Fatal 5

by Karin Kaufman

  Suddenly, an elusive, unsettled feeling began to trouble him. He pulled on the thread. He remembered Manch’s plane had made it through the Raid, so he should be fine. A black and white photograph from the book popped into his mind. Five men stood together in front of a B-25. Manch stood out from the others because of his height. Then, almost peeking out from behind Manch, over his left shoulder, Jack saw in his mind’s eye a small figure of a man.

  That’s when he remembered.

  The man standing behind Manch was Corporal Leland Faktor, Manch’s engineer/gunner. The way Fitzmaurice had been talking, Jack must be taking Faktor’s place on the plane.

  Faktor. Wait a minute, thought Jack.

  Faktor dies.

  21

  Jack walked carefully along the flight deck of the USS Hornet past the second plane, trying to avoid an embarrassing fall. Sailors and bomber crews hurried about doing their various duties. The constant pitching up and down didn’t seem to bother them at all. He’d left Fitzmaurice in the galley with some lame excuse about double-checking the ammo boxes. What he really wanted was a firsthand look at his plane.

  There it was.

  Under the window, painted in white letters he read the name: “Lt. Robert Gray.” He took a few steps back to get a better look and almost tripped over some tie-down cords, lashing the underside of the wing to the deck. As big as these bombers were, the sea could toss them off the deck as easily as a woman sweeping leaves from a porch.

  The wind had begun to kick up, maybe fifteen to twenty knots now. He glanced up at the plane’s top gun turret, its two fifty-caliber guns pointing skyward. This is where he’d spend the majority of the flight—searching for enemy planes.

  Suddenly, a loud siren pierced the air. A commanding voice thundered over the ship’s klaxon, “General Quarters! Man your battle stations! Man your battle stations!” The siren continued to wail. Men began running in different directions. They all seemed to know exactly what to do and where to go. Jack didn’t have a clue.

  Sailors poured out of hatchways, hastily strapping on helmets and life vests. Every anti-aircraft gun buzzed with activity. Some men rolled the guns into position, others loaded ammo. Everyone shifted their gaze between the sky and the horizon. They probably think this is just a drill, Jack thought. General Quarter drills had been called twice a day since the mission began. But Jack knew—this time was no drill. He looked at his watch.

  It was 7:45am. Right on time.

  The ship shuddered as a deafening boom thundered over Jack’s left shoulder. He dropped to all fours. He turned toward the sound in time to catch a nearby cruiser, the USS Nashville, as she let go of another fiery blast from her broadsides. Jack followed the direction of the gunbursts. In seconds, a loud explosion to the south signaled the guns had found their mark. A small Japanese fishing trawler now billowed thick plumes of black smoke. Several Dauntless dive bombers circled the sky above like buzzards.

  All over the ship, jubilant warriors hollered out their unanimous approval, the first taste of combat for the men of the Hornet. The officers on board had no way of knowing if this fishing trawler alerted the Japanese military to their presence. Jack knew they would decide to launch the B-25s now, not later, even though they were still two-hundred miles farther out than planned. The element of surprise meant everything.

  Jack heard the turbines churn faster deep within the belly of the ship and felt the carrier lurch forward. They were positioning the ship to launch the bombers. He suddenly realized how unprepared he was. Over the ship’s intercom, the same voice that cried battle stations spoke again: “Army pilots, man your planes! Army pilots, man your planes! This is not a drill. I repeat, this is not a drill.”

  Instantly, Army Air Force personnel raced out of the main hatchway strapping on their yellow life vests. Jack ran against the flow of traffic as he made his way downstairs. He had no vest and no idea where to get one. Through the steady stream of Doolittle’s Raiders making their way up the ladders, Jack saw Fitzmaurice.

  “Hey Fitz,” cried Jack.

  “Jack, this is it! You were right! We’re not going tonight.”

  “I know, I know.”

  “I wish you were wrong,” Fitz said near the top of the steps.

  “Fitz, where do I get a vest?”

  “Right, Jack,” he said sarcastically as he made his way onto the deck with the others. “See you in Chunking.”

