by Peter Albano
Sharpening his bank, the Libyan streamed glycol from his ripped oil cooler in a white mist. And then a fierce burst of flame licked back from the huge engine followed by a spoor of dense black smoke. Screaming with joy, Brent stood in the cockpit and waved a clenched fist as the stricken fighter made a full roll upward, spilling its own epitaph like shiny black silk behind it, pointing its nose for the heavens in a last desperate effort to escape the clutch of gravity and the inevitable.
Fascinated, Brent watched as the black fighter’s canopy flew open and a brown bundle tumbled out, caroming off the wing and slamming into his own stabilizer, his right arm neatly severed by the stabilizer’s leading edge. Legs and arm spread-eagled, the Arab pilot sailed over Brent’s head, the brown flying clothes mottled red while the pilotless ME rolled again and pointed its nose down into its final dive. Streaking at full throttle, it exploded on the island’s flat surface with a violence seen by only those few who fight and die in the sky. Rotating slowly like a bloody Frisbee, the pilot’s body crashed into a rocky promontory just above the beach.
Brent felt the Nakajima jerk as Takii kicked rudder and pointed the aircraft south again. They roared over a few farmhouses and then Tinian town shook to the vibrations of the big Sakae. Brent glimpsed rows of small shacklike houses, narrow roads, animals, and frightened white faces staring up. Anxiously, he searched the heavens and found the second black ME now high and to the west while Rosencrance’s blood-red machine was curving downward in a shallow dive. “We’re going to catch it now,” Brent said to himself.
Abruptly, the sea was beneath them again and the green tablelike island of Aguijan loomed only a few miles ahead. And the storm was there, licking at the trees that crowned the sharp peak at the island’s center like a single candle at a formal setting. But they would never make the storm. This time the attack would be coordinated, swift, deadly, and from two quarters simultaneously. No more casual target practice.
Brent brought up the Nambu, tightened his finger. He had no trouble making his choice — Rosencrance. He would die emptying his belt into the red ME. Remembering an old samurai adage Admiral Fujita had quoted years ago during the fighting in the Mediterranean, he squared his shoulders, smiled grimly, and repeated it to himself: “If you are to die, Brent-san, die facing the enemy.”
A flash of white to the east on the very periphery of his awareness turned his head. Three high-flying Zero-sens. One with a red cowling and green hood. Yoshi! Yoshi Matsuhara! Joyfully, Brent shouted into his microphone, “Zeros. It’s Edo One, high, bearing one-zero-zero.”
“Very well. I have them.”
Then Ensign Hayusa’s cold, trembling voice. “More enemy fighters at zero-four-zero, elevation forty.”
Brent found them, a pair of black crosses roaring in from the southwest, arrowing toward Matsuhara’s Zeros. “For God’s sake, Yoshi. MEs! MEs!” Brent screamed into the slipstream. “Can’t you see them?” Abruptly, Matsuhara’s wingmen broke, banked sharply and streaked toward the pair of new enemy fighters. Yoshi rolled into a vertical dive, nose pointed toward the Nakajima, Rosencrance and his wing man. A murderous daisy chain had been formed; the B5N, two MEs and Yoshi Matsuhara. Soon, cannon shells and bullets would break the chain.
Brent glanced ahead at the Aguijan. They were so low the cliffs of the forbidding island loomed above them, the swells slowed by the shoaling bottom and angered by the storm rising into successive mountain ranges like waves of attacking infantry, hurling themselves furiously against the unyielding rock cliffs where they creamed and leaped high in explosions of purest lacy white mist catching the slanting rays of the sun and flashing the colors of the rainbow. In any other circumstances, the spectacle would have been beautiful. But not today.
Brent was seized with a chilling thought. Was Takii’s samurai’s mind determined to hurl them all to their deaths against the cliffs in a spectacular gesture of seppuku? Cheat the enemy of the glory and pleasure of the kill? It was consistent with Bushido, had happened thousands of times in the past. Brent tore his eyes from the cruel cliffs and hunched down behind his weapon.
