“Varitek is in no shape to send anything.”
“Have Pottinger do it. Anybody who knows some Morse code can send it in plain English.”
“You want to claim the cruiser?”
“Have him put in just what we saw. People saw fire. Leave it at that.”
“With Mr. Modahl dead … it would look good if we claimed the cruiser for him.”
“Do like I told you,” I snapped. “A hundred cruisers won’t help him now. Then come back and help me fly this pig.”
Ten minutes later Amme was back. “Some flak hit the radio power supply. We can’t transmit.”
FIVE
When the sun rose Varitek was dead. The mountains of New Britain were sinking into the sea in our right rear quarter, and ahead were endless sun-speckled sea and open, empty sky. Right then I would have appreciated some clouds. When I next looked back, the mountains were lost in the haze.
Dutch Amme sat in the left seat and I in the right. Both of us exerted pressure on the rudder and worked to keep the Witch flying straight. We did that by reference to the sun, which had come up over the sea’s rim more or less where we thought it should if we were flying south. As it climbed the sky, we tried to make allowances.
I also kept an eye on the set of the swells, which seemed to show a steady wind from the southeast, a head wind. I flew across the swells at an angle and hoped this course would take us home.
Our airspeed, Amme estimated, was about 80 mph. At this speed, with a little head wind, it would take nearly seven hours to reach Namoia Bay.
Fuel was a problem. I had Amme repeat everything he had told me as we flew down the strait, only this time I listened and asked questions. The left wing had some holes in it, and we had lost gasoline. We were pouring the stuff into the right engine to stay airborne. The upshot of all this was that he thought we could stay up for maybe six hours, maybe a bit less.
“So you’re saying we can’t make Namoia Bay?”
Amme thrust his jaw out, eyed me belligerently. This, I had learned, was the way he dealt with authority, the world, officers. “That’s right, sir. We’ll be swimming before we get there.”
Of course, the distance and flying time to Namoia Bay were also estimates. Still, running the Witch out of gas and making a forced landing in the open sea was a surefire way to die young. I knew just enough about Catalinas to know that even if we survived an open-ocean landing in this swell and were spotted from the air, no sane person would risk a plane and his life attempting to rescue us. Cats weren’t designed to operate in typical Pacific rollers in the open sea.
If we couldn’t make Namoia Bay, we needed a sheltered stretch of water to land on, the lee of an island or a lagoon or bay.
There were islands ahead, some big, some small, all covered with inhospitable jungle.
Then there was Buna, on the northern shore of the New Guinea peninsula.
“What about Buna?” I asked Amme and Pottinger, who was standing behind the seats. “Can we make it?”
“The Japs are still in Buna,” Amme said.
“I heard they left,” Pottinger replied.
“I’d hate to get there and find out you heard wrong,” Amme shot back.
So much for Buna.
I had Pottinger sit in the right seat while I took a break to use the head. The interior of the plane was drafty, and when I saw the hull, I knew why. Damage was extensive, apparently from flak and the bomb blasts. Gaping holes, bent plates and stringers … I could look through the holes and see the sun reflecting on the ocean. The air whistling up through the wounds made the hair on the back of my head stand up. When we landed, we’d be lucky if this thing stayed above water long enough for us to get out of it. Hell, we’d be lucky if it stayed in one piece when it hit the water.
As I stood there looking at the damage, feeling the slipstream coming through the holes, I couldn’t help thinking that this adventure was going to cement my reputation as a Jonah with the dive-bomber guys. They were going to put me in the park for the pigeons. Which pissed me off a little, though there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.
Varitek’s and Modahl’s corpses lay in the walkway in the center compartment. I had to walk gingerly to get around. Just seeing them hit me hard. The way it looked, this plane was going to be their coffin. Somehow that seemed appropriate. I had hopes the rest of us could do better, though I was pretty worried.
When I got back to the cockpit I stood behind Amme and Pottinger, who were doing as good a job of wrestling this flying pig southward as I had. Still, they wanted me to take over, so I climbed back in the right seat. Amme suggested the left, but I was used to using the prop and throttle controls with my left hand and the stick with my right, so figured I would be most comfortable with that arrangement.
Someone opened a box or two of C rations, and we ate ravenously. With two guys dead, you think we’d have lost our appetites, but no.
AMME:
We were in a heap of hurt. We were in a shot-up, crippled, hunk-of-junk airplane in the middle of the South Pacific, the most miserable real estate on the planet, and our pilot had never landed a seaplane in his life. Jesus! The other guys pretended that things were going to work out, but I had done the fuel figures, and I knew. We weren’t going to make it, even if this ensign was God’s other son.
I tried to tell the ensign and Pottinger; those two didn’t seem too worried. Officers! They must get a lobotomy with their commission.
Lieutenant Modahl was the very worst. God-damned idiot. The fucking guy thought he was bulletproof and lived it that way … until the Japs got him. Crazy or brave, dead is dead.
The truth is we were all going to end up dead, even me, and I wasn’t brave or crazy.
POTTINGER:
The crackers in the C rations nauseated me. The only gleam of hope in this whole mess was the right engine, which ran like a champ. Not enough gas, this little redheaded fool ensign for a pilot, a damaged hull …
Funny how a man’s life can lead to a mess like this. Just two years ago I was studying Italian art at Yale …
Searchlights! The Japs rigged up searchlights to kill Black Cats. They probably nailed Snyder with them, and miracle of miracles, here came another victim. Those Americans!
Modahl. A braver man never wore shoe leather. I tried not to look at his face as we laid him out in back and covered him with his flight jacket.
In a few hours or days we’d all be as dead as Modahl and Varitek. I knew that, and yet, my mind refused to accept the reality. Wasn’t that odd?
Or was it merely human?
“We’re going to have to ditch somewhere,” I told everyone on the intercom. “Everyone put on a life vest now. Break out the emergency supplies and the raft, get everything ready so when we go in the water we can get it out of the plane ASAP.”
They knew what to do, they just needed someone to tell them to do it. I could handle that. After Amme got his vest on, I put on mine and hooked up the straps.
I had Pottinger bring the chart. I wanted a sheltered stretch of water to put the plane in beside an island we could survive on. And the farther from the Japs the better.
One of the Trobriand Islands. Which one would depend upon our fuel.
We were flying at about a thousand feet. Without the altimeter all I could do was look at the swells and guess. The higher we climbed, the more we could see, but if a Japanese fighter found us, our best defense was to fly just above the water to prevent him from completing firing passes.
I looked at the sun. Another two hours, I decided, then we would climb so we could see the Trobriand Islands from as far away as possible.