Jack didn’t know, so he tried a subject change. “What are you doing on the base?”
“Working on my story.” She looked at the line of men flowing into the mess. “I was going to join you for lunch, but I caught sight of it and lost my appetite.” She shuddered. “Would you like to comment on the chow—for the record?”
Jack knew an amused Norm watched and listened. Jack was determined not to give him any more tales to tell. “No.”
“Fair enough.” She held up a small box camera. “I think I’ll go take some pictures, talk to some of the guys. Maybe they’ll be more willing to share their feelings.”
No doubt about that, Jack thought grimly, but they might not be the ones she expected.
“I’ll go with you,” Jack said. Her brows arched in a question. “To show you around.”
“Why thank you, Captain.”
The words were respectful, but the tone….
Norm choked back a laugh, tried to turn into a cough, but couldn’t quite manage it.
“Good, you can be my photographer. The magazine wouldn’t spring for one. Cheap ba—buggers.”
Norm snorted this time.
“Do you suppose your crew would assemble for a picture? With your Fort? And me? That would be so cool.”
“Cool?” It wasn’t exactly hot.
“Neat.” She emphasized the “t” at the end. “Actually, it would be really neat.” She grinned again.
“We could probably manage something,” Jack said, wondering what was funny about it and why he wanted to smile with her. It wouldn’t be hard to get them to all show up to meet her. They’d been teasing him about Mel since last night and they’d love meeting her. It would make the story that much better.
Norm nodded. “I’ll see who I can round up and meet you on the flight line. Want me to bring you something to eat?”
Jack shook his head, not taking his gaze off Mel.
Mel smiled at Norm. “I’ll see you later then.”
Night came early this time of year, so the light was already turning that deep, afternoon gold as they started toward the flight line. It made the place look a bit less bleak than usual, though it had never been, and never would be, a comfortable scene. Its purpose was to wage war, not charm the eyes.
As they emerged from the huddle of buildings at the edge of the flight line, Mel stopped, her gaze making a slow one-eighty. He knew what she was seeing, it was as familiar to him as the back of his own hand, but in his mind, he could see it the way it looked from the air as he was coming in. The base lay in a shallow valley, with the main runway tracking along its length. The hard standing dispersals sites jutted out at angles into the patchwork countryside. The taxi strip made an uneven circle around the main runway, and then appeared to bleed off into the buildings huddled to one side. It wasn’t a pretty sight coming home, but it was a welcome one. This evening, though, it did look pretty inhospitable.
She inhaled, then let it slowly out. “Oh my.”
Jack wondered what she was thinking. Her gaze looked open, and yet managed to reveal so little.
“So this was better than Kimbolton?”
He chuckled, lifting his hat and smoothing his hair back before replacing it. “Yeah, it is. Marginally.”
“Which way is The Time Machine?”
“How did you know what it’s called?”
Her lips curved enigmatically. “I’m a reporter, Captain.”
She walked away from him and toward the hard standing dispersal site where his Fort was parked. She seemed to know her way around.
“Why are you really here?” he asked, easily catching up with her.
She looked at him again, her gaze suddenly serious. “To do my job, Captain.”
Chapter Seven
In the late afternoon light, this small city of ugly necessity was bleak. Mel knew its history. Bassingbourne had been an RAF base until Colonel Wray co-opted it for his Ragged Irregulars in October, though they weren’t too ragged yet. That was for the future she needed to try to not think about.
As they crossed the main runway, then turned toward the hard standing where Jack’s plane would be, Mel mentally adjusted the layout with how she’d seen this area the spring she’d come over for the memorial service. Then, the areas between what was left of the runways had been green and vibrant. Many of the original buildings had survived and were still in use to service the small but modern air strip that also hosted a small museum as a tribute to this past.
Inside her head was all the information Jack could give or find for her about this base, but none of it could have prepared her for the reality of it. How could pictures give her a sense of the textures, the colors, the smells, the sounds of living history—or how incredibly coldly inhospitable it all looked to homesick eyes.
