by Daniel Wyatt
Les relished flying, proud to be one of the chosen few. The US Navy stats spoke for themselves. Out of every thirty desirable applicants in the training program, ten went on to flight training. Four passed as pilots. Out of these four, only one was considered worthy to fly operationally. Les was that one. A notch above the rest. A naval aviator. An artist.
And he was part of a proud force — the United States Navy — who had never lost a war at sea. Going back to the War of 1812, the Americans, with a measly seventeen ships, held Britain’s more than 600 vessels at bay. During the Second World War, the USN kept the sea lanes open to Britain and brought the Japanese to their knees in the Pacific, beginning with the Battle of Midway. Now, the USN was top dog in the Pacific, the only area of the world where they were not competing with the army and air force for recognition. Not so in places like Europe. Les had been stationed on Guam for five months now with a temporary special forces Hornet squadron, after coming over from Japan, where he had spent six months with another Hornet squadron. Prior to that he was attached to the USS Midway, home-ported in Yokosuka, Japan. Hornets in every case. His machine.
As far as Les was concerned, there was no other fighter quite like the F-18 Hornet, the aircraft to beat at Top Gun. This multi-role fighter scared many pilots at first. It seemed too complicated, too computerized, too damn expensive. However, it quickly functioned beyond original expectations. The power, the maneuverability, the lightness of the controls, impressed fliers. From the time Les first stepped into the fighter, he found it unbelievably easy to fly, as if he had already been in it for months. He prized the visibility factor. He could see extremely well in all directions. He felt as though he was sitting on the aircraft. Not inside it. Damn good crate, she was.
* * * *
Now in his work khaki, Les threw his gear in the locker marked by his callsign of HULK, and closed the door. Without a doubt a one-woman man, he was, a handsome, muscular specimen who often made the opposite sex’s heads turn. He stood tall — just over six feet — and was richly tanned from the tropical sun. The strong, silent type, he was not one to waste words, almost taciturn at times, talking only when it seemed necessary. Only for something deemed important.
Turning around, he was suddenly and unexpectedly face to face with feisty Jack Runsted — callsign Tiger — another F-18 fighter pilot who had just finished an earlier night flight. Tiger was a skilled navy pilot who’d been bitten by the navy bug in his mid-teens. The women thought this six-foot bachelor was good looking enough, what with his blue eyes and short, curly, blond hair, although he was often irritating, arrogant, and a downright flake. Word was out that he was sowing his wild oats all over the island of Guam. While in a half-drunken state at a navy party a month earlier, he had even tried to make a pass at Les’s wife. Les had calmly offered to re-arrange Tiger’s face. Since then, Les avoided the young man with the Brooklyn accent. Today was no exception. Les turned to the hall, ready to leave. As far as he was concerned, Tiger wasn’t there.
“The CO wants to see you in his office,” Tiger said, breaking the silence. “Right away.”
“Yeah. OK,” Les grunted, over his shoulder.
A short stroll later to the CO’s office, Les saluted his commanding officer, Captain George B. MacDonald. On the walls hung color photos of an F-14 Tomcat, an F-18 Hornet, and the same F-4 Phantom that MacDonald had flown in the Vietnam War.
“At ease, Hulk,” the CO barked in his deep voice, looking up from his desk.
“Thank you, sir.”
MacDonald’s tanned face was long, with sunken, alert brown eyes. Nearing fifty, he kept himself in great shape, appearing to be a good ten years younger. A go-getter, he always wanted everything done in a hurry. And with precision. “What happened out there?” He leaned back in his chair, waiting. No expression.
Les took a breath. “Well, sir, the target disappeared before I could identify it.”
“Disappeared?”
“Yes, sir.”
“That’s the second time this week. And you were there the other time.”
“Yes, sir. That’s right.”
“Did you circle the area this time?”
“Yes, sir. Nothing.”
“What do you make of it, lieutenant?”
“I don’t rightly know, sir. It could be the air force are playing games with us.”
