The Last Heroes Page 6

  ‘‘Mr. Canidy?’’ the orderly asked crisply.

  ‘‘Yes,’’ Canidy said.

  ‘‘The admiral’s compliments, sir,’’ the orderly snapped. ‘‘The admiral regrets the intrusion. The admiral will be pleased to receive Mr. Canidy at Mr. Canidy’s convenience. ’’

  ‘‘You sure you have the right Canidy, son?’’ Canidy asked.

  ‘‘The admiral’s car and driver are outside, if Mr. Canidy would care to make use of them to make his call upon the admiral, sir.’’

  Canidy was wholly confused. He had seen the admiral (there were several flag officers at Pensacola, but only one ‘‘the admiral,’’ the base commander) only twice in his life, once when his aviator’s wings were pinned on him, and once again when the admiral had given the new draft of instructor pilots a five-minute ritual pep talk before they had begun their training.

  He could think of nothing he had done, good or bad, to merit the admiral’s attention. Lieutenant junior grade instructor pilots in primary training came to the admiral’s attention only when they killed a student, or vice versa.

  He stood up and looked down at Ford and Czernik.

  ‘‘Gentlemen,’’ he said, mockingly solemn, ‘‘you will have to excuse me. The admiral requests my professional judgment on a subject of vital importance to the Navy, and, indeed, the nation!’’

  Ford and Czernik smiled. Bitter looked at the Marine orderly. The Marine orderly was not amused. He marched out of the beer bar, and Canidy followed him out to the admiral’s car, a two-year-old Chrysler driven by a natty young sailor who held the door open for Canidy and then closed it after him.

  Canidy decided the whole thing was going to turn out to be a hilarious case of mistaken identity. There was probably a Commander Canidy on the base somewhere, or maybe even a Captain Canidy (who probably spelled his name Kennedy), and the admiral had asked for him with his false teeth out, and the aide had misunderstood him.

  The car drove under the portico of the admiral’s residence and stopped. The Marine orderly leaped out of the front seat and raced around the front of the car to open the door for Canidy.

  I wonder, Canidy thought, if after they find out they have the wrong guy, I’ll have to walk back to the O Club.

  The admiral’s aide-de-camp, a full lieutenant, opened a side door to the residence.

  ‘‘Canidy?’’ he asked.

  ‘‘Yes, sir,’’ Dick replied.

  ‘‘You would have been here somewhat sooner, Mr. Canidy, ’’ the aide said, ‘‘if I thought to tell the orderly to try the beer hall first.’’ He waved Canidy ahead of him into the kitchen, where a white-jacketed Filipino steward was tending an array of bottles.

  The admiral’s aide stepped around Canidy and pushed open a swinging door to the dining room.

  ‘‘Mr. Canidy, Admiral,’’ he announced.

  ‘‘Come on in, Canidy,’’ a gruff voice ordered.

  There were two ruddy-skinned, gray-haired men sitting at a long, brightly polished dining-room table. A large candelabrum had been pushed aside to make room for some manila folders (obviously service records), lined pads, a telephone, and two ashtrays. There was a cigar box and coaster, on which sat glasses dark with whiskey.

  Both the middle-aged men were wearing insignialess khaki shirts and trousers, and it was a moment before Canidy was sure which of them was the admiral.

  ‘‘Lieutenant Canidy reports to the admiral as directed, sir,’’ Canidy said.

  ‘‘I have one official thing to say to you, Mr. Canidy,’’ the admiral said, looking at him with unabashed curiosity. ‘‘What you see in this room, what you hear in this room, you will not relate to anyone, in or out of the service, without my express permission. You got that?’’

  ‘‘Yes, sir.’’

  So it wasn’t a case of mistaken identity. He was expected and something very unusual was about to happen. This was, obviously, one of the wild days Canidy had infrequently experienced in his life. For months, or sometimes years, everything went according to some dull plan, and then, all of a sudden, strange, unexpected, and exciting things happened, one after the other.

  This insane day had begun with Eddie goddamned near killing himself; and then he had learned, in a Southern plantation mansion, that Sue-Ellen Chambers was Eddie’s cousin’s wife; and now he was in the admiral’s dining room.

  The admiral looked at him from rather cold gray eyes for a long moment, and then he raised his voice.

  ‘‘Pedro!’’

  The Filipino steward pushed open the swinging door.

