The ground underneath him thumped again and again as bombers pounded the tiny atoll and he struggled to block out the hideous scream echoing in his head.
8
He found Gustaffson floating face-down in the surf. A fiddler crab poked at the corpse's hand and Turner kicked it away. He dragged Gustaffson up onto the beach, closed the man's eyes, and kept a vigil over the body, eyes not really seeing the lagoon. Only three pilots were left from his original squadron. Maybe Captain Fitzpatrick got a better deal, dying when he had.
"Commander?" the Professor's voice called hesitantly.
"What?" he asked, not turning to look at her.
"Bad news," the Professor said. "Mears and Father Flaherty are dead and we're down to a few gallons of Holy Water. Good news, the Dauntless only took superficial damage, so we can still fly tomorrow."
"I'm not flying anymore," Turner said. He turned his wrists upwards and propped them on his knees. "Grab an MP and just put me in a brig. Please"
She didn't respond.
"This wasn't your fault, Commander."
He didn't respond. She crossed in front of him, forcing herself into his view.
"Do you know what kantai kessen is, Captain?"
"Japanese doctrine of a decisive battle," he said, gritting his teeth. "Hit an enemy so hard, they can't come back."
"After Midway, we blew a hole in that idea. But now that they've got they've got the oni, they have their shot. Mass a combined fleet and hit our biggest carrier group and they can't lose. Pearl Harbor will look like a sideshow. But if we can get the SNAFU to work, when they try it, we'll hand them their heads. Then all your boys can go home."
He looked at Gustaffson's body. If they could do it at Pearl Harbor, they could do it at San Diego or Los Angeles or San Francisco. San Francisco, where Jenny Turner was riveting liberty ships together, waiting for him to come home.
"Ok," he said. "I'll do it."
He looked up at her, suddenly suspicious.
"Wait, what do you mean we can fly?"
9
Luckily, most pilots ran to the small and they found a flight suit that, while it didn't fit the Professor well, at least fit.
"Your survival kit is strapped to your leg, your knife is on your right thigh, revolver here on your left side. You ever shoot a gun before?" he asked.
"My dad's rifle at some cans."
"Same concept. Just make sure you always save one bullet in case the Japs are going to capture you. They do awful things to folks they capture. If a Zero gets on our tail, shoot at him with the machine guns. Odds are it'll just make him mad, but it might buy us a few seconds. If I tell you to bail out or tap my head repeatedly, undo your seatbelt and jump. Make sure you jump high or the tail will cut you in half."
"Ok," she said. He gestured to her flight suit.
"This D-ring here pulls your parachute. If that doesn't open, your reserve is here. If that doesn't open, aim for any mattresses or haystacks floating around. If your parachute opens and you're above water, pull your tabs to detach from your parachute thirty feet above water, otherwise it'll drown you. Make sure to inflate your Mae-your life vest before you hit the water. If you see land swim for it, otherwise save your strength and hope a PBY spots you."
She didn't respond verbally, just nodded.
"Oh and if you're in the water and you see a shark, stay calm. If it comes at you, stab it in the snout or it'll rip you to shreds."
She nodded again, her face now white. He'd laid it on pretty thick.
"You sure you still want to come?"
She licked her lips and squared her shoulders.
"I have to," she said.
"Take it easy, odds are none of that will happen."
Her shoulders relaxed and she exhaled.
"Most likely we'll get lucky: get shot down and die on impact," he said turning to get the Dauntless ready to fly.
10
The Wildcats from the escort carrier linked up ten minutes late, but in an ocean the size of the Pacific, just getting to your intended destination was a minor miracle. There were twelve of them, almost a full squadron.
"Advocate Lead calling for SNAFU One," called the Wildcat at the front of the formation. It pulled alongside the Dauntless and the pilot waved. Turner counted six miniature Japanese flags on the fighter's nose. A bona fide ace, no matter how you counted it.
"This is SNAFU One," Turner responded. "Read you loud and clear."
"We'll form up on you and try to keep the Zeroes off you while you activate your payload."
"Good hunting, Advocate Lead."
He switched over to the intercom.
"Devil's Advocate Squadron?" he asked.
"Why bother assaulting a Japanese fortress if you can't have a little fun?" she replied.
"You OSS folks have a weird sense of humor."
11
"Bandits, two o'clock low," one of the fighters radioed.
Turner pushed the stick forward to lower his nose to get a look. A few dots on the horizon were headed their way, a single flight. Normally, he'd give them odds that even a conservative bookie could go for, but with the oni, it was anyone's guess.
