by Janet Dailey
With fingers to her throat mike, she called the ground command. “That flak is bouncing us around the sky,” she warned.
A few seconds later, the air around her plane cleared of the telltale black puffs and the explanation came back, “Sorry. Some of the gunners thought they were supposed to take a lead on the plane instead of the target. We’ve got them straightened out.”
“Roger.”
The small-arms range was coming up and Rachel swooped the plane to a lower altitude for their rifle fire, leaving the explosions of the big guns behind her. The soldiers were lined up like little stick-men on the sand, the supervising officers stationed to the rear of their positions, some of them pacing. Beyond were the dunes, hairy with waving stalks of sea oats, and below, the ocean colors ranged from the aqua blue of the shallows to the turquoise green of the deep. To Rachel, the wild beauty of the coastline seemed an incongruous setting for artillery practice.
At the end of the gunnery range, she executed a slow, banking turn and made another pass. Upon completion of the pass, ground command ordered her to drop the target in the designated zone. Her tow-target mission was over.
Flying low over the drop area, she told her quiet operator to release the target. The cone-shaped sleeve was unfastened by a lever near the gunner’s seat, which the tow-target operator occupied. There was a sudden lurch of the plane as it was released from the drag of the target.
As she banked the plane into a climbing turn, Rachel saw a jeep speeding across the beach to the drop zone to recover the target and check the accuracy of the gunners. In the briefing, she had learned that each gun was loaded with bullets marked with a different dye, so the color as well as the number of hits would be checked by the officers.
“What’s your name again?” the artillery officer radioed.
“Goldman, WASP Goldman.” She experienced a moment of apprehension that somehow she had fouled up her first mission.
“Well … good job, Goldman.” The praise was grudgingly given, tainted with a bit of surprise.
“Thank you, sir.”
Chapter XVI
IN THAT FIRST week, it only took a few missions for the WASPs to realize what they had let themselves in for. These missions at Camp Davis bore little resemblance to the idealized image they’d had of their roles in this war upon graduation at Sweetwater. They weren’t ferrying spanking new planes crosscountry for the Army. They were flying the dregs of the Army Air Force, and in exercises that practically put their life on the line every time they went up.
After morning flight, a handful of subdued women pilots clustered on the flight line, lingering in the shade of a hangar building on the summer-hot August day. The low morale was evident in lowered chins and drooping heads.
“You should see my plane.” One of the WASPs, a former Olympic diver from California named Betty Cole, dragged nervously on her cigarette, trying to hide the tremor in her hands. “There’s a half-dozen holes in the fuselage, less than a foot from the fuel tanks. Do you realize how close I came to going up in flames?”
“I think I’ve got it all figured out,” Marty declared, the only one among them not unnerved by the situation. “This is a trapshoot and we’re the clay pigeons.”
“Brother, is that ever the truth!” another agreed.
“Half of those fools on the beach don’t know how to aim the guns and the other half don’t know where.”
As Marty crushed a cigarette beneath the heel of her shoe, she glanced sideways at Eden, crouched beside her, her weight balanced on the balls of her feet. “Your Jacqueline told us this assignment was an experiment.”
“And we’re regular guinea pigs,” Betty Cole complained grimly.
“It’s funny.” Mary Lynn studied the sky overhead, watching the planes in the pattern. “I always wondered what it was like … for Beau to fly through flak. Now I know.”
The noise, the violent shudders and hard rocking of the plane, the smell of brimstone, all were fresh impressions on her senses. She chain-smoked, nervously puffing on a cigarette and twisting it in her fingers. The experience had left her badly shaken. It was small consolation that she wasn’t alone.
“I don’t know about the rest of you”—another of their number spoke up—“but the thought of going up again in another red-lined plane so a bunch of green soldiers can use me for target practice—I get all sick inside just thinking about it.” Her declaration was followed by a forced laugh, a brittle attempt to make light of her feelings. “Maybe I’m losing my nerve,” she joked very weakly.
