Hart's War

by John Katzenbach

  “All right, lieutenant, let’s go. Steady march,” Tommy said.

  Shoulder to shoulder, the two men stepped forward.

  The gate had only begun to swing shut behind them when Tommy heard the first whistle. It was joined by another, and then a third and fourth, the high-pitched sounds blending together, traveling the length and breadth of the camp within seconds. The men throwing the softball back and forth stopped, and turned toward them. Before they had traveled twenty yards, the false normalcy of the camp was replaced by the noises of hurrying feet, and the rattling and thudding of wooden doors swinging open and slamming shut.

  “Keep your eyes front,” Tommy whispered, but this was unnecessary, as Lincoln Scott had straightened up even more, and was stepping across the compound with the renewed determination of a distance runner who finally spies the finish line.

  In front of them, crowds of men streamed from the huts, moving as quickly as if the ferrets’ whistles were calling them to an Appell or as if the air-raid sirens had sounded an alarm. Within seconds, hundreds of men had gathered in a huge, seething block, not a formation as much as a barricade. The crowd—Tommy wasn’t yet sure whether it was closer to a mob—gathered directly in their path.

  Neither Lincoln Scott nor Tommy Hart slowed their stride as they approached the congregation.

  “Don’t stop,” he whispered to Lincoln Scott. “But don’t fight, either.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a barely perceptible nod from the Tuskegee airman’s head, and he heard a slight grunt of acknowledgment.

  “Killer!” He could not tell precisely where the word came from, but somewhere within the bubbling tide of men.

  “Murderer!” Another voice chimed in.

  A deep, rumbling noise started to come from the men who blocked their path. Words of anger and hatred mingled freely with epithets and catcalls. Whistles and booing supported the noises of rage, growing in frequency and intensity as the two fliers continued forward.

  Tommy kept his eyes straight ahead, hoping that he would spot one of the senior officers, but did not. He noticed that Scott, jaw set with determination, had increased the pace slightly. For a moment, Tommy thought the two of them not unlike a ship racing headlong toward a rocky shoreline, oblivious to the wreck that awaited them.

  “Goddamn murdering nigger!”

  They were perhaps ten yards from the mass of men. He did not know whether the wall would open or not. At that second, he spotted several of the men who shared his own bunk room. They were men he thought of as friends; not close ones, but friends nonetheless. They were men with whom he’d shared foodstuffs and books and the occasional reverie about life at home, shared moments of longing and desires and dreams and nightmares. He did not, in that instant, think they would harm him. He wasn’t certain of this, of course, because he no longer was sure how they looked upon him. But he thought they might have some hesitation in their emotions, and so, with just the smallest bump shoulder to shoulder, against Scott, he shifted direction to head directly toward them.

  He could hear Lincoln Scott’s breathing. It was quick and short, small gasps of air snatched from the effort their pace demanded.

  Other voices and insults reverberated around him, the words crossing the space between the fliers faster than his feet could carry him.

  He heard: “We should settle this now!”

  And worse, a chorus of assent.

  He ignored the threats. In that second he suddenly recalled the wonderfully calm voice of his dead captain from Texas, steering the Lovely Lydia into yet another hailstorm of flak and death, and without raising his voice, speaking steadily over the bomber’s intercom, saying, “Hell, boys, we ain’t gonna let a little bit of trouble bother us none, are we?” And he thought that this was a storm that he was going to have to fly directly into the center of, keeping his eyes straight ahead, just as his old captain had done, even though the last storm had cost him his life and the lives of all the others in that plane, save one.

  And so, without breaking stride, Tommy launched himself at the gathering of fliers. Linked invisibly but just as strongly as if they were roped together, he and Lincoln Scott tossed themselves at the men blocking their path.

  The crowd seemed to waver. Tommy saw his roommates step back and to the side, creating a small V-like opening. Into that breach, he and Scott sailed. They were enveloped immediately, the crowd sliding in behind them. But the men to their front made way, even if only slightly, just enough for them to continue forward.

