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  Bill was a little surprised to find himself trotting, almost running, back to the Wildcat. As he climbed in, he saw for the first time that something had been stenciled below the canopy: 1ST LTWCDUNN USMCR CPLAM FLORENTINO, USMC.

  That wasn’t there yesterday. He must have painted it on there last night. And I didn’t see it before because I had other things on my mind, like getting killed.

  “Great-looking sign, Florentino,” Bill said when the plane captain appeared at the side of the cockpit.

  “Thank you, Sir.”

  He fastened his seat and shoulder harness again and went through the start-up procedure. The engine caught immediately and quickly smoothed down. He checked the Manifold Pressure Regulator and the Propellor Operation; then he de-sludged the supercharger. After that he followed the Buffalo which had been parked beside him toward the runway.

  When he was lined up with the runway, he went through the final take-off checklist, which takes longer to describe than to do: He checked to see that the indicator in the wing root showed the wings were properly spread and locked. He locked the tail wheel; made sure the sliding portion of the canopy was locked open; set the aileron and elevator tabs in NEUTRAL and the rudder tab a couple of marks to the right. He checked to see that the fuel selector switch was on the main tank and that the cowl flaps were open. He made sure the propellor governor control was pushed all the way in; that the supercharger was set to LOW, the mixture control set to AUTO RICH, and the Emergency Fuel Pump to ON. He pushed the Carburetor Air Control all the way in and finally pushed the throttle to FULL.

  The engine roared, the plane began to strain against the brakes, and the needle on the Manifold Pressure Gauge rose to indicate about fifty-two inches. He released the brakes and the Wildcat started to move down the runway, as if it was chasing the Buffalo in front of it.

  He dropped his eyes momentarily to check the oil and fuel pressure, the oil and cylinder head temperatures, and the indicated airspeed. The needles were all in the green. He thought he saw the airspeed indicator needle flicker to life, which usually happened about 40 knots, but he wasn’t sure. It didn’t really matter. He would sense in the seat of his pants when the Wildcat wanted to fly.

  The rumble of the landing gear suddenly stopped. The Wildcat, having reached an airspeed of about 70 knots, had decided to fly. Without thinking about it, Bill swapped hands on the control stick, using his left hand on the stick to counter the Wildcat’s tendency to veer to the right on take-off and freeing his right hand to crank up the landing gear. It took twenty-seven revolutions of the crank, hard turns, to get it up.

  When he had finished and put his right hand back on the stick, he looked around for Major Parks, spotted his Wildcat, and maneuvered to get into his assigned position behind him. He was not at all surprised when he was in position and had adjusted the throttle, the mixture, and the trim, to see that he was climbing at 1,000 feet per minute, indicating 125 knots, and with his cylinder head temperature right at 215° Centigrade. That’s what the book said was the most efficient climbing attitude, and Major Parks flew by the book.

  As they passed through 12,000 feet, he put the black rubber mask over his face, readjusted his headset to accommodate it, and turned on the oxygen. It felt cool in his mouth and throat, and somehow alien. At 14,000 Parks leveled his flight out.

  Several minutes after that, Parks wiggled his wings, seeming to point with his right wing tip. Bill followed the line down, and there they were, two thousand feet below them.

  He was surprised at the color scheme. The Kates’ fuselages, wings, and rear appendages were painted a lemon yellow. And the red ball of Japan was not readily visible on either fuselage or wings. From the windscreen forward, the Kates were painted black. And so was the bomb hanging under the fuselage.

  Jesus Christ, there’s a lot of them!

  I’ll be goddamned, the Zeroes are below them! What the hell is that all about? Didn’t they think we’d try to intercept?

  Following Parks’s lead, he put the Wildcat into a dive, correcting without thinking about it for the Wildcat’s tendency to drop the right wing and turn the nose to the right.

  As he approached his first target, Bill could clearly see the aft-facing gunner bringing his machine gun to bear on him.

  That bastard is shooting at me!

  That triggered two other—alarming—thoughts:

  Christ, I didn’t test my guns!

