“I blew a tire,” Pickering said.
“Blew the shit out of it,” Oblensky confirmed. “Have a look.”
“Thank you, Mr. Pickering,” Galloway said.
“Thank me for what?”
“You know for what. I couldn’t have gotten away from that Zero.”
“You were doing all right,” Pickering said.
“When I say ‘thank you,’ you say ‘you’re welcome.’ ”
Pickering met his eyes. “You’re welcome, Skipper.”
“I just saw Colonel Dawkins. There were witnesses to both of yours. Both confirmed. What does that make, seven?”
“Eight. I’ll confirm yours. I saw it go down.”
“They confirmed that, too,” Galloway said, and turned to Oblensky. “Did you have a chance to look at that engine?”
“I’m going to pull an oil line from this,” Oblensky said, gesturing at Pickering’s F4F4, “and put it on yours and then run it up and see what happens. You said you shut it down right away.”
“I don’t want anyone flying it but me, understand?”
“If I didn’t think it was safe, I wouldn’t let anybody fly it.”
“Just say ‘aye, aye, sir,’ for Christ’s sake, Steve,” Galloway said.
“What happens now, Skipper?” Pickering asked.
“What you do now is run down all your friends-they’re scattered all over-and bring them here. As soon as the runways are fixed, they’re flying the B17s off to Espiritu Santo. They can go with them.”
“What about the R4D?”
“It took a hundred-pound bomb through the wing. It didn’t explode, but that airplane’s not going anywhere. Mr. Pickering will need your jeep, Steve.”
“It was over by the AvGas dump when that went up,” Oblensky said. “No jeep, Skipper.”
“Well, Mr. Pickering, you said you were thinking of joining the infantry. The infantry walks, so that should be no problem for you.”
For a moment Lieutenant Pickering looked as if he was about to say something obscene. But he thought about it, and what he said was, “Aye, aye, Sir.”
[THREE]
VMF-229
Henderson Field
1535 Hours 13 October 1942
When Captain Charles M. Galloway Walked in, Majors Ed Banning and Jake Dillon, Lieutenant Ken McCoy, Sergeant George Hart, and Corporal Robert F. Easterbrook were sitting on the bunks and wooden crates of the Bachelor Officers’ Quarters-a tent with sandbag walls. Galloway was trailed by Lieutenant Bill Dunn.
Galloway looked at Banning.
“Major, the B-17s can’t get off today. That last raid cratered the runway again.”
There had been a second Japanese bombing attack at 1350, a dozen or so Kates and slightly fewer Zeroes.
“I saw fighters take off,” Banning replied. It was a question, not a challenge.
“You saw two fighters get off,” Galloway replied. “Joe Foss and somebody else. They took a hell of a chance; dodged the craters and debris.”
“I saw one Japanese plane go down,” Major Dillon said.
“Foss again,” Galloway said. “He got a Zero. But that was all the damage we did.”
“What the hell happened to the Coastwatchers?” McCoy asked.
Galloway looked at him. He had not yet got a fix on this semilegendary Marine. A lot of what he’d heard about Killer McCoy had to be bullshit, yet he’d also noticed that Major Ed Banning (a good professional Marine, in his view) treated McCoy with serious respect.
“According to what I heard, McCoy, there was a transmission delay between Pearl Harbor and here. You know what atmospherics are?”
McCoy nodded. Galloway noticed that the nod was all he got, not a “Yes, Sir.”
“Well, we monitor Coastwatcher radio. Sometimes we can hear them, sometimes we can’t. This time we couldn’t. So the warning had to go through CINCPAC radio at Pearl” (Commander-In- Chief, Pacific headquarters at Pearl Harbor, T.H.). “There was a delay in them getting through to here. They said atmospherics. We were refueling our fighters when we finally got the warning. By that time the Japanese were over the field.”
“Buka’s operational, Ken,” Banning said. “These things happen.”
“So what happens now?” Dillon said.
“The Seventeens can’t dodge runway craters. And they don’t think they can fill them before it gets dark. So the Seventeens will have to wait until first light. You’ll leave then.”
“Unless the Japs come back again,” Dillon said.
“Unless the Japs come back again,” Galloway parroted. “I’m sorry, it’s out of my control.”