Fatal 5

by Karin Kaufman

  # # #

  Jack awoke to the strange sensation of someone shaking his toes. The problem was…Jack had the apartment to himself. As he turned on his back, he felt a warm breeze blow over him from a window overhead. But it was the fall in Georgia. There were no more warm breezes, hadn’t been any for over a month. And the window in his apartment was on the right side of the room, not overhead.

  “C’mon Turner, you better get outta the sack. It’s six-forty-five. You and me got AA duty at 0800 hours. I don’t know ‘bout you, but I intend to eat before then.”

  Someone was in his room. A friendly voice, with a noticeable New York accent. Slowly, Jack reached his hands around a stiff narrow mattress and felt the cold steel of a military-style bunk. He lay motionless then opened his eyes slightly, almost against his will.

  “Okay, Turner. Suit yourself. I ain’t comin’ back for you no more. You ain’t out there at 0800, the Sarge will have you for breakfast, I’m tellin’ ya.”

  Standing at the foot of his bed was a short, muscular Italian-looking guy in a T-shirt and khaki-colored pants. A plain white towel was draped around his shoulders. Spots of shaving cream punctuated his face and neck.

  Jack noticed the size of the room, way too big for his bedroom. Bunks lined three walls, all occupied, and a row of steel lockers stretched along the fourth. Cold fear gripped him. He didn’t seem to be in danger; this Italian GI seemed friendly enough. But everything was wrong. Who was this guy? What is this place?

  Convinced he had to be dreaming, Jack rolled back on his side, slammed his eyes shut, and covered himself with the sheet. He searched the darkened corridors of his mind for a better dream. He heard the Italian GI’s footsteps walk away from his bunk.

  “Suit yourself, Turner,” said the fading voice.

  Jack lay there for several anguishing minutes. He couldn’t fall back to sleep; his body was done. Besides, he was already asleep, wasn’t he? Slowly, he rolled over in his bunk and reopened his eyes. It was all there again: the bunks, the lockers, the warm breeze. I’ve gotta be asleep, he thought. I can’t be in some army barracks. This has got to be a dream.

  Why can’t I wake up?

  But what if he wasn’t dreaming? What if he really was in this strange place? Jack rarely dreamed and, when he did, he’d forget them completely before stepping into the shower. The few dreams he could recall were only snippets and images that made no sense. Blurred things, like bad music videos. Certainly nothing this real. Everything he saw bore the undeniable imprint of reality.

  A shower. Maybe if he took a shower he’d wake up. He sat up, instinctively scratching his head. Where his hair should have been he felt a stubby, prickly crew cut.

  He tried to assess the situation logically. Last night was what…Monday? He had read that WW2 article before bed. Before that, he had dinner with Professor Thornton. Earlier that day he had given his first lecture in Thornton’s class. He remembered. “That’s my life. This is not my life.”

  He got up from the bunk and walked slowly toward a doorway at the far end of the room, searching for a shower. The faint sound of trickling water suggested a bathroom. He walked past a square pillar in the center aisle of the room and stopped to notice a dozen rifles neatly stacked around a wooden rack. There were three such pillars in the room about fifteen feet apart.

  He looked back at his bunk, placed against the only wall facing outdoors. He could see the fronds of palm trees gently yielding to the wind outside. He ran to look. There were no palm trees in Culpepper. There was a road outside, partially lined with old cars. Across the street, a baseball field. He turned and examined the roomful of sleeping GI’s. At the foot of each bunk, a wooden footlocker rested on a short stand. Jack’s footlocker had his name stenciled across the top.

  “This is crazy,” he said aloud. A set of dog tags brushed against his chest. He grabbed at it. It identified him as Pfc. Jack Turner, the property of the US Army, with a serial number he did not recognize. U.S. Army? Lord…where am I? As he neared the doorway to the bathroom, he peeked inside.

  “Hey, glad you finally decided to rejoin the land of the living. But as you can see I’m done.” It was the Italian GI buttoning the last of his shirt buttons. “You want I should save you a spot?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “A spot…a place at the mess hall. You gonna chow down or what?”

  Jack stared at him dumbly. “Listen, this may sound crazy to you, but I’m not supposed to be here.”

