Flying to Pieces

by Dean Ing

  "And the fucking village with it," Myles agreed. "But you're not gonna drop it there, are you?,,

  "Minimum loss of life, maximum loss of face," Reventlo replied. "Perhaps we might. It's a credible threat, and that's important." He passed a hand across his face and sighed. "Listen to me, blathering on as if I thought we could actually do this. No, mates. Put it out of your minds.

  If it were just me-but I'd be responsible for two more of us."

  As Keikano spoke to his grandfather, Lovett said, "No you wouldn't. This old guy has already volunteered, and I'm my own responsibility, and a decent mechanic, too, and if I had to chew those shackles loose I'd do it. Don't try to smear your chickenshit on me. If you won't, then that's it. But don't use me as an excuse."

  Something Re an instant of rage flickered across the face of Reventlo to be replaced by tight-jawed control. He spoke to Ohtsu.

  The old fellow straightened again, barked "Hai," and riodded at Lovett with great satisfaction.

  Lovett's grin was more than feral. It was ferocious. "Even 'yes' for an I know what that means, Cris. Can YOU take answer?"

  For a long moment, Crispin Reventio stood and stared at the old bomber, then at his evidently suicidal friend then, with a calm that bordered on the comatose, he said, "Well then, so much for sanity. Plan A: Melanie gets the ultimatum to Jean-Claude, and our people are released down the road with Victor covering their escape. We jettison the Ohka and hope to land here. That failing, Plan B: we send the villagers scattering and drop our calling card on the plaza to burst Jeanclaude's leadership bubble before we land. Comments, Victor? if things go bollocks-up, this could leave you alone on an island crawling with enemies."

  A faraway light shone in the Texan's eyes. "Yeah. Hot damn, whit a yarn that would make. But I know you, Cris, you'll screw everything up and get back in one piece."

  Reventio's headshake consigned Myles to a mental ward. "We'll have to work all night, lads."

  Several calls to Benteen went unanswered, but this did not slow the process of getting a bomber with ninety feet of wing moved by inadequate light to the cave entrance. As with the fighters, the Betty weighed only a fraction of an American craft of the same size, and they did not transfer the added weight of fuel into the plane until it stood with its nose protruding toward the runway. The cave stank of spilled gasoline.

  At last Reventlo calculated they had a bit over an hour's fuel aboard.

  "We'll try to taxi her out now before we're exhausted. If we can't, it was just one more good idea gone to seed. If we can, I'll have an idea how good the engines are. Oh, and one more thing: in case the bomb shackles fail, it might be best if everyone took a walk into the jungle while Ohtsu and I do the taxi test."

  Ohtsu took pride in waving the others away while he helped Reventio start the engines. Lovett, with Myles and Keikano, hurried off halfway down the runway to stand peering from behind trees. Landing lights speared into the night after the second engine settled into a steady rhythm and Lovett, seeing the winged suicide bomb shudder in sympathetic vibration with its mother ship, suggested to Myles that they weren't nearly far enough away.

  "Hard to say," the Texan replied. "If it dropped only a foot or so on its belly, impact might not set 'er off. Those rocket propellant grains could shatter, but I knew that weeks ago. Warmed up some tarry Japanese wax and sealed the propellant cracks one night, on sentry duty, Figured it should reduce the risks a little when we had to move it. Never figured on moving it this way."

  "I'm glad I didn't know what you were doing," Lovett said.

  "Wish I thought you knew what you're doing," Myles replied. "You realize, to reach those shackles in flight you'll be kneeling over a bomb bay with no doors and when the shackles release your load, that whole fuckin' bomber is gonna jump like an elevator, so be ready for it-wups, here we go," he broke off, as the Betty's engines roared.

  The whirring rush of engines was curiously muted to Lov IT' ett, who dropped down on his knees at the base of a tree. He didn't realize for a moment that he had his face pressed into the soil with his hands over his ears. It seemed like the thing to do at the time.

  When he felt a hand patting his shoulder, he stood up to find Keikano at his side. "I knew it would work," he said.

  "Nothin' beats dumb luck," Myles replied, and they trudged back to the plane as its propellers ticked into silence. Keikano and his grandfather took their success matter-of i factly but the others shared an elation that could not last.

