Pacific Glory

by P. T. Deutermann

  He told the major what he wanted to do. The major had a better idea.

  “Let’s go down to five hundred feet and strafe ’em soon as we see ’em. If we can start a fire, even a small one, then we can bomb the little fucks according to Hoyle.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Mick said. They were passing over the gun flashes, which now were much brighter than they had been. “Descending for a two-seventy.”

  Once again the major followed him down, and as soon as they had the gun flashes ahead, he pulled abeam of Mick’s plane so they could both shoot at the same time. Mick was hoping that the sound of the Japs’ big guns had drowned out the roar of their own engines as he stared down into the darkness just below the flaring blasts of the cruiser’s outbound salvos.

  There. Shapes.

  “Tally,” he called.

  “Roger tally. Light ’em up.”

  They were maybe two thousand yards away when they started firing. Mick descended some more, carefully watching his altimeter to level off at three hundred feet. The major matched him perfectly. The ships’ masts were known to stick up as high as a hundred and fifty feet. At half a mile the ships were finally visible in the moonlight, and Mick concentrated on the middle of the three with both guns, laying down long bursts and seeing the tracers curving down into that dark mass of steel. They’ll know we’re here now, he thought.

  “Break right, now,” he called as they flew over the ships. “Angels three.”

  He knew they had to turn away from the trajectory of those big eight-inch guns or risk being shot down, if not by the main battery guns then by the mass of twenty-five-millimeter AA guns arrayed along each side of the cruisers. As they climbed out to three thousand feet behind the ship column, Mick looked back and saw a few lines of tracer trying to follow them out. He also saw a small red and yellow fire down there on the water.

  “Angels seven,” he called.

  “Roger seven. Bombs this time?”

  “Roger bombs,” Mick said. “Pickle one bomb at tail-end Charlie like we briefed, then bank right, climb out, and do it again.”

  “Copy.”

  They maneuvered back astern of the ships, which were no longer visible in the gloom. The major was behind him, keeping close enough to see him but far enough back to give Mick time to dive, release, and escape. Once they gained altitude, the small fire became visible again. Mick lined up on that from seven thousand feet, waited until they were much closer, and then rolled into his attack dive.

  This was the dangerous part. He had only a few seconds to line up on that tiny spot of fire, establish a lead, drop, and then make a climbing turn back to altitude. With no visible horizon reference, this was no time for target fixation, and he hoped the major understood that. He set out his dive brakes to give him time to line up and still keep an eye on his altimeter. As his altimeter passed through thirty-five hundred feet he released the first bomb.

  “Bomb away and I’m coming right,” he called, cleaning the brakes up. “Taking angels seven.”

  “Roger right to seven.”

  There was a large flash of light from down below, followed by a second, dimmer one a few seconds later. As they climbed back up to seven thousand feet, Mick could see a much larger fire down below them. Even better, by the light of that fire they could now see two wakes. The Japs had finally figured out they were under air attack, and were executing air-defense doctrine: Speed up, start a circle.

  “I see two wakes,” the major called.

  “Roger two wakes and one fire.”

  “Let’s take the easy way out,” the major said. “Go hit that bastard again. Those other pogues are gonna be too stirred up.”

  “Roger,” Mick said.

  “Dropping back,” the major said.

  They rolled in again on the one ship that was most visible, with a large fire in her center. More importantly, she wasn’t turning. The other two had stopped firing on Henderson Field and were evading out to sea, away from Guadalcanal. They were firing wildly into the darkness, which made them more visible than before, but not like the one they’d hit.

  “Rolling in,” Mick called. “Same deal as last time.”

  “Roger deal.”

  This time Mick aimed well ahead of the fire, then realized that its intensity had just eliminated his night vision. He had no choice: To aim, he had to look at the fire. He flicked his eyes at the altimeter but could no longer read it. He suddenly had no idea of where he was in the attack profile. In a moment of panic, he pickled the bomb and turned out.

  “Bomb away,” he called. “Outbound for angels ten.”

