The Fly Boys (2 page)

Then Steve realized that there was no point blaming Wohl. What was really pissing him off was having his illustrious father’s
reputation thrown up to him.

“Hey, Gold,” another voice cut in. “How’s it feel to be rich? Over.”

Steve ignored the remark.

“What’s the matter, Lieutenant? Cat got your tongue? Your daddy could always buy you another….”

Steve waited for Wohl to cut in and get him out of this, but he didn’t. Steve guessed he was on his own. He still didn’t immediately
reply. He knew he had to handle this correctly. He was, as Major Wohl had put it, the new kid on the block. If he wanted to
fit in, he was going to have to head-on defuse the issue of his famous father’s wealth and power.

Come to think of it, maybe Major Wohl had realized that as well, Steve decided. Maybe that was why the major was allowing
this hazing to take place.

“It’s like this,” Steve began, keenly aware that the entire squadron was listening. “Sure, my family is wealthy. We live like
royalty back in California. But home might as well be a million miles away. As much money as my old man has, it doeesn’t mean
much out here. I can’t
bribe
the Japs to go down in front of my guns. I’ve got to
shoot them down
, just like anybody else. That answer your question? Over.”

“All right, hombres, palavering time’s over,” Major Wohl cut in, sounding amused. “We’re approaching the target. The bombers
are going in. Remember,” Wohl counseled, “we stay high while the bombers are on the deck. Lieutenant Gold, you
will
remember to stick close by me. Over and out.”

Down below, Gold saw tongues of fire as the Jap antiaircraft ground fire commenced. The first wave of bombers was diving toward
the compound of hangars and the network of tan airstrips cut into the dense green jungle. There were plenty of Jap heavy bombers
parked in muddy, earth-embankment revetments alongside the runways, but no fighters. With nothing to do, the formations of
P-38s cartwheeled in the sky like vultures as the marauding bombers did their on-deck dirty work. Every few moments Steve
would break off searching the sky for the enemy in order to watch the lethal, silent aerial ballet unfurling down below.

The bombers went in fast and low, braving the steady stream of antiaircraft tracer and cannon fire arcing up. They strafed
a path with their machine guns, and then released their parafrags, which drifted down in a deadly snowfall. The first flurry
of parafrags detonated upon contact with the uppermost palm fronds lining the airstrips. The scythelike bursts of shrapnel
decapitated the palms, revealing Jap ground personnel and vehicles. Orange fireballs began to rise up out of the denuded jungle
as other parafrags touched off fuel depots.

The defensive ground fire had been silenced by the time the second wave of bombers made its pass. The wafting parafrags were
disappearing into rolling clouds of oily black smoke.

“Major Wohl,” one of the pilots called, “there’s no way we can go down on deck through all that smoke.”

“Roger that,” Wohl replied.

Steve was relieved. He hated going down on deck to strafe, where a fighter pilot’s attributes of sharp eyes, sharp flying,
and sharp shooting did no good at all.

On deck you had to fly as low as possible so that the defensive machine gunners couldn’t track you, but that just made you
all the more vulnerable to small-arms fire. On deck you just mashed your trigger, blindly hosing the targets that passed beneath
you in a blur, and if your mount was hit, you sure as hell weren’t going to get a chance to finesse or bail your way out of
a flamer when you were indicating four hundred miles an hour seventy five feet above the ground. Chances were you’d end up
plowing your own grave before you knew it.

“Major, we’ve got to have us
some
action,” one of the pilots was complaining. “I’m gonna have me a raging case of the blue balls if I don’t get my rocks off
shooting
something.
”

“Roger that,” someone interjected.

Steve was feeling the same way. His neck muscles were aching from all the head-swiveling he’d been doing, looking for the
enemy. He scanned his port side and looked away, but then something—hell, if he
knew
what it was, he’d bottle it and sell it to Uncle Sammy—made him do a double take.

“We’ve still got plenty of gas,” another pilot cut in.

Steve continued to stare into that dizzying, boundless curve of blue sky, until he’d reassured himself that what he was seeing
weren’t just specks floating across his eyeballs. He already knew that what he was seeing wasn’t his imagination. A guy with
a head full of dreams made for one shitty fighter jock, so he’d trained himself to leave his imagination in the ready room
before going out on patrol.

“We could swing out to sea and wax some of those tankers anchored offshore,” a pilot suggested.