Others faked smiles to go along with her pretense of humor. The area was aptly named Cape Fear. The smell of it was in the air, enveloping them in a chilly dread that made their skin clammy and set their blood to pounding.
“Let’s get a Coke,” someone suggested.
There were a lot of dry mouths, but the sweltering afternoon heat was not to blame. No one was comfortable with the subject of conversation. In a loose group, they drifted toward the ready room.
A poker game was—perpetually it seemed—in progress in a shadowed corner of the room. The whirring blades of a rotating fanhead moved the hot, smoke-stale air to offer some relief. The players at the table, all young male pilots, looked up when the sober bunch of flight-clad women wandered in. Their collective unease was almost tangible. The freckle-faced pilot spied Marty in their midst and rocked his chair onto its back legs.
“Look who made it back, fellas—it’s our hot pilot,” he taunted.
Marty didn’t miss a beat. “I haven’t seen you on the flight line lately, Freckles. Don’t tell me a big, brave boy like you has been ducking his missions and letting a female take them?”
“I had a mechanical problem,” he retorted stiffly.
“Called what? No guts?” she derided.
Mary Lynn pressed a squatty Coke bottle into Marty’s hand, protesting in an undertone, “That isn’t fair.”
“You notice he isn’t denying it,” Marty declared with cutting scorn.
“If you’re stupid enough to crawl in the cockpit of one of those planes and be a sitting duck for a bunch of artillery gunners, I’m not going to stop you,” Freckles said. “You survive in this man’s Army by letting the other guy—or gal—get his head blown off. You wanted a man’s job. Now you’ve got it, so what’s your complaint?”
“You’re brave as hell, aren’t you?” she sneered.
“I’m alive.”
“That’s really something to brag about, isn’t it?”
A pilot burst into the ready room. “Dusty went down! We’re all ordered up in the air!”
Cards were discarded and chair legs scraped the floor in an instant reaction to the summons. Pilots, male and female alike, ran out of the ready room onto the flight line, fanning out to seek out their aircraft.
An air search for a downed pilot was fairly routine for the men in the squadron, but it was still new to the WASPs. Each pilot was assigned a certain quadrant to fly, criss-crossing a given area and watching for the glitter of metal wreckage in the tangle of cypress and swamp grass that surrounded the camp. The proper procedure in the event of a forced landing was to pancake the plane in the swamp so it would leave a wide path that could be spotted from the air. If possible, a parachute was to be spread on the ground to aid in the spotting. Above all, a pilot was to stay at the crash site.
After better than an hour’s search, Mary Lynn felt the eye-strain and the tension that ridged her neck muscles. She hadn’t seen anything but the white dots of herons in her section of swamp. Subconsciously, she was always listening to the sound of her plane’s engine in case it started giving her trouble.
Finally, the downed plane was located in another quadrant. The message was radioed to the search planes that the pilot and his cableman had been found and all aircraft were ordered back to the field. Mary Lynn turned her plane onto a heading for the strip, relieved yet conscious of the jangled tearing on her nerves.
That evening, all of them were slightly st
rung out. At mess, lack of appetite was blamed on the heat. The August weather was held responsible for a lot of the frayed tempers and irritable moods. Marty was the only one who seemed to have some immunity to the common condition. It didn’t take much urging on her part to persuade Eden and Mary Lynn to have a drink at the Officers’ Club and unwind a bit.
Male officers at Camp Davis outnumbered the women a hundred to one. The three of them walked in. The base band was playing a Glen Miller tune while another major pushed his chair into the circle that surrounded their table.
After an hour of being plied with drinks and urged onto the dance floor at every song, they escaped to the powder room for a breather. Eden sat at the mirrored vanity to freshen her lipstick. “Two weeks ago, I was complaining at the lack of eligible men. Out there, a girl can have her pick.”
“Ah, but why settle for one when you can have a whole squadron,” Marty countered as she fluffed the short curls of her honey-light hair.
“They all seem so lonely.” Mary Lynn supposed Beau felt the same. “You get the feeling they’re happy just to have a woman to talk to.”
