Hal nodded and went back to the waist. He tucked the remaining jackets around Adel as best he could. When he finished, he was shivering from the cold, and his bare hands were talons of pain. He replugged his suit into Gorno’s outlet and felt the heat slowly return. His gloves, when he found them, were icy inside from frozen sweat and blood, but he put them on anyway.
When the crew broke out their standard rations of cookies, the chief offered Hal a fruit-bar, but he shook his head. It was more than six hours since he had eaten, but he wasn’t hungry. Instead, he felt sick.
A short time later, the plane dipped and started down the long slope to the English coast. From time to time, Hal unplugged his heated suit while Chief Gorno plugged in. At fifteen thousand feet, Adel woke up and began groaning and thrashing around. Chief Gorno held him while Hal gave him another shot of morphine.
After a moment, Adel’s eyes glazed, and he was again quiet. Hal pulled aside his oxygen mask and said to the chief, “Why didn’t anyone come back here when we needed them? What’s wrong with them?”
Chief Gorno took off his oxygen mask and spat on the floor, the spittle freezing into an ugly white glaze. “Couldn’t. Bandits in the area. O’Reilly told everybody to stay put.” He licked his lips and looked down at Adel’s white face. “They wanted to help,” he added. “They sure as hell did.”
“Then why didn’t they?” Hal said savagely.
“Because,” the chief answered, “they didn’t want to die.”
Chief Gorno turned and stared back out the waist window at the distant chalk cliffs of the English coast. The sight, cherished by all combat fliers, held no interest for Hal. He sat down with his back against the ribs of the plane and listened to the throb of the engines and the keening wind. The dangling phone cords and the oxygen tubes swayed with the movement of the plane. Polished metal glinted with the shifting rays of the mid-day sun.
The two waist guns pointed up toward a blank, empty sky.
CHAPTER 8
The ambulance had taken Adel away, and Hal was slowly taking the guns out of the nose turret when Luke came up to him.
“I want to talk to you,” he snapped.
Hal had been expecting his visit, but not so soon. He wasn’t ready for Luke. Not yet. But now there was no avoiding it. “Go ahead.”
“Fox told me what happened. How the hell could you be such a friggin’ idiot?”
Hal stopped, his hands still over his head, holding the cold metal of the gun barrels. He twisted around to look at Luke. “I had to.”
“Bull! What you had to do was hit the friggin’ target.”
Hal took the left gun barrel out carefully and placed it on the cement at his feet before he answered. “If I hadn’t gone back when I did, he would have died.”
“You didn’t hear what I said. That was a bomb run. You were in charge, not just of your ship, of every friggin’ ship in the squadron. You were the lead for Christ’s sake. You could have screwed up the whole God damned mission.”
“What difference would that make if it saved Adel’s life?”
“One man’s life doesn’t mean a damn thing. Get that through your thick skull. Adel’s life doesn’t mean a damn thing, and neither does yours or O’Reilly’s or anybody else’s.”
“What about yours?”
“Yeah, or mine. The mission comes first. Didn’t they teach you anything in that friggin’ bombardier school?”
“Some things they didn’t have to teach me.”
“Such as what?”
“Such as the value of human life and caring for somebody besides myself.”
“That’s a bunch of crap. This is a friggin’ war for Christ’s sake! Your only feeling is for that friggin’ bombsight. I don’t give a damn if you got both arms shot off. The mission comes first. And you damn well better remember.”
Luke turned to go, but Hal said, “What about after the run? What about when I called for some help? Why the hell didn’t anybody come to help? Was that part of the mission?”
Luke whipped around. “You’re damn right. You were in enemy territory. The VHF reported bandits in the vicinity. Nobody could leave his post.”
“Not even for a man’s life?”
“What about all the men who died on that mission?” Luke fired back. “What about Hollister and Schultz and all the others? You want them to have died for nothing?”
