by Jon Land
“Gus, get the boys together!” Pop shouted to a toothless, barrel-chested man hammering away at a stripped engine.
“What you say, Pop?”
“Hurry up’s what I say, asshole! We got us a war to fight today!”
“Huh?”
Minutes later Pop Keller was standing on the roof of a trailer with the Flying Devils logo fading from its side. Fifty or so men gazed up at him intently as he recited his own colorful version of Locke’s story. Chris scanned them, saw not hesitation and fear but determination and resolve in their faces.
“This here’s the front, boys,” Keller said, nearing his close, “and we’re the last thing that stands between these murderin’ bastards and America. Some of us knocked plenty of Nazis and Japs from the sky and others took out their share of Gooks a few years later. I say it’s time to hit the skies for real again!”
“Yeah!” came the resounding chorus.
“Who’s with me, boys?”
Every hand went up.
“Let’s get to it, then!”
With roars of enthusiastic delight, the men of the Flying Devils headed toward their positions, each knowing his proper place. For them the preparations were probably the same as those for a show, yet Chris could not help but be amazed at the precision of their motions. In less than a minute, the tarps were all ripped from the planes and left to flutter in the wind. Locke looked at the ancient fighters and felt his heart sink. Somehow he had expected fresh, glowing Warhawks and Cobras shining proudly in the sun. What he saw instead was a squadron of battered, broken airplanes that looked as fragile as the balsawood fliers boys toss around their backyards. The Devils had done their best to restore each fighter’s original paint job, but patchup work was so evident that not a single plane could boast a consistent shade.
Locke sat down against a trailer. For a while the sight of broken men readying broken airplanes for battle had an almost comic texture to it. Then suddenly Chris realized there was nothing even remotely comic about what he was watching. The Devils moved confidently, even as they spit tobacco and huffed for breath. Engines were checked, propellers oiled and greased, glass cockpit covers washed squeaky clean. Gun sights were set and huge ammunition belts for the front-mounted machine guns were snapped home. For those planes still capable of holding bombs, dark-green projectiles were loaded beneath the wings. Wooden blocks were yanked from under the fighters’ tires and mechanics rushed crazily from one to the next, tightening a lug or fastening a bolt. When they wiped the sweat from their brow, they left a trail of grease behind. Their white T-shirts grew filthy from the grime.
Chris found himself rising involuntarily to his feet. The fighters were all being spun around now to face the same direction—toward the highway. A few pilots gunned their engines and taxied forward on their own. The ancient fighters seemed brighter now, more alive, as if they understood the role they were being called on to perform and were responding to it.
“We’ll be off the ground in fifteen minutes, Chris,” Pop Keller told him, the pain of his arthritis vanquished along with thoughts of unpaid debts and bankruptcy.
“What are we gonna use for runways?” Locke asked.
Keller’s eyes gazed out at U.S. 83. “The highway, friend. We’ll place trailers across to block off a big enough stretch. Yup, it’ll do just fine.”
Four prairie dust specials were starting to make themselves felt in his stomach, and Pop moved off toward the water jugs to drown the damn booze. Locke looked back at the fighters and watched the pilots donning their flying gear. Other men were still prepping guns and passing out parachutes.
Keller returned, dragging his sleeve across his lips. “We’ll be able to get about twenty of them in the air like I said and about half are equipped with rockets.”
“How many men per plane?”
“Most are outfitted to take two but we’ll stay with one. Cropdusters ain’t the fastest planes on the market but we’ll still need to cut out as much excess weight as possible to be sure of catching them.”
While the plane engines idled, all the men gathered together, and Pop Keller moved toward them. The average age of the Flying Devils looked to be about fifty-five, with variations twenty years in both directions.
“Boys,” Pop Keller began, eyes plainly on his watch, “we ain’t got much time. I ain’t much good at speakin’ so I’m just gonna speak my mind. It’s gonna be dangerous for us on this raid. Our best bet is to strike fast and hard and take these bastards with their pants down. If it looks like none of the dusters have took off yet when we get to the base, both Red and Blue wings will go in blasting. If some dusters have made it up, and that’s my guess, we’ll use a different strategy.” Pop Keller searched the crowd. “Mickey O.,” he called out.