  The major didn’t reply, and Mick turned to look as he climbed out. He saw a large white shape rise up in front of the fire down below. “Missed it,” he muttered, not realizing his mike was hot. Then his night vision disappeared entirely when a very large explosion blossomed below them, a fireball that started out bright yellow and then turned to red.

  “I didn’t,” the major said. “Nailed that bastard.”

  Had to be a magazine, Mick thought. Not big enough for a main, but maybe one of the AA magazines. “I believe you did, sir,” he said. “Now for the hard part.”

  “Na-a-h,” the major called. “Now you join on me.”

  “My night vision is fucked.”

  “I’ll turn my lights on,” the major said. “Piece’a cake.”

  The big red fireball had gone out down below as they cleared the area. They couldn’t see what they’d achieved, but they didn’t see any more salvos headed onto the island, either. The major checked in with Base Ops as they made their first sweep over Henderson Field. It became obvious that the runway was out of action. There were several fires burning along the strip, although Mick couldn’t make out exactly what was burning. They went into a wide orbit overhead while the major coordinated the beach landing with Ops on a different frequency. He wondered if that cruiser had gone down or was now limping back to Rabaul. We’ll need to check that out in daylight, he reminded himself. A cripple in daylight offered a tempting target. Then the major came back up.

  “Runway’s clobbered. They gonna run some vee-hicles down to the beach strip, put some headlights on the sand.”

  “Hope those Japs have gone home,” Mick said. “Nothing like giving them an aim point.”

  “Well, hell, if they start up again, we’ll have even more light on the beach, right? B’sides, they cain’t hurt sand.”

  Mick grinned in the darkness of his cockpit. One crazy bastard over there. “The metal still there?”

  “That’s affirma-hotchee, big guy,” the major said, “but they have to get it back over to the field. Some bigwig inbound from Pearl at first light, so let’s hustle-bustle.”

  The major took the lead, flying a downwind leg at about five hundred feet along the beach. They could see four jeeps’ worth of headlights pointing out to sea on low beam. As they went downwind, Mick could see the lights but not the sand. Oh, well, he thought. When the major crashes and burns, then I’ll be able to see the sand.

  He slowed his barge to minimum speed, deployed flaps but not wheels, and followed the major around. Hook down, flaps down, stand by to feather the mill and then polish this trusty bastard’s belly.

  No, wait: The metal strip was still there! Wheels down, hook back up.

  He felt a cold sweat on his back as he realized his near-fatal error. He swallowed hard. This was going a long way past crazy shit.

  He scanned the dark ocean off to his left as he descended, half expecting a blizzard of eight-inch shells to appear among the jeeps parked below. Then he saw the major’s landing lights flare up as he crossed the imaginary threshold and landed in a swirl of blowing sand, rolling out the full one thousand feet of matting before coming to a stop.

  My turn, Mick thought. He lined up on what he hoped was the centerline of the metal strip and set up his controls for a slow, nose-high, full-power approach onto a field he couldn’t see—and then he could: The troops down below had positioned over a
hundred flashlights in the holes of the Marsden matting, all pointing back and up toward the approaching planes, establishing a centerline of tiny white dots.

  Piece’a cake, he thought and put her down, carrier style, right at the leading edge of the metal. It was a noisy landing, with lots of bumps, but he was able to taxi back up the hard-packed sand and shut it down right behind the major’s plane. That’s when he realized how hard he’d been gripping the controls. The canopy came back and there was the major, standing among a small crowd of grunts who were all clapping and cheering. Apparently the word was already out on the main field: The two nutcases had driven the Japs away. As Mick climbed out he could see a clutch of dozers rumbling down the beach, rolling up the metal strip, while another one was already pulling palm trees back onto the beach.