  I forgot to pull my fucking goggles down!

  The Wildcat shook with the recoil of the .50 caliber Browning machine guns in the wings. And two other thoughts came:

  Jesus, my tracer stream is way out in front of him!

  I’ll be goddamned! He blew up! How the hell did that happen?

  And then he was through the layer of Kates and approaching the layer of Vals beneath them.

  I fucked that up! I didn’t get a shot at any of them, and here come the fucking Zeroes!

  Our Father, who art in heaven—

  I don’t think I can turn this sonofabitch enough to lead him—

  I’m skidding all over the fucking sky! You’re a real hot pilot, Mr. Dunn. In a pig’s ass you are!

  Oh, shit, there goes one of our guys. His right fucking wing just came off!

  For yea, tho‘ I walk through the valley of the shadow of death—

  That’s right, you miserable cocksucker, just stay right there another five seconds, four, three—

  Gotcha!

  Holy shit, there’s somebody on my tail! A fucking Zero, what else?

  I can’t get away from him.

  Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed—

  Chop the fucking throttle, stupid! Put it in a skid, let him overshoot you!

  Oh, my God, the windshield’s gone. I can’t see a fucking thing. I’m going to die. Where the fuck are those goggles? Where the hell is that Zero? Why does my leg feel wet? Did I piss my pants?

  Not unless you’re pissing blood, you didn’t.

  I thought it was supposed to hurt when you got wounded.

  Oh, shit, it hurts! I wonder if it’s broken?

  (Three)

  “How do you feel, Dunn?” the tour guide from the Atlanta Zoo asked, pulling up a folding metal chair to the side of Dunn’s bed. “Well enough to talk to me?”

  What if I said “no”?

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “The more you can tell me about what happened out there, the better,” the tour guide said. “You want to take it from the beginning?”

  “We were at fourteen thousand, about thirty miles out, when Major Parks spotted them. He showed us where they were and went into a dive, and I went after him.”

  “And?”

  “And that’s all I remember.”

  “Come on.”

  “I remember being surprised that the Zeroes were on the bottom of the formation, not the top.”

  “OK. That was unusual. They apparently intended to use the Zeroes to strafe the field here. I guess they didn’t think we had anything to send up against them. When you went in the dive, then what happened?”

  “I shot at a Kate.”

  “You got it. It was confirmed.”

  “The Kates were on top. Then there was a layer of Vals. I went right through them without firing a shot. And then I was in the Zeroes.”

  “And?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t remember much.”

  “You are credited with shooting down one of them. You don’t remember that?”

  “Who says I shot down a Zero?”

  “I don’t immediately recall.”

  “The Skipper?”

  “Major Parks didn’t make it back, I’m sorry to say.”

  “Shit.”

  “I was hoping that perhaps you might have seen him go in.”

  “I saw somebody go down. His right wing, most of his right wing, came off. I don’t know who it was.”

  “When was that?”

  “I don’t know. Toward the beginning.”

  �
�That was the only time you saw one of ours go down?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I told you, that was it. How many of ours went down?”

  “A good many, I’m sorry to have to tell you.”

  “How many is a good many?”

  “We lost fifteen. Two Wildcats—not counting yours, although yours has been surveyed and is a total loss—and thirteen Buffaloes.”

  “We only had nineteen Buffaloes with us.”

  “In addition to yourself, Captain Carey, Captain Carl, and Lieutenant Canfield came back. Of Major Parks’s flight, I mean.”

  “You mean the rest are dead?”

  “Do you remember when you were hit?”

  “You mean everybody but the four of us is dead?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Oh, my God!”

  “Do you remember being hit?”

  “No. I remember the windshield going.”

  “In other words you don’t know who shot you down, whether it was a Zero or some other type aircraft?”

  “It had to be a Zero. I was in the Zeroes.”

  “But you don’t know for sure?”

  “I don’t even know how I got back here.”

  “You came back and made a wheels-up landing.”

  “I found my way back here by myself?”