A burly, white-haired man wearing an oil-stained shirt stepped forward. “Right here.”
“You’ll lead Blue Wing on the air-to-ground assault while I take Red Wing air-to-air after any of the bastards that already took off. Let yours and the other Pipers head the attack ’cause you each got six rockets and the best aim by far. We all gotta be careful,” Pop went on, speaking to everyone, “’cause catchin’ them with their pants down don’t necessarily mean they’ll be holdin’ their dicks in their hands. They’ll be protected, boys. Make your ammo count and remember we gotta knock these dusters down before they can drop their stuff.”
The men of the Flying Devils glanced at each other.
“Boys, I’m not much of an expert on this scientific junk but it’s a plain fact that the scum we’re goin’ up against means to do a swift number on the old U.S. of A. Well, I fought the Nazis and the Japs to keep that from happening and I’ll do it again today, tomorrow, or any other day it’s called for.”
The Flying Devils started hooting and hollering. Some of the men whistled through their parched lips.
“Ready, boys?”
A triumphant scream rang out.
“Then let’s getto it!”
And with that, the Flying Devils scattered toward their fighters, or the trucks and trailers that would follow them to Stonewall Jackson on the ground. Members of the ground-based crew helped the leather-clad pilots into their cockpits and waited for the thumbs-up sign as engines were gunned and propeller blades spun to life. A chorus of sputtering followed, quickly drowned out by the sound of gunned engines revving again. The assault squadron was ready for take-off, with nineteen fighters, six of which were Piper L-4s carrying rocket-propelled warheads under their wings.
“Ain’t gonna miss your own show, are ya, friend?” a voice shouted at Locke over the roar of the engines.
Chris turned to Pop Keller. The old pilot adjusted his goggles and then zipped up his brown leather flight jacket.
“I saved you the rear seat in my personal sweetheart,” Pop said.
And together they trotted toward a red P-40 Warhawk with the gaping mouth of a shark painted on its nose.
Chapter 33
TWENTY MILES AWAY, another part of Keysar Flats was alive with similar activity. Fifty eager cropdusters were approaching takeoff position on two runways at Stonewall Jackson Air Force Base. The canisters had been loaded and all had been ready for ten minutes now but Ahmad Hamshi, the man in charge, had his orders as to the precise schedule and under no circumstances would he deviate from it. Hamshi was Mandala’s leading operations man in the Mideast and one of the few anywhere he trusted. He had brought the Arab to Keysar Flats specifically because he was a man intolerant of slipups. Hamshi would not disappoint him. So far things had gone off without a hitch and he wanted to keep it that way.
Once the cropdusters had begun their climb, Hamshi would dial a number in South America and give the go code, which would be relayed to Mandala in San Sebastian. Direct contact between them was impossible, as was further contact of any kind once the go code was given.
To insure total secrecy and complete control, Mandala had devised a plan he called Hop-Skip, whereby all canisters were loaded onto the initial squ
adron of dusters. They would empty their prescribed amounts and then rendezvous at the first “hop” point where the remaining canisters would be loaded onto dusters that would then “skip” on to the next rendezvous point. To have evenly distributed the canisters at the fifteen bases lining the center of the country would have meant far faster dispersal but would also have required the taking of far more men into his confidence. The physical logistics would prove more difficult under his Hop-Skip strategem, yet on the slim chance that one or more of the rendezvous bases were raided, there would be nothing for the authorities to find. Time clearly wasn’t a factor because the fungus spread so fast that this method of dispersal would slow the rate of total crop contamination across North America by barely a day. Furthermore, if a rendezvous base was captured, the approaching dusters would simply proceed on to the next one.