Abruptly the anger drained out of Hal, leaving him heavily weary. What had those men died for? Was it really for that single mission? That’s when it had happened, yes. But had it been to destroy the submarine pens? Or had it been to save the men on the ships those submarines would have killed? Or the Allied soldiers whose lives would be saved by the supplies that got through? He hoped that it would be for something beyond that, something much bigger: Freedom itself.
But it was all so damn nebulous. If Hollister’s life and the lives of Schultz and the others could only be directly exchanged one-for-one for the lives of the Jews of Europe or of the resistance fighters even now being tortured by the Gestapo, then the loss could be comprehended. But who could form a nexus between a life-giving invention years from now by the grandson of a soldier who lived because Schultz had died? If the moment Hollister’s plane had exploded the gates of a Gestapo hell had swung open and ten men had walked out, there would be no doubt that Hollister and his crew had died for a glorious cause. But this way . . . this way the rewards would not be known for years. Perhaps never. And in a hundred years who would care?
Luke took Hal’s silence for agreement, and he pressed on. “We came close enough to the target so that nobody ever has to know what went on up there except us. I’ve already told the others to keep their mouths shut. As far as anybody is concerned, Adel got hit, and you went back after the bomb run. You got that?”
“I got it. But why not the truth?” Hal asked.
“Because, you jerk, if anybody ever finds out what you did, you’d spend the next twenty years on KP with the Marine Corps. I’m giving you a break. You’d damn well better take it.”
Hal was about to retort when something in Luke’s eyes made him stop. Luke was angry. All right, but he was also afraid. Hal had to fight back an irrational impulse to laugh. Luke wasn’t doing this to protect his kid brother. And Luke couldn’t care less about the lives of Hollister and Schultz and whether their deaths held the key to some future miracle of freedom. He was only thinking about his future. He was the one who had pushed Hal into the lead position. He was the one with his neck out. Even the colonel had said that.
Hal suddenly felt sorry for his brother. “All right, Luke,” he said. “You know more about it than I do.”
“You’re damn right, I do. But if you pull a stunt like that again, I’ll take care of you myself, so help me God!”
He did not shout. The words were low and quiet, but Hal was shocked at the vehemence in Luke’s voice. He realized then the real extent of Luke’s ambition. If someone stood in Luke’s way and it was possible to remove that person without danger to himself, Luke would not hesitate, even if the man was his brother.
When Hal carried the guns to the armorer’s truck, they felt very, very heavy.
During the interrogation in the big room, he noticed that Luke watched the men carefully as they talked to the Intelligence Officer. All their stories were the same. The men looked at Luke and said that Adel had been hit right after bombs away. O’Reilly grinned at Luke, but he too confirmed the story in his lazy, insolent voice. If the major wanted to change the chronology of events, that was his business. O’Reilly was not interested in the ramifications of war. Or was he? He looked over at Hal and smiled. “Sure does know his first aid. Maybe he should have been a medical corpsman.”
“From what I heard,” the Intelligence Officer said, “he saved Adel’s life.”
“Yeah,” O’Reilly agre
ed. “Now if that ol’ Dog House airplane was only a flying hospital instead of a military weapon, Bailey’d be right in his element.”
Somehow O’Reilly’s dig failed to bother Hal, although he sensed Luke’s sudden tenseness.
“Do you have the strike pictures yet?” Luke asked abruptly. “How did we do?”
“Not bad,” the I.O. answered. “Your ship dropped a little short, but the squadron pattern walked up over the target. It was a good strike.”
The news lifted Luke’s spirits, and he shook both clenched fists. “Great. That’s great.”
Fox said, “This means we get passes. Right?”
“Yeah. I think I can swing it. You guys are about due anyway.”
“I sure as hell hope so,” Polazzo said. “I’m ready to celebrate something.”
“Yeah, me too,” said Caplinger. He looked at Chief Gorno, who had remained silent throughout the questioning. “What about it, chief? You want to hit London?”
