In Perfect Time

by Sarah Sundin

  Kay set the basket on the blanket. “What do we have here?”

  Hal embraced her from behind and nuzzled kisses onto her neck. “One luscious woman, and one hungry man.”

  She pried off one arm. “Then we’d better eat lunch.”

  “That’s not what I’m hungry for.” He turned her to face him, his eyes glazed, and he covered her mouth with his.

  All right, all right, she could handle this. She’d fended off advances for over a decade. She returned his kiss, circling her arms around his waist rather than his neck to block him better. Every time his hands worked too low or too far forward, she edged them back into place.

  When he let out a soft moan, she pulled back and gave him a saucy smile. “That was a nice appetizer. Let’s have lunch.”

  Hal drew her close again and burrowed in her neck. “Yeah, time for the main course.”

  Despite her hammering pulse, she forced a laugh. “That’s not what I meant.”

  He kissed her—insistent, deep, dark with desire. One hand wormed between their bodies and fumbled with the buttons of her service jacket.

  “Hal.” She pushed on his chest, but he didn’t budge. With effort, she yanked away his hand, but then his other hand worked on the button at the back of her skirt.

  Panic quickened her breath. She planted both hands on his chest and pushed back, breaking his grip. “Stop it! You have the wrong idea about me.”

  His bleary eyes took a moment to focus on her. “Wrong idea?”

  “Yes.” She straightened her jacket and stood tall. “I don’t know you well enough yet. A man has to be special, has to earn the right.”

  “Is that so?” He smiled and moved closer. “Aren’t you cute, playing hard to get?”

  “I’m not playing.” She stepped back. Her bare foot banged against a rock, and she stumbled.

  Hal caught her in his arms, kissed her even harder. “You don’t have to play, baby. I saw the way you looked at me on the ride down here. I know you want this as much as I do.”

  “I don’t.” She struggled in his slithery grasp. How could he make his hands go in so many directions at once? “Take me home.”

  He chuckled. “Aren’t you the little minx? Your words say no, but your body says yes.”

  “My body says no!” She slapped his cheek, not as hard as she wanted.

  With one arm firm around her waist, he rubbed his cheek and raised a sly smile. “There. Now you can tell your girlfriends you tried to stop me.”

  “Leave me alone!” She stomped hard, but her heel slid off the side of his shoe.

  “So that’s how you like it.” He smiled, his grip tightened, and he backed her up, pressed her against the rocky cliff. “You know, it’s more fun when you give up the pretense and admit you want it.”

  “I don’t. I don’t want it. I don’t want anything to do with you.” She tried to raise her knee to strike him in the crotch, but he had her pinned.

  “All right, we’ll do it your way.” He ran his hand into her hair, almost tenderly. “I’ll pretend to be the dastardly villain, you pretend to be the damsel in distress, and I’ll ravish you. Sounds like fun.”

  No. No, it didn’t. Her words swelled and blocked her throat.

  Lord, help me. The prayer dribbled out, useless.

  10

  Imphal Main Airfield, Imphal, India

  “Hurry. Come on.” Roger beckoned the litter-bearers toward the plane. He didn’t like the looks of the clouds to the northeast, the smell of the wind, or the sense of plummeting barometric pressure. A thunderstorm was coming, and he needed to get the C-47 airborne.

  Imphal lay at the northern end of the Manipur Valley, surrounded by high mountains—and by the Japanese. For two weeks, C-47s and C-46s had been supplying 170,000 troops trapped at the British base.

  “Welcome aboard.” Pettas stood inside the cargo door and motioned a dozen healthy administrative personnel toward the folding seats in the front of the cabin. Ferrying out these “useless mouths” reduced the amount of supplies that needed to be ferried in.

  A man lifted the foot of a litter to another worker crouched inside the plane. The litter tilted at a dangerous angle.

  “Not like that!” Roger sprang forward and lowered the foot of the litter to the floor.

  “Thank you, sir.” The British soldier on the litter saluted with a bandaged hand. “This is more dangerous than the front lines.”

  “Sorry. We don’t have an air evac team.” Roger showed the native workers how to safely load the litter onto the plane, then how to anchor it in the web strapping.

