He became conscious of another SNJ flying alongside; he saw that the pilot was Captain Teitlebaum, who was holding a microphone in one hand. “That was a good quick rendezvous, Isaacs. Your heading will be one-eight-zero. Maintain constant air speed and altitude. Keep your eye on the chronometer. At exactly seventeen hundred you will reverse course and proceed to this check point. At this point you will alter course to the base and release your sleeve in the alley. Have you any questions?”
Melvin shook his head.
Teitlebaum’s SNJ abruptly stood on one wing—the underside vertically flattened against the sky, the small black wheels like buttons on a silver vest—and dropped out of sight.
Melvin banked a few degrees to be on course, trimmed the tow plane until it maintained heading and altitude of its own accord. then lowered himself in the cockpit and loosened the safety belt because he had nothing at all to do for the next half hour. He felt around in the knee pocket of his coveralls. There was a stick of gum. He peeled off the wrapper and slipped the gum into his mouth. It had a sugary, fruity taste after the burnt coffee they served in the hangar and he sucked the juices greedily, blinking with pleasure. The cockpit had begun to grow uncomfortably warm from the rays of the sun on the glass, so he reached up and slid the canopy backward. In rushed a cool, sweet wind, the first of spring after the drizzling, gloomy winter. He yawned and stretched, almost overwhelmed by a feeling of luxury, and unzipped the top of his coveralls. He could hear Teitlebaum on the radio, some distance away because his voice was faint. He was giving instructions.
“. . . full deflection. Sixty mils lead, not one hundred. Bear in mind that you people are after the target, not the man in the tow.”
Melvin tugged the brim of his baseball cap over his eyes and squinted toward the sun, knowing they were up there somewhere, and thought he could make them out a short distance from the center of the glare. They should have been invisible, since he was the victim and was supposed to be shot down without even the knowledge of the enemy’s presence. But he could just see them; they were a little out of position. Still, it was not bad, considering this was the first run, and then, too, the actual target was the sleeve and from there the echelon might be altogether invisible. It suddenly occurred to him that this would not be a theoretical exercise—above him were five SNJ’s with loaded machine guns. He cranked himself higher in the seat and tightened the safety belt. He had no doubt his friends would attempt to hit the sleeve, but that, after all, was irrelevant. He remembered that Elmer seldom paid attention during gunnery lessons in the Quonset hut, and Roska usually shot too far ahead of the target. Then he saw the first plane bending down. It bore toward him with terrific speed, angling across the sun so that he was blinded. He stopped chewing gum; he waited tensely for the noise of the machine gun clattering, and glanced out at the wing, half-expecting to find a series of punctures busily stitching their way toward him, but nothing happened. He discovered the plane rising ahead of him; it had passed beneath him and was now climbing toward the echelon. The attack was already over.
He twisted around in the cockpit and gazed earnestly at the sleeve, wondering if it had been shot full of holes. The sleeve, which reminded him of a shroud, was yawing a little in the wind, the orifice gaping, the implication so sinister and somehow horrible that he felt sick at his stomach.
The second plane—for one instant he saw it—floated into the rainbow flame of the sun; he waited, listening, although he knew he would not hear anything, and a few seconds later it reappeared a hundred yards or so in front of him like the first one, returning to position. Just then he felt a tug and his plane lurched and darted ahead; instantly he rolled into a vertical bank and saw an SNJ spinning wildly toward the water with the sleeve folded across it. The canopy had been opened. The pilot was half out of the cockpit. Then the water exploded. The SNJ seemed to hesitate; near the center was an orange dot, vivid and motionless. Waves were rushing up the wings and over the fuselage and silently crashing into a raging, frothing tower from which one silver wing emerged diagonally; the wing gleamed in the light, slipped aside like the prow of a ship, and was gone. He thought he saw the plane beneath the surface, a shadowy cross, but he could not be sure; if for a few seconds it had been there it sank into the depths while he was watching, and he heard the captain on the radio give orders to return to the base and he obeyed.
Moments later, looking over his shoulder, he saw Captain Teitlebaum spiral down to the area where the SNJ had gone under. The captain would probably circle there until an amphibian arrived. And the men in the amphibian would circle for a while, an hour or so, scanning the area with binoculars, and perhaps land on the water if any wreckage came floating to the surface. But it was over. Nobody would pretend the pilot might be alive, or even that his body would be found. Here the Gulf was deep. The water was unscarred, there were no screaming birds; already the waves rolled powerfully, as they had before. On the floor of the Gulf the subterranean currents were flowing, bearing the wreckage toward some cavern or over some precipice where the coral grew.
All the way to the base Melvin stared at the column of planes, counting them again and again.
At the entrance to the traffic pattern he closed in on them, but suddenly drew back the throttle and lagged behind so that he could not recognize anyone. However, as they flew between the pylons and the leader tilted out of formation and dove toward the field he knew the pilot was Nick McCampbell—the J dropped so steeply and securely, curling toward the target as infallibly as a stooping hawk—and the second J was ready: the wings waddled left, right and down to the left it rolled. The pilot was wearing a red cap. Horne and Roska both wore red caps, but that had been Roska. Before the third plane dropped away Melvin shut his eyes and began counting aloud.
