“What . . . what did you say?”
The demitasse falls from my hand, shattering on the table.
“Number one engine doesn’t sound good. Skeet says there are leaves hanging off the tail assembly.”
“Denise! Come quickly!”
She is at my side instantly. “It is the speech of his sickness,” she says tremulously. “Bon Dieu, it comes day and night now. Get him to bed, Rijn. We must hold his arms.”
“Hold me tight, Denise . . .”
“I will, my darling.”
I feel Rijn’s sturdy grip on one arm, the light, loving touch of Denise on the other. “What is today? The sixteenth of May. Say it; that sometimes staves it off. The sixteenth of May in the year of our Blessed Lord, 1806. Say it.”
“The sixteenth of May . . .” They repeat it with me, over and over and—
“—over the target in seven minutes.”
Lt. Saylors, the pilot, sounds shaky on the intercom, like we all feel. This is a bad run. Number one engine isn’t turning over right. You can feel when all four engines on a B-24 are copacetic, a deep, steady drone. You get so you hear trouble quick.
“Over the target—shit, we’re under it.”
Gordini’s right. We’re coming in at treetop level to stay under the kraut radar. That’s why a screwed-up engine is bad news. No room for error at fifty feet with a full bomb load.
The kraut phone-spotters must have picked us up by now.
Saylors again: “Six minutes to target. Commo check. Copilot.”
“Check,” says Borowski.
“Bombardier-navigator.”
Sweeney in the greenhouse: “Ding-how.”
“Engineer. Hey, Garson.”
“Roger, you’re five by.” In my earphones, Garson sounds worried. “Just listening to number one.”
“Sounds bad.”
“What’s your temp gauge reading?”
“Too high.”
“Same here. Can you ease off number one, skip?”
“Negative,” Saylors says. “Not now I can’t.”
“She’s gonna go.”
“She goes, you’re out of a job.”
“She goes, you’re out of the war.”
“Bird dog it, Garson. I’ll feather if we have to. Left waist, talk to me.”
I hear the clack-clack, clack-clack as Gordini cocks the bolt on his .50. “Left waist, loud and clear.”
“Roger. Right waist. Flagg?”
I try not to sound as scared as I am. I’m a short-timer. Five more missions and I rotate. After the fortieth I started praying for milk runs, but it’s been Ploesti all month. “Right waist, loud and clear.”
“Tail bay, sound off.”
In the tail greenhouse, Skeet Mahoney does a Bugs Bunny over the ’com. “Eeeahh—what’s up, Doc? You’re alive and five by five. What’s our altitude, skip?”
“Doesn’t even read.”
Skeet laughs over the ’com. “You won’t believe this. We got leaves hanging off the tail assembly. Purple Heart, men! I been goosed by an oak tree.”
Saylors again, sharp: “Knock off the chatter. All turrets clear your guns.”
I give the .50 two short bursts. Beautiful and smooth, like a Krupa drum riff. “Right waist clear.”
“Left waist clear.”
“Tail clear.”
“Okay, pot right. Four minutes to target. Going upstairs.”
I feel it in my stomach as the Liberator pulls up steep to make altitude for the bomb run. The other ships climb with us. The German fighters will be here any time now. Forty-four missions, this is forty-five, five to go. I won’t make it. I was born in this waist bay, in a greasy leather flight suit and flak vest, and I’ll die in it.
We make bombing altitude, sweating number one engine all the way, but we’re formed and ready for the bomb run.
“Five hundred, Sween. Take it.”
“Roger.”
“Everybody look out for company.”
Three minutes to Ploesti, the big kraut gas station. A lot of oil they won’t get to use. In the nose greenhouse Sweeney is the boss now. “Commencing run.”
“You got it. Give me a heading.”
“Adjust to course . . . 030.”
“030, roger.”
“Bomb bay doors open.”
“Bandits!” Skeet squeaks with excitement. “ME-109s, six o’clock high!”
“Steady, steady.”
“Easy, Skeet,” I tell him. “Let ’em break first. Suck ’em in.”
Sweeney barks at Saylors: “Steady on 030. Give me some trim.” What he sees now through the Norden is our whole payoff.
“Correcting to 030.”