  He never had to do that in the Mediterranean Theater of Operations. In the MTO, teams of flight nurses and technicians could load a plane full of patients in ten minutes flat. The 803rd MAETS served in the CBI, but they didn’t fly the Imphal run.

  Kay’s face flitted into his mind, and he couldn’t shake it free. Again. The dame might be dangerous, but she was an efficient and competent flight nurse. He could see her doing the tasks he was doing right now—buckling straps and making sure patients were comfortable—only a lot better.

  Roger knelt and tightened a strap attached to the securing pole that ran along the floor.

  A cry rang out. Across the aisle, the top litter teetered and slipped. Roger lunged and grabbed it just in time. “It’s not tight enough.” He worked the pole into the loop of strapping and yanked as hard as he could.

  For the first time ever, he missed Kay Jobson. And for the third time that day, he felt an overwhelming compulsion to pray for her.

  He did so as he worked. All mail was being held in Sicily for their return next week, so he didn’t know if she’d written or if she’d asked any questions. But he did know shame, remembered it with a knifing pain. That memory deepened his prayers.

  Was that why God had chosen him? Why couldn’t the Lord have chosen a Christian man eager to get involved with the gorgeous redhead, a stronger man who wouldn’t be tempted like Roger was? Or a woman? Why didn’t God choose a woman?

  “Okay, Coop. That’s the last of them.” Whitaker wiped his brow. “Now we can do our own jobs.”

  “Yeah. Let’s get this bird off the ground as soon as we can.”

  In the cockpit, Roger picked up his clipboard with Forms 1, C, and F. It would take him a good twenty minutes to fill them out the Army way, or he could do it in five his way.

  Roger pulled out the load calculator and got to work. What was wrong with the military? They cared more about numbers than about the real men those numbers represented. Was it more important for the boxes to be filled in or for these soldiers to arrive safely at their destination, not struck down in enemy territory by a thunderstorm? Fifteen minutes could mean the difference between life and death.

  “Ah, forget it.” He skipped ahead and did it his way. He’d fill in the numbers later for Veerman’s sake. Not now. Not with those black clouds forming over the mountains.

  He leaned into the radio compartment, where Pettas sat at his desk with his radio sets and navigation charts. “You ready?”

  “You bet. Let’s get out of here. I get the jitters knowing we’ve got Japs on all sides.”

  Whitaker entered from the cabin. “Plane looks great, all passengers secured.”

  Roger thanked his aerial engineer, took his seat, put on his headset, and contacted the tower. “We’re clear,” he said to Elroy.

  The copilot held the preflight checklist and called down the list. They checked the hydraulics and fuel and flight controls and everything else. Roger liked shortcuts, but not when it came to actual flying.

  He gave the thumbs-up to the ground crewman, who rotated the propeller on the right engine three times.

  “Clear!” Roger called.

  After the ground crewman backed away, Roger positioned his finger over the ignition button on the electrical panel over the windshield. “Start engine.”

  He pushed the button while Elroy worked the wobble pump beside his seat to raise fuel pressure. The engin
e roared to life. They repeated the process with the left engine.

  Roger scanned the gauges—all looked good. After the tower cleared him, he taxied onto the narrow runway. He and Elroy ran up the engines, finished the final checks, released the brakes, and throttled forward. The plane sped down the runway and lifted into the air.

  “Landing gear up.” Roger released the latch, and Elroy turned the lever.

  He had to build altitude and fast. In less than twenty miles, he’d be over enemy territory, and the Japanese ground troops loved to take shots at the C-47s. Thank goodness they didn’t send up too many fighter planes. The Tenth Air Force bombers and fighters did a great job keeping the Japanese occupied.

  Sure enough, as soon as he passed south over the hills rimming the valley, pops rang out. The left wing jerked.

  Roger gritted his teeth and guided the plane higher. Everything looked fine—flight controls operational, no loss of fuel or oil.

  At his cruising altitude of five thousand feet, he made the final power reduction and trimmed the aircraft.

  “Coop!” Whitaker’s voice rang over the interphone. “Bad news.”