The knowledge of just how far from home she really was swept over her, almost taking her to her knees. She stopped to catch her breath as panic attempted a coup.
“What?” Jack, who had walked with her, casting the occasional questioning glance in her direction, turned to face her.
She fought an internal battle, until she was sure she could keep her voice steady.
“How do you do this? How do you go up there? And come back to this? How do you bear it?”
He started to reach for his packet of cigarettes, but then stopped and shoved his hands in the pockets of his flight jacket. The chill wind tugged at them both. It both brought and removed the smell of the food from the mess. There were other smells, metallic ones and human ones. Wood burning somewhere, maybe, from a fire or bombs. She didn’t know enough to sort them out.
“You can smoke if you need to,” Mel said. “Does it help with all this?”
He shifted his shoulders, as if to shrug off the implication he needed to smoke. “Just something to do with my hands.”
“So what does help?” she asked.
Jack’s expression turned as bleak as his surroundings. “Is this for your article?” Mel shook her head. He shrugged. “Nothing helps.”
He took out his pack and shook out a cigarette. Mel had the feeling he didn’t even know he was doing it. Mel watched him light it up and inhale the smoke. It was awful to watch, knowing what she knew about them. She wanted to tell him, but she’d promised Jack she’d only tell him the truth as a last resort.
She turned away. It would have helped to talk to him about it all. He was the only person here who would understand or believe her—eventually anyway. And that’s the danger, she realized. Sharing it would lead some place they had no right to go. This is why Jack had wanted her to stay away. Shared danger, shared burdens could only result in stirring the feelings simmering beneath the surface, feelings that couldn’t be. The cheese stands alone. So…very…alone….
“What is it, Mel?” Jack stepped toward her, breaking into her bleak thoughts. Concern made his blue eyes even more tempting. “What’s wrong?”
Mel lowered her lashes, counted to ten and managed to produce a shaky smile. “Home suddenly felt far away.” She took a deep breath. “I guess I’m just a girl after all.”
“I don’t think there was ever any doubt about that,” Jack said, a sudden grin blazed with warmth she wanted to lean in to. His shoulders were nicely broad for burdens in need of sharing.
“So how do you keep it all in balance?” she asked, as much to distract herself as get information from him.
He was quiet for a moment, the cigarette in his hand sending a curl of smoke up his side, until the wind whisked it away. “Everybody has their own way of coping, I guess. Some of the guys drink. Ric chases girls.” He grinned, then tossed the cigarette down and ground it out with his foot.
“And you? How do you deal?”
“I try to stay focused on my job. At first, I took it a day at a time, then that got too long. Now, I work in hours. Sometimes I break it down into minutes.” His tone was light, but his expression wasn’t.
So she had one hundred and twenty hours to get through, give or take a
few. The math on the minutes was a bit beyond her at the moment. It didn’t help that she knew most of what was going to happen in most of those hours. Jack had briefed her very thoroughly, despite the obvious gaps, up until the time she was killed. What had happened after that, she wondered, not for the first time? The survivors had spent the rest of the war in prison camps, but what had Jack done? If she’d talked to him freely the last time, if he knew some of the future, the one thing he couldn’t do is fall into German hands.
It was a light bulb that should have gone off in her sooner. He’d had to survive to undo what they’d done. It must have been terrible. Alone, with no one to talk to, no one who would or could understand. And even after, how to explain where he’d been and why? No wonder he’d avoided the Group reunions and stayed off the radar. It had isolated him for his whole life, in many ways. So, he’d tried to tell her, without telling her, to stay away, to keep the truth to herself. He didn’t want to bind her too tightly or make the burden too heavy on her, but he wanted his past back, too. How could he not? He was only human.
And because he was a gentleman, and maybe because they’d fallen in love in his past, he’d hoped she wouldn’t figure it all out. He knew this was going to be hard and he didn’t want the weight of his past on her shoulders, too.
So much for hope. She’d managed to figure it out and add it on top of the pile.