  ‘‘Tell Pedro what you’ll have to drink, Canidy,’’ the admiral said. ‘‘And then sit down. Close. This old birdman is as deaf as a post.’’

  ‘‘Fuck you, Charley,’’ the other gray-haired man said, smiling, and without rancor.

  ‘‘Sair?’’ the steward asked, wanting Canidy’s drink order.

  ‘‘Bourbon, please,’’ Canidy said. ‘‘Over ice.’’

  ‘‘Yes, sair,’’ the steward said. The admiral held up his glass and looked at the other man, who nodded.

  The steward ducked back into the kitchen.

  ‘‘Canidy, this is General Chennault,’’ the admiral said. ‘‘Of the Chinese Air Force.’’

  That didn’t surprise Canidy either. Then he remembered who Chennault was. He was a former Army Air Corps pursuit pilot, one of the old-timers, who had gone to China to help the Chinese in their war with the Japanese.

  ‘‘For the way you emphasized ‘Chinese,’ ’’ General Chennault said, ‘‘fuck you again, Charley.’’

  ‘‘As you may have guessed, Canidy,’’ the admiral said, ‘‘General Chennault and I go back a long way together. But this isn’t a social call. General Chennault is here with the express permission of the Commander in Chief.’’

  ‘‘Yes, sir,’’ Canidy said, because he could think of nothing else to say. It took him a moment to realize that the admiral was speaking of the Commander in Chief, not the commander in chief of naval aviation training, or even the chief of naval aviation training, or even the chief of naval operations. He was speaking of the President of the United States.

  ‘‘Aren’t you just a little curious, Lieutenant?’’ General Chennault asked.

  ‘‘Yes, sir, I’m curious,’’ Canidy said. ‘‘But I’m also a junior grade lieutenant.’’

  Chennault chuckled. ‘‘Before they retired me from the Air Corps,’’ he said, ‘‘I was a captain. Before I was a captain, I was a first lieutenant. I was a first lieutenant, your grade, for fourteen long years.’’

  The steward delivered three glasses, just about full of bourbon over ice.

  ‘‘Don’t you think we’re about to get in a war, Canidy?’’ the admiral asked suddenly.

  ‘‘I hope not, sir,’’ he said. The question made him uncomfortable.

  ‘‘Yes or no?’’ the admiral asked impatiently.

  ‘‘I don’t see how we can avoid it, sir,’’ Canidy said. The admiral snorted.

  ‘‘How would you like to get into it early, Canidy?’’ General Chennault asked.

  ‘‘I’d rather not get into it at all, sir,’’ Canidy replied, after a moment’s hesitation. He had decided that this was one of those occasions when he would say what he was thinking, rather than what he was expected to say.

  ‘‘I’m surprised,’’ Chennault said. ‘‘The admiral told me you’ve been flying the new Grumman.’’

  ‘‘Yes, sir.’’

  ‘‘All that power scare you?’’ Chennault asked.

  ‘‘No, sir,’’ Canidy replied. ‘‘The airplane’s first-rate. But nobody was shooting at me.’’

  The two leathery-faced old pilots looked at each other, and then General Chennault looked into Canidy’s eyes. ‘‘What do you want out of the service, Canidy?’’ he asked softly.

  ‘‘I’m afraid my answer would sound flippant, sir,’’ Canidy said.

  ‘‘Out, you mean? What you want out of the service is yourself?’’


  ‘‘Yes, sir.’’

  ‘‘And then what?’’

  ‘‘I’m an aeronautical engineer, sir. I’ve been offered a job by Boeing.’’

  ‘‘They’ll have you designing ashtrays for transports,’’ the admiral said, smiling, but meaning it. ‘‘You won’t be flying. ’’

  ‘‘They’ve offered me a job in high-speed airfoil design, sir,’’ Canidy said, unable to let it pass.

  ‘‘What do you know about high-speed airfoil design?’’ the admiral asked disparagingly.

  ‘‘That’s my specialty, sir,’’ Canidy said.

  ‘‘You’re one hell of a fighter pilot, according to your records,’’ Chennault said, ending the sparring. ‘‘They didn’t let you fly the F4F-3 because they liked you or because they thought you were a wing expert.’’

  ‘‘General Chennault is a highly qualified judge of fighter pilots, Canidy,’’ the admiral said, offering an olive branch. ‘‘That’s a hell of a compliment from him.’’