  Back at the main field the repair effort was in full swing, with more dozers pushing dirt and sand into craters while infantrymen fought some oil fires in the nearby jungles and the offline dozer drivers, blades in the air as shields, shot snipers out of the trees. The jeep took them to Operations, where they received another enthusiastic reception. Mick let the major tell the story, with much gesturing and a full measure of expanding aviation bullshit, two cruisers absolutely sunk with direct hits, the rest of them, at least five, hightailing it out of there in a big panic, all trailing smoke and fire. Mick perched on an ammo crate, sipping some coffee that one of the sergeants had thoughtfully laced with whiskey, while the major provided the night’s entertainment.

  “Who’re the bigwigs coming in at sunrise?” he asked the sergeant, who was watching the show with a big grin.

  “New skipper’s arriving,” the sergeant said. “Cactus Air Force is going uptown.”

  Mick asked him what that meant.

  “New skipper’s a brigadier general,” the sergeant said, rolling his eyes.

  “That gonna take all the fun out of it?”

  “Generals often do, Lieutenant,” the sergeant said. He looked at his watch. “You better get you some shut-eye. You’re launching again at zero seven hundred.”

  * * *

  The morning brief came and went, and they lifted off to go work the weeds. At three that afternoon, Operations called a stand-down for all hands so the new skipper could address the squadron pilots. Mick was surprised to see that the major wasn’t present for the evolution. Then he learned via the sergeants’ grapevine that the new general had grounded the major after learning about the night dive-bombing caper the night before. There went all the fun, Mick thought, just like the Top said.

  The brigadier gave them the usual team effort, highest professional standards, the whole world is watching what we do here, it’s going to be a long haul, but victory will be ours speech. Then he said there’d be a beer muster in the O-club tent in thirty minutes. Dis-missed. They all stood at attention in the sweltering heat as the general walked off with his aide and the nervous-looking operations officer. By this time, Mick was the only Navy pilot attached to the Cactus Air Force, so he decided to let the Marines do their buzz-cut bonding all by themselves. He went to find the major.

  The major, it turned out, was holed up in the sergeants’ version of a Navy Acey-Deucy club, which was a kluge of three CONEX boxes welded together behind high sand berms down near the beach. A lone generator struggled with wet air to provide power for two fans and one freezer. The freezer held the beer and was thus in the most secure part of the club. The major was visibly drunk but greeted Mick like a long-lost brother. A sergeant with one leg brought Mick a frozen beer and then left the two of them to talk.

  “Why ain’t you at the big damn deal?” the major asked.

  “Couldn’t find my XO, is why,” Mick said.

  “Not XO anymore,” the major said. “They got a full bull in there now. I’m getting sent back to San Diego.”

  “Aw, please, don’t throw me in that briar patch, B’rer Fox,” Mick protested.

  “Ain’t like you think,” the major said, “but never you mind. You need to get up there, git you some face time.”

  “Fuckit,” Mick said. “Face time is usually how I get in trouble. This beer ever gonna thaw?”

  “Gimme that,” the major said. He pulled out a knife and cut away the top of the beer can, then passed it back to Mick. “Cactus snow cone.”

  Mick chewed on his beery slush. “All it needs is a Spam sandwich to make it four-star,” he said.

  A very young-looking second lieutenant showed up in the opening to the CONEX box. “Excuse me, sir,” he said to Mick. “Are you Captain, I mean, Lieutenant McCarty, sir?”

  “Who the hell wants to know?” the major asked, suddenly looking like he might want to fight.

  “Uh, excuse me, sir, Major, but the general wanted to know where the Navy, uh, lieutenant was, sir. On account of he was missing beer muster. Sir.”

  The major gave Mick a sympathetic look. “Generals,” he said. “They keep score, don’t they. Better getcher ass up there, Lieutenant. Sir.”

  Mick thanked the shavetail and told him he’d be right along.

  “Major,” he said. “It’s been a professional privilege to be on your wing and to have you on mine. Thanks for last night.”

  “Like I promised when we met,” the major said, “we had us an adventure, didn’t we. You’ll do to ride, old son. Now you better get a move on before I get drunk and embarrass the sergeants’ mess here.”