  It was the last time Jack would see Fitzmaurice. Fitzmaurice was rushing off to die. But he was too young, Jack thought, too innocent. He should be somebody’s kid brother, some little boy’s favorite uncle.

  Jack waited on the landing for a break in the flow of men, then hurried one deck below. He watched a guy coming out of a room strapping on a vest. He grabbed one then hurried back up the ladder.

  As he came onto the flight deck the bow of the ship dipped low, sending a wall of icy saltwater spray across the deck, covering Jack in its mist. He turned toward the bombers, amazed at the transformation that had already taken place in a few short minutes. A powerful little buggy had rearranged the planes in a criss-cross fashion toward the rear of the ship, freeing up several precious yards of deck space for the planes to use during takeoff.

  Most of the crews were already in their planes. He made his way toward his but stopped briefly to stare into the cockpit of plane number one.

  There was the legend himself.

  Colonel Jimmy Doolittle was seated on the far side in the captain’s chair. He turned toward his co-pilot and said something Jack could not understand, then glanced down at Jack. Jack felt Doolittle’s fierce, determined eyes pierce right through him. Doolittle gestured with his head for Jack to get a move on it, then smiled.

  Jack hustled toward plane three, already in takeoff position. As he approached, Lieutenant Manch leaned out his window on the left side and yelled over the noise. “Glad you decided to join us, Jack.”

  It was so crazy that this guy knew his name. But his warm, Virginian accent and smile relieved some of Jack’s tension. “Sorry, Lieutenant. I’ll be right up.” Why hadn’t Lt. Manch called him ‘Leland’ or ‘Faktor’?

  He ducked low along the belly of the plane until he came to a small opening. There, waiting like a hotel doorman, a sailor bent down on one knee holding a wheel chock in his left hand. “All ready, Sergeant?” the sailor asked.

  “Uh, yeah. Thanks.”

  “Don’t worry. Just go on in. I’ll close her up,” he said with a grin. “Good luck.”

  “Thanks,” Jack answered as he climbed through the hatch.

  “You made it, Jack.”

  Jack looked up to see the face of Lieutenant Charles Ozuk, poking out from a narrow opening like a badger. He remembered Ozuk from the book Thornton had given him last night. Ozuk was the navigator on plane three. He had dark hair and a round pleasant face.

  “I was beginning to worry about you,” Ozuk said. “Better get this on. Lieutenant Gray’s going to want a communication check any minute.” Ozuk handed Jack a set of headphones, then crawled backward into his station and out of sight.

  Jack set the headphones aside a moment. He had to see what was going on inside the plane. He followed Ozuk back through the passageway toward the front. After crawling on his belly for a minute or two, he looked down at Ozuk sitting in a small seat behind the cockpit. Next to Ozuk was the bombardier, Sergeant Aden Jones. His cap, set back on his wide forehead, revealed a receding hairline. He looked nervous. He nodded to Jack but said nothing. Looking beyond Ozuk and Jones, Jack saw Lieutenants’ Gray and Manch in the cockpit going through their pre-flight checklist.

  “Sergeant?” Lieutenant Gray yelled over his shoulder. “What are you doing?”

  “Just checking out the scenery, sir,” Jack replied.

  “Well get back in position. We’re gonna take off any minute.”

  “Sorry, sir.”

  Jack wiggled backward to his compartment. He had the back half of the plane to himself, but he didn’t like it
. He put on the headset then turned to survey his surroundings. The fuselage offered little comforts. Jack had toured a few B-17’s at various air shows but had never been inside a Mitchell. It was much smaller. His compartment was dark and dreary with only a small porthole. Some extra light came in through the top gun turret. Jack thought about checking it out but decided it was too risky to sit there during takeoff.

  It was frustrating. Here he was inside a B-25 Mitchell about to take off an aircraft carrier in World War II, on one of the most historic missions of all time…but he couldn’t see a thing. Suddenly, the roar of an airplane engine up ahead sputtered to life. A wisp of exhaust fumes whipped down the flight deck. Jack knew it was Doolittle’s plane.

  “There goes the Colonel!” Manch shouted. “Come on, sir. Show us how it’s done!”