  "We've an hour or so until dawn," Reventlo said. "I suggest we three flying fools try to catch a wink." And with that, he stretched out on a workbench that was now strewn with debris blown into the cave by his twin-engined tornado.

  A few hours later, Lovett struggled back to awareness only because Keikano was shaking him, holding a radio before his face. "Wha-it's full daylight, we should be feet wet by now," he said groggily.

  But as he shook Reventlo awake, he could hear the voice of Melanie Benteen from the speaker: "-war council early this morning; the taste of Jean-Claude's toe-jam must still be fresh on Merizo's tongue. I don't think they cared whether I could hear. Are you there, over?"

  "Lay it on me," he said. "We're here, Mel."

  Benteen -went on, "Their idea is very simple. It would be. Since we told them about the charter boat, they have to hunt us all down and disappear us before it gets here. They'll say we all took off in bigbig aero canoe, and if we don't return, who would like to buy a few of their nice shiny machines? Friendly smiles, innocent shrugs. End of story. Who's to argue?"

  "For one thing, a shell crater the size of Sumatra," Reventlo put in, fully alert already. "We'll have to drop the thing now, if only to dispute that tale in the event none of us I make it. Preferably in a spot where it can't be missed."

  "Hi, Cris, and what are we dropping?"

  Reveritlo told her, ending with, "So when you hear our engines overhead, Keikano will be trying to alert the villagers without getting himself bagged, and it will be time for you to come forward to Jean-Claude with your radio. Can you manage that?"

  "I think so. What if I can't?"

  "We'll strafe around the village and then put the biggest divot in creation slap in the middle of it. You could get some collateral damage even in the council house, I'm afraid. But that might knock some walls down. I hope you and Coop can deal with that; burrow under all that bum wipe if you can, luv."

  "You've got my vote. I don't know where Coop is, but I'll try to negotiate for him. It sounds better than the alternatives I've been having nightmares about."

  "You must've done; we couldn't raise you during the night," Reventlo said. "Expect us within an hour."

  "That, or a concussion wave from here," Lovett reminded them.

  I "That's our Wade, always a ray of sunshine," Benteen said wryly.

  "You want the facts or don't you," Lovett said. "If that happens, try to convince Jean-Claude we're just testing our brand of fireworks, and that we have more."

  "We do have more," Myles put in. "Not a patch on the ass of that thing you'll drop, but if I can still toss a Myles bomb, bit by bit I could make the council house look like a bad day in Beirut."

  "Please do, Victor," Benteen begged. "I don't know why, but I trust you of all people to do it right."

  "We're terribly late, Melanie," said the Brit. "So it's pecker-up, and all that."

  "Ah-guys? In case I can't tell you later: I'm glad you're doing this.

  Hugs to you all." And her transmission ceased.

  Ohtsu had dug out flying togs too large for him from the storage boxes, and similar outfits for Reventio and Lovett. The grayish brown coveralls were too small for the others, but the Brit managed to shrug his slender frame into a brown leather jacket with a sheared fur collar, his pale arms sticking out comically. The old Japanese explained that the parachutes had been cannibalized long ago by his friends. When Reventlo passed this on, Vic Myles sighed and brought his little surplus chest-pack chute from the cave. "You'll be hangi
ng over a hole, Lovett,"

  he said, and handed the thing over. "You'll want insurance, right?"

  Lovett couldn't resist as he began to adjust straps. "How much you want for the rental, Vic?"

  "Whatthehell, we're millionaires. Ten large, but only if you deploy it.

  And fuck you, by the way." He turned his back on them and trotted off.

  Lovett smiled to himself, thinking, Vic Myles is the only man I know who can say 'fuck you" with tenderness.

  Minutes later, they paused at the Betty's fuselage hatch before swinging up into its interior. Lovett pocketed his little radio, smiled wanly at his Brit friend. "We won't be high enough to get cold so I'll be okay.

  But if Myles tries to take a picture of you in those duds, shoot him quick," he said. "Hey, where's Keikano?"

  "Off in the bush, waiting for us to clear the turf before he slips into the village," said Reventlo. "I promised him I'd make a low pass for the punters before we open up."

  "And Myles?"