His hands tingled and his stomach clenched. Something was wrong. He shoved the flight stick to the right, snapped the Dauntless nearly upside-down and dove away.
"Professor, wake the SNAFU up!"
The dive bomber shuddered as bullets ripped through the fuselage, but it was mercifully brief. A Zero zoomed past, blue demon dancing and waggling its tongue at him. If he'd stayed fat, dumb, and happy the Zeroes would have blown them out of the sky.
"Professor?"
There was no response. He looked over his shoulder and saw her head leaning limply against the side of the cockpit, a serious dent in one side.
He pulled out of the dive and did a quick scan of the sky. The Zeroes weren't following him, instead they were locked in a dogfight with his escorts, white contrails weaving and turning in complex patterns of life and death. He flipped back to his escort's channel, which was filled with the sound of machine guns and the frantic calls of the pilots. The Wildcat pilots were doing their best to try and hit the Zeroes with two planes at one time, but the nimbleness of the Japanese planes made it difficult.
Ok, the Professor was out of the fight, possibly KIA. He'd seen the simple metal rod going through the floor in front of the gunner's seat. Maybe some percussive maintenance would work. He yanked the stick back and forth, sending the Dauntless bouncing through the air, the wings shrieking in protest. But that was the only god-awful noise he heard, no matter how hard he threw the dive bomber around.
"Come on you son of a bitch, sing!" he snarled.
Two Zeroes broke out of the furball and bore down on him. He turned toward them and pushed the Dauntless into a sharp dive below them, their tracer rounds zooming over his head. They went inverted and dove after him, filling the air around him with tracer fire.
Fine. They wanted to follow him? Let them.
He pushed the dive farther, his stomach trying to claw its way out of his throat. His altimeter raced down through 2,000 feet, then 1,000, then 600 and he pulled back on the flight stick and activated his dive brakes. His vision narrowed to the dark blue Pacific, shot through with white wave crests like tiger stripes. He clenched his legs to keep from passing out.
He saw the shadow of his plane on the ocean and waited for the meeting of shadow plane and real plane to kill him. At the last second, the horizon crawled into his vision and the altimeter hovered around 50 feet. He looked over his shoulder just in time to see one of the Zeroes plow into the ocean. The other overshot him.
Turner pulled up, squared his sight on the back of the Zero and fired. His tracers reached out toward the fragile plane and bounced away as the oni shifted to the back of the plane.
"Dammit!" he swore.
The Zero pulled up and away from the waves.
The waves.
It would be like ditching, but without the actual cra
shing. He grit his teeth and gingerly pushed forward on his flight stick. Each time he approached a wave he pulled up slightly.
"Come on, come on," he said, each time pushing a little farther down on the stick and hoping it wouldn't be too far.
A quick slap of rushing water sounded and then the SNAFU screamed.
He pulled up and looked for the Zero. Its skin was a bold white, with no sign of the oni. It worked! But the Zero was looping back on his tail.
He banked hard, hoping to buy time, but without any diving range he was only delaying the inevitable.
Machine guns fired in a snarl and he flinched, expecting to die at any second. But the plane flew steady and smooth. He looked behind him and the Japanese fighter was banking away, trailing vapor. The barrels of the twin Browning machine guns in the back were smoking and the Professor looked back at him. He switched to the intercom.
"I was dreaming about my library," she said. "I never thought I'd be so happy to be woken up by screaming."
He laughed. Up above he saw the Zeroes still fighting with the escorts, but they were all white, with not an oni among them.
12
He was sitting on the beach of the atoll, smoking a cigarette when the Professor approached him.
"Commander, I have a confession. I lied to you. About the onigawara and the Shinto priest. There wasn't time to test the SNAFU. Not if we wanted to get it done before the Japanese got their kantai kessen."
He shook his head at her and took a drag of his cigarette before responding.
"So you put me in a big, slow-ass dive bomber, threw us into the teeth of the Japanese, all on a hunch?"
"Not a hunch. I knew it would work," the Professor said. "Our devil was tougher than theirs."
He was alive and she'd been right, so he couldn't be too mad.
"How did you figure that?" he asked with a sardonic smile.
She had a smile when she replied, but hers was beaming with pride.
"Cause he's like me: our devil came from Jersey."
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OTHER BOOKS BY NICK CARCANO
OCCULT .45
OCCULT .45 OMNIBUS
ABOMINABLE
DEAD TO RITES
SILVER MOON
THE BIG WEIRD ONE
SNAFU
WITH THE FISHES
OPERATION PERSEUS
TO BEAR ARMS
A MOVEABLE FESTUNG
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