“It’s more than talk they want.” Marty shook her head at Mary Lynn’s innocent interpretation of a man’s needs. “Ready to go back among the wolves?”
“Yes.” Eden stood up, joining them as they moved toward the door. “They drink a lot, have you noticed?” Her observation drew little comment beyond affirmative nods.
Later, Eden discreetly covered her mouth to hide the yawn she couldn’t suppress. She tried to appear interested in the ramblings of the officer with the silver oak leaves on his uniform, so confident of his ability to impress her that he couldn’t see her boredom.
Her glance strayed to the dance floor where Marty was tightly entwined in the arms of her partner, a devastating lieutenant with sun-gold hair. For a fleeting instant, she wished for Marty’s sense of freedom with men, then changed her mind. Its very impermanence lacked style. She turned back to her lieutenant-colonel and faked an attentive smile.
In an Army camp capable of housing ten thousand soldiers, innumerable hiding places existed for those who had reason to need them. It was in such a forgotten corner of the base that Rachel and Zach lay on a scratchy Army blanket, mostly clothed even though few of the buttons were fastened.
Rachel rested her head on the pillow of Zach’s muscled shoulder while he stroked the silken strands of her hair. She was turned toward him, her hand lying on his chest where it could feel the heady thud of his heart. There was a languor about the warm night air that soothed and put distance between Rachel and the half-known fears of her assignment.
“You and your artillery buddies almost got me today,” she informed Zach from the secure comfort of his embrace. “You shot the cable in two just three feet from the tail of my plane.”
“We’re a trigger-happy bunch.” A smile was in his voice.
“This is ridiculous, you know that,” Rachel murmured, casting an eye at their surroundings. “We’ll probably be carried off by the mosquitoes.”
“The facilities are on the primitive side,” he conceded, his voice rumbling deep in his chest and vibrating against her ear. “But it’s the best I can offer right now. Marry me, Rachel.”
For a little second, she let the fanciful words turn around her before she faced the reality. “You can’t marry without the Army’s permission. They’d never give their consent to a marriage between an officer and an enlisted man. Even though we aren’t officially a branch of the Army, we do have officer status.”
“Who said anything about asking? We don’t need them,” he countered evenly. “We’ll marry the ancient way. Find two witnesses and vow before them, ‘Behold, thou art consecrated unto me according to the law of Israel.’”
“Zach, you talk such nonsense.” But for all her denial, it filled her with a warm glow to hear him speak like that, simplifying everything.
His fingers fitted themselves to the point of her chin and lifted it so he could see her face, glowing in the pale light. “Why is it nonsense to love you, Rachel?” His handsome looks were so dark and devastating they took her breath away, that ebony-black hair, those azure-blue eyes, and those nobly chiseled features.
“Maybe because there’s so much uncertainty around.” She curved her fingers along the back of his neck. “I love you, Zach. Sometimes … I just don’t know what I’d do if anything happened to you.” There was an underlying fierceness in her low voice.
A frown flickered across his expression. “I keep telling you,” he insisted, “nothing is going to happen to me.” He rocked a hard kiss across her mouth in a sealing promise, then rolled her out of his arms and sat her up so he could light a cigarette. “Want one?” He offered her a Camel from the squashed pack in his breast pocket.
“Thanks.”
When the match flared suddenly in front of her, the brilliant yellow flame coming toward her, Rachel recoiled in a terror that seemed instinctive. It shook her, and she turned from it.
“What’s wrong?” Zach looked at her, puzzled by her reaction.
“It was too bright. It hurt my eyes.” She came up with this plausible explanation and pushed the unlit cigarette at him. “Light it for me, will you?”
The match went out and he had to strike another. Zach saw her turn her head rather than look at the fire. It puzzled him as he passed her the burning cigarette and bent his head to light his own. She circled her knees with her arms and drew them up to her chest, hunching over them in a tight ball.
“What is it, Rachel?” he asked gently, sensing the fear in her that she didn’t want him to see. “You seemed afraid of the match flame.”