  "Get your arse up in the Betty and quit asking questions," Reventlo replied shortly. "In his place, I know where I'd be: far from here, looking for a foxhole. Nothing he can do here now." Ohtsu, dealing with switches in the cockpit, called a question down. Reventlo's reply sounded like a macho, "Ee-eh, Ohtsu-san." He swung up and inside, speaking over his shoulder. "He wanted to know if we had any doubts about this. I've always found, past a certain point of insane risk, a thing is easier to do if we look past what we're doing, and bear in mind why we're doing it."

  "For Chip," said the American, pulling himself up. "To morrow would've been his birthday. What's your excuse?"

  Reventio fairly howled with laughter as he swung into the pilot's seat.

  "I haven't," he said, "the foggiest fucking idea.

  Lovett strapped himself into the seat of the bomber's dorsal turret, almost directly above the glide bomb's canopy which protruded up into the bomb bay. That little tuffet, with its 20- mm. cannon, was a bubble like a tiny observatory that gave him an unimpeded view of jungle, rough runway, and the bowl of sunny sky above. As the Betty's engines warmed up, he took one look down between his knees and saw the deadly Ohka, influenced by the shudders of its mother ship, vibrating under its shackle mounts. After that, he tried not to look down there again.

  He energized his radio, knowing that Reventlo had one, too. "Should the Ohka be shaking like a leaf?"

  "Everything will, except us. Think about something else, old cock; if it goes up we'll never know it." And then, as the engines roared into full emergency power, Lovett heard Reventlo launch into what might have been an Aussie version of a death song, at first in tones like a low moan but rising to mix with the song of engines.

  But it was just Crispin Reventlo, thinking about something else. "Whoa, oh, ohhhh," and now he released the brakes, the Betty moving downslope, riding hard over the rough strip, "Once a jolly swagman," (bounce, whump), "camped by a billabong, under the lshaaaade of a coolibah tree..." it was Australia's unofficial national anthem, a "go to hell"

  flung like a challenge in the face of probability, and as the tail wheel lifted, Reventio was belting out, "You'll come a waltzing Matilda with me!" Lickety-whop, went one main wheel over a bump, and, "Down came a jumbuck to drink at the billabong," Revendo thundered, voice shaking from the vibrations, and Lovett tried to watch the trees sliding by faster every second through Revendo's next stanza, trying not to notice that they were veering slightly to the left, nor to see the towering trees their port wingtip seemed destined to find, and he wanted to join in the refrain but his vocal cords weren't having any, thanks.

  And now the solid bounces well-en't so solid, the broad wings lifting hard, Reventlo straightening the Betty so that they might not catch those top fronds on the left, yelling, "You'll never catch me alive, said he-e-e." Lovett wishing to Almighty God those words didn't sound so much like prophecy as he saw what seemed to be rushing at them dead ahead and knew that, even though the hoffendous rattles of the undercarriage had ceased and they were actually airborne by inches, they weren't going to be borne high enough to clear the treetops after all, but the word abort had no meaning now as gravity hauled down on Lovett's innards and, "Waltzing Matilda, waltzing Matilda," reverberated through the fuselage, now a weird duet because Yohei Ohtsu had heard the refrain and caught the spirit of the thing and was yelling, "Owaruzee Matiruda, owaruzee Matiruda," Re a lunatic, and Lovett decided they should go out as a trio, and found his lungs finally up to the task even though slipstream winds were whistling in the bomb bay now and above the calamitous roar of big engines, three crazy old farts stared into those onmshing trees howling, "YOU'LL COME A-WALT71NG MATILDA with meeeee!"

  And at close to a hundred miles an hour, committed absolutely and inevitably to a pair of treetops in the way, both of those tall trunks shuddered as if they'd been struck by Paul Bunyan's axe, beginning to fall away with agonizing slowness, a dust ring visibly spreading with the shock wave at the base of each tree, and. Lovett had time to realize why Vic Myles had disappeared when he did, and where he'd gone to: ly the end of the runway, no place for a survivalist but direct below the path of the Betty, where primacord-wrapped tree trunks could be disintegrated as an extreme measure.

  And they might have made it cleanly over the trees, buoyed by the Brit's resounding, "... His ghost may be heard as you pass by that billabong,"

  but for the spread of the Ohka's stubby wing, which happened to intercept a load of palm fronds that wedged between the two aircraft with a grinding hiss.