  ‘‘I’ve read the general’s book, sir,’’ Canidy said.

  ‘‘On your own? Or because it was suggested to you?’’ Chennault asked.

  ‘‘I was ordered to read it, sir,’’ Canidy said.

  ‘‘I want your honest opinion of The Role of Pursuit Aviation, ’’ the admiral said.

  ‘‘Theoretically, it sounds fine,’’ Canidy said.

  ‘‘Just ‘theoretically’?’’ the admiral asked.

  ‘‘It’s never been put to the test of actual combat, sir,’’ Canidy said.

  ‘‘And if it was?’’ Chennault asked.

  ‘‘I’m not in a position to judge, sir,’’ Canidy said.

  ‘‘But you have, haven’t you?’’ Chennault said. ‘‘Speak up, Canidy. Where did I go wrong?’’

  Chennault’s book was a treatise on the interception and pursuit of enemy bombardment aircraft. Canidy had given it a lot of thought.

  ‘‘I wondered about armament and armor, sir,’’ he said.

  Chennault made a ‘‘come on’’ signal with his hand.

  ‘‘The larger bombers get, the greater their weight-carrying capacity,’’ Canidy said. ‘‘Which means they can armor their engines and fuel tanks, and carry more and larger-caliber weaponry, and some armor. And that obviously means a decrease in their speed and maneuverability and range. So long as the enemy doesn’t have really large airplanes . . . like the Boeing B-17 . . . it won’t be a problem. But if they do . . .’’

  Chennault was impressed with Canidy’s analysis of his theory. He had himself seen the problems Canidy had spotted. But he did not like to hear them from a young man still damp behind the ears.

  ‘‘How would you like to go into combat as a pursuit pilot, in, say, sixty days?’’ Chennault asked abruptly.

  Canidy felt the skin at the base of his neck curl. The question was asked in dead seriousness.

  ‘‘I don’t think I’d like that at all, sir,’’ he said.

  ‘‘Christ, when I was your age . . .’’ the admiral said.

  ‘‘Within a year, give or take a couple of months, we’re going to be at war,’’ General Chennault said. ‘‘If you believe that we’re not, you believe in the tooth fairy. You also believe in the tooth fairy if you think the Navy is going to release a healthy, highly skilled pursuit pilot with demonstrated qualities of leadership just before the war starts.’’

  Well, Canidy thought, there it is, right out in the open. Two unpleasant facts that I have been unwilling to face.

  ‘‘I’m very much afraid that you’re right, sir,’’ Canidy said.

  ‘‘Of course I’m right,’’ Chennault snorted.

  ‘‘What is the general proposing, sir?’’ Canidy asked.

  ‘‘I’m offering you a one-year contract, Canidy, on behalf of the Central Aircraft Manufacturing Company, Federal, Inc., to go to China and participate in the construction, maintenance, and development of civilian aircraft for the Chinese Air Transport Ministry.’’

  ‘‘I’m in the Navy, General.’’

  Ignoring him, Chennault went on. ‘‘What you’ll be doing is flying Curtiss P40-Bs against the Japanese. The pay— your pay, I’m offering you a job as a wingman—is six hundred dollars a month, plus rations and quarters and a bonus of five hundred dollars for every aircraft you down.’’

  That was nearly twice what he was paid by the Navy. And, of course, there were no five-hundred-dollar bonuses for primary flight instructor pilots.

  ‘‘At the conclusion of your contract year,’’ Chennault went on, ‘‘you will be taken back into the Navy with no loss of time in grade. If you get promoted flying for us, you will receive a similar promotion in the Navy.’’

  ‘‘I would be discharged from the Navy?’’ Canidy asked. ‘‘Not just released from active duty, subject to recall?’’

  ‘‘Discharged,’’ Chennault said. ‘‘You would leave the United States as a civilian.’’

  ‘‘And if I didn’t come back in the Navy?’’

  ‘‘You are a gutsy bastard, aren’t you?’’ Chennault asked admiringly. ‘‘Saying that in front of the admiral.’’ He paused. ‘‘You do your year, and if I’m wrong, and there is no war, I’ll guarantee you can come home and go to work for Boeing. You could probably get more money as an engineer in China, come to think of it. But if the United States gets in the war, and I think it will, you’ll have to make your own arrangements with the draft board.’’

  ‘‘And if I don’t want to go to China?’’