Steve keyed his throat mike. “Nix that. We’ve got company. Bogies—a whole slew of ‘em—at nine-o’clock level.”

Silence, except for the cackle of static and whoosh of white noise coming over Steve’s headset, and then: “Bullshit! This
is Captain Leeland, and I don’t see shit out there…. I—oh, wait a minute. I
do
see them now….” More static, sizzling like bacon frying. “Jesus, Gold! You’ve got some eyes.”

“Roger that,” Major Wohl said expansively. “I count twenty.” He paused. “How many do
you
count, Lieutenant Gold?”

Steve chuckled. “Twenty, sir. Over.”

“Leeland, your flight will escort those bombers home,” Wohl commanded. “The rest of you follow me.”

The squadron came apart. Leeland and his flight of four broke right, banking out over the sea in order to catch the bombers
just now hugging the coastline on their way home. Wohl, with Steve as his wingman, led his remaining twelve fighters on a
diagonal to intercept the rapidly approaching Jap fighters.

Steve saw that they were Zekes: Mitsubishi Zero-Sen single-engine fighters. They were more maneuverable than the P-38, but
lacked the speed, firepower, and sturdiness of the dual-engined American plane.

The Zeros scattered and began to climb. The P-38s climbed as well. The G-force flattened Steve against his seat back as the
twin-engined P-38s rose like rockets, easily gaining the ceiling advantage over the Zeros.

“Break into teams,” Wohl ordered. The P-38s broke into six pairs. “You’re on your own, hombres. Good hunting,” the major said
calmly. “Gold, follow me in.”

Steve followed as Wohl pushed his P-38 over into an attack dive toward a Zero that did a barrel roll trying to get away. Wohl
expertly banked his aircraft in tandem with his target, and needed to fire only a single burst from the 20-millimeter cannon
and four .50-caliber machine guns clustered in his fighter’s nose to open up the Zero’s burnished silver belly. Gutted, the
smoking Jap fighter tumbled out of the sky.

“Nice shooting, Major,” Steve said, thinking,
When do I get my turn?

“Just keep watching my back, old son,” Wohl murmured.

All around Steve the sky was a hornet’s nest of activity as the P-38s tangled with the Zeros. The deep blue heavens became
slashed with bold black brushstrokes of smoke as waxed Jap fighters plummeted to the sea. Steve remained dutifully glued to
Wohl as the major went after another target. The Zero corkscrewed as Wohl hosed it down with tracer rounds. An instant later
it cracked open like a seed pod blossoming into fire.

Steve glanced into his rear-view mirror, and then craned his neck to check the blind spots behind him. He saw a pair of Zeros
angling in. He keyed his throat mike. “Major, we got company—”

“Tell you what, old son, you’ve been a good boy so far. Why don’t you have at ‘em? Over.”

“Can I have ‘em both, Major?” Steve asked eagerly.

Wohl’s laughter filled Steve’s headset. “Sure, old son.” He banked hard left, skidding steeply away as the lead Jap’s twin
20-millimeter cannons and a brace of 7.7-millimeter machine guns begin winking fire. “Take two, Lieutenant. They’re small.”

The brace of Zeros were closing in fast as Steve worked his speed brakes and hauled back on his throttles and stick to roll
up and over. The Zeros overshot him, streaking past still flying wing to wing. Steve leveled off and sighted in on the lead
plane. He pressed his triggers. The staccato chattering of his quartet of .50s played counterpoint to the thudding of his
20-millimeter cannon. The gunfire reverberated inside his cockpit as his rounds hammered sparks from the silvery wings and
fuselage of the Zero. The wounded Jap plane yawed in preparation for a desperate skid to safety, but then Steve’s rounds blew
off its propeller. The crippled Zero slammed into its companion, and then both disappeared in a crimson fireball.

“Two for the price of one! Well done, Lieutenant,” Wohl said. “Now come on back into position as my wingman.”

Fuck that
, Steve thought. He now had seven kills. There were still a half-dozen Zeros in the sky. With a little luck, he could get
three more, to become a double ace. He keyed his throat mike. “Major, your signal is breaking up. Please repeat orders, over.”

“I said get back into position as my wingman. Over.”

“Major, there must be something wrong with my radio. I’m not receiving.”

