by R. R. Irvine
“My God!” he blurted. He’d come out of the trees without realizing it. They were standing at the edge of a clearing that ran as straight as a highway for half a mile. At the other end stood an airplane that looked poised for takeoff. It looked too real to be one of the usual Cargo Cult counterfeits pictured in textbooks.
Karen jabbed him in the ribs. “Maybe the Anasazi flew across the ocean after all.”
The sight of the runway cut into the jungle, and the work taken to build it, awed him. In a climate such as this, where the growing season never ended, a closely cropped runway like this one would have to be tended constantly. Axelrad took a deep breath, not caring how many mosquitoes went with it. His adrenaline kicked into high gear and he started jogging forward. Karen ran alongside, practically dancing for joy.
Two-thirds of the way down the runway, he saw the plane for what it was, an elaborate mock-up, and started to slow. Another model plane stood to one side and slightly behind the first.
She grabbed his arm to keep him going. “In the trees,” she shouted.
My God, she was right. A hangar was hidden beneath the overhanging branches.
The hangar wouldn’t be visible from the air, he realized, which seemed odd. The whole purpose of the Cargo Cult was to use fake runways and airport facilities to lure planes and their cargo. So why hide the hangar?
“We’ve got to get back and report this,” he said breathlessly.
“Hold it,” Karen said as a man appeared in the hangar’s open doorway. “Who’s that?”
By then they were close enough to see his military gear.
“He’s no native. That’s for sure,” Axelrad said. “Better yet, what the hell is he doing here?”
CHAPTER 32
Nick crossed her fingers and offered a silent prayer to the gods of technology, hoping the batteries in her laptop computer had survived the steam bath that passed for atmosphere on Balesin. At the sound of a healthy beep, she sighed with relief and angled the computer screen toward Henry Yali, who was sitting beside her. The two of them were perched cross-legged on the floor of the new house. Everyone else had left for their assigned chores after promising not to disturb Nick until mealtime.
That gave her plenty of time to interview Yali, as long as the laptop cooperated. Its manual promised two to four hours of use before recharging was necessary. She’d settle for one.
Yali claimed to have seen computers before, though he shook his head skeptically when she told him that this one could show him all the airplanes that had flown during World War Two.
Like a magician preparing a trick, she held out a compact disk for inspection, showing him both sides before inserting it into the drive. At the click of a button, the title page, Aircraft of World War Two, filled the screen. Icons showing options according to country of origin ran along one side of the screen.
Using the track-ball, Nick centered the cursor on American Bombers and clicked. A B-29 Superfortress appeared against a vibrant blue sky.
Yali’s jaw dropped open. “Frum be praised,” he intoned, reaching out to touch the screen. “This is truly wondrous.”
She clicked again and the in-flight B-29 gave way to a full-scale cutaway drawing.
“It’s like a miracle,” he said.
She explained the plane’s finer points, remote-controlled gun turrets, pressurized bulkheads, and crew bunks, all of which distinguished it from earlier, smaller bombers.
“How do you know so much about planes that flew so long ago?” Yali’s tone verged on reverence.
“Airplanes are my first love. I’ve been building models of them since I was a girl.”
He stroked his chin and stared at her in open appraisal. “John Frum himself would welcome you,” he said finally.
Now was her chance, Nick thought. She had his respect, or so she hoped. “Henry, do you remember the planes that came here during the war?”
He nodded at the B-29. “Nothing that large ever landed on Balesin.”
“How old were you when the first planes came?”
“I remember them clearly enough, if that’s what you’re asking. When you get to be my age, it’s the old memories that stay with you, while the rest fades away.”
“Did American planes ever land here?” she persisted.
His eyes shifted away. “During the war, only Japanese.”
“What about after the war?”
“By then there was no need for them to come. American soldiers landed, but the Japanese were gone by then.”
“When did you build your first airplane?” she asked.
“John Frum’s airplanes, you mean?”
She nodded.
Yali smiled. “John Frum’s power goes back long before I was born. My people have been building monuments to him for a very long time.”
“The airplanes that you’ve built have two engines,” she observed. “Was that always the case?”
He nodded absently, his eyes fixed on the computer screen.
Nick repositioned the cursor and called up a twin-engine B-26 Martin Marauder, known as the widow-maker because of its unforgiving flight characteristics. “Have you ever seen a plane like this?”
Yali touched the screen tentatively, his finger tracing the full-color image. “No.”
“What about this one?”
A keystroke turned the B-26 into a twin-engine Mitchell B-25. Yali removed his finger.
“I have seen photographs of such planes,” he said, “but they’ve never come to Balesin.”
“Lily told me that American planes came here after the war.”
Yali shrugged. “All planes that come here do so at John Frum’s bidding. Even your American seaplane.”
“But it belongs to Lee Coltrane,” she pointed out.
“Only through the grace of John Frum.”
Nick took a deep breath and called up another view of a B-25. This one had teeth painted on its nose.
“Wonderful,” Yali breathed, his finger caressing the sharp, white teeth.
Both the B-25 and B-26 had seen extensive service in the Pacific during the war. But Yali’s unfamiliarity with them seemed to indicate that Frum’s air force had been inspired by Japanese aircraft. That left Nick with the Mitsubishi known as the Nell.