  ‘‘Then you go back to your BOQ and forget you ever met me,’’ Chennault said. ‘‘You won’t be able to do that, of course. You’ll remember this little encounter, no matter what you decide, for the rest of your life.’’

  ‘‘When would I have to go?’’

  ‘‘Sometime in the next thirty days,’’ Chennault said.

  ‘‘How many others are being asked?’’

  ‘‘In the first group, a hundred pilots. We have a hundred P40-Bs en route to China."

  "Why P40-Bs?"

  Chennault paused before replying. ‘‘Because our noble English cousins don’t want them. They consider them obsolete, ’’ he said. ‘‘OK?’’

  "I’ve never flown a P40," Canidy said.

  ‘‘No one has, the first time,’’ Chennault said dryly.

  "May I ask why I’m being asked? I don’t have all that much experience."

  ‘‘All we have to go on is records, Mr. Canidy,’’ the admiral said. ‘‘Yours are outstanding.’’

  ‘‘One year. And when that’s over, I’m out. Is that the proposition?’’

  ‘‘That’s the deal,’’ Chennault said. ‘‘I won’t muddy the waters with any talk of duty, honor, country.’’

  ‘‘And how much time do I have to make up my mind?’’

  ‘‘Take whatever it takes,’’ Chennault said. ‘‘Two, three minutes.’’

  Canidy had a sense of being caught in something he had no control over. He thought of the cliché ‘‘swimming against the stream,’’ and he thought that he really was being recruited for this because of the performance he’d turned in in advanced training. He held the training command record for most holes in a towed target, and he had shot down (according to the motion-picture cameras mounted on the Grumman F3F-1 where the .30-caliber Browning machine gun was normally mounted) all four of the advanced fighter training instructors they’d matched him against, one after the other.

  It was also, he thought, equally possible that he was being asked to go to China because he had been judged expendable by his Navy superiors. If that was true, that the Navy felt they could do without him, that could really be dangerous when the war started. Fliers the Navy felt it could do without would be the ones sent on missions where severe losses were to be expected.

  ‘‘Shit,’’ Canidy said, the word coming without his intending it to. He was aware that both the admiral and General Chennault were looking at him with distaste.

  ‘‘I’ll go,’�
� he hastily added.

  "OK," Chennault said. He stood up and offered Canidy his hand.

  4

  When the admiral’s Buick took Dick Canidy back to the officers’ club, Ford and Czernik were gone. He thought that he hadn’t been gone all that long, despite all that had happened, and that Bitter might still be trying to explain why he had made the unscheduled landing. He went to the bar and ordered a pitcher of beer. He would wait for him.

  Bitter didn’t show up for two hours. By then, Canidy had decided that ‘‘Salty Sam, the Perfect Sailor’’ had come back to the beer bar while he had been with the admiral, bought the two students the ritual pitcher of beer, and then gone to the BOQ. Salty Sam really hated to drink even a glass of beer during the week, even if he was not scheduled to fly the next day.

  He was genuinely surprised when Ed Bitter, in a dress white uniform, slipped onto the bar stool beside him.

  ‘‘I’d given you up for lost,’’ Canidy said. Something was bothering Bitter. He wondered if Bitter had been struck with a sudden case of officer’s honor and confessed his sins to the squadron commander.

  ‘‘I wasn’t sure you would still be here,’’ Bitter said.

  ‘‘I said I would be,’’ Canidy said.

  The bartender, a moonlighting whitecap, came up. ‘‘What can I get you, Mr. Bitter?’’

  The question, Canidy thought, was one Bitter was not prepared to immediately answer. The skipper had obviously chewed his ass.

  Indicating Canidy’s glass, Bitter asked, ‘‘What’s that?’’

  ‘‘Bourbon,’’ Canidy said.

  ‘‘Give us two of the same,’’ Bitter said to the bartender.

  ‘‘Hard likker? The next thing you know, you’ll be out wenching!’’

  Bitter looked at him uncomfortably for a moment, and then opened the catch of the high-collared blouse before replying. ‘‘I suppose it’s a delayed reaction to what happened this afternoon.’’

  ‘‘I suppose,’’ Canidy said. ‘‘Well, hell, it’s over. Or did something happen when you reported to the skipper? That is why you’re all dressed up?’’

  That innocent question produced another strange look.

  ‘‘No. I mean to say, he accepted my explanation that it was nothing more than an unscheduled, precautionary landing. ’’