Jack snapped to attention and saluted an imaginary point behind Babcock. “Good morning, Colonel.”
Babcock whipped around, then turned back with a faint smile. “You’re a funny man, Novak.”
“If you want Castle to buy this wholesome act of yours, you have to be consistent.”
“Good point.” The man actually saw it as advice, not a jab. “This is a lot like my dad’s campaigns. You have to present the right image, feign interest.” He dropped a conspiratorial wink.
Conversation with Babcock always killed Jack’s appetite. He dug in his heels and crossed his arms. “I see it more like how my dad cares for his congregation. You minister to needs and encourage everyone to work together—with genuine interest.”
Babcock’s mouth twitched. “Fine. You be a preacher; I’ll be a leader.” He motioned his adjutant to drive away.
Jack grumbled as he pedaled down the road. He wanted to be executive officer for the group’s sake, because he’d be good at it, but Babcock wanted it for his own sake. At least Castle saw through the baloney. Didn’t he?
May turned around in the front seat of the jeep to face Ruth. “Please tell me I don’t look as ridiculous as you do.”
“Sorry. It’s a tie.”
“I think you look cute.” In the driver’s seat, Charlie fingered a strand of May’s hair.
Her cheeks turned pink. “We’d be cuter if you had flight suits in our size.”
“No kidding.” Ruth tightened the belt holding up the voluminous olive drab jumpsuit. When the ladies arrived at the airfield in dress blues, Charlie had laughed good and hard, then taken them to get flight suits and leather jackets. Skirts were not practical in a bomber.
Jack had sent Charlie with a jeep while he walked his new pilot through the preflight inspection, and Ruth appreciated the ride past all the buildings and away from all the men. Two women on the air base had attracted attention, whistles, and at least one bicycle accident.
“A donkey?” May pointed at a man leading a black donkey with a blue blanket over its back.
“Sahara Sue, Joe Winchell’s souvenir from Tunisia.” Charlie hummed the tune of “Sierra Sue.”
Ruth stared. She’d heard of groups adopting dogs, but a donkey? From Africa?
“Straight ahead—that’s the control tower.” Charlie turned right onto a wide paved road. “Each plane has its own hardstand—its own personal parking pad—dispersed around this perimeter track to minimize loss in case of air raid.”
Ruth leaned forward in her seat. She understood why Jack loved his job. The airfield buzzed with activity and throbbed with purpose. The heady scent of metal and fuel and adventure, that’s what she smelled on Jack.
Charlie turned left and parked the jeep. “Here’s our ship,
Sunrise Serenade
.”
Jack’s plane, and it was beautiful. He’d described it so often, she felt as if she were meeting one of his friends. Ruth climbed out of the jeep and scanned the length of the olive drab plane. Behind the clear nose, yellow letters spelled out
Sunrise Serenade
in an arch over a rising sun with musical notes for rays. No naked ladies on the pastor’s plane.
Up in the cockpit, Jack sat in the copilot’s seat, head bent.
“Jack’s running through the cockpit check with Silverberg.” Charlie leaned into the jeep. “Can’t forget the Thermos. Heaven forbid the great Jack Novak has to fetch his own coffee.”
Ruth raised her eyebrows. Sarcasm from Charlie?
He headed under the wing. “Want to see something?”
She followed, awed by the enormous engines right overhead. Heat had discolored the metal in a mottled rainbow like an oil slick.
Charlie patted a section on the underside of the plane where the gray paint didn’t quite match. “This is how we all met. The hole from the flak burst that put Jack in the hospital.”
Ruth fingered the cool aluminum patch and tried not to think of shells piercing this skin, then Jack’s, but she’d seen the damage.
“Okay, gals, let’s go.” Charlie picked up a wooden crate, set it by a door near the tail, and made a gallant sweep of his arm. “All aboard.”
Ruth followed May inside. She had room to stand, but not much more.
Charlie joined them. “This is the waist compartment. Two gunners, one at each window, and down there is the tail gunner’s station.”
Ruth peered down a narrow tunnel to a small seat in front of the rear window. “Isolated, isn’t it?”
“That’s why we have the interphone system.” Charlie patted a dome in the floor. “Here’s the ball turret. The gunner doesn’t get in until we’re over the Channel. Pretty snug in there.”
May held onto the metal post connecting the ball turret to the ceiling. “Spinney snug?”