  They shook hands, eye to eye, and then Mick left to go up the beach and past the pile of neatly arranged dead palms. By the time he got to the beer muster, the general had already left on an inspection tour of the airfield’s defenses, leaving the pilots to do what they did best. Mick joined right in. Sometime after dark, he staggered into his tent, his head already hurting from the formaldehyde preservatives in the beer, and dropped onto his cot. The last thing he remembered to do was to make sure his carbine, loaded and chambered, was safe like a steel baby in his arms.

  * * *

  In his dreams, a siren was wailing to the accompaniment of several police whistles. The sound of a giant buzz saw rose up and then drowned out all the lesser noises as he climbed toward consciousness. Then he was levitating, pressed up against the canvas fabric of his tent while his eardrums flattened inward and all the breath was squeezed out of his lungs by the explosion of a pair of fourteen-inch shells outside.

  He fell back onto the dirt floor where his cot had been, stunned and spitting sand out of his mouth. A wad of rank canvas tent fabric and the mosquito net dropped down on top of him like a shroud, followed by the tops of several palm trees and then a rain of dirt and sand that seemed to go on for goddamn ever. The inside of his ears felt wet, and all he could hear now was a loud hum. Then he felt two more shells land, not so close this time but still near enough to press even more debris onto him with the double shock wave. He tried to draw a breath but got a mouthful of netting instead.

  Bunker, he thought, twisting to get on his side. Gotta get to the bunker. He felt rather than heard more shells landing, some close, most distant, great big shells that hammered the ground with jaw-rattling power.

  He tried to move sideways but couldn’t. It felt like there was at least one tree trunk pressing down directly on the tent, along with several hundred pounds of dirt, palm fronds, and other things. More shells were landing, but these were trending farther away, in the direction of the landing strip. They were also different. They weren’t pounding the ground but seemed to be going off in the air, followed an instant later by a hail of steel fragments shredding the palm groves and anything else that had the misfortune to be vertical out there.

  He decided to relax, wait for help. As long as he stayed on his side he could draw a breath, and the mound of debris above him was probably protecting him from the shrapnel that was decapitating whole trees and reducing any unprotected airplanes to aluminum confetti. The shelling seemed to go on forever. He wondered if the major had gotten off on one of his night bombing sorties. Then suddenly it ended, abruptly as it had
begun.

  His head hurt, and he was thirsty. The air in his tomb seemed hotter than before, if that was possible. He wondered just how much shit was piled on the remains of his tent. Would they find him? Was there anyone left alive out there to even look? The general had told the pilots about the possibility of Jap battleships coming down from Rabaul to work over the airfield, especially after last night’s dive-bombing attack. Most of the guys had thought he’d been exaggerating, adding a little drama to his own arrival on the island and throwing some shit at the major. Mick had missed the speech, fortunately, because he would have asked the general if the battleships would still come now that there were night dive bombers on the island. He’d experienced some eight-inch howitzer fire during advanced flight training down in Texas, but these shells had been bigger. Much bigger. Maybe the general had been right. Mick hated that thought.

  Breathing was getting harder. His lungs worked, but there simply wasn’t much breathable air.

  Great, he thought. I’m gonna suffocate down here under all this debris. Okay, hotshot, he told himself; can’t just lie here anymore. Nobody’s coming to rescue your worthless ass. This is like the Yorktown: time to do something.

  He wiggled around under all the debris to see what would move and what wouldn’t. He was able to reach the survival knife sheathed on his right lower leg and pull it straight up to his waist, but he couldn’t turn his hand to apply the big knife to the canvas. He squirmed some more, but his movements shifted something on top of him, and now his legs became immobilized as a load of sand slid down to bury them under serious weight. He was afraid to cut through the canvas only to admit a ton of sand right in his face. He felt the cold steel of the carbine barrel against his right cheek, but the rifle wasn’t going to get him out of here.

  Buried alive, he thought, and then banished the thought. He felt something wet on his cheek. He hadn’t felt the sting of a cut, but it was definitely wet. He was able to get to the tiny flashlight on his flight suit with three fingers and turn it on. In the red glow of the light he could see a black stain on the canvas, a stain that was slowly growing.