  “You’re talking to the wrong guy about that. I’m just a Pfc. like you. They don’t ask me to make duty rosters yet.”

  “No, I mean in these barracks. I’m not supposed to be here in these barracks. I don’t belong here.”

  “What, somebody smack you good last night? Whatta you mean you’re not supposed to be here?”

  “I don’t know. Nothing’s making any sense right now.”

  “You musta tied on a big one last night, Jack. But you better snap out of it. Here’s the skinny…you gotta get dressed, get some grub, get your gear, and be down at our duty station in less than an hour. I’ll get the guns checked out. But you better get it together. Pronto.” He was poking his index finger gently into Jack’s chest.

  Here’s the skinny? Who talks like that?

  The GI threw his towel into a laundry bin and walked past Jack. He headed down the center aisle toward a doorway in the far corner of the room. “You better get a move on it, Jack,” he whispered loudly.

  Somebody moaned “shut up” as the GI disappeared through the doorway.

  8

  Jack walked back to the bathroom. A naked light bulb glared down at him from the ceiling. The toilets and urinals must be in the next room; he could tell by the smell. On a shelf to his left were a stack of plain white towels, the kind you get in a cheap motel. Jack grabbed one and walked toward a shower nozzle. He hung his towel and khaki-colored underwear on a wooden dowel and placed his watch on a shelf set about head-high.

  He reached for the shower knob, careful to pick the one with an “H,” and stood off to the right. Ice cold water blasted out. Chills from the wet spray zapped his neck and arms. At his feet, a puddle of icy water quickly gathered on the cement floor in search of the drain. He danced out of its way.

  In a few moments, it finally warmed up. As the shower drenched his head and face, he ducked and closed his eyes. A thick stream poured off his chin like a faucet. When he opened his eyes, he expected to be standing in his antique porcelain tub with its four little legs in his garage apartment at 433 Rambling Road. It would be Tuesday morning. He would get on with the rest of his day, get some work done on his new book. This whole bizarre dream would start slipping from his grasp so fast he wouldn’t recall a fraction of it by breakfast, even if he wanted to.

  With his eyes still shut, he reached down for the hot and cold water knobs in his tub, fully expecting them to be there. Instead, he felt a rough cement wall. Not a good sign. His fingers spidered up the wall until they felt the same military knobs as before. He turned them off and stood there stiffly, fighting a wave of nausea. He opened his eyes, squinting at first, and panned the room.

  Nothing had changed.

  He slapped his palm against the wall. His last hopes for a rational conclusion to this nightmare were gone. Reaching for the towel, he dried himself off and faced the unwelcome reality that he would have to play this thing out, whatever it was. Maybe some sense would come of it later.

  After his shower, Jack found a set of fatigues in one of the metal lockers along the wall. Not surprisingly, the locker had his name on it. Everything in the locker fit, even the boots. He studied its contents carefully. It yielded no clues.

  He found the mess hall in the interior of the building by following a couple of hungry-looking GI’s. Ten minutes later, he was looking at breakfast: some greenish scrambled eggs, two shiny sausage patties, and a clump of oatmeal. He had no appetite.

  He quickly located the Italian GI again among thirty or forty others. W
ithin a few minutes, he’d learned his name was Salvatore Bertelli, Sal for short. Sal was from the Bronx, and Sal had the hardest time believing Jack didn’t know his name or anything about him. “What you got magnesia, or somethin?” he asked.

  Jack looked across the noisy table at Sal. “Let’s just say I’ve got amnesia,” he whispered. “Let’s just say I did get hit over the head in a bar last night. Right now, I need your help. I don’t know where I am. I don’t know what I’m doing here. I don’t even know what I’m supposed to do with you on duty. Could I just follow you around for a while? I’m sure I’ll snap outta this. But for now—”

  “Geez, Jack. You’re serious.”

  Jack stared directly into Sal’s eyes. “Completely.”

  “Maybe after duty, you better go see the Doc down at Tripler. Let him give you a look.”

  Tripler, Jack thought, where have I heard that name before? “I’ll do that,” Jack said. “But for now…can you help me out?”

