways to do things-the right way, the wrong way, and The Marine Corps Way-Pickering viewed The Marine Corps Way as just one more fucking infringement on his personal liberty, and Dick Stecker regarded The Marine Corps Way as an opportunity.

  Their current situation was a case in point. The Marine Corps seemed for the moment to have misplaced them-as opposed to having actually lost them. So far as they knew, immediately on certification as qualified in a particular aircraft, every other Marine Corps Second Lieutenant Naval Aviator had been transferred to an operational squadron for duty.

  Most F4F Grumman Wildcat pilots were assigned to the Pacific, either to a specific squadron or to one of the Marine Air Groups. The Marine Corps had lost a lot of pilots in the battles of the Coral Sea and Midway and in connection with the invasion of Guadalcanal.

  It followed that Lieutenants Stecker and Pickering, duly certified as qualified to fly Wildcats, should have been on their way to the Pacific some time ago. Or failing that, they should have been assigned to one of the fighter squadrons forming in the United States for later service in that theater.

  But that hadn't happened. They were "temporarily" assigned to the Naval Air Station, Pensacola, Florida (where they'd learned how to fly less than a year before), picking up brand-new Wildcats at the Grumman factory and ferrying them all over the country.

  This bothered "Pick" Pickering no end. He wanted to be where the fighting was, not cooling his ass in the United States.

  He also wallowed in fear that they would be permanently assigned to Pensacola as instructor pilots, spending the war in the backseat of a Yellow Peril teaching people how to fly, while the rest of their peers were off covering themselves with glory in the Pacific.

  Dick Stecker had a pretty good idea about why they were doing what they were doing. And while Pickering had listened politely to Stecker's explanation, he didn't accept a word of it. Possibly, in Stecker's view, because it was too simple:

  Dick Stecker received his commission from the United States Military Academy at West Point. Since very few Marine officers took their commissions from the Army trade school, screwed up The Marine Corps' Pilot Procurement Program scheduling insofar as Lieutenant Stecker was concerned.

  Pickering received his commission from the officer candidate school at Quantico. The idea of becoming a Marine Aviator never entered his mind until he was given a chance to volunteer for pilot training as an alternative to what The Corps had in mind for him: mess officer.

  Before coming into The Corps, Pickering had worked in hotels; he knew how to run bars and kitchens.

  The Corps needed people with experience in those areas, and The Corps was notoriously nonsensitive to the career desires of newly commissioned second lieutenants, even those whose announced intention was to start fighting the Japs as soon as possible.

  But Pickering had a friend in high places. Long before he himself had been commissioned and learned how to fly, Brigadier General D. G. McInerney had been a sergeant at Belleau Wood in 1917. One of his corporals then had been Pick Pickering's father, currently a reserve Navy officer on duty somewhere in the Pacific. The elder Pickering and McInerney had maintained their friendship over the years.

  While acknowledging that The Corps did need mess officers, General McInerney decided it needed pilots more, and would just have to make a mess officer out of some other lieutenant who did not possess young Pickering's splendid physical attributes, high intelligence, and tested genetic heritage.

  Lieutenants Stecker and Pickering both arrived at Pensacola for training at the same time. Lieutenant Stecker did not think this was pure coincidence. Dick Stecker's father, Jack (NMI) Stecker, now an officer with the First Marine Division on Guadalcanal, had also been at Belleau Wood with General McInerney.

  After Pickering and Stecker arrived at Pensacola, their basic flight training was not conducted in accord with the rigidly structured and scheduled system that other young pilots were subjected to. For one thing they were not assigned to a large class. And while they completed the exact syllabus of training everyone else was given, they did not do it as part of any particular training squadron. They took some ground school courses with one training squadron, other ground school courses with other training squadrons.

  And when it came time' for them to actually climb into an airplane, their instructor pilots were not just instructor pilots but senior instructor pilots.

  Even though the normal duties of senior instructor pilots were supervision of other instructor pilots and giving check rides, they could and did fit two orphans into their available time, for The Good of The Corps. It was a secret only to Lieutenants Stecker and Pickering that General McInerney inquired every week or so into their progress.