For just a moment, panic almost won again as the weight of everyone’s need tried to crush her. Somehow she fought it back, or at least got it at bay. What was the big deal anyway? She just had to keep her secrets, crash in Occupied France, evade the German army, make sure Jack’s best friend died and Norm didn’t and not fall in love with the only guy she’d ever wanted to fall in love with. Hey, if she made it home, there was always Eharmony.com.
Like Jack said, it was all about focus. And not thinking too far ahead. She’d start with seconds and work her way up to minutes. It was how she’d gotten through the last five years and it was how she’d get through the next five days. Or die trying.
Oh, that was a happy thought.
“I’m a good listener,” Jack said. “My mom always said a trouble shared is a trouble halved.”
Mel wanted to tell him not to be nice to her, to not trust her, because he was too darned tempting when he was nice. But she couldn’t tell him that either. The list of what she couldn’t do was getting way too long.
“Captain Hamilton!” Mel turned away from temptation with relief, and toward the voice. It was the Colonel’s aide approaching them. “The Colonel would like to see you, sir, in his office.”
Jack looked at Mel. She avoided his gaze, producing a facsimile of a smile. “I’ll wait for you by The Time Machine.”
He looked about to say something, but for whatever reason didn’t. He nodded and turned away, leaving her with an easy, determined stride, that had a hint of arrogance to it. Men in uniform, she’d learned, all walked that way. She half smiled at the sight. Of course, her smile faded, they needed that arrogance to survive all this. Maybe she could get an infusion of it? Or catch it?
She heard the roar of trucks and saw the crews for the next round of practice flights starting to arrive. Captain Morgan of the Memphis Belle hopped out of one of them and walked past her. Mel couldn’t help but gawk like a groupie. He’d died just this spring, and yet here he was in all his youthful glory. Dang. Without thinking about it, Mel followed him until the Belle came into view. She’d seen her, of course, in the future, but now the Belle was as young as her Captain. Mel walked up, her head tipping back further and further, the closer she got.
“Wow.” She grabbed a passing ground crewman. “Could you take my picture with her?” This wasn’t being a groupie, exactly. Last time she’d had her picture taken with the Belle and her captain…
“Sure.” He looked startled, until it dawned on him she was a girl in crew’s clothing. He smiled broadly.
“I want it here, by the nose art.” She looked up, wondering if she could mimic the Belle’s pose for the picture, but before she could decide, Bob Morgan himself came up, looked her up and down, and then slid an arm around her waist.
“Who are you?” he asked, smiling down at her as the crewman snapped off a couple of shots.
“Just a reporter.” She slid clear of his hold, wondering if he’d remember her the next time he saw her. That thought made her eye want to twitch. She reached up and patted the Belle. “That’s a lucky plane you have there, Captain. She’ll bring you safely home.”
He looked at her for a long moment. “You really believe that, don’t you?”
“Thanks for the picture.” She smiled and turned around to find Jack watching her. That had been quick, almost too quick. He was smoking like a volcano about to erupt, too. It should have made him less cute, but it didn’t. “It was lovely to meet you, Captain. Give my best to your other Belle.”
He tipped his hat at her, gave Jack a grin that was designed to provoke and strolled away. Jack looked like he might get pulled off the scent of what was really steaming him, but then he managed to shake it off.
“Are you out of your mind?” he hissed for her ears only. “Is a story really worth risking your life for?”
Once again she was saved by an interruption. Several voices called out to them. It was the crew, waiting for them by The Time Machine. Jack muttered an expletive.
“This isn’t finished. We’re talking later.”
“Sure.” But for once, Mel wasn’t looking at him. She was looking at his plane, at his crew. “So that’s it.”
“It looks just like the Belle,” Jack pointed out.
“No, it doesn’t. Yours has a—” Mel stopped, staring at the nose art.
Ric came up, smiling and smoking. “If she’d been mine to name, she sure as shooting wouldn’t have a tornado on the cone.”
Mel looked at him, as her thoughts did a spin. “It’s not a tornado.” It was a vortex. A freaking vortex. She needed to think about it, but there wasn’t time. They were all crowding around her. She had to focus on them, not Jack’s vortex. His freaking vortex.