When he opened his eyes there was no one ahead, the pylons were directly below; he signaled his turn for anyone who might be following and dove into the pattern.
After he had landed and found a slot on the parking line he cut the switches and pushed aside the shoulder harness, but remained in the cockpit for a long time, leaning forward with his hands folded over the top of the control stick and his head resting on them.
When at last he entered the hangar he saw that somebody had marked the gunnery run complete, as though nothing had happened. He took off his coveralls, his cap, and his gloves, rolled them up as he always did, and placed them in the locker, and was about to close the locker when it occurred to him that all he had to do was examine the other bundles of clothing in order to learn who was missing. He hesitated, unrolled another pair of coveralls, and looked at the name inked inside the collar. They belonged to Roska.
Three bundles remained. He knew that one of them belonged to McCampbell; then he noticed in the bottom of the locker the casual, non-regulation shoes that belonged to Pat Cole. Cole always wore them when he was flying. Melvin slammed the locker and hurried away from the hangar in the direction of the barracks, but when he got there he could not force himself to go inside. He walked back and forth at the entrance and finally sat down on the steps.
When he entered the barracks it seemed to him strangely quiet. The corridors were deserted. Usually there was somebody around, studying the announcements on the bulletin board or standing at attention in front of Ensign Monk’s room or gazing out the windows.
He went up the steps to the lounge. One cadet whose name he did not know was lying on the leather sofa, smoking and reading a magazine.
Melvin walked through the lounge and up to the third floor and started along the corridor toward the room where he had lived with Sam Horne. He walked more and more slowly, and when he could see that the door was open he stopped. He could not hear any voices. Once again he was struck by the silence in the barracks.
Presently he sensed that there was no one in his room. He continued walking toward it, more rapidly, and by the time he got there he was positive. He looked in. The room was empty. He went in, lay down on his bunk, and put his head underneath the pi
llow, but almost immediately got up and went over to the wash basin to see himself in the mirror. He was surprised that he did not look any different than usual. There was no sign of shock or grief on his face. He put on his garrison cap and walked down the rear steps to the second floor, to the room where the others lived. The door was closed. He stood in front of it, with his arms folded, listening. He could hear bureau drawers being opened and shut; the closet door squeaked, footsteps pattered across the linoleum.
Melvin suddenly pushed open the door and saw Ensign Monk on his knees busily stuffing clothes into a duffle bag. The officer leaped nimbly to his feet, his pink face moist and swollen with emotion, clapping his hands and crying, “Out! Out!”
Melvin quickly shut the door, but he had seen that the linen had been stripped from Elmer’s bunk and the mattress folded back.
10
Flight 487 was scheduled for the second lesson in gunnery at eight o’clock the next morning. Melvin had assumed they would be given a day or so of rest after what had happened, but Sam Horne nodded with approval when he saw the schedule. He said, “That’s a good policy. They get us in the air again before we have time to think. That’s the only way.”
They met Captain Teitlebaum in a corner of the hangar where the colored chalk diagrams of the previous day were still visible on the floor; Melvin stared at the diagrams during most of the captain’s lecture. Teitlebaum was very short and habitually stood with his thumbs hooked in the drawstrings of his life jacket. He always wore shoes with blocky crepe soles and every once in a while he would rise up on his toes and expand his chest. There would be, he remarked, a slight change in the procedure: they would rendezvous at the beach as usual, but would then fly out to sea in two two-plane sections instead of in echelon. The sections were more maneuverable and could save time. Roska was assigned to pull the target.
Horne and Melvin walked along the flight line together, and as they were nearing their planes Horne said, “Listen, don’t get yourself on top of that sleeve. When you’re diving, if you got a slow start, or if you aren’t steep enough, it’ll drift under you.” He looked at Melvin, stopped walking, and dropped his parachute. “Will you listen to me?”
“All right, I’m listening,” Melvin said.
“Stop thinking about yesterday. This is today.”
“Nobody said it wasn’t.”
“All right!” Horne said gruffly. “I’m trying to be of some help. I’m trying to give you the word on what I found out. This is it: about the time you’re in firing range you may find out you’re not ahead of the sleeve any more.” He paused, demonstrated with his hands, sliding one hand gradually into the trajectory of the other. “You follow me? It slides under you if you don’t dive steep enough. And then you try to correct, but you can’t correct fast enough, and then—well, I don’t know how to explain it. It’s just one of those things you got to discover for yourself. But be sure you know what you’re doing. You follow me?”
“Yes, all right,” Melvin agreed, and went on, “I was just thinking that the only reference Teitlebaum made to Elmer was that today, with only four planes on the attack, we’d have more time to practice.”
Horne looked at him in disbelief and all at once grabbed him by the coveralls and began shaking him; Melvin gasped and struggled to break away.
“Wake up, will you!” Horne shouted. His face was livid and his little blue eyes burned wickedly. With a gesture of contempt or of exasperation he let go, and said in a quarrelsome voice as he picked up his parachute, “Why don’t you ever wash those stinking coveralls?”