The black ME was close, jockeying for his killing angle. Brent watched the aircraft grow in his sights. The enemy was alone, Rosencrance looping into an Immelmann in an interception of Matsuhara while high above Matsuhara’s wingmen were engaging the pair of high-flying MEs. Then, suddenly, the sun was gone, hidden by the first outriders of the storm and Brent was hurled to the side, the restraint of his harness saving him from injury against the side of the cockpit. Takii was banking hard, skimming the cliffs so close, the left wing tip clipped off the top of a clump of scraggly brush like a chain saw through celery.
But the fighter was moving in for a point-blank shot and the pilot was smart, pulling up sharply, not allowing Takii to lure him into crashing into the side of the cliff but losing his firing position at the same time. Again Brent was hurled to the side, the big plane turning, canopy close to the curving side of the island as Yoshiro Takii called on every horsepower and taxed every spar, former, stringer, and wire in a desperate attempt to throw off the Arab’s aim. The Arab veered away and Brent knew he was setting up for a belly shot. He jammed the breech of his Nambu high bringing the muzzle down, but the ME was off their right rudder and the tail plane was in Brent’s line of fire. “For Christ’s sake, Takii! Give me a shot!”
The pilot seemed not to hear him. Instead, Takii continued to hug the curving sides of the island with his wings nearly vertical like a yo-yo spun around a child’s head. But the sharp inclination of the wings lost lift and Brent could feet a gut-wrenching drop. Then the quarter-roll to the right, a flattening as airfoils found cushions of air, and another quarter roll to the right, a sharp lunge upward, and then down like the wildest roller-coaster ride, forces reversing, Brent abruptly lifted from his seat by centrifugal force and straining against his shoulder restraints as the big plane crested its climb and hurtled downward, banking again close to the island.
Blood surged to the young lieutenant’s head, his eyes bulged, nose ran, and a million needles tried to push their way through the flesh of his cheeks and forehead. Despite the wild gyrations, he fought the Nambu bringing it to bear on his enemy. For an instant he had a clear field of fire and the ME skidded into his sights. They fired simultaneously. Tracers snapped past and Brent felt the big plane vibrate from bullet hits. With the winking twenty-millimeter in the center of his sights, Brent held down the trigger and sprayed the front of his enemy like a man using a garden hose squirting firebrands. But again his burst was cut short by his pilot’s maneuvers.
Takii threw the stick to the right and kicked rudder, throwing the big plane into a wrenching turn. He spoiled the enemy’s aim, but could only hold the turn for a moment. With the bomber’s airfoils nearly vertical and the aircraft threatening to side-slip into the sea, he horsed the stick to the left, dropping down to the wavetops and banking only a breath away from the sheer sides of the island. Suddenly a downdraft and the plane plummeted while Takii pulled the stick back into his guts, slapping the sea with his elevators like a sperm whale in a mating frenzy. Out of control, the big bomber staggered drunkenly, lurching from side to side and threatening to stall and smash into the breakers.
This is it, Brent said to himself, convinced death was only seconds away. Then he prayed as his pilot fought the controls like a madman. Finally, by a miracle of piloting, Takii regained control and trimmed the aircraft level.
Muttering thanks to God, Brent tracked his gun as the fighter zoomed far out and then banked in smartly for another run. The front of the ME blazed, the Arab trying for a difficult full-deflection shot. He was an excellent marksman. There were thuds, pings, and bangs from hits as Brent opened fire. Struck by a 7.7 millimeter slug, there was a “pop” as his oxygen bottle exploded and his binoculars and flare gun were blown from the bulkhead by a half-dozen more slugs. Then an explosion of a twenty-millimeter shell that knocked him from the gun and over the left side of the cockpit where he hung
helplessly for a moment, filled with disbelief, a black door slamming in his head. Then reality began to return with the smell of cordite, burned cloth, and screams in his earphones that turned his blood to ice water. Something hot and sticky running down his chest. He shook his head, trying to clear the dregs of night from his brain.
The middle cockpit had been hit and Ensign Takashiro Hayusa was screaming, spraying blood, chest blown open, his pulsating and ripped right lung exposed to the wind. His shrieks were high and shrill, the eerie cries like sharp fingernails raked across Brent’s soul. Blood sprayed Brent’s face, stuck to his helmet and jacket where it coagulated immediately in the cold wind.