The captain folded his arms. It was no secret that Andersen Air Force Base to the northeast, the old converted World War Two B-29 base, had been busy throughout the Mariana Islands all July with aerial activity. “The air force have been deploying some exercises lately where radio silence is vital. But I wish we’d know in advance so that we don’t waste taxpayers’ money sending up a thirty million dollar aircraft for nothing. Do you think it could have been the B-29 that’s being repaired for the Second World War reunion coming up on Tinian? The — what’s that squadron?”
“The 509th Composite Group, sir,” Les replied.
“Yeah, the atomic outfit.”
“It might have been the B-29, sir. The target was large enough. And it appeared to be landing. Maybe at Saipan. It never got above a thousand feet.”
“But why this late at night.” The CO smiled for the first time. “I remember your file. Your father was based with the 509th, was he not?”
“Indeed he was, sir. Ground crew.”
“Is he coming out for the reunion?”
“I’m hoping he is, sir. I don’t know yet.”
“I’d like to meet him, if he does make it.”
“You would?” Les tried to restrain his surprise. “Yes, of course, I’ll let him know.”
The CO smiled again. “OK. In the meantime, I’ll see if I can find out what’s going on. I’ll make some calls. Dismiss, lieutenant. Go get some sleep. Say hello to Gail for me.” Remaining in his chair, he snapped off a stiff salute.
“Yes, sir, I will.”
Inside of five minutes, Les jumped into his newly-leased, white Nissan 240SX, opened the sunroof, and drove through the front gate. The night was warm. He opened the glove box and fingered through his assortment of 1950s and 1960s rock-and-roll tapes. Fats Domino, Ricky Nelson, Buddy Holly... He chose Dion’s Greatest Hits, one of his favorites, and snapped it into the tape deck. There wasn’t a car on the road, not at two-thirty in the morning during the week. However, he still stuck to the island’s strictly enforced thirty-five-mile-per-hour speed limit out of habit. When The Wanderer came on, he cranked the music up good and loud, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. Home, his wife, the sack, ten minutes away.
Chapter two
SCOTTSDALE, ARIZONA
Robert Shilling turned his back to the sun, wiped his brow, and continued vacuuming the pool in his swim trunks. It was a typical southern Arizona summer day. Hot, dry, no clouds. Now, at mid-afternoon, the temperature hung at a blistering 103 degrees. Shilling was feeling the heat. He was getting too old for this. Since his retirement in 1985, he had been thinking seriously of selling his sprawling suburban bungalow and moving into an apartment on one of the hillsides overlooking Phoenix or Scottsdale. On the other hand, he couldn’t bear the thought of wasting away the last few years of his life in some concrete high-rise. Besides, a mechanic by trade, he loved to work with his hands. And there was always plenty to do around the house.
“There you are. Come out of the sun before you fry to a crisp.”
Robert spun around to see his wife, Edna, standing with a tray of two tall, frosty pina coladas. She set the tray down on the patio table near her, under the shade of the umbrella.
“Have a drink. Cool off. What are yuh doing out here, anyway?”
Robert sighed, adjusting his dark sunglasses. “Ah, the pool’s so dirty. I haven’t been able to get at it for a week.”
“Can it wait? Sit down.”
“Sure.” Robert hooked the top part of the pole under the diving board to keep the vacuum system circulating freely. “Be right there.”
“You’re getting a little
red on your chest,” Edna warned her husband as he walked over to the shade of the patio umbrella.
“It’s no wonder,” he admitted, glancing down at his chest thick with white bristle. “I’ve been out most of the day.”
“Naughty boy.”
“I didn’t think it was that bad. I could use one of those drinks right now.” He plunked himself down in one of the white plastic chairs and placed his sunglasses on the table.
