Warrior Women

by Paula Guran

  Em smiled and ducked her gaze while the other women giggled.

  Lillian almost purred. “We’re not flying now, I don’t see why they should be nervous. We’re not going to crash into them.” Em looked away at that. It was just a joke, she told herself.

  Jim tilted his head to the sullen-looking pilot. “Frank there almost walked back out again when he saw you girls sitting here.”

  “What, afraid of little old us?” Lillian said, and the others laughed. The sullen-looking pilot at the other table, Frank, seemed to sink into his jacket a little further.

  Jim shrugged. “His loss, right?”

  Em agreed. Anyone had an issue with women pilots, it was their problem, not hers.

  Em had to go at the mystery backwards. The accident report wasn’t available, so she dug through the flight logs to see who else was flying that day. Who else was in the air with Mary.

  She made her way to ops, a big square prefab office building off the airstrip, around lunchtime the next day, when she was less likely to run into people. The move paid off—only a secretary, a woman in civilian clothes, was on duty. Em carried her logbook in hand, making her look more official than not, and made up some excuse about being new to the base and needing to log her next flight and where should she go? The secretary directed her to an adjoining room. There, Em found the setup familiar: maps pinned to the wall, chalkboards with instructions written on them, charts showing planes and schedules, and a wall of filing cabinets.

  Every pilot taking off from the field was supposed to file a flight plan, which were kept in ops. Mary’s plan—and the plans of anyone else who was flying that day and might have collided with her—should be here. She rubbed her lucky pennies together and got to work.

  The luck held: the files were marked by day and in order. Flipping through, Em found the pressboard folder containing the forms from that day. Taking the folder to an empty desk by the wall, she began studying, reconstructing in her mind what the flight line had looked like that day.

  Mary had been part of a group ferrying seven BT-13 Valiants from Romulus to Dallas. She wasn’t originally part of the group; she’d been at Romulus overnight after ferrying a different BT-13. But they had an extra plane, and like just about any WASP, she would fly anything she was checked out on, anything a commander asked her to fly. Those were the bare facts. That was the starting point. Less than an hour after takeoff, Mary had crashed. A collision—which meant it must have been one of the other planes in the group.

  WASP weren’t authorized for close-formation flying. When they did fly in groups, they flew loose, with enough distance between to prevent accidents—at least five hundred feet. Mary was the only WASP in the group, but the men should have followed the same procedure and maintained a safe distance. Just saying “collision” didn’t tell the story, because only one plane hit the ground, and only one pilot died.

  The accident had eyewitnesses: the other six pilots in the group, who were flying with Mary when she crashed. She started jotting down names and the ID numbers of the planes they’d been flying.

  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  Startled, Em flinched and looked up to find a lanky man just past forty or so, his uniform starched and perfect, standing in the doorway, hands clenched, glaring. Silver eagles on his shoulders—this must be Colonel Burnett. Reflexively, she crumpled her page of notes and stuffed it in her pocket. The move was too obvious to hide. Gathering her thoughts, she stood with as much attention as she could muster—part of her mind was still on those six pilots.

  She’d spent enough time in the Army Air Force to know how men like Burnett operated: they intimidated, they browbeat. They had their opinions and didn’t want to hear arguments. She just had to keep from letting herself get cowed.

  “Filing a flight plan, sir.” She kept the lie short and simple, so he wouldn’t have anything to hold against her.

  “I don’t think so,” he said, looking at the pages spread out on the desk.

  They were in a standoff. She hadn’t finished, and wanted to get those last couple of names. Burnett didn’t look like he was going to leave.

  “It’s true,” she bluffed. “BT-13 to Dallas.” Mary’s last flight plan; that might have been pushing it.

  “You going to show me what’s in your pocket there?”

  “Grocery list,” she said, deadpan.

  He stepped closer, and Em had to work not to flinch away from the man.

  “Those are papers from last week,” he said, pointing at the plans she’d been looking at.

  “Yes, sir.”