  Then they were past trees and beach, feet wet over a low surf and banking gently to the left, and Reventlo could be heard invent inga stanza of curses even as he fought to maintain a perilous hundred feet or so above the water. Familiar noises suggested that the main gear was retracting, though slowly. "Picked up something. She wants to roll, Wade; you may have to bail," Reventlo said, his voice tight.

  There was only one chute on that plane. "Wait one; maybe not," Lovett said, cramming his radio between his breast and the chute. He found footholds, with no problem getting down to the bomb bay where green fronds whipped and scratched furiously against the Ohka's plywood wing, making one hell of a racket. His chute wouldn't deploy at such a low altitude anyway, and it was like a hard sofa pillow against his chest but it would take too damned long to shuck the thing so Lovett wriggled down, pushed the Ohka's canopy back, and dropped into its seat, fumbling in very close quarters for that Swiss Army knife in his trousers.

  "Got a saw blade here," he said, seeing that Ohtsu had come aft, almond eyes astonished as he watched this American madman begin to saw at the hissing, whipping palm fronds while sitting in the cockpit of a kamikaze bomb. "Narrow envelope here," Reventio's voice can-fe hoarsely. "Rate of climb minimal, but I think we might orbit the island."

  "Hit one of those peaks and-we'll orbit the solar-system," Lovett replied slowly, fighting greenery that wanted to fight back. One fanlike branch fell away, gone instantly as if it had never existed, and Lovett's free hand stung as he grasped the butt of another bunch, and as he sawed away he could see, from the edge of his vision in a narrow slit between the mother ship and its flying bomb, the shoreline of Fundabora slipping past a half-rhile distant. It seemed as if Reventlo's control of the Betty was slowly improving but Lovett's surge of strength began to ebb now, and he slumped -for a moment, grimacing up to meet the gaze of Ohtsu.

  The Japanese peered at the varying clearance between the fuselages, then jerked around and shouted something. "Ichiban idea, I'll try to jink her, Wade," said Reventlo. 'Ready?"

  "Does it matter?" But as the entire length of the bomber yawed and rocked, the clearance slit dilated again for an instant. With the rushing hiss of a bad steam fitting, another bunch of fronds magically disappeared. Now Lovett caught at the last bundle and began to tug sideways on it, the slipstream now helping, now hindering. The bundle slapped against Lovett and then vanished, leaving a bloody welt on his arm.

  "Capital," Reventio crowed
. "Come home, Wade, all is forgiven."

  But as Lovett thrust his body up, his head extended above the windscreen of the Ohka, and the canopy, of course, had to be open for his exit. The slipstream, he found, now hurtled unimpeded around him. A man might drop down unaided, but he needed help to get back up again. He held his hands up to the old man who was braced above him. Ohtsu saw what was needed and reached down to help.

  And it should have surprised neither of them that a spindly old fellow in failing health was more likely to fall than to provide the necessary muscle. Ohtsu, with no chute, almost tumbled atop Lovett twice before the American waved him away. "Call him back, Cfis, let him explain," he said into his radio, making himself more comfortable in the cockpit.

  He slid the little canopy shut and, free of that hammering wind, took stock of his situation as Ohtsu disappeared for ward.

  His narrow field of vision showed that they were now a thousand feet up, skirting Mushroom Bay at a speed of roughly a hundred and fifty miles an hour. "I don't think we'll drop you by accident," said Revendo, "after all that. Let's make a low pass for the home folks, shall we? Give Keikano some credibility." And with that, he spoke to Ohtsu, beginning a gentle bank, trading altitude for speed as they dropped toward the lagoon breakwater. Lovett could see, directly above him, old Ohtsu scramble into the dorsal turret.

  "By the bye, do you have your hammer for those shackles?"

  "Nope. Slipped my mind, Cris, I can't imagine why."

  "Romeo to Juliet," Reventlo said, now hoping to raise Benteen. "Are you there, luv?"

  "I've been listening and you're scaring, me to death," she replied.

  A bark of laughter from the Brit. "I chewed a few washers from my shorts, too. Let's see who else we can scare. You may call the big dog now, my dear." He followed this with a shouted order in Japanese.