Whip (13 page)

Faster and faster they raced over the waves, plunging down the ever-brightening tunnel of darkness. Now they saw the wild reflections in long yellow-quicksilver patterns on the water, following the wake thrown up by the propellers of the B-17, and then, on cue, it seemed, as Whip followed every move of Bill Kanaga in the big Fortress, they slid to the right. The signal was the sudden great shower of flaming sparks racing from and spearing ahead of the heavy bomber. Kanaga's top turret gunner, his nose gunner, and Kanaga himself, with three fixed machine guns in the nose of his airplane, had all opened fire at the same time as the targets rushed into range of their weapons. Whip skidded the B-25 well to the right, opening the distance, leaving room for both planes to make their attacks without one interfering with the other.

The world was spattering and sparkling and glowing. Searchlights were coming on along the ships as the Japanese tried to blind them, and this gave Kanaga's gunners the targets they wanted. Suddenly the B-25 vibrated, a series of steady, hammering blows.

In that fiery maelstrom of churning fire and water the two pilots grinned at one another.

The hammer banging within the B-25 was Lou Goodman, firing his fifty-caliber gun, aiming at searchlights and flaring muzzles of antiaircraft weapons at the same moment firing at them.

Time slowed to nothing, the targets coming up slowly, so goddanmed slowly, and if the Japs would wait just long enough before depressing those flak guns… well, the harbor was filled with destroyers and cruisers, and those people were damned good gunners, and what had really saved them so far was that everyone was shooting well over them, shooting much too high, because who would expect two planes to be flown by madmen?

Who would fly this low to the water
at night
? A single slip, a stab of vertigo to untwist the brain; anything would be the end.

Time is an enigma in battle; it is mercilessly brief or it is distressingly extended, and it all depends upon the viewer. To the Japanese the two bombers were rushing toward them so swiftly they had almost no time to get their major weapons depressed to fire at the planes assaulting them.

From within the bombers the entire world was unrolling ahead with dragging slowness.

But now time began to accelerate, for as they drew closer to the ships they expanded in size, and viewpoint changed, faster and faster.

"Bomb bays open." The words slipped easily from Whip and Alex was ready, anticipating, his hand hitting the control almost as swiftly as Whip voiced the command.

Moments later the doors were open and a new rumble filled the airplane, adding to the shaking and roaring and thunder of their passage. Moist air swept up through the bays and mixed with the stink of fuel and the acrid smell of gunpowder and changed the thrumming uproar of their flight.

Radio silence was behind them now. "Whip, I'm taking that cruiser dead ahead of me,"

Kanaga called, and even as his voice crackled in their earphones the B-17 eased upward, sliding in a smooth curve to just the altitude the pilot judged to be perfect, boring straight in.

"Got it," Whip came back. "We'll take the tin can over to the right." He eased the bomber in, a gentle control motion that set them directly on a line toward the destroyer he had selected as his target.

The world was blotchy with its dark and reds and yellows and glowing, burning things ripping the sky, reflecting eerily in the water. Whip was just starting to come up to altitude for the strike when he saw the sudden white spots on the water beneath the B-17, and he knew that Kanaga had dropped, spacing his 500-pounders exactly so, the touch of the artist, all of it by judgment and feel, and then to hell with the Fortress, the destroyer was rushing upon them, the decks twinkling and ablaze with antiaircraft, and Whip felt a touch of admiration for the fat man below and ahead of him in that nakedly exposed position, for tracers were streaming out ahead of the B-25 and in the distance they could see toy figures jerking spasmodically.

He cracked one bomb away, and then another, and if everything had been done right the bombs would be hitting the water flat, the nose and fins in perfect position, and they would bounce, skip back into the air, staying just above the water so that if everything was right they would arrow into the side of the warship and tear a savage hole where they struck. The B-25 seemed abruptly to stagger as an explosive shell erupted beneath the left wing. Whip corrected automatically, but the airplane was still in a near vertical bank as they shot over the destroyer, and the top turret gunner hammered away with his twin fifties, giving it everything he had. They were too fast and too low to take any return fire from their target, but other ships were tracking them now, and the world was another mass of glowing claws of destruction arcing and spinning in their direction.