Charlie gave her a sheepish smile. Must have been a personal joke. As Jack said, people falling in love had their own language. A sigh grew in Ruth’s chest, but she absorbed it back into her lungs. If she were normal, she and Jack might be exchanging glances and private sayings.
She passed through a metal doorway.
Lord, could you possibly— could you ever forgive me and make me normal?
“The radio room,” Charlie said. “Technical Sergeant Rosetti, the radioman. Rosetti, meet Lieutenant Jensen, Lieutenant Doherty, our passengers today.”
Sergeant Rosetti wore a garrison cap and a headset over thick black curls. “Welcome, ladies. We should do this more often, de Groot.” His gaze bounced around, but not quickly enough to conceal a scan of Ruth’s figure. Thank goodness for the shapeless flight suit.
Charlie led them through another doorway and along a narrow aluminum walkway. “The bomb bay. We load these racks with goodies for the Nazis. By the way, if you come back here when we’re in flight, watch your step. The bomb bay doors won’t hold your weight.”
Ruth didn’t want to test that theory.
Yet another doorway. “The cockpit. Make your way around the top turret, and squeeze on in.” Right inside the door stood a round platform with two poles leading up to a Plexiglas dome in the ceiling.
Jack turned around in the copilot’s seat and eyed the ladies’ outfits. His mustache flicked up on one side. “Still think flight nursing is a glamorous profession?”
Ruth eased behind his seat. “Who cares about fashion when you have a chance to fly?”
Charlie introduced Lieutenant Silverberg in the pilot’s seat. The lanky pilot patted the instrument panel. “This is how we get this baby in the air and keep her there.”
Ruth had never seen so many dials and gauges and buttons and switches—at least a hundred on the panel, and more cascading onto a center console, still more on the walls by the pilots’ seats and overhead.
“How do you … ?” She stopped. Her question sounded daft and eyelash-batting.
Jack smiled. “Same way you know all those medications and procedures and patients. Training and practice.”
“See why I hold our skipper in such high esteem?” Charlie said. “This is the toughest, most important job on the base.”
“Baloney. Charlie’s got the most important job. I’m nothing but his glorified chauffeur.”
“Don’t even try, Jack. You don’t wear modesty well.”
Jack’s eye twitched, but then he laughed.
“Well, well, well.” Behind Ruth, a large man gripped the top rim of the doorway, like a gorilla hanging from a branch. “When did we switch from ferrying bombs to ferrying bombshells?”
Ruth crossed her arms over her chest and held her chin high.
“Can it, Owens, they outrank you,” Jack said, a growl in his voice. “Ladies, this is Technical Sergeant Owens, a fine flight engineer and top turret gunner, if not a gentleman. Now, Charlie, why don’t you show our passengers to the nose so we can finish the cockpit check?”
“On our way.” Charlie stepped down into a hole between the seats.
“Okay, Silverberg,” Jack said. “Control check. Full right aileron.”
Lieutenant Silverberg shoved the wheel forward and to the right.
Jack twisted around to look out his window. “Right aileron up. Right elevator down.”
“Left aileron down. Left elevator down,” Lieutenant Silverberg said.
Ruth dropped into the passageway behind May. Why was she disappointed? What did she expect from Jack? A half hour’s devoted conversation? He had a job to do.
She got to her knees and crawled after Charlie and May, glad she wasn’t wearing a skirt.
“Best room in the house—the nose compartment.”
Ruth straightened up. A man with sandy hair hunched over a plywood desk to her left. Lieutenant Findlay, the navigator, gave the briefest salute and returned to his maps and charts and rulers.
Charlie buckled a throat microphone around May’s neck, while Ruth struggled with her own. Would Jack have helped as he did with her watch strap, gaze intent, touch lingering? No, of course not. True to his word, he hadn’t laid a finger on her since he’d hauled her across the hospital road to apologize to her. He was less attentive, but wasn’t that what she wanted? And if not what she wanted, wasn’t it what she needed?
Charlie glanced out the clear nose. “Why don’t you take a seat? They’re about to start the engines.”
Ruth and May sat on the floor and leaned back against the rounded wall.
A sudden cough and sputter. The compartment filled with the engine’s roar, and Ruth’s heart quickened.
May gripped Ruth’s arm. “I hope I don’t get sick.”
Another engine added to the din. The purpose of the test flight was to see if Ruth could handle flying.
