CHAPTER 13
Kaufman Field Baalkpan
“T en- Hut!” cried a shrill, Lemuran voice. The sound didn’t echo in the hangar made of canvas and the oversize Baalkpan bamboo, but at least the building was tight enough to make it loud.
“Oh, ah, ‘as you were,’ by all means,” replied Adar’s voice in his carefully cultivated English.
“Thanks, Your Excellency,” Colonel Ben Mallory replied, and his voice did echo-from within the wheel-well he’d somehow managed to cram an unlikely percentage of himself into. “Just a minute… and I oughta… Eeee! There! Now, if I can just get me outta here!” A pair of wrenches dropped to the hard-packed, concretelike crushed limestone floor, and Ben grunted and squirmed until he extricated himself. “Ahh,” he said, wincing, as he stepped forward and straightened from his crouch. “Gimme a rag, Soupy,” he demanded, his eyes clenched shut over hydraulic fluid and burning sweat. He held his greasy hands out, blindly.
Lieutenant (jg) Suaak-Pas-Ra, acting exec of the 3rd Pursuit Squadron, was similarly buried in the cockpit of the P-40E, with only his legs and tail visible. “Can’t, sur,” came the muffled reply, but somebody hit Ben in the chest with a clean cloth, and he wiped his face. He blinked.
“Wow,” he said when he could see. “What brings the whole back row of the chessboard to my modest little abode?” Not only was Adar standing in the wide opening of the hangar, but quite a few others including Steve Riggs, Perry Brister, “Ronson” Rodriguez, and Bernie Sandison were with him. Those he understood. He was surprised to see Isak Rueben and several “high-up” Lemurians he recognized, but didn’t really know, however. He didn’t understand why Pam Cross and Sister Audry were there at all. Wait, Pam’s a nurse. She’s probably here to check the new arrivals, and make sure the men they sent out to me are really fit to be here.
Adar walked slowly around the big, muscular-looking plane that seemed to crouch menacingly in the still, sultry shade of the big building. As always, he wore what all the humans referred to as his “Sky Priest suit,” despite his lofty status, but the star-spangled, purple hood was thrown back, revealing his gray fur and bright, silver eyes. He’d been there when Santa Catalina limped into Baalkpan Bay, and he’d watched the heavy crates removed from the dry-docked ship. He’d even been out to the infant airfield while it was still under construction and the fighters were being uncrated and positioned for assembly. But this was the first time he’d ever seen one of the “hot ships” in one piece. Even though he had no real grasp of what it was capable of, beyond what he’d been told, he could tell just by looking at it; by the sleek, animalistic, hungry lines, that it certainly appeared capable of more than he’d ever truly believed.
“It is magnificent!” he gushed. “Oh, it is!” He took a breath. “And how many have you managed to save, to assemble?”
“We have twenty, Mr. Chairman, that’ll fly once we finish getting everything hooked up,” Ben said as though he’d failed his task. “Plus one more we can fly with the landing gear fixed.” He shrugged. “I mean to use that one as a trainer, if Bernie doesn’t swipe it and stick those Jap floats salvaged out of Amagi ’s hangar on it. Nuttiest thing I ever heard! A P-40 seaplane!” There were chuckles, and he looked wistfully at the fighter. “We might even cobble one more together, but no promises. It’s not so much a matter of spare parts; we’re actually pretty good there. As I said, we have engines, radiators, gauges, tires… you name it. But some of the airframes were damaged in fundamental ways we didn’t expect just by looking at thm. The crates must’ve taken a real beating, particularly those in the holds, and the crate bracings themselves actually torqued things around.” He smirked. “The good news is, we’ll have plenty of replacement tail assemblies, windscreens, control surfaces, and,” he grunted, “rudder pedals. We’re also using two pretty corroded fuselage assemblies for simulated flight trainers. Got ’em rigged in the trees to respond to stick controls!”
He looked at Riggs, then Ronson. “That was one little thing I was going to see if your guys could do: juice the instruments so we can do some night-flying training-without using one of our batteries… or busting a plane!”
Ronson grinned. “Sure thing, Ben.” He looked at Riggs. “It’ll be good training for the EM flight engineers, and you can use batteries! Homegrown ones! I don’t know when we’ll have anything like Bakelite, but we’re doing good stuff with glass and ceramic, and we finally have batteries that don’t weigh a ton.”
Bernie looked at Ronson. “Just so long as you don’t give us any more of those wood and brass ‘box bombs’!”
Ronson cringed and cut his eyes back at Riggs. “So? I forgot there was zinc in brass! I’m an electrician’s mate, not a metallurgist! Nobody got hurt!”
Ben laughed. “That’d be swell, so long as I don’t have to use any of my batteries for the job!”
“So,” Pam Cross suddenly asked in her heavy Brooklyn accent, “when’re ya gonna fly one?”
“Well, it’s been taking a while to get all the bugs ironed out,” Ben defended, a little self-consciously. “I got almost two hundred ’Cats workin’ on these crates and trying to learn how to fly ’em-without letting anybody fly one! Only guys with flight experience are even allowed into the training program, but”-he took a breath-“nobody but me, Lieutenant Mackey, and those five other poor fellas that came in the other day on the ‘Buzzard’ have any experience at all in P-40s, and honestly, a couple of them have no business flying anything for a long time. The guys are wrecks, and not just physically. Karen says they shouldn’t ever fly again! Those damn Japs
…” He stopped. “Doesn’t matter, anyway, I have to let the guys here have an equal shot, after all the work they’ve done.”
“What about the ground crews?” Sister Audry asked. “Some enlisted men have also arrived from Maa-ni-la, yes?”
Pete was just as surprised to hear her speak as he’d been when Pam had.
“Yeah, they’re doing okay, I guess. Sergeant Dixon, the one who showed up with Mackey, is a lot better now, and he’s pretty much become the senior crew chief around here. He makes the new guys take it easy. Dixon’s a gem. I don’t know if we could’ve done it without him. All the planes came with instructions and I’d seen them put together before, but he’d actually done it.”
“Where is he now?” Adar asked.
“Couple hangars over, doing the same as me and Soupy and these other guys.” He patted the Curtiss green wing behind him. “About a thousand little ‘final touches.’ All the planes are together that are going to be, and thanks to the Corps of Engineer-’Cats Brister loaned me, we’ve got roofs over every one. But we’ve still got to finish checking out the hydraulic systems, which we were just doing here, and make sure all the connections are tight on the Prestone tanks, fill ’em up-and do the same for the oil tanks and Prestone and oil radiators, rec thhe batteries, gauges, triple -check the connections on all three fuel tanks.” He wiped his brow with his rag and grinned at Pam Cross. Gosh, she really is pretty, looking at me like that! he thought. Too bad she’s so stuck on that maniac Silva… or is she? He blinked and looked at the others. “After that, we’ll finally put the props on and do a preliminary run-up on the engines-we just got fuel a couple days ago.” He stopped and looked at Isak Rueben. He knew the scruffy little guy was nuts; all the “Mice” were. He’d never forget watching them chain-smoke cigarettes, covered with oil from head to foot…
“That reminds me. We have a problem with condensation in the fuel tanks. Too much humidity and heat, I guess.”
Isak realized Ben was talking to him. “Uh, just hafta keep them tanks empty-er maybe plumb, brimmin’ full, is all. Nothin’ else for it. Drain off the damn water before you fill ’em… sir.”