In Perfect Time

by Sarah Sundin

  A cliff rose before him. The canyon was narrowing. He couldn’t make the turn.

  “Everyone hold on tight. I’m pulling up.” Roger’s fingers kneaded the control wheel. If only he could wipe off the sweat. He focused hard on the cliff. Timing had to be just right.

  “Cooper . . .” Elroy’s voice came out in a low, warning growl.

  “Ready?” It loomed closer, closer, rocks and vines and skinny waterfalls. “Now!”

  Roger yanked the control wheel to his chest. The engines whined. Something screeched along the undercarriage. More screams in the back.

  “One, two, three. Level off.” He pushed the control column forward, found himself a good hundred feet above the treetops. The plane shuddered in protest at the rough treatment.

  Where was the thunderous collision behind him? If he were in a movie, the Zero would have slammed into the cliff. “Where is—”

  A kick to the rear. Metal scraped on metal. The C-47 tipped forward.

  Roger cried out, pulled back on the controls. They shook in his hands, fought him hard. Trees reached up to him, branches whacked the wings, the undercarriage. “Lord, help me!”

  The land sloped away beneath. He gained some altitude, edged over the next hill, and mowed off another treetop.

  Roger gave the plane more throttle. “Whitaker? What happened?”

  “Whitaker got knocked out,” Pettas said, “when the Zero hit us.”

  “The Zero? He hit us? Where is he?”

  “Can’t see him. Turn a bit, let me see.”

  “Turn?” Toward the enemy?

  “Yeah. I’m looking through the astrodome, don’t see nothing. Wait. There’s smoke. Go back, Coop. Go back.”

  Smoke? Roger exchanged a glance with Elroy. “Let’s have a look.”

  Mom always said curiosity would kill him. Today she might be right. He turned the wheel to the right and applied right rudder pressure. The plane tipped in the correct direction but slipped to the inside of the turn. “Uh-oh. We lost rudder control.”

  “Or we lost the rudder.”

  Roger puffed out a ragged breath. The Zero must have sheared off part of the vertical stabilizer on the tail. At least he still had elevator control. If the horizontal stabilizers had been hit, he might not have been able to pull up after the collision.

  “Holy smoke!” Elroy pointed, then let out a nervous laugh. “Sorry about the pun.”

  Roger peered past his copilot. It might not be holy but it was certainly smoke, a gray plume drifting up from the jungle behind them. “He must have crashed.”

  A slow smile cracked Elroy’s round face. “I think we’re the first cargo plane in history to down an enemy fighter.”

  Roger laughed, a strangled sound. “Might be right.”

  “Let’s go home.”

  “I agree. Pettas, you got a heading for us?”

  “Not yet. Got wounded back here.”

  Roger clamped his lips together. “Okay. Get us a heading, would you? Elroy, head southwest in the meantime. I’ll check on the passengers.”

  He unfastened his seat belt and stood. His knees felt loose, and his hands shook. After he drew a deep breath, he headed to the radio room. Pettas leaned over charts on his desk, and Whitaker sat on the floor, holding a bandage to his bloody head.

  “You okay, Whit?”

  He grimaced. “Hurts, but I’m alive.”

  Roger patted him on the shoulder and went through the doorway into the cabin. Some of the passengers were out of their seats, helping others. “How many are hurt?”

  “Six.” A blond officer pressed a dressing to a wound on another man’s shoulder. “None seriously. We located the medical kit.”

  “Good.”

  A thin captain wrapped a dressing around his calf. “I say, that was quite a show, Lef-tenant.” Why on earth did the Brits insert an F into lieutenant?

  Roger knelt to assist him with the bandage. “You know us Yanks. Always showing off.”

  “We need to instruct you in geography. This is India, not the Wild West.”

  Mischief turned up the corners of Roger’s mouth. “India. That’s why we were playing cowboys and Indians.”

  One dark eyebrow rose. “I see your navigator studied with Columbus and confused the East and the West Indies.”

  Roger laughed, tucked in the tail of the bandage, and went to check on the next patient.

  What he wouldn’t give right now for an evac team’s big medical chest, full of medications and supplies. And what he wouldn’t give for a flight nurse, full of expertise and cheer. Maybe a green-eyed redhead.