She manipulated the track-ball until a side view of the Nell came on screen. It became famous early in the war for sinking two British battleships, the Prince of Wales and the Repulse. The bomber’s success was due to its extremely long range, something the British navy hadn’t expected. That range also meant that Nells could have flown from the Japanese mainland to Balesin without refueling.
Yali leaned close to the screen, started to reach out, then hesitated. “I don’t remember seeing anything like that before.”
He looked too calm and too sure of himself to be telling the truth.
She closed her eyes and revisited the airstrip near the old lighthouse. Certainly, the mock-ups there could have been replicas of the Nell. For that matter, the B-25 wasn’t that dissimilar. To refresh her memory, she opened her eyes and called up the B-25 one more time. Seen in side view, its fuselage was bulkier than the Nell and the B-26 Marauder. Otherwise, it had comparable features, two engines, two tails, and a top turret.
“John Frum tells us that America is the promised land,” Yali said abruptly. “We must look there, not east.”
“Is that your way of saying that John Frum’s airplanes are based on American models?”
He smiled indulgently. “John Frum may create planes in any image that suits him.” Yali tapped the screen, then immediately transferred the tapping finger to the side of his own head. “I have flown such planes in my dreams. Our goal is always America.”
Nick stared at him, probing for any sign that he might be trying to mislead her. But the look on his face seemed smugly sincere. Certainly, Yali worshiped the American way of life. His flag-raising ceremony was a celebration of Old Glory, as was his ritual red, white, and blue body painting. So, why wouldn’t
his air force be American?
She sighed. Chances were, the best she could ever do was speculate on the type of airplane that served as a model for Balesin’s mock air force. Of course, much of archaeology came down to speculation, a great deal of it built on shaky evidence. Such conjecture was well and good when dealing with sites thousands of years old. But guesses dating back a mere fifty or sixty years could be career killers.
“Our planes will fly one day,” Yali said abruptly. “To come to life, they await only the touch of John Frum.”
“When will that happen?”
Yali smiled. “Sooner than you think.”
Nick swallowed a groan. Over the years, she’d interviewed any number of shamans. To a man, they delighted in responding to questions with enigmatic comments that sounded as if they’d been gleaned from fortune cookies. Henry Yali was no exception.
“Sooner doesn’t help me much,” Nick told him.
Still smiling, Yali closed his eyes and nodded at something only he could see. Whatever it was had his eyeballs shimmying behind their lids.
“I can see him now,” Yali exhaled. “I was there, you know, to welcome John Frum when he arrived on Balesin. Now I have sent for him again. This time he and his followers will arrive in a great ship. He will lay hands upon us and his planes and we will be as strong as America is.”
Pure shaman-speak, Nick thought, promising everything without being too specific.
“You have no facilities to accommodate such a ship,” Nick remarked, remembering that before airplanes the Cargo Cult had built fake docks.
Before Yali could reply, Chief Jeban appeared in the doorway. “We must go,” he said to Yali. Addressing Nick, he added, “Two of your people were seen climbing Mount Nomenuk.”
Yali clenched his fists. “I saw them in the night. I flew above them. I’d hoped it was only a nightmare. Now, they have broken John Frum’s law and will have to pay.”
CHAPTER 33
April 18, 1942
The South Pacific
He imagined what the bomb run must have been like. Had they caught the Japs with their knickers round their knees or had the Japs been waiting for them? Those poor bastards, bad weather and not enough fuel to get home, and maybe not enough fuel to make it to mainland China either. Still, he felt a momentary regret for having been diverted from the Hornet’s main mission. Everybody’s going to remember the guys that dropped the first bombs on Tokyo. Nobody’s going to remember us. Hell, nobody was even supposed to know. If they got out of this alive, he wondered what would happen to the crew. Probably they’d be sent on some high-risk mission and given a chance to die as heroes. As for himself, he’d gotten to the point where he no longer cared.
They’d been flying for eight hours now and he knew that the crew was getting nervous. He looked at his map again as if to gain reassurance. Their target was what was called a high island, not some strip of sand barely twenty feet above sea level. Still, it wasn’t very big. You could probably walk from one end to the other in a day, and it wouldn’t make much of a blip on the horizon. An error of even half a degree in his calculations would put them hundreds of miles off course. He’d had to compensate for the magnetic variation as well. He rechecked his calculations, then went back to the map.
He examined the markings that indicated two separate airstrips. The one on the west side of the island had been built by the Japs. They would have to come in low from the north to avoid it. He’d been told that the other strip, the one cut into the mountainside, was pretty crude. In fact, it was just dirt with the undergrowth scraped off by the natives. A B-25 was no Piper Cub, he thought. Even coming in low, they were bound to make a racket. It was impossible to keep two 1700-horsepower Wright Cyclone engines quiet.
The pilot’s voice came through the intercom. “Navigator, where are we?”
The name is Johns, you bastard, he thought. “On course, skipper,” he replied, swallowing his resentment. “Landfall anytime now.”
