Stripped to his skivvies, Jake ignored the prodding and indignities of the routine physical examination. His mind was elsewhere. He saw Morgan and the faces of the men he had known who were now dead. Two had been killed in automobile accidents, but a half dozen or so had died in plane crashes. One had ejected from an F-9 in the training command when it caught fire and had made the long, long fall when his parachute failed to open. He had known Morgan best, but he had also been good friends with a boy from California who had flown his A-6 into the Nevada desert on a night training mission.
Mad Jack looked at Jake’s hands. “Are you fit to fly?” the doctor asked.
“I’m not a doctor,” Jake said. “I just fly the planes. For Uncle Sam. . . .” he added, his voice trailing off. The skipper would have a comment or two about that. Well, Frank Camparelli was right. But so was he. There was a limit to just how much stupidity in high places men ought to endure. If those elected civilians didn’t intend to put on enough pressure to win, then they had no right to waste lives just screwing around. Camparelli makes no apologies for stupidity; he merely accepts it. Maybe the problem is that the admirals and generals never tell the elected officials what fools they are.
“Are you fit to fly?” the doctor asked again.
“What do you think? You flew with me a few weeks ago. Was I dangerous? Was all that medical education your parents paid for in jeopardy?”
“You can put your clothes on.” Mad Jack began scrawling in the medical record.
“What’s your professional opinion, Quack? Are you going to let me drive these flying pigs or aren’t you?”
“What do you want?” the doctor asked. “Do you want to keep flying?”
Jake pulled on his shoes. “I don’t know, Doc.” He spoke slowly, trying to concentrate. “I’ve been flying since I was fifteen. Flying’s all I know.
If this war goes on I expect I’ll die in an airplane.” He picked up his wallet and keys from the desk. “The hell of it is, I really don’t give a damn.”
The doctor looked intently at the pilot. “When we flew to the beach a few weeks ago, you asked me a question that I thought you knew the answer to.
You asked, ‘Is life worth the final smashup?” Well, what’s your answer? Is it?”
“I don’t remember saying that.” The pilot sat with his elbows on his knees.
“I always thought flying worth the sacrifices,” he said at last.
“Life is a hell of a lot more mundane than flying, isn’t it? It’s a lot more complex. Not much glory. It doesn’t have many of those right or wrong, black or white decisions that flying’s so full of.” Mad Jack droned on something about good pilots making rotten choices in life, but Jake’s attention had wandered to the frame prints that hung on the bulkheads. The prints were famous moments in naval history: Dewey in Manilla Bay; Farragut steaming past the forts at Mobile; Monitor and the Merrimack at Hampton Roads.
Mad Jack had another picture. It showed a squad of marines pinned on the beach at Iwo Jima, their faces contorted by the strain of combat. There had been glory there.
TWENTY-ONE
Jake left Tiger Cole at the bar in the Cubi Point 0 Club Without a carrier in port, the place was dead. Carrying a fresh scotch, he headed for the pay telephone, pockets weighted down with thirty dollars in quarters. He and Cole had arrived the day before, signed in the B O Q, and reported to the duty officer-as Camparelli had instructed them to do. At the bar Cole had said, “You should call.”
“It’s a lot to ask of her,” said Jake.
Cole shook the dice cup and rolled. “Call her.”
He selected a pair of threes and returned the other dice to the cup.
“Wish I had your problem.” He rolled again. A third three. “Go on.”
Jake felt as though he were feeding quarters into a slot machine.
Less than half his scotch remained when he heard Callie’s voice amid a hum and intermittent static.
“It’s me. Jake.”
There was a pause. “Jake! Great to hear your voice. I thought you were at sea. Where are you?”
“Cubi Point in the Philippines. I flew here yesterday afternoon in a cargo plane with another guy, my bombardier.”
There was another pause. “Are you on leave.
“Sort of.”
“Jake! You’ve been hurt!”
“No, no. I’m fine. Really, I’m okay. I’m calling from the O Club, and I’ve got a scotch in my hand.”