Melvin was trembling with excitement and answered curtly, “They’re no worse than yours!”
“They smell up the whole locker! They stink like a haystack full of mice!” Horne exclaimed. “Now come on, we’re late enough as it is! God damn, wake up, will you?”
“I can look out for myself.”
“You can? Is that a fact?” said Horne. “Well, that’s news to me.”
Neither of them said anything else until they reached the plane which had been assigned to Melvin; there Sam Horne muttered something—it could have been either an apology or a warning—and continued along the line.
Melvin said, “I’ll follow you to the beach,” conscious that Horne was already too far away to hear. He buckled on his parachute and got into the cockpit. A mechanic hopped up on the wing, inserted a crank in the cowl, and leaned heavily against it: a dull, protesting whine began to emerge from the interior of the engine and rose to a shrill scream as the crank revolved more and more rapidly. Melvin turned a switch: the propeller kicked, flung itself over, swung back, and vanished in a shining arc while smoke poured from the exhaust and the fuselage rattled from the vibrations. The mechanic, his faded blue dungarees whipping in the wind, skidded down the wing and jumped off. Melvin tuned in on the squadron tower, checked his instruments, and gazed around the station. It was only a few minutes after eight o’clock, but already the sun was hot. There was a strong sea breeze.
In a little while Horne came taxiing by, the brilliant orange rudder of the J swaying like the tail of a goldfish as he leaned rhythmically from side to side in order to see what was ahead. Melvin released the brakes and trundled forward, swung into the aisle, and followed him between the rows of parked planes into the cool rectangular shadow of the tower and into the sunlight again, where they joined the others weaving methodically toward the downwind end of the field.
Horne and Melvin took off side by side. The wingtips of the two SNJ’s were only a few feet apart. It was against regulations to take off so close together, but they knew nobody would do anything about it unless they had an accident. If they drifted against each other and crashed, and survived, there would be a board of review and the probability they would be dropped from flight training; all the same they had gotten into the habit of leaving the field side by side. They did not know why, except that it was a tradition at Barin Field to take off and to land as close together as possible and they had come to feel a certain pride in doing so, just as they took pride in being able to say, when anyone asked where they were stationed, that they were at Bloody Barin.
They pulled up the wheels the instant they were off the ground and banked to the left, Melvin easing the throttle forward because he was on the outside of the turn and had farther to go, and in a few seconds they were curving over the pines on their way to the rendezvous, a puddle of soft aluminum sunlight slipping along the wings whenever they turned and reflecting from the glass canopies with a blinding flash.
Ten minutes later they hurtled across the beach. Behind them and several hundred feet above, hanging motionless in the sky, were Cole and McCampbell.
Down the beach the four planes roared, crabbed against the off-shore breeze, passed above the tow plane where Roska hunched in the cockpit with his cap tilted over one eye, and arched out to sea—streaming over launches and sailboats, a few swimmers near the sandbars, slanting and twisting up and higher up. Far beneath them the gulls were diving after fish, and white flowers burst, smaller than daisies, when the birds struck the water.
Soon the SNJ’s were out where the Gulf was dark, no longer mottled like turquoise with the shadows of caves and ledges below the surface, and Melvin, taking a moment to glance around, discovered Captain Teitlebaum flying close beside him. He had that disconcerting habit of materializing like some murderous little genie, a plump yellow cigar clenched in his teeth and a restless, malevolent glare in his merciless, violet eyes. Melvin stared at him and had no sensation of exchange; it was as though his look had been met by the insanely lucid and vigilant glare of some predatory animal. Nevertheless, whether man, wolf, or the emanation of a magic lamp, he was an officer and Melvin began to feel uneasy. So far as he knew he had not done anything wrong, but he had learned from experience that this was no excuse. Feeling somewhat harassed, he went on with his work, which, for the moment, was simply maintaining the position. Teitlebaum watched, said nothing, and in a little while sank out of sight a
nd reappeared on Horne’s wing. Melvin glanced across and was pleased to see the captain scrutinize Horne with that same implacable mistrust. Still without a word or a signal he whirled away.
Melvin next located him a quarter of a mile below them on the opposite side of the tow plane, from which position he evidently intended to observe the gunnery runs.
Horne had been leveling off and frequently turning around to his left to peer down at the target sleeve, and Melvin, flying on his right, moved in closer, for he supposed that Teitlebaum had been studying them to see if they were frightened by what had occurred the previous day and a tight formation should prove to him they were not afraid. Besides, the air was stable, there seemed to be no currents; and so he flew a trifle closer. He could not tell precisely how far the hub of his propeller was from the trailing edge of Horne’s wing, but he guessed it might be eight or ten inches. He was tempted to ease in closer and was considering whether or not this would be safe, when Horne looked around to the right for the first time and his eyes bulged. Melvin saw him reach cautiously for the microphone and heard him say, not exactly with anger, but as though he were warning a dog that was about to spring at him: “Damn you, get away from me!”
The Patriot Page 14