The Last Heroes (Men at War 1)

‘‘Delicious Leader, Delicious Blue Five.’’

‘‘Go ahead, Blue Five.’’ There was a tone of impatience in the squadron leader’s voice, even over the clipped tones of the radio.

‘‘My fuel warning lights are on,’’ Whittaker said. ‘‘Request permission to land as soon as possible.’’

There was no reply for a moment, and then:

‘‘Delicious Blue Five, you are cleared to land as number three. I’ll want to see you on the ground.’’

‘‘Blue Five leaving the formation at this time,’’ Whittaker replied. He dropped the nose and pointed the P40-E toward the tail of the second plane making its approach.

‘‘I want to see you on the ground, Whittaker,’’ the squadron commander said. ‘‘Acknowledge.’’

‘‘You want to see me on the ground, acknowledged,’’ Whittaker said.

Whittaker knew his squadron leader did not like him, and most of the reasons why he didn’t. The squadron commander was a Regular, and he was a reservist who had not troubled to conceal his annoyance at having been kept on active duty. He had not displayed what the squadron commander believed was the proper team spirit, and, probably just as important, he hadn’t seen any point in trying to hide the fact that he had an independent income.

Instead of spending his spare time with his peers at Clark, he had rented an apartment in the Hotel Manila, to which he would drive in his brand-new yellow Chrysler New Yorker convertible. He spent his time there playing polo with wealthy Americans, Filipinos, and officers of the 26th Cavalry. His photograph appeared regularly on the society pages of the Manila Times.

Whittaker touched down and taxied directly toward one of the three fuel trucks. He was sure that the first thing the squadron commander was going to do when he got on the ground was ask the fuel guy how much Whittaker had taken. The commander didn’t trust people he didn’t like, and he didn’t like Whittaker. Therefore he believed that Whittaker’s fuel warning lights had not been glowing, and that Whittaker had simply wanted to refuel immediately, rather than wait his turn, whic

h would have been just about last.

Fuck him. He would find out that Whittaker had been running on the fumes.

There were no hangars in Iba auxiliary field, just a radio shack, which doubled as the control tower. There were several field tents, a canvas fly-covered mess and kitchen area, three olive-drab fuel trucks, two vans, two jeeps, a staff car, and Second Lieutenant Whittaker’s new yellow convertible.

The Chrysler was another bone of contention between Whittaker and his squadron commander. Once they had moved to Iba, the Old Man had forbidden his officers to return to Clark Field for any purpose, including picking up their personal vehicles. Jim Whittaker felt that he had obeyed the order. He had not returned to Clark. He had called Manila and ordered his Filipino houseboy to go from his suite in the Manila Hotel out to Clark and drive the Chrysler to Iba.

‘‘You’re a guardhouse lawyer, Whittaker,’’ the Old Man had told him when the Chrysler appeared. ‘‘You know I meant no cars up here. I don’t like guardhouse lawyers.’’

‘‘We don’t have enough transportation, Captain,’’ Whittaker replied. ‘‘The car is at the disposal of the squadron.’’

Under the circumstances, the Chrysler had remained. For one thing, Whittaker’s Filipino boy had taken off, and there was no other way to get the car back where it belonged. For another, Whittaker was right: they needed transportation. But so far as the Old Man was concerned, it was another example of Whittaker’s near insubordination whenever he could interpret an order to his own satisfaction.

After Whittaker had been refueled and was taxiing to his parking space, and seven of the squadron’s sixteen aircraft touched down and were lined up to refuel, the Japanese began their attack. When the first Japanese plane appeared, Whittaker knew he had two choices. He could go to the threshold of the runway and wait until the last of the out-of -fuel P40-Es had landed before he tried to take off, or he could take a chance of getting safely into the air by simply forcing his way into the landing pattern.

He pushed on the left rudder pedal and advanced the throttle as he turned onto the runway. During his takeoff roll, he test-fired his guns.

It was later learned from observers on the ground that there had been fifty-odd Mitsubishi dive-bombers and about as many Zeroes, possibly as many as fifty-six. In the air at the time, things were much too confused for anyone to count with any degree of accuracy.

The engagement didn’t last long. The carrier-based Japanese were operating at the far end of their operational radius, and when they had done what they had come to do, they headed home.

Whittaker made two passes over Iba. The runways were blocked with furiously burning P40s, shot down as they tried to land, and others, who had landed before the attack began, and been destroyed by bombs and machine-gun fire. The Japanese had gotten all three fuel trucks.

Whittaker saw the Old Man, standing and watching his aircraft burn. Hands on hips, he looked up as Whittaker flew over, but he made no signal of any kind.

Whittaker turned the nose of the P40-E toward Clark Field, forty miles away. There was no way he could land at Iba, and with the fuel trucks gone, no reason to.

Marrakech, Morocco December 9, 1941

Two days after the burial of the pasha of Ksar es Souk, Thami el Glaoui, a man in his late sixties, wearing his customary white robes, climbed into his Delahaye convertible sedan and went to the mosque to pray that Allah had taken the pasha of Ksar es Souk into heaven.

When he had finished praying, he dismissed his bodyguards with a curt wave of his hand and walked slowly and alone through the cool arches of the mosque, circling and circling again the fountain and pool.

This was always comforting when he was troubled and confused. The mosque had been there for several hundred years before the French had come, and would be there several hundred years after the French were gone. Thinking about that helped him put things into perspective. And often it reminded him of the quatrain of Haji Abdu Yezdi: ‘‘Cease, atom of a moment’s span, to hold thyself an all in all. The world is old, and thou art young.’’

He missed Hassan el Moulay, the late pasha of Ksar es Souk, both personally and in the discharge of the duties Allah the All-Wise had placed on him.