“No,” the chief said shortly. “I don’t like that town. Too big.”
Caplinger winked at Hal. “The chief likes to camp out in the woods. We won’t see him for three days.”
Chief Gorno was not offended. He grinned, showing his big square teeth. “It’s a hell of a lot better than camping out in Trafalga’ Square.”
“And he won’t get the clap,” Ed Bernard added dryly, and Caplinger’s face turned red while the others roared.
“Did any of you see Hollister get hit?” the interrogator asked, and the laughter stopped dead.
Out of the silence, O’Reilly said, “He got it just before we hit the target. I don’t think anybody saw what happened for sure.”
Cossel added quietly, “He was there one minute, then he was gone.”
“Did anybody get out?”
“No,” O’Reilly said.
The I.O. was unaware of the pain in O’Reilly’s voice and the brittle silence. Without looking up, he asked, “Wasn’t Schultz flying with Hollister?”
He looked up to see why no one answered, his eyebrows arched.
O’Reilly pushed away from the table, ending the conversation. “You’ve got everything, Dad. And if I don’t get into London, this sex-maniac co-pilot of mine’ll have my date knocked up before I can find out her last name.”
The I.O. watched them leave, and Hal saw his face pull into a puzzled frown. He couldn’t understand why they were so touchy. This had been a milk run: no fighter attacks and only two planes lost out of the whole group. Everybody should be singing. But you never knew about fliers. They were all crazy. He turned and motioned to the next waiting crew.
By the time Hal moved into the latrine to shave, O’Reilly had already showered and shaved and was on his way to the orderly room to pick up his pass. Cossel, stripped to the waist, was shaving in the afternoon light that filtered through the grimy windows. Hal took off his shirt and moved to a basin near Cossel.
“O’Reilly doesn’t waste much time.”
“Yeah,” Cossel grunted. “Between him and Fox, they know every commando in Piccadilly.”
“You going into London?”
“Not tonight. I’m going to hit the club. You?”
“Maybe tomorrow.”
“It’s only sixteen hundred. There’s a train practically every hour.”
Hal finished lathering his face and began shaving. “What about Northampton?”
“Northampton.” Cossel paused, his razor halfway down the lather of his cheek. He finished the stroke and rinsed his razor under the tepid water in the basin before he said noncommittally, “There’s nothing there. Except the hospital.”
Hal hadn’t intended to tell Cossel his reason for going, but he was sure Cossel had already guessed, so he said, “I thought I’d see if I could visit Adel.”
“Why?”
Cossel’s question startled Hal. “Why? Well, because . . .” he stopped. Now that he was forced to think about it, he didn’t know why. Usually, he disliked hospitals. Being around illness of any sort made him uneasy. “I just thought I’d see how he’s doing.”
“Your brother goes over to the hospital almost every night. Maybe you can get a ride with him.”
“Luke?” Hal was surprised. It wasn’t like his brother to visit anyone in a hospital. Not that illness bothered him. Luke didn’t care enough about people to go around visiting the sick.
“Crystal,” Hal said. “She’s a nurse in the hospital.”
Now it made sense.
Thinking of Crystal Buehler, Hal wondered about her and Luke. If his brother drove over to Northampton almost every night, it had to be for more than conversation. Luke wouldn’t waste time on any girl who wouldn’t put out. Unless, of course, he was really in love. But Hal couldn’t believe that. And even if Luke was in love with Crystal, she surely couldn’t possibly be in love with him. A girl with the class of Crystal Buehler wouldn’t fall in love with a redneck like Luke. Would she?
Suddenly he thought of Fairview and Sue McGinnis; she was a girl with class too. And he had been wrong about her.
The memory was painful, and he pushed it aside. “Do you think I did right?” he abruptly asked Cossel.
“About what?” Cossel answered. But Hal knew he understood the question.
“Adel.”
Cossel shrugged. “That’s hard to say.”
“That, I take it, means no.”
