Secret Honor (Honor Bound 3)

At the time, it seemed probable that the squadron commander had been hit by ground fire. The squadron commander had told him that some of the trains were armed with antiaircraft machine guns and light cannon, mounted on flatcars. Because his attention had been fixed on the locomotive, Archie hadn’t noticed anything on the cars behind it.

That night, at the Officers’ Club (empty, as always, of females—long-legged, firm-breasted, or otherwise), he learned about the Group’s promotion policies: Everybody got to be a first lieutenant after eighteen months of commissioned service, which means he had about ten days before that happened.

There were two ways to get to be a captain. If you lived to serve twelve months as a first lieutenant, then promotion was automatic. But promotion came a lot quicker in another circumstance. The senior first lieutenant was the squadron executive officer (senior, that is, in terms of length of service in the squadron, not date of rank). If the squadron commander got either killed or seriously injured (defined as having to spend thirty days or more in the hospital), then the Exec took the Old Man’s job and got the captain’s railroad tracks that went with it.

Four weeks and six days after Archie reported to the squadron the squadron first sergeant handed him a sheet of paper to sign:

* * *

HEADQUARTERS

4032ND FIGHTER SQUADRON

23RD FIGHTER GROUP

IN THE FIELD

2 MARCH 1943

THE UNDERSIGNED HEREWITH

ASSUMES COMMAND.

ARCHER DOOLEY, JR.

CAPT. USSAC

FILE

201 DOOLEY, ARCHER, JR. 0378654

COPY TO CO, 23RD FIGHTER GROUP

* * *

He hadn’t gotten to work his way up to executive officer. The young man who had become the Old Man and the Exec had both gone in on the same day, the Old Man when his Mustang ran into a Kraut antiaircraft position that had gotten lucky, and the Exec when he banked too step, too low to the ground and put a wing into the desert.

That left Archie as the senior first lieutenant in the squadron.

The colonel had driven over from Group in a jeep, told him to cut orders assuming command, and handed him two sets of railroad tracks, still in cellophane envelopes from the quartermaster officer’s sales store.

Archie had pinned one set of captain’s railroad tracks over the embroidered gold second lieutenant’s bars still sewn to the epaulets of his A-2 horsehide flight jacket, and put the other set in the drawer of the squadron commander’s—now his—desk. If he ever had to go someplace, like Group, he would pin the extras on his Class A uniform then.

Being a captain and a squadron commander was not at all like what he’s imagined. A lot of really unpleasant shit went with being the Old Man. Like writing letters to the next of kin.

He hadn’t actually had to compose these, thank God. There were letters in the file that some other Old Man had written, full of bullshit about how your son/husband/brother/nephew died instantly and courageously doing his duty, and how much he would be missed by his fellow officers and the enlisted men because he had been such a fine officer and had been an inspiration to all who had been privileged to know him.

Not the truth, not about how he’d tried to bail out but had been too close to the ground and his ’chute hadn’t opened; not that he’d been seen trying and failing to get out of the cockpit through a sheet of flame blowing back from the engine; not about how he’d tried to land his shot-up airplane and blew it, and rolled over and over down the runway in a ball of flame and crushed aluminium. Or that they really didn’t know what the fuck had happened to him, he just hadn’t come back; and later some tank crew had found the wreckage of his Mustang with him still in the cockpit, the body so badly burned they couldn’t tell if he had been killed in the air or died when his plane hit.

He didn’t have to type the letters, either. The first sergeant just took one from the file and retyped it, changing the name. But Archie had to sign it, because he was now the Old Man and that’s what was expected of him.

And he was always getting bullshit pep talks from some major or light colonel at Group that he was supposed to pass down the line.

Like what he remembered now, staring down at the Kraut staff car:

“Dooley, what interdiction means is that you and your people are supposed to engage whatever you come across, like one fucking Kraut with a rifle, one motorcycle messenger, not pass him by to go looking for a railroad locomotive, or something you think is important, or looks good when you blow it up. The motorcycle messenger is probably carrying an important message. Otherwise he wouldn’t be out there. You take out a Kraut staff car, for example, you’re liable to take out an important Kraut officer. Interdict means everything that’s down there. You read me, Captain?”

“Yes. Sir.”