Please, Lord, help me through this. You saw Aunt Pauline’s letter, and you know she can’t manage much longer. I need this.
The third engine started, then the fourth, and vibrations tickled Ruth’s back.
Charlie sat across from them, beside the navigator’s desk, a pencil sticking up from his mouth like Roosevelt’s cigarette holder. “So far, so good?”
Ruth gave a quick succession of nods. “This is so exciting.”
“Isn’t it?” May shouted over the noise. “And we aren’t even moving.”
Lieutenant Findlay glared at them over his shoulder.
Ruth lifted May’s earphone and spoke in her ear. “I don’t think he likes hens in his roost.”
“Clear for taxiing.” Lieutenant Silverberg’s voice crackled in Ruth’s headset.
A release, and the plane rolled forward. May’s grip on Ruth’s arm tightened.
Taxiing seemed to take forever. Planes, sheds, and trees passed by, and then the B-17 swung in a quarter circle and faced a stretch of pavement bounded by green grass.
“Pilot to crew. Clear for takeoff.”
The engines built to a whine, as if protesting the extra work, and Ruth’s fingers tingled in May’s grasp. She wiggled her fingers to loosen the grip and patted her friend’s hand.
“Oh, Ruth, what are we doing?”
“We’re having an adventure.”
The Flying Fortress inched forward. Shouldn’t it be moving faster? But then it did, faster and faster than Ruth had ever been, bouncing and jostling, faster than a car or a train, and how could it possibly stay on the ground? A cottage stood in the way, straight ahead. Ruth pressed back, as if a few inches would help in a collision.
With a swooping feeling, the bouncing stopped, and the nose pointed up, over the cottage. Smooth. Free.
“Flight,” Ruth whispered.
“Wheels up,” Lieutenant Silverberg said.
“Check,” Jack said, his voice warm in Ruth’s ear. “Up right.”
“Up left.”
“Tail wheel up.”
Charlie cocked his head toward the nose. “Come enjoy the view. The bombsight and gun aren’t installed, so nothing’s in your way.”
Ruth crawled up onto a platform and around the bombardier’s chair.
“Don’t worry. You can’t fall out.” He climbed right into the conical glass.
“Charlie!” May gasped.
“Oh brother. I know my plane.” He slid out. “You’ve got to see.”
Ruth craned her neck forward. In an instant she knew she had to fly again and again. Blue sky soared above her as always, but the earth rolled beneath her, a crazy quilt of green and gold, stitched with black roads and deep green hedgerows, appliquéd with miniature houses and people and farm animals. “Oh my. I’ve never seen anything so beautiful.”
“Never,” May said. “It’s wonderful.”
“Bombardier to the skipper,” Charlie said. “Two cases of love at first sight down here.”
“Oh yes,” May and Ruth said simultaneously, which made them laugh.
“Make that three cases.” Charlie gave May a slow wink.
Ruth glanced down and out the window, where a river lay crumpled like a silver ribbon dropped by a careless girl. If she hadn’t flinched from Jack’s kiss, they’d be acting like Charlie and May by now.
She stroked the cool Plexiglas, a barrier between her and open sky, between her and certain death. Her aversion to kissing served as a similar barrier between her and loving intimacy, between her and devastating revelation.
Was the aversion a curse or a blessing?
London
Sunday, September 26, 1943
“‘Mind the gap’?” Jack studied the sign on the Underground train. “I say, old chap, do they take us for a bunch of blithering idiots?”
“Brilliant deduction, Novak.” Charlie peered down his nose and held a pencil like a pipe. “I do believe they consider us incapable of differentiating platform from open space and—”
“Just get off the train.” May gave Charlie a playful shove.
Jack pointed a warning finger at Ruth. “Don’t even think about it. The gap—mind the gap.”
She stepped off the train. “The doors, Sherlock—mind the doors.”
Jack hopped through, but the door banged his shoulder. She shook her head at him. “Buffoon.”
He rubbed his shoulder and smiled. Yeah, things were going great.
“Enough, you two,” Charlie said. “Jack, you’ve got the map. Where to?”
Jack pulled the map from the inside pocket of his service jacket and scanned the Underground station’s walls and corridors and tracks and swarms of people. “First we’ve got to figure out how to get out of this place.”
“You’re such a greenhorn.” Ruth pointed to a sign suspended from the ceiling that read “Way Out.”
“‘Way Out’?” he said. “Way out where? Way out in the middle of nowhere?”