  His face reddened, and she thought he might start screaming at her, drill-sergeant style. “Who authorized you to look at these?”

  Somebody had to speak up. Somebody had to find the truth. That allowed her to face him, chin up. “Sir, I believe the investigation into that crash ended prematurely, that all the information hasn’t been brought to light.”

  “That report was filed. There’s nothing left to say. You need to get out of here, missy.”

  Now he was just making her angry, he probably expected her to wilt—he probably yelled at all the women because he expected them to wilt. She stepped forward, feeling her own flush starting, her own temper rising.

  “Why was the report buried? I just want to know what really happened.”

  “I don’t have to explain anything to you. You’re a civilian. You’re just a civilian.”

  “What is there to explain, sir?”

  “Unless you march out of here right now, I’ll have you arrested for spying. Don’t think the Army won’t shoot a woman for treason!”

  Em expected a lot of threats—being grounded, getting kicked out of the WASP, just like Lillian said. But being shot for treason? What the hell was Burnett trying to hide?

  Em was speechless, and didn’t have any fight left in her after that. She marched out with her logbook, just as Burnett told her to, head bowed, unable to look at him. Even though she really wanted to spit at him. In the corner of her gaze, she thought she saw him smile, like he thought he’d won some kind of victory over her. Bullying a woman, and he thought that made him tough. By the time she left the building, her eyes were watering. Angrily, she wiped the tears away.

  Well away from the building, she stopped to catch her breath. Crossed her arms, waited for her blood to cool. Looked up into the sky, turning her face to the clouds. The day was overcast, the ceiling low, a biting wind smelling of snow. Terrible weather for flying. But she’d go up in a heartbeat, in whatever piece-of-junk trainer was available, just to get away from here.

  One of the lessons you learned early on: Make friends with the ground crew. When some of the trainers they flew had seen better days and took a lot of attention to keep running, sweet-talking a mechanic about what was wrong went further than complaining. Even if the wreckage from Mary’s plane was still around—it would have already been picked over for aluminum and parts—Em wouldn’t have been able to tell what had happened without seeing the crash site. She needed to talk to the recovery team.

  Lillian told her that a Sergeant Bill Jacobs’ crew had been the one to recover Mary’s Valiant. He’d know a lot that hadn’t made it into the records, maybe even be able to tell her what happened. If she could sweet-talk him. She touched up her lipstick, repinned her hair, and tapped her lucky pennies.

  On the walk to the hangar, she tried to pound out her bad mood, to work out her anger and put herself in a sweet-talking frame of mind. Hey there, mind telling me about a little ol’ plane crash that happened last week? She wasn’t so good at sweet-talking, not like Lillian was. Not like Mary had been.

  The main door of the hangar was wide open to let in the afternoon light. In the doorway, she waited a moment to let her eyes adjust to the shadows. A B-24 was parked inside, two of its four engines open and half-dismantled. The couple of guys working on each one called a word to the other now and then, asking for a part or advice. A radio played Duke Ellington.

&nbs
p; The hangar had a strangely homey feel to it, with its atmosphere of grease and hard work, the cheerful music playing and the friendly banter between the mechanics. This might have been any airport repair shop, if it weren’t for the fact they were working on a military bomber.

  Em looked around for someone who might be in charge, someone who might be Jacobs. In the back corner, she saw the door to an office and headed there. Inside, she found what she was probably looking for: a wide desk stacked with papers and clipboards. Requisitions, repair records, inventories, and the like, she’d bet. Maybe a repair order for a BT13 wounded in a collision last week?

  She was about to start hunting when a man said, “Can I help you, miss?”

  A man in Army coveralls and a cap stood at the doorway. Scraping together all the charm she could manage, she straightened and smiled. She must have made quite a silhouette in her trousers and jacket because he looked a bit stricken. He glanced at the insignia on her collar, the patches on her jacket, and knew what, if not who, she was.

  “Sergeant Jacobs?” she said, smiling.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Her smile widened. “Hi, I’m Emily Anderson, in from New Castle.” She gestured vaguely over her shoulder. “They told me you might be able to help me out.”