  Roger grimaced and returned to the cockpit, since the able-bodied passengers had the first aid under control.

  Pettas looked up as Roger passed through the radio room. “Got our coordinates, our heading, relayed them to Mike.”

  “Good work.” Roger clapped him on the back, then settled into his seat, replaced his headset, and took the controls.

  Once again, Kay’s face flashed through his mind. Why couldn’t he stop thinking about her today? Even after the ordeal he’d gone through, the urge to pray for her swelled inside him.

  He obeyed.

  12

  Pomigliano Airfield

  “Stop fussing over me.” Kay pushed down the blanket Georgie was trying to tuck under her chin. She didn’t want to go to bed, even after today’s drama. Thank goodness a military policeman had been stationed in the village near the beach grotto. He’d arrested Hal, taken statements, and called in Major Guilford, the commanding officer of the 802nd MAETS.

  Georgie spun away to her own cot and pulled a box from underneath. “Mama and Daddy sent a Hershey bar in my last package. They’d want you to have it.”

  “And the tea’s almost ready.” Mellie peered at the tin pot on the little cylindrical Coleman stove.

  Kay threw off the blanket and sat up cross-legged in her pajamas. “Stop fussing and listen to me.”

  Georgie pressed the chocolate bar into her bandaged hand. “We’re nurses. Fussing is what we do. After what you went through this morning, you deserve some fussing.”

  “I can’t believe they won’t press charges.” Mellie swirled the pot. “Hal can get away with what he did because there weren’t any witnesses, but a fine man like Hutch isn’t allowed to fraternize with Georgie because he’s a noncommissioned officer—and I’m so glad you two are back together, by the way.”

  “So am I.” Georgie peeled open the Hershey bar in Kay’s hand. “But that Hal. He should at least be charged with conduct unbecoming an officer.”

  Kay didn’t care about the charges. Hal had been reprimanded, scared out of his sleazy skull, and thoroughly warned by Major Guilford. He’d never bother her again.

  “Here you go, honey.” Mellie held out a tin cup of tea.

  Kay’s sigh came all the way up from her bandaged feet. “No chocolate. No tea. All I want is the truth.”

  “The truth?” Mellie glanced at Georgie, then back to Kay. “Do you think we’ve been lying to—”

  “No.” This morning, recklessness flung her into Hal’s groping hands, and now a burning, driving recklessness propelled her. “Tell me the truth about God. Right now.”

  Mellie sank onto Georgie’s cot. “About . . .”

  “God?” Georgie sat beside the brunette.

  “Yes, and I want the truth. No more lies. I’m sick of lies.”

  “Lies?” Mellie turned the cup of tea in her hands.

  Kay thrust her jaw forward. Receiving the truth meant divulging the truth. “I read Job.”

  “Job? In the Bible?” Georgie’s blue eyes widened.

  Her past wriggled inside her, desperate to stay in the dark, desperate to come to light. She fixed a hard stare on her friends. “I’m only telling you this so you’ll understand. I don’t want pity, only the truth.”

  “Okay.” Mellie leaned a bit closer, and her eyebrows inched together.

  Kay tossed aside the chocolate bar, pulled her musette bag from un
der her cot, and slid out Roger’s Bible. “My father’s a preacher. One of those charlatan traveling tent preachers who cons everyone out of money then skedaddles to the next town.”

  “Oh my. I—”

  “He considers himself a modern-day Job, with a past full of suffering and a present full of blessings because he’s so righteous.” Kay used the ribbon to open the Bible. “Like Job, he has three daughters, Jemima, Kezia, and Kerenhappuch. I’m Kezia. Bet you didn’t know that.”

  One corner of Mellie’s mouth tilted up. “I’m the last person to comment on unusual names.”

  “Is that right, Philomela?” Kay allowed a quick smile.

  “Go on.” Georgie leaned forward on her knees.

  She smoothed open the Bible with her good hand, her fingers brushing Roger’s handwritten notes. “They sing for the tent meetings, the whole family. Beautiful voices all of them, except me. Father said I was cursed because I was evil.”

  “Heavens!”