“I wasn’t.” She sounded impatient with him. “It hurt my eyes. I told you that.”
For a long minute, Zach stayed silent and studied the white spiral of smoke rising from his cigarette. “In the barracks, some of the guys talk a lot about what it’s like in the fighting … some of the things they’ve heard … what happens to guys on the front. It’s as if they have to talk their fears out—in case they’re the one who gets hit by an artillery shell and blown into so many bits they can’t even find his dogtags.” His glance flickered to her, measuring and keen. “I’ve heard pilots are afraid of fire.”
A tension seemed to electrify her. For an instant, Zach expected to hear an explosive denial. Then a sudden sigh loosened her, although a twisting agitation remained.
“It doesn’t have anything to do with flying, not really.” Her mouth was grim-lipped and tight, a frustration seething somewhere inside. “A girlfriend of mine—she was an actress in Hollywood for a while—just before graduation, she was flying an AT-17 to Big Spring. I was following her in another plane. All of a sudden, there was a big, blinding ball of flame where her plane should have been.”
“Rachel—”
“But I had this … aversion before that.” Impatiently, she broke in to reject any possible sympathy. “When Helen was killed, I thought it was a premonition of her death, but it hasn’t gone away.” Finally, she looked at him in the darkness, her face all white and rigid with tension. “I’m afraid to look into the flame—afraid I might see you … or maybe my grandmother.”
The haunted depth of her strangely violet eyes was more than Zach could stand. He looked away. Words seemed inadequate comfort. The burning tip of his cigarette glowed in the dark, the red heart growing hotter and pulsating with an eerie life. He ground it into the dirt, then reached for the tight ball Rachel had made of herself and gathered her into his arms.
“What are you doing?” Rachel protested when he took the freshly lit cigarette from her fingers and threw it into the night.
“No cigarette. No fire. No flames to see faces in. For now, there is only love.” A smile was on his mouth as he lowered it onto her lips. His body followed it down, its weight gently driving her backwards onto the blanket.
The hot, drugging kiss lasted long seconds before Zach lifted his head to study her face and see if he’d driven t
he fear aside. The heady sweetness of her was on his tongue, adding to the high run of pleasure he felt.
Rachel fingered the black silk of his hair, absently combing through its sleek thickness. “You are crazy.” Her lips lay softly together, all the previous tension eased.
“I must be to love you,” he agreed smoothly. Their embrace had pushed her blouse apart where the lower buttons were unfastened, exposing the pale flesh of her stomach. Zach bent to kiss it, feeling her skin quiver under the caress of his mouth. “I’m waiting for the day our baby will grow inside you.” When he lifted his head to look at her, his hand lovingly rubbed her flat stomach. “Why don’t we start making one now?”
“Zach, no. What am I supposed to do with a baby while you go off to fight?” Her words resisted his suggestion, but her face appeared warm.
“What’s the matter? Can’t you fly a plane with a baby on your hip?” he mocked and began nibbling on the sensitive cord along her neck.
“Zach.” Her hands tightened around him to press him closer. “Love me.”
Chapter XVII
OUTSIDE THE PILOTS’ ready room, all was black. After sundown, no lights were permitted; the field was under blackout orders and even the runways were darkened.
Yet in the battle zones the war was fought by night as well as by day. Radar trackers and searchlight operators had to be trained in the skills they would need in their combat roles, skills which required night practice … and pilots were needed to fly the planes for them to track on their screens or with their lights.
“Cigarette?” Eden shook a Lucky Strike from the green pack and offered it to Rachel.
The tall blonde refused with a shake of her head and turned away as Eden snapped a flame from her lighter and held it to the end of her cigarette. She pulled the smoke deeply within her lungs, then exhaled in a nervous rush. The hastily crushed butt of her previous cigarette still smoldered in the ashtray.
There was little Eden could do to rid herself of the tension that honed all her senses to a razor-fine edge of animal keenness. Danger lurked out there—stalking around the darkened field.