  “Right now you and me, we gotta go. You gonna eat that?”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Well, c’mon. We got exactly twenty-five minutes till we make the Sarge’s hate list. I don’t want to spend the weekend digging holes and filling ‘em back up again. Let’s get our gear.” He pushed himself away from the table and headed for the door.

  Sal hurried through the halls back to the barracks with Jack in pursuit. A few more GIs had crawled out of bed, slowly making their way to the showers. Jack gave Sal his full attention, imitating everything he did.

  Sal opened his footlocker and pulled out a waist belt holding a bayonet and canteen. He went into the bathroom, rinsed out the canteen, and refilled it. Then he went back to the locker, pulled out a pie-pan steel helmet and put it on. Jack had the same gear in his footlocker. Sal then thumbed through the rifles in the center gun rack, grabbing one in particular. He exited out a side door next to the row of lockers. “Let’s do it, Jack.”

  Jack grabbed a rifle—any rifle—and followed Sal out the door, wrestling with the waist belt as he went. In his four years in the Air Force, Jack had pulled duty a number of times but had never seen rifles like these. He wasn’t a Guns-and-Ammo kind of guy, but they looked like antiques.

  Barely a few steps from the barracks into the fresh morning air and he stopped dead in his tracks. Directly ahead, about seventy-five yards away, were two rows of large airplane hangars. What he saw caused his heart to skip a beat. Between the two closest hangars were several B-17 Flying Fortresses, World War II bombers, parked wingtip to wingtip. There could be no mistake. In his whole life, he’d only seen one at an air show, well-worn with age. These beauties glistened like new in the early morning sun.

  He turned for a moment to look at the barracks building and the handsome row of palm trees, all about fifteen feet high, evenly spaced around the border of the property. It was an odd-shaped, three-storied building. Jack had seen it somewhere before, maybe in a picture or a movie, but he couldn’t place it. Then he noticed the backside of a wooden sign along a walkway facing the hangars. He ran over and read the words on front:

  Halemakai Barracks

  Hickam Field - US Army Air Force

  Honolulu, Hawaii

  “Halemakai Barracks? Hickam Field?”

  That’s where he’d seen this scene before. It was too incredible to comprehend. Somehow, he was in Hawaii. Hickam Field was one of the air bases at Pearl Harbor. His eyes focused on the third line: “US Army Air Force.”

  US Army? The Air Force hadn’t been part of the Army since…since World War II. He looked back at the B-17’s. Back at the sign. He looked all around in disbelief then began to sweat.

  He noticed the age of the cars parked along the roadside: vintage Buicks, Chevys, Fords, Packards, and Studebakers—all in mint condition. There was even an old trolley-style bus. But it wasn’t old; it was like new. Not a modern vehicle in sight. He looked back at the airfield. No jets, no turbo-props, no helicopters. Just the B-17’s and some other old planes he couldn’t identify.

  He looked and found Sal about one hundred yards away, walking along the hangars toward the end of the runway. “Wait! Sal, wait up.” Jack sprinted, his rifle banging him in the butt with each stride. “Sal, what’s today’s date?”

  “What?”

  “Today’s date…what’s today’s date?”

  “Today’s Sunday. You don’t even remember that?” Sal kept walking, didn’t even look up.

  “No. I said the date. Not the day, the date.”

  “I don’t know. It’s the sixth or seventh. I don’t know. What’s it matter? I’m here fourteen more months, that’s all I know.” He kept walking, the anti-aircraft battery now in sight.

  “Is it December?”

  Sal stopped for a moment and stared at Jack. “You serious? You are serious. Course it’s December. No snow’s on the ground, but I’m not having any trouble remembering what month I’m in. What’s a matter with you, Jack?”

  “Is it…1941?”

  “You don’t even know what year you’re in? Maybe you should see the Doc now.” Sal turned and began to walk again, shaking his head in disgust.

  Jack looked at his watch. It was 7:35am. He couldn’t believe it. But it all added up. Somehow, some way, he was standing at Hickam field in Pearl Harbor on the morning of that fateful day.

  That great day of infamy.

  9

  It felt like something out of the Twilight Zone.