He could feel the pilot ease back on the throttle. Not too slow, he hoped. Their speed couldn’t be much above the B-25’s stall speed of eighty-five miles an hour, and at their low altitude they couldn’t possibly recover from a stall.
“I’ll be damned,” he heard the copilot say.
“Landfall,” the pilot announced.
The top turret gunner let out a whoop.
Johns asked, “Do you see the landing strip?”
“Right where it should be. I’ve got a straight approach. You did a good job, Bob.”
Johns was surprised that the captain had actually remembered his name. He felt the wheels come down and the first bump as they touched ground. The plane taxied for what seemed like forever and then swung around. Good landing, he thought. Now all we have to do is take off again. He hoped the jungle wasn’t crawling with Japs.
He eased into the cockpit and peered over the pilot’s shoulder, “Cut the engines,” he ordered. The copilot looked like he was going to protest, but the pilot feathered the props.
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” he said.
“Listen,” Johns replied.
“I am listening,” the pilot said, sliding open his side window. “I don’t hear a damned thing.”
“I don’t either,” Johns said. “That’s what’s got me worried.”
CHAPTER 34
Nick joined Elliot on the porch, where he’d been pacing sporadically since Yali and his men marched out of the village, intent on finding the missing couple.
“Look at this!” he complained, leaning over the porch railing to thrust a hand into the rain that was growing heavier by the hour. “This place is nothing but damp and mildew, while my Anasazi sites in New Mexico haven’t been rained on in years.”
“A desert drought would feel good about now,” Nick responded.
“At least the desert mummifies the dead,” Elliot went on, not the least bit mollified. “But this climate? Nothing survives here that isn’t shrink-wrapped.”
“What’s really bothering you?” Nick asked, though she figured she knew the answer already.
“Curt and his wandering students, what else?” He wiped his wet hand on his trouser leg. “Hell, Nick, I’m sorry I got you into this. I’ve been putting up with Curt’s eccentricities for years, but that’s no reason to inflict them on you.”
“Hey, you know me and airplanes. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. You don’t think they’d be foolish enough to climb the mountain?”
“Curt’s the one who ought to be out there searching for them.”
“Come on, Elliot, you’re not being sensible. Henry didn’t want help. He made that clear. We were all ordered to stay here and wait.”
Elliot groaned. “You’re right. It’s just . . .” He spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “Curt can be rather erratic. Right now, he’s probably worried sick about those two and won’t admit it. That’s one of his foibles. He’s a specialist in foibles. That’s what his cover stories are all about. Take this Anasazi theory of his. No one’s expected to take it seriously, so nothing nasty sticks to his reputation when nothing materializes. But take it from me. If the Anasazi actually turned up here, Curt would say he never doubted the connection for a minute. I learned a long time ago that behind that easygoing facade of his, is blinding ambition. Ever since I’ve known him, he’s talked of making a truly great discovery. Something not only to rival my Anasazi work, but surpass it.”
“You make him sound a little crazy,” Nick said.
“Aren’t we all? But he got worse when we were competing for a fellowship. When I won, he shrugged it off, saying he’d expected to lose. But I could see even then it was eating him up.”
While Nick was thinking that over, Lily arrived, half-hidden beneath a huge umbrella. “Prepare yourselves,” she announced immediately. “Henry is right behind me.” She climbed onto the porch and folded away her umbrella. “Here they are now.”
A line of men came out of the rain. A body was slung b
eneath a pole carried on the shoulders of the first four men in line.
“My God!” Elliot gasped. “That’s Karen Tracy.”
With each step the men took, the girl’s head bobbed loosely as if her neck were broken.
“Curt!” Nick shouted over her shoulder. “You’d better get out here.”
Axelrad’s body came next. He, too, was slung grotesquely beneath a long bamboo pole. Henry Yali was walking beside him.
Nick grasped her father’s arm as the thought swept through her mind that Yali had killed them for breaking John Frum’s law.
“Let’s get them out of the rain,” Buettner commanded. Until he’d spoken, Nick hadn’t realized that he’d come out of the house.
Once the bodies had been laid out side by side on the porch, Nick took a deep breath and left the comforting sanctuary of Elliot’s arm. Within a few seconds, only Yali and Lily remained behind. The rest of the shaman’s men had faded back to their houses.
Nick knelt beside Karen Tracy. “There are no obvious wounds,” she said, struggling to maintain a professional tone of voice.
“I concur,” Elliot said, kneeling across from her.
It was a procedure Nick and her father had used before, cross-checking one another at field autopsies. Only in those cases the dead had been gone for a century at least.
Nick looked up at Henry Yali, whose bare chest glistened wetly. “Is this how you honor John Frum?”
Yali shook his head violently. “This is not my work. They were dead when we found them. I swear it.”
“Where did you find them?” Buettner asked.
Yali gestured vaguely toward high ground. “On John Frum’s mountain.”
“Do you know what happened?” Nick asked.
“Only that it must be the will of John Frum.”
Nick glared at the shaman, but he pretended not to notice. Clenching her teeth, she went back to work, unbuttoning Axelrad’s sodden shirt.
“I don’t see any . . .” She broke off to lean closer to Axelrad’s chest. “My God, his neck’s been broken.”