“Right . . . hold it. Hold it.” Sweeney’s nothing now but an eye and cross-hairs and a thumb on the bomb-release button. “Hold it . . .”
The MEs dive through our formation like a school of sharks. Messerschmidts, long thin wasps, fast and hard to knock down. I watch them wheel away, waiting, saving ammo for when we’ll really need it. And then from nowhere two more hit us.
“Going to seven o’clock, Skeet!”
“Bombs away!”
“Ding-how! Let’s go home.”
The ship jerks and lifts with the loss of the bomb weight. The burning oil rigs below tilt toward me as Saylors banks her up in a climbing turn. As we level out, the first of the flak hits us. They’ve got to protect Ploesti, we’ve been hitting it so much. The antiaircraft cover has doubled in the last month, it’s Flak Alley now, the sky is full of sloppy inkblots as the bursts blossom out. There’s a flat boof and the screech of metal punching through metal. Someone makes an awful sound on the ’com. I twist around to Gordy.
“Hey, who—?”
Gordini’s nothing but blood under his helmet. That’s it, my personal kiss of death. Gordy and I started out together, one of the first crews in North Africa. If he can get it . . .
“Three o’clock, Flagg!”
I swivel around, swinging the gun. Gordy got it, not me, not yet. “I see him.”
The ME turns tight and comes in with the sun behind him. White sky and a black bird getting bigger and bigger. I used to love the sky. Will I ever look at it again without searching, without fear? We all of us have that tight look now, like scared hawks that have no love for the sky but only exist in it as long as they’re fast.
I give the kraut a burst and he veers off, wobbling. The waist bay is full of smoke. “What’s burning?”
“Anybody hit?”
“Gordy.”
“Six o’clock!”
“I’m on it.”
“Way to go, Skeet.”
The ship lurches as we take another burst of flak. The drone of the engines strains higher.
“Number four’s burning. Fire in number four!”
“Lead ’em, Skeet. Lead ’em!”
“Feathering number four.”
We’re running on three engines now, and the waist is foggy with smoke. “Waist to pilot, what’s burning?”
“Two o’clock! Coming around to you, Flagg.”
The ME is turning in, still broadside to me, a good shot. I lead him and get off a solid burst before the .50 jams. My lungs are full of smoke. I go on oxygen as the next blast of flak staggers the ship. Borowski is screaming over the intercom, and for an awful moment I think no one’s left in the cockpit.
“Sween!”
That’s all I hear before the junk of our nose greenhouse falls below and behind me, Sween twisted up in it. Then number one engine starts to miss. That’s bad, that’s Sweat City. Two engines gone, we’ll fall behind the formation, what’s left of it. Two MEs, sensing us for a loser, turn in at five o’clock. Skeet’s gun bud-dud-duts in a short burst, and then quits. The fighters come on, eight guns wide open, tracers streaming into our tail.
“Skeet? Hey, tail! Sound off.”
Skeet chokes something into the ’com.
“Pilot to waist. Get back to Mahoney when you can.”
“Wilco. W
here’s the fire?”
“Aux wiring, no big deal.”
I haul the .50 breech open, pull out the bent shell case that caused the stoppage, then yank back the bolt twice to cock it, glaring out at the white panel of sky where less than half our flight is wavering home. Lot of Maydays on the radio. We hope someone’s listening, even the krauts. They crash, they ditch over Rumania, over the Adriatic, over Italy and the Mediterranean. To be captured, to be picked up by air-sea, to drown, to spend a crazy day or two drinking wine with Italians before coming home to fly again. A Purple Heart and two bucks extra on payday.
We’ve taken a lot of flak, but we’re beyond German fighter range. “Waist to pilot. Gonna check out Skeet.”
I belly along the crawlspace with the medical kit over my shoulder. The tail greenhouse is chewed to ribbons. By the time I wrestle off Skeet’s flak vest and leather jacket, I’m working on a corpse. I plug into his ’com set.
“Waist to pilot. Skeet bought it. How’re you doing up there?”
“Engineer, how’s two and three?”
“Overheating.”