  Jack ran and caught up with Sal, all the while scanning the scene, looking for something to parlay his fears. The B-17’s were in plain view, and they were brand new. Showroom condition. A sailor sputtered past on an antique motorcycle, also brand new.

  “Sal,” he said, gently grabbing his arm.

  “What!” Sal pulled away. “Jack, you gotta come outta this. They’re gonna put you away you keep talking like this.”

  “Sal, you’ve gotta believe me. Something terrible is going to happen here about twenty minutes from now.”

  “Whatta you talking about? Now you know the future. Five seconds ago you didn’t even know what year you were in.” Sal resumed his hectic pace toward the battery, now about twenty yards ahead.

  Jack realized how foolish he must sound. The words sounded foolish leaving his mouth. How could he be in Pearl Harbor in 1941? This didn’t seem like a dream. Did he travel back in time somehow? Maybe his body was lying helpless in a coma somewhere, locked into some weird mental illusion.

  None of these theories satisfactorily explained why everything was so real. He was experiencing something as real as his old life used to be, as real as life is to anyone who lives it. He had to consider the possibility all this was real, at least for the time being. He decided to take full advantage of his knowledge of the Pearl Harbor attack to survive the next hour.

  Sal finally reached the anti-aircraft battery, with Jack close behind, and relieved the two weary airmen standing there.

  “You’re early,” one of them said.

  “That’s okay,” Sal answered. You guys go get some chow or some sleep. We’ll take it from here.” He lifted a boot on a fifty-caliber ammo box, grabbed hold of the handles on the machine gun, and swiveled it around pretending to shoot down a plane.

  The two airmen walked by Jack and nodded politely. He stepped into the circle of sandbags and looked at his watch again. 7:45am. Ten minutes. Only ten minutes. He looked up. What direction did the planes come from? He couldn’t remember. From the north? Yes, the north. Looking at the sky now, it was hard to imagine several hundred Japanese planes were already in the air, headed this way.

  When Jack was sure the two airmen were too far to hear, he said, “I’m going to tell you something, Sal. You’re gonna have a hard time believing it. But you’ve got to believe it. Your life may depend on it.”

  Sal cast a “yeah, right” look in Jack’s direction. He continued through his paces checking out the gun.

  “In ten minutes, six carriers worth of Japanese fighters and b
ombers are going to attack Pearl Harbor and all the air bases, too. Hickam is going to get hit—bad. We gotta get out of here, start warning people, sound some kind of alarm.”

  “What? Jack…” Sal had a frustrated, angry look on his face now. “You don’t know how stupid you sound. We ain’t goin’ nowhere. And no Japs are coming here.”

  “It’s not stupid, Sal. If this is December 7th, and it’s 1941, it’s going to happen.”

  “No, I’ll tell you what. We’re gonna sit here, do our four hours like we always do, stare at the birds and the trees, watch planes take off and land. Some other couple of suckers, whose Sunday got ruined too, are gonna take our place. And then I’m heading down to Waikiki for a swim, show these Hawaiian dames what a real man looks like.”

  “No, Sal. The Japanese are coming. Right here. They’re going to sink most of our battleships. Hundreds are gonna die. I’m not joking, and I’m not crazy. We’ve got less than ten minutes.”

  “Don’t you think the brass would know it if the Japs were coming?” Sal’s eyes widened; his nostrils flared. “You think they’d let everybody sleep in like this? You think the General would order us to line all them planes up like that if there was a even a chance we’d get attacked? You gotta be—”

  “General Short blew it!” Jack shouted loudly, cutting Sal off. “He didn’t see it coming. He had his head in the sand. Everybody did. He’s getting ready to play golf right now!”

  “Better watch what you say, Jack.” Sal leaned forward. He seemed only seconds from punching Jack out.

  Jack turned and looked behind him. Their anti-aircraft battery was directly in line with the bombers positioned on the apron beside the runway. He realized the very spot they were standing would be bombed or strafed very soon. “You see all those beautiful planes over there?”

  “Course I see ‘em.”

  “According to history, eighteen of those bombers are going to be destroyed before you digest your breakfast. Over a hundred guys on this base are going to be killed and more than two hundred others wounded!”