So far, retirement had been good to the couple. They were healthy and tanned, and both had stuck to a daily exercise program to keep the pounds down. Part of that program was golfing. At seventy, Robert had a full head of white, crewcut hair. He still had the broad shoulders from his youth, but age was slowly etching its evil way into his dark skin. The wrinkles were deeper and his voice gruffer. He had often said that he would have preserved his lungs and voice box if he had quit smoking earlier, instead of only ten years ago. Edna had been a smoker also, until shortly after her husband quit. Her face too had the telltale lines, which she thought was rather unbecoming for the Miss Arizona 1944 she had been. Nevertheless, she was still pretty with vivid blue eyes and dimples when she smiled. The sixty-four-year-old was still quite attractive in the one-piece bathing suit she was wearing.
She pulled up a chair and joined her husband in the shade. Noticing his war album on the table, she turned to him. “Reminiscing?”
Robert consumed some of his drink. He enjoyed pina coladas on a hot day. “I guess I am. You know, I haven’t looked at it in ages. I wonder if I’ll recognize any of those guys at the reunion?” His eyes grew large. “And will they recognize me?”
The couple eyed each other.
During World War Two, Robert Shilling had been a master sergeant with the United States Army Air Force, a crew chief with the famous 509th Composite Group on Tinian Island, the organization responsible for the world’s first atomic bombing missions. Following his post-war discharge, he returned to his hometown Phoenix, married Edna, and worked as a mechanic for a Ford dealership in the city, the job he had recently retired from.
Staring at the open book of snapshots, Robert recalled — in a flash — some of his hard-working war years on the tropical island of Tinian. There had been no glory scraping his fingers to the bone keeping his crew’s B-29 in the air. Keep the boys flying was the rally cry, much to the same degree as Remember Pearl Harbor. That was hard to do considering all the mechanical problems that plagued the first B-29s. The hours had been long, the heat unbearable. Often he was so tired that he would fall asleep in his work clothes because he was too weak to even peel them off.
“There it is,” Edna said, bracing herself.
“Huh?”
“The Mary Jane. You had it open to the Mary Jane.”
Robert set the drink on the table. “Yeah, missing in action,” he said slowly, as if in a trance.
“They never found the bomber or the crew, did they?” she asked softly, hoping for a response. The Mary Jane was usually a taboo subject in the Shilling household.
Robert answered with a jerk of his head. “No one knows what happened. It just disappeared somewhere between Tinian and Japan, a couple days before the Japanese surrender. Geez, they were a good bunch of guys.”
“A couple of days before the surrender? So it went missing after the atomic missions. After all these years. I never knew that!”
He sighed. “You didn’t?”
“No.”
“Ah, it was just a routine mission.” Robert took a big gulp of the drink. “There was still a few conventional bombing missions after the atomic ones.”
“Was there?”
“Yeah. A lot of people don’t know that. Anyway, can we drop the Mary Jane?”
“Sure.” She got the intent. No more talk about the bomber. At least not for now.
Robert’s mind fell back to the war. He remembered how the aircrew had treated him and his ground crew with the utmost respect. They were a team, regardless of rank. The loss of the Mary Jane aircrew had struck Robert hard, as if he alone — the crew chief — was to blame for their disappearance. Due to guilt, he, at first, refused to attend the 509th reunion. Forty-five years later he continued to ask himself the tormenting questions. Were there mechanical problems with the engines? Was the bomber shot down by a Japanese fighter... or worse... by some trigger-happy US Navy gunner aboard some battleship? No one would ever know. Then... more recently... he asked himself what difference it really made now. Why sweat it over and over again? It was then that he decided to go to Tinian. He and his wife needed to get away, see some old friends from the 509th and their two sons — David and Les — on the other side of the Pacific.
“Looking forward to the reunion?”
“Yeah, I guess so. Now I am.”
“Have you heard how many are going?”
Robert took a long time to answer. Folding his arms, he said in a flat voice, “Including wives, something like four or five hundred.”
Edna looked surprised. “That many? I can’t wait to see Les’s kids. They must be so big now. Did you read David’s letter?”
“I did. He seems to be doing quite well for himself. The Midas Touch. But he didn’t have to send us the air fare to Kyoto.”
Edna chuckled. “He’s got a lot more money than we do.”
