The Last Heroes (Men at War 1)

‘‘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?’’