  The second engine kicked on. Both engines revved to full throttle, blaring until they sounded like they might explode. No one had ever tried to fly big bombers like the Mitchell off an aircraft carrier before. Doolittle’s Raiders had practiced at Eglin AFB, but no one knew for certain if it could be done on a pitching carrier deck.

  No one but Jack.

  Jack longed to catch a glimpse of Doolittle’s plane taking off. He strained his eyes out his little porthole, but the left engine obstructed his view.

  “Let’s go, let’s go, you can do it,” Jack heard someone yell from the front of the plane.

  “He made it!” shouted Manch as flight number one lifted off the carrier deck with several yards to spare. “Just like back at Eglin. Piece-a-cake!”

  Jack sat back in resignation, closed his eyes, and let the black-and-white video of this historic occasion replay through his mind. At least he had the added bonus of hearing the engines roar and could feel the wheels rumble down the wooden deck.

  “Pilot to gunner. Pilot to gunner.”

  Jack grabbed his headset, frantically searching for the mouthpiece.

  “Turner, you read me?” It was Lieutenant Gray.

  Jack’s eyes ricocheted off every item in his little room, finally resting on a hand-held microphone hanging on a hook. He lunged for it, mashing down the button with his thumb. “I read you, Lieutenant. Sorry, sir.”

  “You having problems, Turner? We’re about to sail out of here.”

  “No problems, sir.”

  “I’m closing the bombay doors,” Gray said. “Do you confirm?”

  Jack heard the doors closing, and a kerchunk as they locked into place. “Check. Bombay doors secure.”

  “You got those extra fuel cans strapped down, yet? Don’t want to see those things flying through my window when we lift off.”

  “Right away, sir.” Jack found a bundle of canvas straps lying on the floor and quickly secured five big cans to each other, then jerry-rigged them to at least ten others nearby.

  “Pilot to gunner.”

  “Yessir, Lieutenant?”

  “Just double-checking. The interphone working properly? Got to be able to connect with you at all times on this.”

  “Seems fine, sir. The delay before was my fault.”

  “There goes, Travis,” Gray said into the interphone, as another set of engines kicked into action. Plane Number Two. “Okay, boys. We’re next. You get those cans squared away, Jack?”

  “All set, Lieutenant.” The excitement of the moment had temporarily blocked his fears of death and doom. This was a genuine thrill. He looked out his window just beyond the right engine and noticed a sailor wearing a black reefer coat holding a fire extinguisher in his hands.

  “Right engine clear?” Manch shouted out his window.

  “Right engine clear!” the sailor shouted back.

  Suddenly, the plane began to rumble and vibrate as the right engine burst to life.

  “Left engine clear?” shouted Gray out his window.

  “Left engine clear!” yelled the sailor. The left engine fired up. Even through his headset, the noise from the engines filled the fuselage. The pulsating plane lurched forward and began to taxi into position.

  The plane turned slightly to the left. As it turned, Jack caught a glimpse of the second bomber lifting off the carrier deck. It was a breathtaking sight. Not a scratchy, black and white video image but living color.

  Jack’s plane swung around and faced dead ahead. Gray started revving his engines. The B-25 shuddered then shook violently as the brakes resisted the engine’s aggression. After fifteen or twenty seconds, Gray received the all clear. The wheel blocks were jerked away, the brakes released.

  The nose gear lifted slightly like a horse shedding its rider, then bounced on the deck and started to roll forward. Jack closed his eyes and braced himself. He tried to focus on the fact that none of Doolittle’s planes crashed on takeoff. He wondered how long this dream would play out. How far would the realism go?

  Genuine fear, the kind that bullies every other thought stirred inside him. He’d been fighting it since the moment he’d figured out he was sitting in the same spot Leland Faktor occupied during the original mission. What would that mean for him? He thought about his first dream. Was he ever in any real danger? If he hadn’t ducked behind those sandbags in that instant, would the bullets that killed Sal have killed him also or would he have just woken up? If he were seriously hurt or killed in this raid on Tokyo, would his body react in character?

  How could he know?