The American had no time for the wounded navigator or the pain in his chest and the blood he could feel running to his waist and pooling against his belt. Biting his lip, he closed his mind to the screams, the pain, grabbed the pistol grips and swung the Nambu back to the right. The enemy was there, off their right elevator, throttled back and casually moving in for the kill.
The young gunner glanced skyward. Yoshi and Rosencrance were locked in a personal duel, while high above a Zero burst into flame and began its curving descent into the sea. A black Messerschmitt had rolled out of the fight trailing smoke. No help there.
Groggily, Brent brought the Nambu to bear and squeezed the trigger. But the ME dropped behind and slightly above the horizontal tailplane. He was directly behind the rudder. Seething with frustration, Brent released the trigger. “For Christ’s sake, give me a shot, Takii,” he screamed over Hayusa’s fading groans.
Takii seemed not to hear. Instead, he seemed to be trying to keep the Messerschmitt precisely where the Arab chose to be; behind and slightly above the horizontal tail plane. A new pain brought the gunner’s hand to his chest. His flight clothes were ripped and slimy gore stuck to his glove like red paste. Chunks of shattered bone imbedded in coagulating blood. Dully Brent stared at the offal on his hand, his ripped jacket, and the huge hole in the forward bulkhead. Pieces of the navigator had been blown through the bulkhead and mixed with his own wounds. Two or three slugs had ripped his clothes and opened wounds on his chest. Now the rents in his flesh burned — flamed with the intensity of branding irons. For the first time in his life, Brent Ross felt hopeless — defeated — and deep down, the floor of his stomach boiled as an atavistic clutch of horror uncoiled like a great loathsome maggot.
Slugs cracking in his ears like whips jarred the gunner. Brent pleaded feverishly, “Bank, Takii. Give me a shot!” But again, Takii seemed not to hear. Was Takii frozen by panic? Wounded, too? The ME moved in and death began to wink.
*
When he heard the call from Shonendan Two, Commander Yoshi Matsuhara was fifty kilometers to the east and north of Saipan. From four thousand meters he could already see the hump of Saipan and the table-top of Tinian in the distance, with the enormous black hulking storm looming just to the south and obscuring the southern end of Aguijan. Brent was in trouble. With his throttle jammed to the fire wall and his wingmen straining to keep station, Yoshi had raced toward the Marianas, his compass heading 230. A fearsome flash of orange low and to the west caused him to groan and feel fear deep down in the very essence of his being. Was he too late? Brent, Takii, and young Hayusa dead already? Then he exulted. A black Messerschmitt. Crashing into Tinian. Brent Ross’s uncanny gunner’s eye had scored again.
At that instant, Yoshi’s trained, experienced eyes had picked up the B5N racing toward Aguijan with another black fighter in pursuit. Then Rosencrance’s red 109 curving upward toward him and two more MEs, which were nothing more than black mites to the south caught his peripheral vision at the same time. With the speed of a computer, Matsuhara’s mind weighed and analyzed each problem and the best possible decisions were made in a millisecond. A waggle of wings followed by a flurry of hand signals and NAP Masatake Matsumara and Ensign Subaru Kizamatsu had gunned into splitesses, diving toward the pair of Messerschmitts closing from the south and four hundred meters below.
Now Matsuhara had just completed a half-roll and was screaming down hard on the fighter closing for the kill on the B5N which was hugging the cliffs and racing toward a tall steel derrick. Anchored on the sea floor just off the south coast of the island with a long cable attached to a tower on top of the cliffs, the rig was the only way to off-load cargo to the inhabitants of the island. But Rosencrance was intercepting him, cutting him off, growing in his windshield.
The red fighter was at a disadvantage, climbing on his interception. Yoshi hunched forward, jaw set, eyes squinting, his left hand first rubbing his hachi-machi headband and then trailing across his waist where he could feel his belt of a thousand stitches. Softly, he called on the gods and Buddha.
Yoshi cursed. The renegade Rosencrance was a talented flyer and fearless in a fight. The red ME was closing on him head-on. There was no chance he could help the B5N without fighting the red Messerschmitt first. And he was low on ammunition — had fired for eight seconds in shooting down the Constellation. He had nine seconds of firepower left. He would make every round count.