  He relaxed, maybe thinking she was only going to ask for a little grease on a squeaky canopy.

  She said, “The crash last week. The one the WASP died in. Can you tell me what happened?” Her smile had stiffened; her politeness was a mask.

  Jacobs sidled past her in an effort to put himself between her and the desk—the vital paperwork. He began sorting through the mess on the desk, but his movements were random. “I don’t know anything about that.”

  “You recovered the plane. You saw the crash site.”

  “It was a mess. I can’t tell you what happened.”

  “What about the other plane? How badly was it damaged?”

  He looked at her. “How do you know there was another plane?”

  “I heard there was a collision. Who was flying that other plane? Can you at least tell me that much?”

  “I can’t help you, I’m sorry.” He shook his head, like he was shaking off an annoying fly.

  “Sergeant Jacobs, Mary Keene was my friend.”

  When he looked at her, his gaze was tired, pitying. “Ma’am, please. Let it go. Digging this up isn’t going to fix anything.”

  “I need to know what really happened.”

  “The plane crashed, okay? It just crashed. Happens all the time, I hate to say it, but it’s so.”

  Em shook her head. “Mary was a good pilot. Something had to have happened.”

  Jacobs looked away. “She switched off the engine.”

  “What?”

  “She’d lost part of a wing—there was no way she could pull out of it. But before she hit the ground, she had time to turn off the engine so it wouldn’t catch fire. So the plane wouldn’t burn. She knew what was going to happen and she switched it off.”

  Mary, sitting in her cockpit, out of control after whatever had hit her, calmly reaching over to turn off the ignition, knowing the whole time she maybe wasn’t going to make it—

  “Is that supposed to make me feel better?” Em said.

  “No. I’m sorry, ma’am. It’s just you’re right. She was a good pilot.”

  “Then why won’t you—?”

  A panicked shouting from the hangar caught their attention—“Whoa whoa, hold that thing, it’s gonna drop”—followed by the ominous sound of metal crashing to concrete. Jacobs dashed out of the office to check on his crew.

  Em wasn’t proud; she went through the stack of papers while he was occupied.

  The fact that Mary had crashed and died was becoming less significant to Em than the way everyone was acting about it. Twitchy. Defensive. Like a pilot towing targets for gunnery training, wondering if the wet-behind-the-ears gunners were going to hit you instead. These guys, everyone who knew what had happened, didn’t want to talk about it, didn’t want her to ask about it, and were doing their damnedest to cover this up. What were all these people hiding? Or, what were they protecting?

  It wasn’t a hard answer, when she put it like that: the other pilot. They were protecting the pilot who survived the collision.

  She dug through repair orders. Mary’s plane had crashed—but the other plane hadn’t. It still would have been damaged, and there’d be paperwork for that. She looked at the dates, searching for that date. Found it, found the work order for a damaged BT-13. Quickly, she retrieved the list of names she’d taken from the flight plans. She’d copied only half of them before Burnett interrupted her. She had a fifty-fifty chance of matching the name on the work order. Heads or tails?

  And there it was. When she compared ID numbers with the ones on the work order, she found the match she was looking for: Frank Milliken. The other pilot’s name was Frank Milliken.

  She marched out of the office and into the hangar. Jacobs was near the B-24 wing, yelling at the guys who had apparently unbolted and dropped a propeller. He might have followed her with a suspicious gaze as she left, but he couldn’t do anything about it now, could he?

  She kept her eyes straight ahead and didn’t give him a chance to stop her.

  “You know Frank Milliken?” she asked Lillian when she got back to the barracks.

  “By name. He’s one of the Third Ferry Group guys—he was part of Jim’s bunch of clowns last night,” she said.

  Em tried to remember the names she’d heard, to match them up with the faces, the guys who talked to them. “I don’t remember a Frank,” she said.

  “He’s the sulky guy who stayed at the table.”

  Ah . . . “You know anything about him?”