  “What is it?”

  “Zero coming in at nine o’clock high.”

  Roger’s heartbeat slowed to a stop. A Japanese Mitsubishi Zero. The same nimble little fighter plane that wreaked havoc at Pearl Harbor.

  A C-47 was a workhorse, an airborne truck, stable and sturdy and dependable, but not built for dives and rolls and the acrobatics needed to evade attack.

  “What are we going to do, Coop?” Elroy’s brown eyebrows bunched together over his wide blue eyes.

  The beat returned, but faint and defeated. “We’re going to pray. Nothing else we can do.”

  Italy

  The more Kay struggled, the more Hal laughed. He honestly thought the whole thing was a game, thought every no meant yes.

  “Oh, baby, this is going to be so much fun.” He unzipped her skirt.

  Kay tried to zip it again, but his hands moved to her chest. She couldn’t win, couldn’t gain control. Her throat clogged shut, and her eyes moistened.

  Oh no. She wouldn’t cry. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

  If only she could break free, but the harder she fought, the tighter he held her.

  What if . . . ?

  The idea was so strange, so counterintuitive.

  Lord, help me. The prayer felt stronger now, straighter, as if bound for heaven itself. A few deep breaths, and she decided. It was her only chance.

  “Oh, Hal.” She wrapped her arms around his neck, gave herself completely to his kiss, and let his hands go where they would.

  He moaned and came up for a grin. “That’s more like it.”

  “Mm-hmm.” She kissed him, played with his hair, and unbuttoned his shirt. “Want to go for a swim?”

  He startled and looked her in the eye. “A swim? It’s only sixty degrees today.”

  Kay gave him her most flirtatious look and traced a squiggly line down his breastbone. “Don’t tell me you’re chicken.”

  “No, but it’s—”

  “We’ll have to warm each other up afterward . . . somehow.”

  Light grew in his eyes. “All right then.” He reached for her blouse.

  “Oh, I’ll do that.” Kay fiddled with the waist buckle on her jacket. “Not a man in the world has been able to undo this thing.” Because she’d never given any man the opportunity.

  “Faster this way anyhow.” Hal backed up, ripped off his shirt, and undid his belt buckle.

  Kay dipped her head as if concentrating on her jacket but watched Hal’s feet out of the corner of her eye.

  Standing at bat, one perfect moment hung in the air right after the pitcher released the ball. Swing too early or too late and you missed. But when you swung at the perfect moment, the ball soared out of the park.

  Kay’s fingers tensed, her feet dug into the sand, and her breath came hard but steady.

  Hal lowered his trousers, leaned over, raised one knee.

  The perfect moment.

  Kay bolted and scrambled up the rocks.

  “Hey! Kay!” A thump on the sand, a curse. “Where are you going?”

  “Away.” Rocks scraped her feet and hands, her stupid skirt bound her knees, but she didn’t stop until she reached the road. She grabbed a fist-sized rock and whirled around.

  Hal lay on the sand in his skivvies, trousers tangled around his feet. “What on earth?”

  She brandished the rock at him. “If you lay your sleazy hands on me one more time, I’ll bash your skull in.”

  “Ah, come on, Kay. We were just having fun.” He got up to his knees.

  She didn’t want to find out if he’d turn violent. She ran for the jeep, but the key wasn’t in the ignition. Her shoes—little good they’d do her. She could run faster barefoot than in high heels.

  Down the road she ran, legs pumping as hard as the skirt allowed, feet screaming from pain. Would he chase her down? First he’d have to put on his pants. That bought her a minute or two.

  The village lay in sight. A strange sensation heaved in her chest, and a sob burst out.

  She’d accepted Hal’s invitation so she could regain control.

  A sharp pain in her foot, and she collapsed to her knees. She had no control. None at all. It was all an illusion.

  11

  Over India

  “Gotta hit the deck.” Roger shoved the control column forward, and the plane went into a dive.

  He had a plump plodding aircraft and no guns. His only chance was to reduce the Zero’s maneuverability by skimming the treetops. An Allied fighter plane or two would also be nice.