  His brain was in charge of this illusion, and he had no wish to die. But why had his brain chosen the role of Leland Faktor for him to play? What was the significance of that? He remembered a sermon he’d heard at a funeral a few months ago. The pastor was quoting some passage in the Bible, talking about death being an appointment set by God, not something that just happens by itself.

  God couldn’t want him to die like this, could he?

  Jack tried to reassure himself, then suddenly felt the rear wall of the fuselage sucking him backwards. The plane picked up speed as the carrier deck lifted high upon the tilting sea.

  In the next moment, they were off.

  22

  The plane dropped slightly at first, giving Jack the sensation of an elevator falling several flights. She slowly regained altitude then climbed slightly. Jack heard the landing gear retract then the bomber banked to the right. His eyes snapped to the cans he had just strapped in. They were holding. He held on tightly to avoid sliding across the floor himself. Within minutes Lt. Gray leveled the plane out and brought her into cruising altitude, a scant fifty feet above sea level.

  “Pilot to gunner. Jack, you read me?”

  “I’m here, Lieutenant.”

  “How’s everything holding up back there?”

  “Everything’s fine, sir.”

  “Better get started on the fuel cans,” Gray said. “Keep topping them off while we’re far from the coast. Before long we’re gonna need your hawk eyes in that turret scanning the skies.”

  “Okay, Lieutenant.” Jack sized up his assignment. He guessed he was supposed to pour the fuel from the cans into the large tank sitting in front of him. But he knew, in the end, it wouldn’t matter. A few extra cans of fuel would never close the two-hundred mile gap created by taking off this early.

  Jack knew a pilot of Gray’s caliber would have already figured this out. They weren’t going to make it to any airfield on the Chinese mainland today after dropping their bombs on Tokyo. Gray had probably already started forming a plan for bailing out.

  Jack found a wide-mouthed funnel upside down beside the fuel tank. He carefully poured in the first can. It drank down the entire can like a cowboy swigging a whiskey shot.

  When he finished, Jack squeezed into the plexiglass turret. He squirmed around on the seat until he got comfortable then kicked the footrests into place. When he looked up, his eyes contracted from the brightness of the mid-morning sun. The dreary weather near the carrier had evaporated.

  After a few minutes, his stomach began to rumble and he felt lightheaded. Sinking below the rim of the turret, he closed his eyes. He�
�d flown many times before but never at such a low altitude. It seemed they were only inches above the water, skipping over the waves like a stone.

  Slowly, he regained his composure and sat up again. A few minutes more, and his system began adjusting to the speed of the passing scenery. There was no land in sight, just the sporadic tufts of stratus clouds floating by and the undulating whitecaps of the sea rolling beneath the belly of the plane. They flew like this for over an hour. Every five minutes or so, Jack went below to add more fuel to the tanks.

  “Pilot to gunner.”

  Jack reached for the interphone. “Go ahead, Lieutenant.”

  “How we doing with the spare cans?”

  “Just loaded the last one about five minutes ago, sir.”

  “About what I figured,” Gray said.

  “What do you think?” he heard Lieutenant Manch say to Gray. “Think we’ll make it?”

  “I think we have to,” Gray replied. “Okay, Jack. Why don’t you give those guns a try? Give the turret a good once over.”

  “And try not to shoot down Holstrum in the plane behind us,” Manch said.

  Jack scanned the turret walls for controls. He gave one of the footrests a push with his boot. Nothing. He found what looked to be a control lever below the guns. He moved it back and forth. The twin guns instantly moved up and down. He maneuvered the handle horizontally. It didn’t respond. This thing’s gotta move sideways, Jack thought.

  “I’m not hearing those guns,” Lieutenant Gray said.

  Jack gave the handle a hard shove. Suddenly, the turret jerked wildly to his right. A loud burst of machine gun fire blasted into the air. He had accidentally squeezed the trigger. In shock and horror he glanced up at the right side of the tail section. A ribbon-like piece of sheet metal dangled helplessly in the wind. One of the stray bullets had torn a hole right through it. Jack watched anxiously for the next few moments but nothing happened. As he stared more closely at the damage, he could see his stupid mistake hadn’t affected the rudder’s operation. A few second later, the small piece of tail section ripped away and fluttered out of sight.