With the engine in full overboost and in a steep dive, the white airspeed needle chased around the indicator — 300, 350, 400 — the white needle overtaking the slower red danger line. The stick vibrated in his hands like a live thing, and all the strength in his powerful arms and hands could not hold it still. The airframe was bouncing and vibrating as enormous pressures built up against wing and tail surfaces. He had called on a punishing dive in attacking the Constellation and Yoshi knew his wingspans and airframe had been strained to the limit and were in jeopardy again. But he had no choice.
At a combined closing speed of almost one thousand knots, the fighters came into range in a blink. Fighting the controls, Yoshi brought the red machine into the bouncing, glowing reticle and the red bead onto his enemy’s engine. Rosencrance began firing but Yoshi held his thumb above the red button. Then at a hundred and fifty meters, with shells and tracers snapping around his canopy, he jammed the trigger. A two second burst and the red machine flashed past like a bolt of lightning.
The commander knew Rosencrance would roll and dive on his tail, looking for his killing angle. With a groan, he glimpsed the Nakajima far below, flying directly for the derrick and the steel cable. If the black ME did not kill them, the derrick would. A quick glance over his shoulder and he saw a burning Zero high and to the north. Matsumara was hit. And a ME was smoking, falling off into a wide chandelle. A white parachute blossomed. Kizamatsu needed him and so did the crew of Tora II. But Rosencrance had him — dictated his actions. Cursing his luck, the commander pulled back on his stick.
*
The black ME was directly behind the Nakajima as Takii screamed down on the steel derrick and slender steel cable which was almost invisible in the shadows of the overhanging thunderheads and the mist which was rapidly turning into slashing rain. Clinging to the B5N as if it were attached by a cable of its own, the fighter was close astern and firing in short bursts as the big bomber bounced up and down in the turbulence of the storm. Eyes stung by the rain, Brent pulled down his goggles and screamed curses, choking back the pain and feeling trails of blood oozing down his thigh. Triggering off a dozen rounds at a time, he took chances with his tail assembly and saw holes appear in his tail fin.
Suddenly the bomber staggered as a twenty-millimeter shell hit the right wing like a sledgehammer, blowing away a huge chunk of aluminum, exposing the main wing spar, stringers, and ribs. Praying frantically, Brent sent a burst into his enemy’s cowling, shooting off a cowling fastener and riddling a wing root fillet. With the left side of his cowling ripped loose and threatening to crash back onto his tail, the Arab pulled up abruptly just as the B5N slashed under the cable. The enemy pilot never saw it.
Caught just inboard of the left mainwheel well, the cable sliced through the ME’s wing structure like a hot razor through butter. Staggered by the impact, the fighter was hurled by its own momentum upward into a twisting, agonizing turn, sev
ered wing flopping and tumbling far below with the left main wheel and part of a wing tank breaking free, cowling ripped loose and shedding aluminum sheeting like a molting reptile.
Screaming with joy and whipped by huge raindrops, Brent forgot his wounds and half stood, cheering as the big fighter continued climbing and writhing and disintegrating in its death agony like an eviscerated jackal, finally stalling and dropping off into a dive, twisting around its one remaining wing. The canopy flew back and a figure maddened with fear scrambled over the combing and was hurled into space by the savage motion of the fighter. Too late. The plane crashed into the tumbling surf and smashed itself to pieces on the rocks while the pilot pulling on his D-ring with the white parachute leader trailing was smashed to bloody gelatin at the base of the cliff.
Brent’s cheers turned to gasps as rain, pearly strings and snakes of it, stormed into the cockpit, coating his goggles with streaming curtains. He was blind — absolutely blind in a world made of gray jelly. And his wounds pained him and he was suddenly weak. But he was alive.
*
Cheered by Takii’s clever maneuver and the violent end of the ME, Yoshi braced his feet and pulled back on the column with all his strength, screaming “Banzai! Banzai!” to the heavens. The B5N was out of it, either protected by the storm or destroyed by it. In any event, he was free now to kill Rosencrance — if the renegade did not kill him first. He was in his second full-power dive in thirty minutes. Could the souped-up Mitsubishi take it? Hold together? He knew Rosencrance was turning. He had no choice. Either die in a collapsing aircraft or in the cone of his enemy’s fire.