  The closeness of the men seemed to buffet them like winds. The voices around them quieted, the catcalls and epithets suddenly fading away, so that they struggled forward through the mass of men in an abrupt, eerie silence, one that was perhaps worse than the noise of the insults had been a few moments earlier. It seemed to Tommy that no one touched them, yet it was still difficult to step forward, like wading through fast-running water, where the current and power of the river pushed and tugged hard at his legs and chest.

  And then, suddenly, they were through.

  The last few men cleared from their path, and Tommy saw the route to the huts open wide, empty of men. It was like bursting in their plane from a dark and angry thunderhead into clear skies and safety.

  Still in lockstep, marching in tandem, Tommy and Scott headed fast for Hut 101. Behind them, the crowd remained silent.

  Scott sounded like a man who’d just boxed fifteen rounds. Tommy realized his own short and wheezy breathing duplicated that of the black flier.

  He did not know why he turned his head slightly, at that moment, but he did. Just a slight shift of the neck, and a gaze off to his right. And in that small glance, he caught a brief glimpse of Colonel MacNamara and Major Clark, standing just behind one of the grime-streaked windows of an adjacent hut, partially concealed and watching their progress across the compound grounds. Tommy was riveted with a sudden, almost uncontrollable outrage, directed at the two senior officers, for allowing their own express order to be contradicted. “No threats . . . treat with courtesy . . .” that was what MacNamara had demanded in no uncertain terms. And then he’d witnessed the violation of that order. Tommy almost, in that second, turned and headed toward the two commanders, filled with instant indignation and a desire for confrontation. But into the midst of that abrupt anger he heard another voice speaking to him, suggesting that perhaps he had just learned something important, something he should keep to himself.

  And it was this voice that he decided to follow.

  Tommy turned away, although he made absolutely certain that MacNamara and Clark had seen that he’d seen them spying on their progress from behind the window. With the black flier at his side, he climbed the wooden planks into Hut 101.

  Lincoln Scott spoke first.

  “Well,” he said quietly, “it seems bleak.”

  At first Tommy wasn’t certain whether the fighter pilot was speaking about the case or the room, because the same could have been said of both. Everything accumulated by the other kriegies who’d once shared the space had been removed. All that remained was a single wooden bunk with a dirty blue ticking pallet stuffed with straw. A solitary thin gray blanket had been left behind on the top. Lincoln Scott tossed his remaining blankets and clothing down on the bed. The overhead electric bulb burned, although the room was filled with the remaining diffuse light of afternoon. His makeshift table and storage area were at the head of the bed. The flier looked inside and saw that his two books and store of foodstuffs were all intact. The only thing missing was the handmade frying pan, which had inexplicably disappeared.

  “It could be worse,” Tommy said. This time it was Scott’s turn to look at him, trying to guess whether it was the accommodations or the case that he was speaking of.

  Both men were quiet for an instant, before Tommy asked: “So, when you went to bed at night, after sneaking around to the toilet, where did you put your flight jacket?”

  Scott gestured to the side of the door. “Right ther
e,” he said. “Everybody had a nail. Everybody hung their jackets there. They were easy to grab when the sirens or the whistles went off.” Scott sat down heavily on the bed, picking up the Bible.

  Tommy went over to the wall.

  The nails were missing. There were eight small holes in the wooden wallboard arranged in groups of two, and spaced a couple of feet apart, but that was all.

  “Where did Vic hang his coat?”

  “Next to mine, actually. We were the last two in line. Everybody always used the same nail, because we wanted to be able to grab the right jacket in a hurry. That was why they were spaced out, in pairs.”

  “Where do you suppose the nails are now?”

  “I haven’t any idea. Why would someone take them away?”

  Tommy didn’t answer, although he knew the reason. It wasn’t only the nails that were missing. It was an argument. He turned back to Scott, who was starting to leaf through the pages of the Bible.