  “How else?” the Naval Intelligence debriefing officer asked, a tinge of sarcasm in his voice.

  “The last thing I remember is when I lost my windshield. And got hit.”

  “You don’t remember heading back here?”

  “The last thing I remember is trying to pull my goggles down after the windshield went.”

  “You were apparently flying with the canopy open—”

  Christ, I forgot to close the canopy, too?

  “Was I?”

  “The shell, most likely a 20mm, apparently entered the cockpit from the side—”

  “Just one round?”

  “There were others. In the engine nacelle. Another just forward of the seat. But the one—the one which entered the cockpit—apparently exploded going through the windshield, from the inside out?”

  “Yeah,” Bill said, understanding.

  “What they took out of your face and leg, legs, was debris from the windshield and control panel. Perspex and aluminum fragments.”

  “Then it was a Zero.”

  “Presumably.” The Intelligence officer looked directly at him. “You have no memory of breaking off the engagement and heading back here?”

  “No.”

  “Could you determine, do you have any memory of determining, from your instruments, or from a loss of control, that your aircraft was no longer airworthy?”

  “No,” Bill said, and then, thinking aloud, “That’s an odd question.”

  “You were seen leaving the area.”

  “So?”

  “The officer who saw you leave could not tell whether you had lost your windshield. You were too far apart.”

  “Who was that?”

  “I don’t think we’d better get into that.”

  “But he thought I was running, right?”

  “Were you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “That’s not a very good answer, you realize?”

  “Sorry about that.”

  “You don’t seem overly disturbed at what could be an accusation of cowardice in the face of the enemy.”

  “Fuck you, Lieutenant.”

  “You can’t talk to me that way!”

  “If I’m to be charged with cowardice in the face of the enemy, what’s the difference what I say to you?”

  After a long pause, the Naval Intelligence Officer said, “I didn’t say anything about you being charged with anything.”

  “No witnesses, right? Everybody’s dead?”

  “If you’re through with my patient, Lieutenant,” another voice said, from behind Dunn, “I’d like to put him aboard the PBY.”

  “You’re being flown to Pearl Harbor,” the Intelligence Officer said to Dunn.

  “I’d prefer to stay with the squadron,” Bill said.

  “You won’t be flying for a while. Three weeks anyway,” the voice behind him said.

  “And there’s no squadron to stay with,” the Naval Intelligence Officer said.

  “Moving is going to be painful,” the voice behind him, now much closer, said. “I can give you some morphine, if you like.”

  “How painful?”

  “You’re pretty well stitched up, particularly on the legs. Any movement will be painful.”

  “Then you’d better give me the shot,” Bill Dunn said.

  II

  (One)

  MENZIES HOTEL

  MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA

  1040 HOURS 8 JUNE 1942

  When the knock came at his door, Captain Fleming Pickering, USNR, was relaxing with his jacket off and his tie pulled down, tilting back in a chair, his feet on the windowsill of his seventh-floor suite, and balancing a cup of coffee on his stomach. Even that way he looked tall and distinguished; and it would have taken a moment of indecision before you concluded he was a man in his early forties. At first glance he appeared younger than that.

  Rooms—much less suites—in the Menzies Hotel, now the Headquarters of General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander, South West Pacific Ocean Areas, were not ordinarily assigned to lowly Navy Captains. But Captain Pickering was not an ordinary officer, or for that matter, an ordinary man.

  Six months before, he had been Chairman of the Board, Pacific & Far East Shipping Corporation. He had been known as Captain Pickering then, too, preferring the title to the more grandiose Commodore which many ship owners adopt, whether or not they have ever gone to sea. Fleming Pickering had received his Master, Any Ocean, Any Tonnage, license from the U.S. Coast Guard when he was twenty-six. He was entitled to be called Captain.

  The Corporation he chaired was in many ways as singular as he was. P&FE did not for instance issue an annual stockholders’ report detailing the financial condition of its assets (which included fifty-two ships and a good deal of real estate in the United States and abroad). The majority stockholders did not consider such a report necessary. Captain Pickering and his wife owned seventy-five percent of the outstanding shares, and controlled voting rights to the other twenty-five percent, which had been placed in trust for their only child.