  “Hope the passengers are secured,” Elroy said.

  “Better they get banged up than shot up.” Roger spoke into his interphone. “Whitaker, station yourself at the astrodome, call out what you see.”

  “Okay. Not sure how much good that’ll do.”

  “Better than nothing.” And nothing was what he had. Fighters had cockpits with full visibility, bombers had guns facing all six directions, but cargo planes had useless little passenger windows.

  “I see him,” Whitaker said. “He’s following us.”

  “Position?”

  “About seven o’clock high. Can’t tell how far away he is.”

  Elroy fiddled with the mixture controls. “Airspeed two hundred mph, altitude two thousand.”

  Pressure built in Roger’s eardrums, and he longed for chewing gum. Maximum airspeed was 255, and the plane was supposed to fall apart at 300. But Zeros could fly at 350, no problem.

  He huffed out a breath. What else could he do? He had to push the plane to its limits. And himself too, for the sake of the other twenty-one men on board.

  “Two hundred ten. Two twenty. One thousand feet.”

  The needle shimmered and worked its way from the yellow zone to the red zone. The jungle zoomed up below, sprawled over steep hills. Evasive maneuvers would be tricky.

  “He’s firing!”

  Roger banked the plane to the left, pulled up a bit so he wouldn’t go into a spin. The tail buffeted. He must have been hit. “Where is he, Whit?”

  “He passed us up, turning around. Looks like he’s coming in again from the front.”

  “There he is!” Elroy pointed up, to about two o’clock.

  “Okay.” Roger eyed the sharp ridge ahead. “Watch him. When he opens fire, I’m putting her in a dive.”

  “Oh boy. This isn’t what I signed up for.”

  A laugh escaped Roger’s pressed-tight lips. “Ain’t that the truth.”

  His gaze hopped between the gauges, the landscape, the Zero closing in. Pain stabbed his taut eardrums.

  “Now!” Elroy shoved his column forward.

  So did Roger. Bright tracer fire streaked past the windshield, and he instinctively hunched low in his seat. A series of thuds shook the plane down its length. “Check the gauges.”

  “He passed us again. Making another t
urn,” Whitaker said.

  “All right.” Sweat dribbled down his temples. He aimed the plane over the ridge, toward the valley. More like a canyon. Oh, swell. This could be his stupidest idea ever. Or his last. Lord, stop me if you’ve got a better idea.

  “Manifold pressure, hydraulic fluid pressure, oil pressure—all normal.” Elroy wiped his hand on his trouser leg, then back to the controls. “Looks like we didn’t take any damage.”

  Yet.

  The canyon ahead, below. No more than half a mile across. His ears popped, sound rushed into the void, and he sighed in relief.

  “He’s coming! Eight o’clock high.”

  From the left. Roger plunged over the ridge, down another hundred feet, banked to the left.

  Elroy cried out, and Roger bit his tongue, tasted blood. He leveled off, the wings wobbling. What on earth was he doing? Flying in a valley? Wooded hills whooshed by on both sides.

  A bend—Roger slipped to the right. “Whitaker! Where is he?”

  Choice cuss words singed the interphone. “Knocked me over, you numbskull.”

  “Where is he?”

  Three pops along the top of the fuselage, muffled screams from the back. Roger zigged to one side, zagged to the other.

  More cussing from Whitaker. “Passed over us. He’s coming down behind us, into the canyon. We’ve got wounded in the back.”

  “That has to wait. First we have to get out of this alive.” That would require fancy flying.

  He followed the narrow river below.

  “He’s closing in, opening fire.”

  “All right. Hold on.” Roger wiggled the control column back and forth, making the plane hop, worked the rudder pedals to make her slip side to side.

  “Watch the right!” Elroy cried.

  Roger skidded away, but a shimmy ran through the right wing.

  “Lost the wingtip.”

  His breath jerked around more than the plane. He’d lose a lot more than a wingtip if the Zero didn’t break off the attack. How far were they from British territory?

  Roger mixed up his pattern. Up, right, down, left, right, left, up, down. Had to throw off the pilot’s aim, had to avoid the hills, had to follow the river.