“That’s for hell sure.” Robert paused for a moment. “Sounds as if he’s dating a Nip.”
“This is 1990, dear. The politically-correct term in Japanese. No more Nips. Not even Japs.”
Robert grunted. “Oh, yeah. So I’ve been told.”
“From the sound of your voice it seems you don’t approve.”
Robert stared her down. He couldn’t bear the thought of a Japanese daughter-in-law. Young people David’s age just didn’t understand. They didn’t live through the war years. “What do you think?” he said curtly.
He still found the war hard to forget. His mind drifted back to how badly the American POW’s were treated by the Japs. The Americans had taken Japan to their knees. After the war, the Japs turned around and whipped everybody else by selling their products cheaper. This was especially true in the car market. Buy American was Robert’s personal motto. Keep the jobs here. But he seemed to be the last of a dying breed.
Edna decided to change the subject. “By the way, why are they not waiting for a 50th anniversary, instead of a 45th?”
“I wondered that, too. Maybe because we’ll all be too old in 1995.”
“What’s on the agenda?”
Robert adjusted his chair, and told Edna what he knew. The usual assortment of breakfasts, lunches, and other get-togethers. Fifi, the world’s only flying B-29, would make an appearance by flying over the runways at Tinian. Major-General Phillip Cameron, the pilot who had dropped the first atomic bomb, at the controls. Next, a couple tours of Tinian, with a windup gala evening on the third and last day.
“I can’t wait. Two weeks to go. It’ll be fun.”
“Sure,” Robert replied.
“Too bad it has to be in August. I heard that’s the hottest month in the Mariana Islands. Les says it gets pretty humid there at times.”
Robert shrugged. “It has to be August. That was the month we dropped the bombs and ended the war. It wouldn’t be right any other time. Anyway, I’d better get back to the pool.”
* * * *
GUAM
Les was so sound asleep that he didn’t hear the bedside phone ring. His wife pulled her tired body across her husband’s bare chest and grabbed the receiver, warm from the sun’s rays streaming through the bottom of the curtain covering the bedroom window.
“Hello,” she said, gruffly, almost in a whisper into the receiver, as she lay on her back.
“Gail. It’s David. How yuh doing? Yuh OK?”
She brushed the hair from her eyes and got up on one elbow. “Hi, David.” She glanced over at the digital clock on the nightstand. “Guess we slept in. Hell, it’s ten o’clock.”
“Can I talk to my little broth
er?”
“Sure. He was out late. Didn’t get back from the base ’til two or so.”
“Out on maneuvers, was he?”
“Yeah. I’ll see if I can wake him.”
Gail glanced at Les, who was out cold. “Hey, Les.” She was talking louder now. “It’s your brother.”
Les opened his eyes to see Gail looking down at him, inches away, smiling, hugging him close. Her long brown hair hung down over her nightgown. She placed the receiver between them so they both could listen.
“Hi, David,” Les said, clearing his throat.
“How goes it, little bother?”
“Ah, well... hanging in there. What’s up?”
“I got a letter from mom and dad. They’re going to the reunion after all. They said they plan to come up to Kyoto for a few days, too. I wanted to know if you and the family wanted to drop by with them. How about it?”
“Yeah, I suppose so,” Les said slowly, struggling for the words, eyes squinting. “If I can get the time off. I’ll have to see, I’ll let you know,” he went on, stopping to kiss his wife on the cheek, while she purred in his ear. “By the way, I didn’t think dad wanted to go. What changed his mind?”
“Hell if I know. And he even wants to visit Japan for the first time. You don’t suppose the ol’ guy has finally mellowed?”
“Maybe.”
“Get back to me as soon as you can, OK.”
“Sure. A day or so.”
“Great. Got to go. See yuh, navy boy.”
“You bet.”
Gail hung up for him.
“Hi there, Hulk,” Gail said, her hand moving in his hair.
Les smiled. “Are the kids up?”
“I don’t hear them. Close the door,” she demanded, smiling.