  “My father is a Baptist minister,” Scott said. “Mount Zion Baptist Church on the South Side of Chicago. And he always says that the Good Book will provide guidance in times of turmoil. Myself, I am perhaps more skeptical than he, but not totally willing to refuse the Word.”

  The black flier’s finger had crept inside the pages of the book, and with a flick, he opened the Bible. He looked down and read the first words he saw.

  “Matthew, chapter six, verse twenty-four: ‘No man can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one and despise the other.’ ”

  Scott burst out with a laugh. “Well, I guess that makes some sense. What do you think, Hart? Two masters?” He snapped the Bible shut, then slowly exhaled. “All right, what’s the next step? Now that I’ve gone from one prison cell to the next, what’s in store for me?”

  “Procedurally? A hearing tomorrow. A formal reading of the charges. You declare your innocence. We get to examine the evidence against you. Then, next week, a trial.”

  “A trial. A nice word to describe it. And counselor, your approach?”

  “Delay. Question authority. Challenge the legality of the proceedings. Request time to interview all the witnesses. Claim a lack of proper jurisdiction over the matter. In other words, fight each technicality as hard as possible.”

  Scott nodded, but in the motion of his head there was some resignation. He looked over at Tommy. “Those men just now, in the compound. All lined up and shouting. And then, when we passed through, the silence. I thought they wanted to kill me.”

  “I did, too.”

  He shook his head, his eyes downcast.

  “They don’t know me. They don’t know anything about me.”

  Tommy didn’t reply.

  Scott leaned back, his eyes looking up to the ceiling. For the first time, Tommy seemed to sense a mingling of nervousness and doubt behind the flier’s pugnacity. For several seconds, Scott stared at the whitewashed boards of the roof, then at the bare bulb burning in the center of the room.

  “I could have run, you know. I could have got away. And then I wouldn’t be here.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Scott’s voice was slow, deliberate. “We had already flown our escort mission, you see. We’d fought off a couple of attacks on the formation, and then delivered them to their field. We were heading home, Nathaniel Winslow and myself, thinking about a hot meal, maybe a poker game, and then hitting the hay, when we heard the distress call. Right in the clear, just like a drowning man calling out to anyone on the shore to please throw him a rope. It was a B-17 flying down on the deck, two engines out and half its tail shot away. It wasn’t even from the group we were supposed to be guarding, you see, it was some other fighter wing’s responsibility. Not the 332nd. Not ours, you see. So we didn’t really have to do anything. And we were low on fuel and ammo, but there the poor bastard was, with six Focke-Wulfs making run after run at him. And Nathaniel, you know, he didn’t hesitate, not even for a second. He turned his Mustang over on its wing and shouted at me to follow him, and he dove on them. He had less than three seconds of ammunition left, Hart. Three seconds. Count them: one, two, three. That’s how long he could shoot. Hell, I didn’t have much more. But if we didn’t go in there, then all those guys were going to die. Two against six. We’d faced worse odds. And both Nathaniel and I got a kill in our first pass, a nice side deflection shot, which broke up their attack, and the B-17, it lumbered out of there and the FWs came after us. One swung around onto Nathaniel, but I came up before he could line him up and blew him out of the air. But that was it. No more ammo. Got to turn and run, you know, and with that big turbocharged Merlin engine, weren’t none of those Kraut bastards gonna catch us. But just as we get ready to hightail it home, Nathaniel, he sees that two of the fighters have peeled off after the B-17, and again, he shouts at me to follow him after them. I mean, what were we going to do? Spit at them? Call them names? You see, with Nathaniel, with all of us, it was a matter of pride. No bomber we were protecting was going down. Got that? None. Zero. Never. Not when the 332nd was there. Not when the boys from Tuskegee were watching over you. Then, goddamn it, you were gonna get home safe, no matter how many damn planes the Luftwaffe sent up against us. That we promised. No black flier was going to lose any white boys to the Krauts. So Nathaniel, he screams up behind the first FW, just letting the bastard know he’s there, trying to make the Nazi think he’s dead if he doesn’t get out of there. Nathaniel, you know, he was a helluva poker player. Helped put himself through college taking rich boys’ allowances. Seven card stud was his game. Bluff you right out of your shorts nine times out of ten. Had that look, you know the one, the ‘I’ve got a full house and don’t you mess with me’ look, when really he’s only holding a lousy pair of sevens. . . .”