Ahmad Hamshi checked his watch: one minute to go now. The pilots were revving their engines. Since each plane was weighed down with the bulk of the excess canisters, its climb would be slowed. It would take just over seven minutes from takeoff for the dusters to rise to their optimum dispersal altitude and spread out sufficiently, and not until then would they open the valves that would dispense their cargo.
Hamshi sniffed the air. The clearing skies had left things hot and humid, ideal weather for the fungus to procreate and spread. Mandala would be pleased to learn that even the weather had cooperated with them, as if Allah was behind their plan. He checked his watch again.
The time had come.
He made the appropriate signal to the men directing the planes on both runways, and immediately the first two dusters began to accelerate down the dust-blown strips.
Ahmad Hamshi saw them clear the ground. As the next two taxied into position, he moved inside his cobweb-coated office and adjusted the transmitter to the proper frequency. He gave his call signal and a slightly garbled voice answered with the according one.
“The birds are flying” was all Hamshi said, repeating it twice before he returned to the runways.
“We got two thousand horses under us, Chris,” Pop Keller shouted back to Locke from the front of the cockpit.
“What?”
“There should be a set of headphones in front of you,” Pop shouted louder. “Put them on!”
“I got them!” Chris yelled back, fitting the plastic over his ears.
Pop Keller’s voice filled them immediately. “I said we got two thousand horsepower pulling us. I do some special stunts so I had the old Warhawk souped up a little.” He tightened his own set of headphones. “You’ll be able to hear all communications clearly now, friend.” His eyes tilted down. “That’s the base down there to our right. Enjoy the show.”
The ninth and tenth cropdusters were climbing for the sky when Hamshi saw the planes coming. He shook himself, wondering if it might have been a trick of the brightening sun, then quickly realized it wasn’t. Unless he had lost his mind, though, the squadron of planes swooping toward Stonewall Jackson on an obvious attack run was a mixed collection of World War II fighters!
He started running toward the twin rows of dusters, reaching them just as two more screamed toward the sky and the ghost squadron roared closer.
“Damn!” Pop Keller rasped into his headset. “Some of the cropdusters are already airborne. Blue leader, how many do you figure slipped out?”
“I count twelve climbing and spreading, Red leader,” the husky voice of Mickey Ostrovsky came back. “Weighted down by the look of it. Climbing slow.”
“Blue leader,” said Keller, “take your Pipers down and knock out as many of the other dusters as you can. Have the other half of your wing wait to mop up the mess.”
“Affirmative, Red leader.”
Pop adjusted his headset and Locke felt suddenly dizzy as the bottom seemed to drop out of the Warhawk.
“Red Wing, this is Red leader. We’re a little late, boys. Time to do some huntin’.”
Ahmad Hamshi had just signaled the dusters to continue taking off when the wave of Pipers soared over the runways. He saw the shiny, oblong objects shot from their wings, heard the rockets whistling through the wind, and hit the pavement just before they did.
The explosions came fast and loud, like thousands of pieces of glass shattering. Smoke clouded the start of the runways but as Hamshi climbed back to his feet he saw that miraculously only two of the dusters seemed damaged. Armed assault troops were pouring from the barracks by this time, rushing toward flatbed trucks that held heavy-canvas-covered, high-caliber machine and antiaircraft guns.
They were still yanking the covers away when the Pipers attacked again from the opposite direction. A dozen rocket-propelled warheads hurtled toward the ground. The resulting explosions sent huge chunks of cement into the air and disabled at least four additional dusters. As the Pipers swung into a steep climb, a pair of Bearcats dove under them and sprayed the runway area with machine-gun fire, scattering Hamshi’s men.
The smoke made it hard for Hamshi to estimate the damage. This was crazy. He was watching the whole plan disintegrate around him thanks to a bunch of crazy men flying ghost planes. He started running toward the main body of troops, who had started to organize their fire, even as the truck-mounted big guns were tilted toward the sky.
“The planes!” Hamshi shouted. “Move the disabled planes out of the way! We’ve got to keep the runway free! The runway must be kept free!”