“It meant yes and no. Another time or place, you’d be right. On the bomb run . . . maybe you were still right.”
“But you don’t think so?”
“You didn’t see me moving.”
“That’s right. I didn’t. Why didn’t I?”
Cossel studied his razor. “That’s an interesting question. Maybe I’ve lost something. Maybe I never had it. Or maybe I was just scared.”
“Scared?”
“Or . . . maybe I wasn’t scared enough.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing. It’s merely an observation.” He paused. “What about you?”
“Me?”
“Love, hate, jealousy, self-preservation, honor . . . fear. Those are the usual motives. Which one was yours?”
Hal ran them over in his mind. He ruled out each one until he came to fear. Could that have been his motive?
“There’s another,” he said slowly. “Compassion.”
“Yes, there’s compassion. Was that it?”
“It had to be. There’s nothing else.”
Cossel studied Hal in the mirror. “Yeah,” he agreed. “What else could it be?” He ducked his face into the water, cutting off the conversation.
CHAPTER 9
It was dark when Luke Bailey wheeled an old Plymouth staff car into the blacked-out streets of Northampton. The hospital was on a side street at the edge of town, and though there were no lights of any kind, Hal could make out that the hospital was a long two-story brick building that looked as though it might have been an apartment before the war.
At the far end of the block, a squatty brick emergency air-raid shelter banked with sandbags had been built squarely in the middle of the brick-paved street.
The darkness did not appear to hinder Luke’s vision, and he sped down the short street, the sound of the car’s engine echoing loudly off ancient apartment buildings. At the end of the street, he wheeled the car to a wrenching halt with its nose against the air-raid shelter, directly beneath a ‘NO PARKING’ sign.
He cut the engine, and the silence made the darkness seem deeper. When he slammed the car door shut, the sound reverberated like a pistol shot. Hal closed his door gently, then followed Luke back along the street and up the steps into the hospital where they paused at a reception desk located in what had once been the building’s vestibule. Everything except
worn linoleum on the floor had been painted with white enamel. The walls, the ceiling, the moldings, even the reception desk, gleamed in spotless splendor as though daring a germ to appear. That, and the familiar biting odor of antiseptics, removed any doubt of the building’s present use.
An elderly, rawboned woman in a white uniform looked up from behind the littered desk.
“Good evening, Gertie,” Luke said airily. “Where’s my doll?”
“Ow, it’s you, Maja’,” Gertie answered without smiling. “Miss Buehle’s on duty.”
“When will she be off?”
“An ‘our.”
“Okay. I’m gonna talk to her a minute?”
“Well,” Gertie said reluctantly, “I’ll just see if she’s busy.”
“Tell her it’s me.”
She clicked the button on an intercom and said, “Lieutenant Buehle’? Do you ‘ave time for a visita?” Her voice echoed faintly from a Tannoy speaker somewhere in the building.
A few seconds later, the intercom clicked, and Crystal Buehler asked, “What is it?”
Before Gertie could answer, Luke leaned over and pressed the switch. “It’s me, Crys.”
“Oh, Luke. I’ll be right out.”
“Rodger, dodger.”
Luke straightened, and Gertie glared at him. “In the futcha, Maja, Sir, I will ‘andle the communications.”
The rebuke did not bother Luke; not when he was in a good mood. “Sure, Gertie. Anything you say. Say, you’ve got one of my crew here. Sergeant Adel. He was admitted today. The lieutenant here’d like to see him.”
“Adel, is it?” She picked up a clipboard and ran a stubby finger down a list of names. Hal was surprised to see how many there were.
“’ere it is,” she said. “Adel. Room one-thirty-two. ‘e’s been out of surgery four ‘ouas. Should be able to see you now.”
“Thanks.” Hal started toward the hallway but stopped when Crystal Buehler came in. Hal thought how right the white nurse’s uniform was for her. It suited her cool hauteur perfectly.
Rush to Glory Page 13