  Kay glared at Georgie. “I said no pity.”

  She held up both hands. “All right. No pity. None at all.”

  “That’s better.” Kay hated the thickness in her throat. If her friends dissolved, she’d dissolve too, and that wouldn’t do. “Father said if I were good, God would redeem me and make me able to sing. But no matter how hard I tried to be good, I still couldn’t sing. Father said I was irredeemable, evil, God hated me.”

  “Oh, honey, no.” Georgie’s eyes glistened. “God loves you.”

  Kay jabbed her finger on the page. “Father never let us read the Bible, said we couldn’t understand it. Now I know why. Because he lied. All those verses he quoted—they’re not from the Lord, they’re from Job’s friends and they’re lies.”

  “Oh.” Mellie covered her mouth. “No wonder you didn’t want anything to do with God.”

  “I want the truth.” She riffled the pages. “But it’s too much. It’s too thick. I don’t know where to start.”

  Georgie scooted over to Kay’s cot and flipped toward the New Testament. “Let’s start with—”

  “Wait.” Mellie’s dark eyes scrutinized. “What exactly do you want to know?”

  The swelling in Kay’s throat rose, froze her tongue, and stung her eyes. She swallowed it down. “Is it true?” Her voice came out disgustingly watery. “Is it true anyone can be redeemed? Even someone like me?”

  Georgie rested her hand on Kay’s arm. “It’s true. Jesus died for you.”

  “That’s impossible. Father—” She scrunched up her mouth. Father lied. He lied. “My father said Jesus only died for the good people, not people like me.”

  Georgie turned the pages.

  “Romans 5:8,” Mellie said.

  “That’s where I’m going.” Georgie flicked a finger under her eye and wiped it on her skirt.

  Oh, swell. Now her friends were crying? How on earth could Kay keep it together? “What’s it say?”

  “I can quote it,” Mellie said. “But I want you to see it with your own eyes.”

  “Here.” Georgie pointed. “Read this out loud.”

  Kay found the verse. It must have been one of Roger’s favorites. Tons of notes in especially small handwriting filled the margin. “ ‘God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.’ ”

  “Do you see, honey?”

  The words swam in her mind. While we were yet sinners? Christ died for—for the sinners as well as the good? Anger loosened her throat. “This was in here all along? Why didn’t he tell me? Why’d he lie to me?”

  “I don’t know.” Mellie’s voice was soft. “But I do know it breaks God’s heart. Did you read all of Job? Did you see God’s anger toward Job’s friends? That’s how he feels about your father’s lies.”

  Georgie put her arm around Kay’s shoulders. “God loves you, honey. He wants you to come to him.”

  “But I’m not . . .” Her thoughts swirled into a mess. Roger said he’d been a sinner, really bad, and God redeemed him. Was it true? Could she be redeemed? “I’m not good enough.”

  “No one is.” Mellie let out a wry chuckle. “That’s the point. God doesn’t call you to come to him because you’re righteous. God makes you righteous.”

  Kay pressed her unbandaged hand to her neck, and her carotid artery pulsed beneath her fingers. Roger said the heartbeat was a message from God: His life, his love.

  For her?

  Part of her longed for it and wanted to believe, but another part dug in its heels. “Would it mean I’d have to give up control of my life? To him?”

  “Yes.” Mellie never minced words, did she?

  “Kay—”

  “No. Don’t say anything. Let me think.” She shrugged off Georgie’s hand and slid further down the cot. All her life, her goal had been to gain control. And she’d done it by running away, becoming a nurse and a stewardess, and making boys fawn over her. Now she knew it was an illusion. She had no control over her career, over men, over her life.

  That strange reckless impulse compelled her to throw herself into God’s hands.

  “Kay, are you all right?” Mellie said.

  She stared at her friends. She’d always envisioned them with their cans of white paint, their eager paintbrushes.

  A new image formed in her mind. Kay sat in God’s hand like a tiny china doll. And the Lord smiled at her with a kind and loving look no man had ever given her—not for taking but only for giving. He held a paintbrush in front of her, waiting for permission.

  Only he could paint her white. Not her friends. Not Kay herself. Only the Lord.