  Captain Fleming Pickering, USNR, was, in other words, an important and influential man in his own right. But what made him unique, in the military pecking order, were the orders he carried in his pocket:THE SECRETARY OF THE NAVY WASHINGTON, D.C.

  30 JANUARY 1942

  CAPTAIN FLEMING W. PICKERING, USNR, OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY OF THE NAVY, WILL PROCEED BY MILITARY AND/OR CIVILIAN RAIL, ROAD, SEA, AND AIR TRANSPORTATION (PRIORITY AAAAA-1) TO SUCH POINTS AS HE DEEMS NECESSARY IN CARRYING OUT THE MISSION ASSIGNED TO HIM BY THE UNDERSIGNED.

  UNITED STATES NAVAL COMMANDS ARE DIRECTED TO PROVIDE HIM WITH SUCH SUPPORT AS HE MAY REQUEST. OTHER UNITED STATES AGENCIES ARE REQUESTED TO CONSIDER CAPTAIN PICKERING THE PERSONAL REPRESENTATIVE OF THE UNDERSIGNED AND TO PROVIDE TO HIM APPROPRIATE SERVICES AND AMENITIES.

  CAPTAIN PICKERING HAS UNRESTRICTED TOP SECRET SECURITY CLEARANCE. ANY QUESTIONS REGARDING HIS MISSION WILL BE DIRECTED TO THE UNDERSIGNED.

  FRANK KNOX

  SECRETARY

  Very soon after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Navy Secretary Frank Knox came to realize that the information about Naval operations in the Pacific he was getting—and would get—from regular Navy officers was understandably slanted to reflect well on the U.S. Navy. These reports tended to gloss over any facts or opinions that might suggest that the Navy was less than perfect. What he needed, he concluded, was someone to report to him directly, and someone who not only was not a member of the Navy establishment, but who would know what he was looking at.

  Knox met Pickering through their mutual friend, Senator Richmond Fowler (Republican-Califor
nia). He decided immediately that Pickering was the man he was looking for. It was less Pickering’s nautical experience that appealed to him than Pickering’s strongly stated conviction that after Pearl Harbor, Knox should have resigned and the admirals at Pearl Harbor should have been shot. It was in vino truth: The day Secretary Knox met him, Pickering was treating a sorely bruised male ego with large doses of Old Grouse Scotch whiskey. The P&FE Chairman, a much decorated Marine corporal in France during the First War, had just been told the Marine Corps could not use his services in World War II.

  Two weeks later, Knox offered Pickering a commission as his personal representative, with captain’s stripes to go with it. To Knox’s surprise, Pickering immediately accepted. Shortly thereafter he left for the Pacific.

  “Come!” Captain Pickering called; and carefully, so as not to spill the coffee, he looked over his shoulder.

  A youthful-looking Navy officer somewhat hesitantly stuck his head in the door.

  “Captain Pickering?”

  “Yes,” Pickering said. “Come on in.”

  His visitor’s sleeves, Pickering saw with surprise, carried the stripes of a full commander. He didn’t look old enough to be a commander, Pickering thought. Even more surprising was the manner in which the commander carried his large, apparently full briefcase. It was attached to his wrist by a chain and a handcuff.

  “You are Captain Pickering?” the young-looking commander asked.

  “Guilty,” Pickering said. “Who are you?”

  “Sir, may I trouble you for some identification?”

  “Jesus,” Pickering said, and carefully removing himself from the tilted back chair, went to his uniform jacket and took out a wallet. The breast of the jacket carried ribbons for both valor and for wounds received in action in what had now become the First World War. He offered the young commander his Navy Department identification card, and then, because he already had his hands on it, his local identity card.

  That one, with red diagonal stripes across the photograph and data blocks, told the Military Police he had been authorized unlimited access to all areas of MacArthur’s headquarters. The red stripes seemed to awe people, Fleming had noticed. It should satisfy this young man.