  “Not really. They kind of run together when they’re all flirting with you at once.” She grinned. “What about him?”

  “I think he was in the plane that collided with Mary’s last week.”

  “What?” she said with a wince and tilted head, like she hadn’t heard right.

  “I’ve got a flight plan and a plane ID number on a repair order that says it was him.”

  Clench-jawed anger and an anxious gaze vied with each other and ended up making Lillian look young and confused. “What do we do?”

  “I just want to find out what happened,” Em said. She just wanted to sit down with the guy, make him walk her through it, explain who had flown too close to whom, whether it was accident, weather, a gust of wind, pilot error—anything. She just wanted to know.

  “You sure?” Lillian said. “This is being hushed up for a reason. It can’t be anything good. Not that anything is going to make this better, but—well, you know what I mean. Em, what if—what if it was Mary’s fault? Are you ready to hear that? Are you ready to hear that this was a stupid accident and Burnett’s covering it up to make his own record a little less dusty?” Em understood what Lillian was saying—it didn’t matter how many stories you made up for yourself; the truth could always be worse. If something—God forbid—ever happened to Michael, would she really want to know what killed him? Did she really want to picture that? Shouldn’t she just let Mary go?

  Em’s smile felt thin and pained. “We have to look out for each other, Lillian. No one else is doing it for us, and no one else is going to tell our stories for us. I have to know.”

  Lillian straightened, and the woman’s attitude won out over her confusion. “Right, then. Let’s go find ourselves a party.”

  Em and Lillian parked at the same table at the Runway, but didn’t order dinner tonight. Em’s stomach was churning; she couldn’t think of eating.

  She and Lillian drank sodas and waited.

  “What if they don’t come?” Em said.

  “They’ll be here,” Lillian said. “They’re here every night they’re on base. Don’t worry.”

  As they waited, a few of the other girls came in and joined them, and they all had a somber look, frowning, quiet. Em didn’t know how, but th
e rumor must have traveled.

  “Is it true?” Betsy asked, sliding in across from Em. “You found out what happened to Mary?”

  “That’s what we need to see,” she said, watching the front door, waiting.

  The men knew something was up as soon as they came in and found the women watching them. The mood was tense, uncomfortable. None of them were smiling. And there he was, with his slicked-back hair, hunched up in his jacket like he was trying to hide. He hesitated inside the doorway along with the rest of the guys—if he turned around to leave this time, Em didn’t think Jim or the others would try to stop him.

  Em stood and approached them. “Frank Milliken?”

  He glanced up, startled, though he had to have seen her coming. The other guys stepped away and left him alone in a space.

  “Yeah?” he said warily.

  Taking a breath, she closed her eyes a moment to steel herself. Didn’t matter how much she’d practiced this speech in her mind, it wasn’t going to come out right. She didn’t know what to say.

  “Last week, you were flying with a group of BT-13s. There was a collision. A WASP named Mary Keene crashed. I’m trying to find out what happened. Can you tell me?”

  He was looking around, glancing side to side as if searching for an escape route. He wasn’t saying anything, so Em kept on. “Your plane was damaged—I saw the work order. So I’m thinking your plane was involved and you know exactly what happened. Please, I just want to know how a good pilot like Mary crashed.”

  He was shaking his head. “No. I don’t have to talk to you. I don’t have to tell you anything.”

  “What’s wrong?” Em pleaded. “What’s everyone trying to hide?”

  “Let it go. Why can’t you just let it go?” he said, refusing to look at her, shaking his head like he could ward her away. Lillian was at Em’s shoulder now, and a couple of the other WASP had joined them, standing in a group, staring down Milliken.

  If Em had been male, she could have gotten away with grabbing his collar and shoving him to the wall, roughing him up a little to get him to talk.

  She was on the verge of doing it anyway; then wouldn’t he be surprised? “It was your fault, wasn’t it?” She had the sudden epiphany. It was why he couldn’t look at her, why he didn’t even want to be here with WASP sitting at the next table. “What happened? Did you just lose control? Was something wrong with your plane?”