“Now you listen, you son of a bitch—”

Steve turned down the gain until the major’s voice was barely audible. No way was he going to quit now. Maybe it was the fact
that this was the first action he’d seen since being shot down, or maybe it was the ribbing from the other guys he’d just
taken about how he’d been born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Whatever it was, Steve knew that he just
had
to wax a couple more tails. He realized that he would likely catch hell for it, but he was willing to take the heat later
on in exchange for more kills now.

Steve opened up his throttles and pushed his stick forward, chasing after a fleeing Zero skimming low over the sea. He quickly
closed the distance between himself and his target. He was less than a hundred feet above and behind the Jap when he began
firing, whittling away the Zero’s tail. What remained of the Jap fighter tore itself to pieces cart-wheeling across the surface
of the sea.

“
Lieutenant Gold, this is Major Wohl. Return to position. I repeat—
”

Steve pulled up and began to climb, on the lookout for fresh meat as Major Wohl’s tiny voice continued buzzing in his ear
like a baleful conscience. Steve ignored it. It had been a long time since he’d seen combat, and now it felt just too good
to stop. A Zero darted across his nose and Steve instinctively kicked rudder to try a difficult deflection shot. He managed
to rivet a generous burst into the big red circle painted on the Zero’s side, evidently cutting come of the Jap fighter’s
control cables. The Jap pilot slid back his canopy and bailed out as his fighter fluttered out of control like a flame-singed
moth.

“
Damn
, I never ever saw
anybody
shoot like that,” Steve heard Major Wohl blurt out.

He was about to acknowledge the compliment when he remembered that his radio was supposed to be broken.
Next victim
, Steve thought, feeling evil. Just one more and he’d be a double ace.

He looked around for a target, but the dogfight was over. All twelve P-38s were still flying, but the sky was cleared of Zeros.
Oh well, being able to paint four “meatballs” on the side of his airplane was better than nothing, Steve thought. The honor
of becoming a double ace would have to wait until next time.

“Let’s go home,” Major Wohl said.

Steve breathed a sigh of relief. The major didn’t sound too pissed. Maybe his cutting loose like he did was going to turn
out to be okay.

The flight back to Tobi passed quietly. Steve was one of the last to land. As he taxied his P-38 past the palms and sandbagged
machine-gun emplacements, he saw Wohl talking to the operations officer, Captain Mader. As his plane approached the hangars,
the two officers both paused in their conversation to look in Steve’s direction.

Neither man was smiling. Steve guessed that the shit was going to hit the fan after all.

Wohl went stalking off, and Mader was climbing up on Steve’s wing even before his props had stopped turning.

“What kind of crazy stunt did you pull up there?” Mader demanded as Steve raised his canopy. “I’ve never seen Wohl so hot.”
Mader was a pudgy, moon-faced man with light brown hair and military-issue wire-rimmed eyeglasses.

“The major was just probably beside himself with joy,” Steve said. “I just waxed four Zeros.”

“No shit? Congratulations, I guess,” Mader said reluctantly. “But whatever you did up there, Wohl ain’t too happy about it.
I’m supposed to check out your radio and get your gun camera film developed. You’re to report to his office pronto.”

Steve glumly nodded. “I’ll just change out of my flight suit.”

The sunlight glinted off Mader’s specs as he shook his head. “The major said pronto, Lieutenant.”

Steve Gold stood at rigid attention while Wohl, seated behind his desk, scowled at him. The major’s telephone rang. Wohl snatched
up the receiver. “Hello? Yeah, Mader! What have you got?”

Major Wohl’s office occupied the rear half of a plywood hut with a canvas roof. The walls were painted light green, and were
taken up with filing cabinets, silhouette identification charts of enemy planes, and a large map of the Pacific theater of
operations. On the wall behind Wohl’s beige metal desk was a grouping of framed reproductions of Frederic Remington prints:
grizzled, bearded cowpokes were chasing Injuns across the prairie and otherwise generally having themselves a high old time
back in the Old West. Steve wished he could join them. That son of a bitch noncom who sat out front shuffling papers for the
major had kept Steve waiting while Wohl showered and changed and had himself a bite to eat. Now Steve, tired and hungry, was
standing at attention in his sweat-soaked overalls, stinking of gas and cordite fumes, his .45 in its shoulder holster a chafing
burden against his ribs, as the major continued talking on the phone.