“Okay, I’ll try to ease her down. Flagg, get back on the waist.” Crawling back to my gun, I feel the familiar jerk and grind of the landing gear. Borowski’s trying it out. This time there’s more grind than jerk.
“They hit the gear. We can’t lock down.”
I look at the mess of Gordini behind his gun. I’m not going to make the Big Fifty, but I did this time, and so it goes on while the sky beyond the right waist bay, the curtained window, deepens to morning blue.
I am in bed, Denise sobbing against my cheek.
“The ship’s junk. We had to belly in.”
Over Denise’s thin shoulder, Rijn holds the open Bible, praying in a low, earnest voice.
“They had to cut Skeet out of the greenhouse.”
“You see?” Denise raises her tear-streaming eyes to Rijn. “You see what I live with, what I love?”
“Rijn . . . you have been praying?”
“For you, Ethan. God help you.”
“I told you: God is gone. Even Satan is obsolete. There’s only us.”
And I stare past them to the May morning beyond our window with the self-preserving keenness of a frightened hawk. Be swift, tomorrow. Berkeley, be skilled. God has abdicated, and his throne is left to the hunting birds.
There will be prisoners at Auschwitz who survive only so long as they clean, weigh, and keep accurate tally of the gold parted from the teeth of other, gassed prisoners. Like the camp officials who are more intrigued with the economy of Zyklon B than its ultimate use, they cannot afford to ponder what they do, and blot it out by concentrating on weights and the fluctuating value of gold. All true horror sheaths itself in banality.
On this early morning, the day of my death, Denise concentrates on our chocolate and poached eggs as if their correct preparation is the answer to all conflict. She speaks with studied ease about the coming evening, not about the hours in between. She will not be here for supper; she performs in Tartuffe. Her eyes dart again and again to the door. She listens for Rijn’s step on the stair. I must pretend with her.
“We will dine in Montmartre after the theatre. I fancy venison in wine tonight.”
“But it is so expensive, Ethan.”
“Oh, just this once. We will make a treat of it.”
The footsteps thud on the stair. The napkin crumples in her fist. I rise to admit Rijn.
“The carriage is waiting, Ethan.”
I turn to take up my cloak. Denise is holding it ready. She arranges it about my shoulders with a too-bright smile.
“Bon chance, cheri. Rijn, we dine in Montmartre tonight after my performance. Will you join us?”
He takes his cue from my imperative glance. “With pleasure.”
“Why do you not both come to the theatre?”
“We will be there,” I promise.
“Je t’aime, Ethan.”
I start to embrace her one last time. “You have made me very—”
“No, don’t!” Denise’s hands carve the shape of helplessness in the air. “Go quickly.”
This is our parting. Any other would be unbearable.
Our carriage rolls along the Boulevard St. Germain as the early sun splashes across doors and windows. The breeze is heavy with the scent of dew and spring flowers. It will be a warm day: good weather at Gettysburg, over Ploesti, north of Da Nang. And one day will come a wind so hot that glass melts and steel itself drips like tallow. Distant, but in three years the man will be born who orders my guns to Gettysburg. It begins.
Our driver turns the horses onto an uncobbled road. We jolt with the ruts, and I catch sight of a bare, dead tree among the greenery. Napalm does things like that.
I lean back against the upholstered seat. I know my symptoms well; it will not be a bad attack this time, more like a light doze. If I keep my eyes closed, Rijn will think I am merely at ease or praying.
We defoliated so much of Vietnam, the whole ecology is shot. Less jungle for Cong to hide in, but I know they mined this trail. Even spaced out on grass, you get a feel for mines.
August 4, 1969. S-2 said the trail is cleared of mines, but Big John steps on a toe-popper and loses half his foot. While they’re dragging him off the trail, Barrio gets himself fucked up on a betty mine. The platoon freezes. Radio calls for a dust-off to pull out the wounded. Nobody wants to move. Sergeant Tuck is moving up and down the scared line, chewing ass in pure Tennessee backwoods, making one man move, then another. We go on, single file and uptight, putting our feet in the same place as the guy in front until we reach the paddy and slide into nice safe mud.
We don’t need those mines, not after a week of search-and-destroy. I’ve been on uppers most of it and a little hash this morning. I couldn’t make it any other way. Lost too many good guys. I’m going into that village flying like the rest of the platoon. All but Tuck.