“If you’re drinking scotch, I suppose you must be all right.”
“Well, actually, everything’s not all right. I got into some trouble.”
“Trouble? What kind of trouble?”
He began searching his pockets for cigarettes. “I got into trouble with the navy. I did something wrong, didn’t follow orders exactly.”
“How serious is it? This trouble you’re in.”
“Oh, it could be worse. They’re not going to shoot me or anything. I’ll survive. I’m going back to the ship in maybe three days to deliver a new plane. But I’d sure like to see you before I go.”
“I’d like to see you, too. I really would.”
“Could you come?”
“Huh? You mean fly out to the Philippines?
Now?”
“Yeah. I know it’s a lot-“
“It’d be very difficult to leave just now. My job. It’s such short notice. Maybe-” “Callie, I need to see you.” Waiting for her reply, he cradled the receiver between his head and shoulder, and lit a cigarette.
“How would I get there?”
You fly to Manila. I can meet you there and bring you back to Cubi.”
“Why not stay in Manila?”
“Can’t. I’ve got to report to the duty officer here every morning.”
“It’s really serious, isn’t it?”
Jake took a breath before answering. “Yes. It’s pretty serious.”
“Hold on. I’ll see if there’s anything I can work out right now. You can hold, can’t you?”
“Sure.” After a few minutes he was told to add more quarters. He fed the slot as quickly as he could. A coin slipped from his hand, hit the counter, and fell to the floor. He didn’t bother to pick it up.
Finally she came back on.
“Jake?”
“Right here.”
“I can’t come until the day after tomorrow.”
“That’s okay.”
“I can catch a flight arriving in Manila at one-fifteen Saturday. That doesn’t give us much time together. you still want me to come?”
“You bet. I really want to see you.”
“Okay. I’ll be on Cathay Pacific flight 923.”
“Got it. Hey, I can’t wait to see you-and thanks.” After promising Callie that he’d relax and take care of himself, Jake made another phone call, then returned to the bar and came up behind Cole. “She coming, shipmate?” Cole acknowledged this with a hint of a smile. Jake went on, “This guy I know in the flying club here will fly me to Manila to meet her.”
Jake picked up the dice and put them in the cup. After a shake he turned it over on the counter.
Five aces.
They looked at each other, then stared at the sign behind the bar: “Five naturals buys the party, five aces buys the bar.”
Cole made a show of surveying the empty room “Barkeep,” Tiger called.
“Give me a double of the most expensive stuff you have back there. And pour Yourself one, too.” His blue eyes met Jake’s and the corners of his mouth twitched. “Without a doubt Grafton, you’re the luckiest man I’ve ever met.”
Jake stood with his arm around Callie while Harold made a thorough preflight inspection of the four-seat Cessna 172. Harold’s caution impressed Jake. Most pilots who had completed the first half of a flight would check nothing more than the fuel and oil before taking off again the same day.
Even so, Jake knew that he would not be at ease with Harold at the controls.
He was not comfortable in a
n airplane unless he was flying it.
“I hope this flight is better than my last one,” said Callie. She had complained about the turbulence on her flight from Hong Kong as soon after Jake had kissed her at the customs exit and given her a long hug.
“It was pretty smooth at four thousand feet coming over here,” Jake said.
Callie squeezed Jake’s hand and said, “I don’t want to hassle you, but when we’re on the plane maybe you could tell me about the trouble you’re in.”
Jake smiled. “These prop planes are pretty noisy. You have to shout to be heard. I thought that when we land at Cubi, we’d check into a hotel and then, if you’d like, we could go to the beach. I know one that’s sugar white and very quiet. I found it one day when I was flying. It’d be a good place to talk.”
Callie grinned. “Sounds like a good plan to me.”