"Let's take the tanker." The words came from Whip so casually he sounded almost laconic. "Lou, wake 'em up," he added to the colonel, and the fifty-caliber machine gun roared and bucked again as a great dark shape loomed out of the water, seeming to plunge toward them rather than their racing toward their new target.

Far to their left and behind them a terrible mushroom of fire sundered the night as it leaped upward. "Kanaga got a good one!" came the shout from Joe Leski in the top turret. "Cruiser! Looks like he got the engine room!"

Whip concentrated on the tanker swelling monstrously in size. He let the next two bombs go. Before he had time to think of the strike Leski shouted in near-hysteria. "The destroyer! We got the son of a bitch! Split 'em right in two! He's — "

Leski's voice cut off as the destroyer they had hit dead-on with two heavy bombs exploded violently. Dazzling flame shattered what remained of the night, a huge pulsation of ghastly flaming light as the warship tore itself apart.

They went rigid with shock. Not from the kill they had just scored. Not from what might happen with the tanker into which Whip had cracked his last two bombs.

It was Bill Kanaga. His last bomb had bounced across the water, a dense stone of finned metallic hell that tore into the side of another tanker. The Flying Fortress, with destroyers on each side of the tanker, lifted its nose and barely skimmed the masts of the Japanese ship. Kanaga was his usual skilled self, clearing the masts cleanly and only by scant feet.

In the same instant the tanker exploded.

Had Kanaga gone for the safety of altitude from his skip bombing run he would have been exposed to withering antiaircraft fire from the warships and the long-range guns on shore. His best move was to stay low.

The best sometimes isn't enough. The tanker turned into a huge ball of dark red flame that enveloped the racing B-17 and even as Whip and the others in the B-25 watched, frozen with shock, everything a flickering screen of unreality before them, another brilliant flash speared the sky.

They knew it was the B-17.

They flew home silently. No one talked about the three, possibly four ships they had destroyed in those terrible minutes in Simpson Harbor. It didn't seem to matter very much.

13

It was never quite the same again. At Seven-Mile Drome, they climbed wearily from the B-25, gaunt-eyed, troubled within themselves. The airplane was moved beneath trees and camouflaged and they lay under the wings and body as dawn brought with it heat and the pervading humidity of the nearby jungle.

They gathered that evening to discuss their next moves. "Mule will stay here with some of the other men," Whip told the small group. "He's more important coordinating the logistics than wandering off in the hill country." He laughed quietly at the expression on Muhlfield's face. "You'll be back in the hills soon enough, Mule. In the meantime, see what you can keep moving with those Gooney Birds and that Lockheed. We've got to get everything up to that field before the weather knocks us out or the Japs tumble to what's going on."

Whip turned to Bartimo. "I want you to spend some time with the Aussies here at Seven-Mile and down at Moresby. There's also the matter of working with the native bearers, see how they're coming along, and — "

"I hardly speak their language, old chap," Alex said with open distaste.

Whip didn't raise an eyebrow. "Tough shit. You're the brain in this outfit. You'll make out."

"You have an elegant way of expressing yourself," Alex murmured. Seeing the expression on his pilot's face, Alex threw up his hands in mock horror. "I know, I know.

Go screw myself. You've told me enough times."

"It's about all the tail you're going to get," Muhlfield offered.

Alex turned with a bland expression to Colonel Lou Goodman. "You'll see how much good those silver eagles of yours do, Colonel. Whip doesn't seem to have learned how to recognize insignia. Now, if this were the Royal Australian Air Force, we would — "

"You'd be getting your ass shot off, that's what."

Alex shrugged. "True. Better without a bloody arse than be barbaric, however."

Muhlfield shook his head in dismay. "How the shit would you know?"

"Are you asking if I'm assless or barbaric?"

"Knock it off, you clowns," Whip growled. He turned to Lou Goodman. "I'm going upcountry. If you're going to run this outfit, Lou, I guess you'd better come along."