  Kay closed her eyes as something warm and unfamiliar and irresistible stirred in her chest.

  He waited.

  She opened her eyes. “It’s time.”

  13

  Dinjan, India

  May 8, 1944

  Growing up on a farm, Roger had been raised to view rain with both gratitude and caution. Rain was a blessing, necessary for growth, but too much at the wrong time was a curse.

  Roger stood by the tail of his plane alone in the downpour. The heavy rains that had fallen in India in April and the first week of May reduced the amount of cargo the Troop Carrier Groups could transport to the besieged troops in Imphal. But the thunderstorms allowed the ground crews to repair battle damage and the flight crews to rest.

  Monsoon season didn’t even start until June.

  He poked his toe at a shimmering puddle. Plop. Plop. Splash. How could he resist?

  “And I was worried Roger Cooper might grow up.”

  Roger smiled at Bill Shelby approaching from behind. “If my mom were here, she’d cluck her tongue and say, ‘Twenty-nine going on ten.’ ”

  Shelby nodded at the plane. “How’s she coming along?”

  “The mechanics are top-notch. They said she’d be ready tomorrow.” He worked the new rudder side to side.

  “I like the artwork.”

  “Yeah.” Combat pilots painted little Rising Sun flags on their planes’ noses for each victory, and Roger’s ground crew had painted one under the pilot’s window. Officially, he only had a “probable” credit for the downed fighter plane since there were no other witnesses, but most of the men in the 64th Troop Carrier Group treated him like he’d shot up the entire Japanese air force.

  Veerman was less impressed. In all the excitement after they returned to base, Roger had forgotten to finish his preflight paperwork. And he’d been so much better about it lately.

  Shelby smoothed his hand over one of the thirty-two patches on the fuselage. “Another month in India.”

  “At least. Unless they extend our deployment again.” Roger’s stomach squirmed. Most of the men’s complaints about the order centered on the nasty British Emergency Rations, the danger, and the shortage of parts and supplies in the lowest-priority combat theater in the world. Roger didn’t voice his concern about Kay Jobson’s letters piling up unanswered in Sicily. If she’d written.

  A month ago, he’d bee
n thrilled to get away from her. Now he had the strongest urge to write her, apologize, and find out how she was doing, but he didn’t have her Army Post Office number. He certainly wouldn’t ask Grant Klein for the information.

  Shelby patted the aluminum patch and wiped his wet hand on his trousers. “If we ever get back to the Mediterranean, I’ll never whine again.”

  Roger blinked and focused on the conversation again. He hadn’t let a woman have this effect on him in over a decade. Maybe he should request a permanent transfer to the CBI.

  “Ready for lunch?”

  “Yeah.” Roger turned, tilted his hat so it took the full force of the rain, and headed toward the mess. “If it’s inedible, I can fry up some of the eggs I bought off the local kids.”

  “I’m surprised they don’t give them to you. When you’re around, they act like teenage girls at a Frank Sinatra concert.”

  He loved the kids here—bright and funny and generous. “I make them take the money.”

  “Imagine that.” Shell’s voice rose. “Oak leaves for your Distinguished Flying Cross.”

  Roger frowned and followed Shell’s gaze behind him. Klein and Singleton were heading for lunch too. He gave Shell a giant grin. “How about your DFC? Lost an engine from ground fire and made it back to base.”

  Shelby’s pale blue eyes looked serious, except for a sparkle he couldn’t hide. “Every man in the 64th Troop Carrier Group has earned a DFC. Well, almost every man.”

  Grant Klein, the only pilot in their squadron without the red, white, and blue striped bar to pin to his uniform, marched past them. “I know better than to fly in dangerous conditions. I don’t take unnecessary risks.”

  Roger tapped his chin as if deep in thought. “Not flying in dangerous conditions. Not taking risks. In the CBI, that would mean not flying at all.”

  “That’s what he’s doing.” Shelby elbowed Roger.

  “True.” Everyone knew Klein was as fussy as a hen about his loads. They had to be just so, not a pound over the limit, everything in its place. How many times had the man refused to fly until the locals unloaded his plane and reloaded it with half the weight? He usually flew only one flight a day while everyone else flew two or three.