Already he was starting to consider how to make up for the loss of at least six dusters. Mandala’s orders had been precise in the event of sudden mechanical breakdown. Well, this certainly fell into that category. The canisters were the key, Mandala had explained, and should be moved from disabled planes onto planes that could fly.
Sprinting along the runways, Hamshi noticed two more of the dusters had managed to take off and were climbing into the sky. Then he saw the streak of red, a Warhawk with a shark’s mouth for a nose, screeching forward, and he heard its machine-gun fire. Both dusters dipped crazily out of control, swooning for the ground beyond the runway and exploding on contact.
The bastard had shot them down! Then Hamshi watched as half the ghost fighter squadron broke off and soared higher in obvious pursuit of the dusters that had managed to escape the base. He glanced in the direction of one of the hangars and then bolted in a diagonal toward where the base personnel had gathered.
“We got the sons of bitches! You see that, Chris?”
Pop Keller pulled up from his dive and climbed almost vertically, his engine straining. Locke had seen all right but he couldn’t believe it. The ease with which Keller had maneuvered the Warhawk and knocked the cropdusters from the sky was incredible.
“Two down, lots to go!” Pop screamed. “Heeeeeee-yahh-hhhhh!”
Keller leveled off and picked up the Warhawk’s pace as Blue Wing was diving for another attack run.
Down below, the monstrous machine guns and antiaircraft cannons had finally been made ready.
“Holy shit!” Pop grabbed his headset. “Blue leader, this is Red leader, do you copy?”
“I copy, Blue leader.”
“I just spotted guns, big ones, on the ground.”
“I see them too, Red leader,” Mickey O. acknowledged.
“They’ll tear you to shreds! Have your team pull up, do you hear me?” Keller could hear the booming rat-tat-tat of the big guns and see the fire belching from their barrels even from this distance.
“Negative, Red leader, too late to pull out now.”
“The bastard’s crazy,” Pop said to Locke.
Aren’t we all? Chris might have responded but he was having trouble catching his wind.
“Red Wing,” Pop Keller started into his mouthpiece, “this is Red leader. Assume attack formation. We’ll take airborne planes from the rear. Let’s go for it, boys!”
As in the steps of a complex dance routine, the planes of Red Wing—a pair of trainers, three Mustangs, two Corsairs, a Spitfire, and a Messerschmitt—fell in behind Pop Keller,
whose Warhawk flew at the center of a wedge spread into a pattern of wide wings. The fighters stormed into the wind, cheating the currents in pursuit of the specks climbing, spreading, and drawing away from Stonewall Jackson Air Force Base.
“We haven’t got much time,” Locke said, finding his wind but not his stomach.
“Won’t take much,” Pop promised, opening his throttle a bit more.
Behind Red Wing, the battle was raging back at the base. Mickey O. lost one Piper and a Trojan in the first assault from the big guns. Not one of his wing’s rockets, fired in desperation, had found its mark.
“Blue Wing, this is Blue leader. Remaining Pipers, follow me down for a run at the guns, ’specially the cannons. You others blast the runway to fuckin’ hell.”
Mickey O. swung his Piper for the big guns as the Bearcat, Mustang, and T-6 trainer roared for the runway. In World War II, the Piper L-4 Cubs had been used extensively for bombing runs on German Tiger tanks. A direct charge into those heavily armored monsters, of course, was out of the question. So the Pipers would make their runs by coming around the flank of a mountain or diving from the camouflage of a hill. Mickey O. tried that strategy with his remaining Pipers now. He swung in low beyond the barracks and cut a sharp angle back for the big guns, hoping to take them by surprise from the rear.
As he dipped into his approach, he saw the other three members of his wing had made a successful strike on the runways. Green-garbed men who had been pushing already disabled aircraft aside scampered frantically away. More of the dusters were blown onto their sides and set ablaze.
“Hot dog!” screamed Mickey O., who somewhere had left a wife and kids, several sets of them actually, scattered all over the country. He was sixty-two and cancer had for some time been eating away at his innards. Well, fuck these Commie bastards and fuck the cancer too!