Ric stared at her like she was dim. “That’s not a tornado?”
“No, it’s…” She hesitated and then it came to her. She smiled at him coolly. “It’s a flux capacitor.”
“A what?”
Mel could see Norm biting his lip, trying not to laugh. She shouldn’t take it any further, but she did. “Well, double duh, it’s written right on the side of the plane. It’s a time machine.”
The charm faltered as Ric turned to look at the nose cone. “Oh, right. A flux capacitor. I guess it could be. It’s not like Jack is an artist. But I can see it. Sure.”
Mel looked at Norm and winked. She shouldn’t have done that either, but she’d always had trouble with impulse control. Just past Norm, Jack was looking startled and a bit alarmed. He should have told her this, too, and she wouldn’t have been startled. Did he think she wouldn’t recognize it after jumping into the freaking thing? Added to that were his orders to help him put Ric in perspective. This seemed a perfect opportunity to help him see the light. But perhaps she should pull back a bit now that she’d made her point. Didn’t want him to figure out that she knew about his vortex. As the crew, hats in hand, jostled into a ragged line for introductions, she leaned close to Jack and whispered, “I think it’s a very good tornado. Very artistic, but what made you choose it as a symbol for time travel?”
His expression cleared part of the way, but there wasn’t time for more. The crew was waiting. Jack’s crew, Norm’s buddies. The moment was both portentous and pedestrian. She knew them all so well, and in some cases, had actually met the survivors. Don’t think about that now, she cautioned herself. Focus, girl. They’re alive now. That’s all that matters.
First up was the crew chief, Sam Gabay. He was a big, dour man, so it was inevitable they’d call him Gaby. His hand engulfed about half her arm, the shake was short and oily. He apologized and wiped it away with a quiet ch
arm, despite the cigar clenched between his teeth. He drifted naturally into the place he’d stand in the photo Jack had sent her. Or would send her. Or something like that.
Next was the Ram, also known as John Ramsey. He was a big man, too. As bombardier, he folded himself into that terrifying, exposed space in the nose of the Fort and directed the bomb run while getting shot at by diving FWs. In later model B-17’s they added a gun sight to the position, but not soon enough for a lot of bombardiers. When he wasn’t looking through a Norden bombsight, he was a schoolteacher. English, with a particular love for the romance period.
Harry and Roy were the waist gunners and such a matched set that most people thought they were brothers. Both medium in height, weight and coloring, they weren’t related and couldn’t have come from more different backgrounds. Mel always thought of them as rich man, poor man.
Lours and Fitz were tail and ball turret gunners. Their small statures had predestined them for these low-life-expectancy positions. They occupied them with amazing good humor. The navigator, Hal Larsen, looked like an escaped shoe store clerk. Narrow wire rim glasses circled pale gray eyes, and his light brown hair was already retreating across his scalp. He pushed them up with a finger before shaking her hand and mumbling a greeting. Despite his mild-mannered exterior, he was a good navigator.
After Hal came Bennie, the top turret gunner, being jostled to hurry by Ric. Bennie was the comic relief of the group. He talked fast and funny and he looked goofy, too.
Ric, well, Ric was the glamour boy. Blond and certain, he was beautiful. Actually, he was beautiful, being in the full flush of his manhood. He probably rocked a lot of girls back on their heels just by smiling at them. Mel didn’t rock or blink or blush. She knew too much to about him to be dazzled or even impressed. She couldn’t look at him without seeing his future face superimposed over this one, a face raddled by alcoholism.
This self-centered man was the flash point of her and Jack’s personal history, and the propellant for two trips into the past. Today he looked like a charming, shallow pool being slightly ruffled by the winds of war. Looking into his handsome face creased by a smoky smile, it was hard to believe he’d ever died for Jack or for anyone else. There must be more to him than could be seen. Jack definitely needed a wake-up call about the nature of their so-called friendship.
Out of Time Page 8