Goodman studied him for a moment. He scratched his leg to stall. He needed to have it straight, right out in front. "I'm glad you said that," he responded quietly.

"About running the show?"

"That's about the size of it."

"There never was any question." The expression on Whip's face told Goodman of the lack of guile in his remarks.

"All right," Goodman said.

Russel studied him carefully. In a sudden fluid motion he was on his feet. "Let's take a walk, Lou."

They moved slowly along a path bordering the runway. Neither man paid attention to aircraft or vehicles. There wasn't that much they had to say to one another, but it would be vital in the coming weeks and months that the words came now.

"It's not like you to press about top dog, Lou," Whip said finally.

"Top dog has nothing to do with it," Goodman said, keeping it low key. "Neither does rank."

"You're still pushing, fat man."

Goodman smiled despite himself. Whip's use of his favorite name for the man he held in higher esteem than any other told Goodman what he needed to know. "I've got to push,"

he said, surprising Whip.

The pilot stopped in his tracks. He was into another of those moods that came upon him with explosive force. "But what the hell
for
?"

"You."

"Me?" The astonishment was genuine.

"Look, Whip. You run this outfit. You run it better than anyone I've ever seen. You've made these airplanes do everything but talk. We're building them into better weapons.

Those people who fly for you will follow you anywhere." Goodman took a deep breath.

"But you can't run your outfit in the air and operate the whole thing from the ground.

You can't be two people at the same time and you can't be in two places at the same time. You — "

"Goddamnit, I know that."

"Do you really? Don't you see what I'm getting at?"

"Do it ABC, Lou."

"If I take over this special operation, Whip, then it's got to be all the way. I run the show."

"Shit, there's no argument there! I — "

"You take orders from me. Orders, Whip. Not counsel or advice of friends.
Orders
. From the colonel on down. There'll be times when you won't agree with me. I'm not going to screw with your combat operation and sure as God made little green apples I'm not going to see you embroiled in a fight with me. If that happens you lose something in the air. I don't want that on my back. So it's got to be clean between us. Not colonel and captain. It's got to be Goodman and Russel coming to that agreement,
now
. Just between the two of us."

Whip chewed his lip, fighting with himself. Goodman knew what chewed inside him as well. This whole affair was Whip's from the very beginning. He'd fought to get this operation going. He'd dragged it through channels and risked official wrath by going over heads. It was his, body and soul. Now this man was saying to him that he'd have to step aside on a major part, perhaps even a critical part, of what would be happening.

At the same time his respect for Goodman's expertise and wisdom had no qualification.

As for kicking over the traces of his own absolute authority, Jesus, he'd have to go to Lou to know what to do and — He shook his head, his brow furrowed with his concentration.

What it all boiled down to was that this was a team effort. Period. He'd have to yield the iron fist, he had to trust this man. A shudder seemed to pass through his body and Lou Goodman knew the decision had been reached. Whip turned to stare directly into his eyes.

"Feels like we're back in that old Lockheed of yours, fat man."

They clasped hands tightly.

"You call that goddamned thing an airplane? Jesus Christ, it's a refugee from a rag factory!" Lou Goodman looked with disdain at the battered Piper L-4, a single-engined two-seater resting on old tires and a sagging tail wheel. The yellow fabric had been patched more times than could be counted, and half the wings and fuselage was masking and electrical tape.

"I think it's something we were supposed to sell to the Japanese before the war," offered Muhlfield, "but they gave it back."

"Do you blame them?" Goodman jerked a thumb at the weary liaison plane. "And we're supposed to land this thing in the high country?" he shot at Whip.

"The airplane has only one problem," Whip said.

"Yeah, I know," sneered Goodman. "It forgot how to fly."

"Uh uh. It's got a fat, loud passenger."

Goodman pressed his lips together. "Get in, you sawed-off bantam rooster. I cut my teeth on the old J-3 and I wouldn't trust you or anyone else in this… this travesty."

They grinned at one another. Goodman had to stuff himself within the narrow cabin.

When finally he was wedged into the machine he could-hardly move his shoulders.