  When they completed the course, they did not march in dress whites in a graduation parade to the stirring strains of "Anchors Aweigh" and the Marine Hymn played by a Navy band.

  Their wings of gold were pinned on one Tuesday afternoon in the office of a Navy captain who seemed baffled by what was going on.

  After that they were recommended for fighter training... probably, in Dick Stecker's judgment, because none of their IPs felt comfortable announcing that one of his students didn't have that extra something special required of fighter pilots especially with General McInerney in the audience.

  And when they went down the Florida peninsula for Wildcat training, they again received the prescribed training, but they got it from pilots who were not only qualified IPs, but were also functioning in operational squadrons. So they were taught the way it really is, rather than the way the Navy brass thought it should be.

  In fact, because of the quality of their instruction, they were just a shade better pilots than other young aviators of equivalent experience. Pickering considered that he was fully qualified to battle the Dirty Jap right now; Stecker was perfectly happy with the opportunity to get more hours in the Wildcat.

  Stecker walked back out to the transient parking ramp. Pickering was nowhere in sight. After a moment, though, Stecker saw him standing near the open door to the dirigible hangar, talking to a Naval officer.

  He just doesn't want to believe it really does rain inside there.

  Well, screw you, pal, you are about to learn that it does.

  (Four)

  BUKA, SOLOMON ISLANDS

  AUGUST 1942

  Sergeant Steven M. Koffler was awakened in his quarters by Miss Patience Witherspoon. She squatted by his bed and squeezed his shoulder. Miss Witherspoon herself had constructed the bed, of woven grass ropes suspended between poles.

  He opened his eyes and looked at her.

  The fucking trouble with her, he thought, for perhaps the one-hundredth time, is her fucking eyes. They're clear and gray.

  It's as if a real girl is looking out at me from behind that scarred face.

  "There are engine noises, Steven," she said in her soft, precise voice.

  "Right," he said.

  He swung his feet out of bed and jammed them into his boondockers. They were green with mold, and he had no socks.

  The three pairs he'd had when they jumped in had lasted just over a month.

  He picked up his Thompson submachine gun and checked automatically. As usual the chamber was clear, with a cartridge in the magazine ready to be chambered. He slung the s
trap over his shoulder before he noticed Patience holding something out to him.

  It was his other utility jacket, in no better shape than the one he'd been sleeping in, but Patience had obviously washed it for him.

  "I'll save it for later," he said. "Thank you."

  "Don't be silly," Patience said, modestly averting her eyes.

  He took Mr. Reeves' German binoculars from the stub of a limb on one of the poles that held the hut together and hung them around his neck.

  Then he walked to the tree house-there was no real reason for haste. Using the knotted rope, he walked up the tree side to the observation platform.

  `What have we got, Ian?" he asked.

  `Rather a lot, I would say," Ian replied. "They should be in sight any moment now." Steve could hear the muted rumble of engines and decided Ian was right. There were many of them.

  And a moment later, as he scanned the skies, he saw the first of them. He handed the binoculars to Ian Bruce.

  "Never let these out of your hands, Koffler," Mr. Reeves had told him just before he and Howard went off into the boondocks. "Ian is a rather good chap, but a curious one. Give him half a chance and he'll try to take them apart to see what magic they contain to make things bigger." When Ian handed them back a moment later, Steve noticed that the last tiny scrap of leather had finally fallen off the side of the binoculars. A thumbnail-sized area that had been glue still held on. But tomorrow that too would disappear and the binoculars would be green all over.

  "Twenty to thirty, I would say," Ian said. "And I thought I could make out another formation a bit higher."

  Steve put the binoculars to his eyes again. The spots in the sky were now large enough to be counted.

  Six 5-plane V's.

  Thirty. Almost certainly Bettys.

  The Betty (designated the Mitsubishi G4MI Type I aircraft by the Japanese) was the most common Japanese bomber.

  Koffler knew a good deal about the Betty: He could recite from memory, for example, that it was a twin-engine, land-based bomber aircraft with a normal complement of seven. It had an empty weight of 9.5 tons and was capable of carrying 2200 pounds of bombs, or two 1700-pound torpedoes, over a nominal range of 2250 miles, at a cruising speed of 195 miles per hour. Its maximum speed was 250