Tuck’s RA, bucking for thirty years. Without the army he’d be pumping gas back in Trashville. He digs this shit; he goes after Charlies for the fun of it when the rest of us would just stay cool. He gets people wasted, guys who were real short and counting days till they got back to the world.
I don’t feel much, but I can still be scared. Big John and Barrio and me were the last of the old squad. My chances have run clean off the slide rule, man. Today, tomorrow I’ll get it. With hash it won’t hurt so much.
The navy fighters lay down napalm, but they must be smoking themselves, because most of it goes wide. The heat is unbelievable as we move in. Napalm sucks up the air; if you don’t burn you can smother.
We hear incoming: Cong 82-mm. mortars. Somebody in Third Platoon starts popping smoke grenades, figuring the Cong is still in the village. The wind blows the smoke right down on us. Nobody can see anything. We’re flushing old men and women and little dinks out of the huts, all of us blind with brown and yellow smoke. A white blur of movement flickers in the corner of my eye. I wheel and fire out of reflex. It’s a dink, maybe ten years old. He grabs his arm and runs screaming back into the hut.
Tuck chops his arm at the few lousy huts. “Burn ’em all. This one first if they won’t come out.”
“It’s just a dink in there.”
“What’re you, Flagg? the fuckin Red Cross? Burn it.”
Screw it. For all I know the clink would drop a grenade in the gas tank of someone’s jeep tomorrow. I put my lighter to the roof thatch and the hut goes up fast. Tuck lobs a frag grenade inside. It goes off like the end of the world. The roof lifts, then falls through, nothing but fire now.
The black sizzling thing crawls out of the hut and flops over, twisting like bacon on a skillet as the fire fries and splits its skin. Thank God for the hash. Used to be something like that would make me sick. But I’m out of it now, don’t feel a thing. Not even when Tuck gets zapped.
One minute he’s in front of me, then going over backwards with the stray round from shit knows where; maybe someone in our own platoon
. Screw Tuck. He got a lot of guys scratched for nothing. The hash high makes it funny. Tuck falls and falls forever like trick photography, and I’m laughing as we pull out of the village. What the hell, I’m splitsville anyway, never gonna make it back to the world. Tuck got it, not me, and so it goes on . . .
“Ethan? We’ve arrived.”
We alight from the carriage. Already the day is turning humid. A hundred paces away among the trees are Berkeley and Hampton, both in black, and two other men.
“Ethan, for the last time, I implore you—”
“Let me thank you for your friendship now, Rijn. I have loved you.” I fumble for his square hand, but he embraces me fiercely.
“Then for that love and Denise’s, stop this. You are ill. Give him his meaningless apology. This is insanity.”
“Come. They are waiting.”
We move toward the assignation over wet grass that whistles about our boots, through scarlet azaleas and yellow marigolds. The forest at morning looks new-made, virginal, the sins to come unthinkable. It is a good day to leave it.
“By God, Flagg,” Berkeley yawns by way of greeting. “I did not suppose you would be so prompt.”
“It is a habit of shop boys, my lord.”
Hampton opens the pistol case, murmuring introductions: the bewhiskered doctor still red-eyed from too little sleep, his hastily recruited assistant, a young medical student. Hampton offers the pistols to Rijn for inspection. He does not take them.
“Lord Berkeley—doctor—my friend is genuinely ill—”
“Rijn, no more.”
“He is in no condition to fight.”
Hampton remarks gravely, “By coincidence, Lord Berkeley himself is not in the best of health.”
Berkeley inclines his head to me. “Nevertheless, sufficient to the time.”
Rijn is desperate. “Then compose, reconcile.”
Berkeley removes his high, buckled hat. “That consideration is past, is it not, Flagg?”
“As are many things. Give me a pistol, Rijn.”
Rijn examines each weapon and offers me one reluctantly. How solid and final it feels in my hand. Hampton draws Rijn and the others to one side. “Master Flagg has stipulated a single exchange of shots. Back to back, gentlemen. Twenty paces to my count, turn on my command. Single shot at will.”
Masterpieces of Terror and the Supernatural Page 47