  Lincoln Scott took another deep breath.

  “They got him, of course. The wing man came around behind and stitched him good. I could hear Nathaniel screaming over the radio as he went down. Then they came after me. Blew a hole in the fuel tank. I don’t know why it didn’t explode. I was smoking, heading down, and I guess they used up all their ammunition getting me, because they broke off and disappeared. I bailed out at maybe five thousand feet. And now I’m here. We could have run, you know, but we didn’t. And the damn bomber made it home. They always made it home. Maybe we didn’t. But they did.”

  Scott shook his head slowly.

  “Those men out there in that mob. They wouldn’t be here today if it’d been the 332nd flying escort duty over them. No sir.”

  Scott lifted himself from the bed, still clutching the Bible in his hand. He used the black-jacketed book to gesture toward Tommy, punctuating his words.

  “It is not in my nature, Mr. Hart, to be accepting. Nor is it in my nature to just let things happen to me. I’m not some sort of carry your bags, tip my hat, yessuh, nosuh, house nigger, Hart. All this procedural crap you mentioned, well, that’s fine. We need to argue that stuff, well, you’re the lawyer here, Hart, let’s argue it. But when it comes right down to it, then I want to fight. I did not kill Captain Bedford and I think it’s about damn time we let everyone know it!”

  Tommy listened closely, absorbing what the black man had said and how he’d said it.

  “Then I think we have a difficult task ahead of us,” he said softly.

  “Hart, nothing in my life up to this point has been easy. Nothing truly worthwhile ever is. My preacher daddy used to say that every morning, every evening. And he was right then, and it’s right now.”

  “Good. Because if you didn’t kill Captain Bedford, I think we’re going to have to find out who did. And why. And I don’t think that will be an easy task, because I haven’t got even the slightest idea how to get started.”

  Scott nodded, and opened his mouth to speak, but before any of the words came out, he was distracted by the sound of marching boots coming from the exterior corridor. The steady resonant noise stopped outside the doorway and seconds later the single thick w
ooden door to the bunk room flew open. Tommy turned swiftly toward the sound, and saw that MacNamara and Clark, along with a half-dozen other officers, were gathered in the hallway. Tommy recognized at least two of the men as former occupants of Trader Vic and Lincoln Scott’s bunk room.

  MacNamara stepped into the room first, but then stood just to the side. He didn’t say anything, but crossed his arms, watching. Clark, as always, was directly behind him, passing rapidly into the center of the room. The major stared angrily at Tommy, then fixed Lincoln Scott with a harsh, angry stare.

  “Lieutenant Scott,” Clark hissed, “do you still deny the charges against you?”

  “I do,” Scott replied, equally forcefully.

  “Then you will not object to a search of your belongings?”

  Tommy Hart stepped forward. “We do indeed object! Under what rule of law do you think you can come in here and search Lieutenant Scott’s personal property? You need a warrant. You need to show cause at a hearing, with testimony and with supporting evidence! We absolutely object! Colonel . . .”

  MacNamara said nothing.

  Clark turned first to Tommy, then back to Lincoln Scott. “I fail to see what the problem is. If you are indeed innocent, as you claim, then what would you have to hide?”

  “I have nothing to hide!” Scott answered sharply.

  “Whether he does, or does not, is irrelevant!” Tommy’s voice was raised, insistent. “Colonel! A search is unreasonable and clearly unconstitutional!”

  Colonel MacNamara finally answered in a cold, slow voice. “If Lieutenant Scott objects, then we will bring this matter up at tomorrow’s hearing. The tribunal can decide. . . .”

  “Go ahead,” Scott said briskly. “I did not do anything, so I have nothing to hide!”