The air was bumpy in the climb, but when the plane passed through 3700 feet, the ride suddenly became smooth. Harold’s seat was higher than those in the rear, where Jake and Callie sat, and the angle of the climb made it appear even higher. To Jake it seemed as though Harold sat on a throne. His bald pate shone in the afternoon sun. It saddened Jake to think that after one more flight in the Intruder, he would never again have control of his destiny in the air.
When they were flying downwind to the runway at Cubi Point, Jake estimated from the direction and slope of the windsock that Harold would be fighting about a fifteen-knot crosswind from the left on final approach-tough for a Cessna to handle. As Don Harold turned from left base to final he pushed on the right rudder to align the nose of the plane with the runway. Jake watched Harold put the Cessna in a slip by holding right rudder and dipping the left wing. Now the airplane could track straight down the final approach course in spite of the stiff crosswind. Jake heard a chirp as the Cessna touched down on the left wheel and then a softer chirp as the right wheel eased down and the plane settled on the runway. Jake said loudly “Good job! You caught the three wire!”
He and Callie took a cab to the Subic main gate They walked across the bridge to the nearby hotel. Earlier, he had paid the clerk a premium price for the best room available.
Callie surveyed the room. The dark green paint was peeling. Water stains blotched the ceiling and wall. A faucet dripped in the chipped porcelain sink. “I feel like I’m in the Hide-A-Wee Hotel for a sordid affair.
Saying nothing, Jake went over to try to stop the ieak- His hand froze on the faucet handle-a water logged black roach, about an inch long, lay upside down on the drain, with one bent antenna stuck to the bottom of the rust-stained sink. Jake stepped quickly into the bathroom and tore off a bundle of toilet paper When he came out, Callie was staring at a picture of black and white cow that stared back at her with lugubrious expression. It stood in a field of very green grass. “This print looks like it was cut from a dairy ad.
“American export art.”
He stood in front of the sink, half-hiding it from Callie- Reaching into the bowl, he scooped up the roach in the toilet paper, taking care not to squeeze to rightly. Callie’s voice came from behind.
“What’s that in your hand?”
“It’s, uh, nothing much-“
“What is it? A bug of some sort? Is that what it is?”
“Yeah.”
“What kind?”
“It’s a black bug.”
“It’s a what?”
Jake sighed. “It’s a cockroach.”
Callie sat gingerly on the side of one of the two single beds, causing its springs to make boinging noises. Jake reached for the closed toilet lid and hesitated; he decided to flush the toilet first.
“How big was that roach, anyway?” Callie called from the other room.
The toilet groaned and rattled as it filled up. “I didn’t measure it.”
“It’s a big one. I know it.”
He lifted the lid, plopped in the wad of tissue paper, and flushed again.
“My God, it’s bigger than I thought. Hasn’t it gone down yet?”
“Callie. Relax. I didn’t try flushing it down the first time.”
“Then why did you flush the toilet?”
“Just checking it out, that’s all. It really seems to be working great.”
The toilet gave out a screech just before it stopped filling up. Jake watched it long enough to know it wouldn’t overflow, then he went and sat down next to Callie. She was on the edge of her bed with her head in her hands.
Jake was relieved to see that she was tearless. “I know this place is the pits.” He put his arm around her shoulders. “I’m sorry.”
She looked at him. “Does the bathroom have a shower or a bath?”
“No. But there’s a shower down the hall.”
“I have a brilliant idea. Why don’t we go to the Hilton instead? Or the Holiday Inn? That’d be fine too.
“I think we’re stuck. There aren’t any decent places around here.”
“Well, check the beds for crawling things. I want to be sure I’m not the next meal for something. If the beds pass inspection, I guess I’ll survive.
“Will you?”
“Sure. As long as I have you.”
The jeepney was orange and white, and frilly tassel jiggled from its canvas top. With Callie and Jake in back, it left Po City behind and headed out on a macadam road that was filled with potholes. The young Filipino driver seemed to delight in hitting the holes at full speed and ignored Jake’s pleas to slow down. His passengers were knocked about and, at times, propelled straight up into the air.
Callie asked, “How much longer?”
“Twenty or thirty minutes.”
“I don’t think I can last that long.”
“Hang tough.”
“If I were pregnant, I’d lose the baby after this ride.” The driver honked his tinny horn at some chickens in the road.
They got out of the jeepney on the outskirts of a small fishing village.
Jake persuaded the driver to wait for them by tearing a twenty-dollar bill and giving him half. Then they trudged more than two hundred yards to the beach.
Holding hands, Callie and Jake strolled barefoot on the clean white sand where it was soft and damp from dissipating waves. Jake liked it when the fizzing water of a wave swirled around his ankles and, as it receded washed between his toes and sucked at the san beneath his soles. Jake and Callie were alone on the beach.
Callie said, “That sunset is gorgeous “You should see one at thirty thousand feet.
“I’d like to. It must be spectacular.”
“It is. I hope I see another one from the air.”
Callie was wearing Jake’s Jersey City Athletic Club T-shirt; on her it looked like a nightie- Jake was bare-chested and he had rolled up his jeans.
They had walked a distance on the damp sand and now, they headed back toward the blanket they had taken from the hotel closet, the dark blue blanket that Jake suspected was navy-issue.
Callie asked, “What can happen to you’?”
“They could court-martial me. They could send me to prison.”
“Surely they wouldn’t send you to prison.”
“It’s a possibility. They’re conducting an investigation on the ship now.
When it’s over, they’ll probably decide to court-martial us.”
“But a court-martial is like a trial, isn’t it?”
“Yes. It’s the military’s version of it.”
“Then it could be decided in your favor.”
“Not likely.”
“But it could be.”
“Listen, what I did was damned serious. A few weeks ago one of my sailors lied to me. I wanted the skipper to hammer him good, but the Old Man decided not to. I wanted this guy disciplined because he lied, because he broke my trust. What I did is a lot worse than what that sailor did. They’ll come down hard on me, you can count on that. They won’t let me get away with disobeying orders, not something this big. The State Department will have to be told, maybe even
the president.”
“I understand. I’m not trying to deny the seriousness of what you did. But I don’t think you should assume there’s no hope. Now what else could the navy do to you, short of sending you to prison?”
“They could boot me out with a dishonorable discharge. I’d have one helluva tough time getting a job in the civilian world with a dishonorable on my record. They could ask me to resign my commission, and give me an honorable. That way, I could at least get a flying job.”
“Anything else they could do?”
“Well, at the very least I guess they could give me a letter of reprimand or censure, which would be put in my personnel file. If that happened, I could stay in the navy for a while. But there wouldn’t be much point in it. I’d never be promoted. I’d be a lieutenant for the rest of my career.”
“Couldn’t they just bawl you out and leave it at that?”
“Slap my wrist and send me on my way? Fat chance. Any way you cut it, my career in the navy is over.” Callie didn’t respond.
The sun had been replaced by a bright three-quarter moon. The air was cooler and they sat shoulder to shoulder on the blanket. Callie’s arms encircled her drawn-up legs, which were almost hidden by the T shirt. “How will you handle it if it turns out you can’t fly any more?”
“I don’t know. I guess I’ll just have to adjust somehow. But I sure as hell won’t miss the war. The bombing. The killing. I’m sure tired of all that.”
“You’ve done your part.”
“I wouldn’t say that. I don’t like the idea of leaving the fighting to others. It’d be like … running out on the other guys.
Sure, the war sucks.
But I’ll quit fighting only because the navy makes me quit.” Then he added, “You think we should all quit. Now. Right?”
“Yes,” she said. “That’s my opinion. But we don’t want to get into that again, do we?”
Jake thought about it. “Nah. Who wants to talk about the war, anyway? The hell with it. Let’s go for a swim.” Jake moved about thirty feet to the left of the blanket to undress. While removing his jeans and underpants he stole some glances at Callie, who undressed sitting down, taking off her shorts and panties beneath the T-shirt, which she kept on. When she giggled it startled him. He’d never heard her giggle before.
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