The Last Heroes (Men at War 1)

Aldwood gave them a detailed tour of the aircraft’s controls and told them what he knew of its flight peculiarities. He didn’t rush through it, but he was finished thirty-five minutes later.

‘‘You want to wait until you’ve been off the ship another night?’’ he asked, finally. ‘‘Or—?’’

‘‘I’m not going to be any better tomorrow,’’ Canidy said.

Ten minutes later, wearing an Army Air Corps leather helmet and goggles, and a Switlick parachute marked PROPERTY USN, Dick Canidy looked out both sides of the cockpit, called ‘‘Clear!’’ and put his hand on the starter switch. It took him a long time to get the engine to even cough, and even when he had it running, it ran roughly and there was a peculiar oily smell he hadn’t smelled before. There was also, barely visible in the propeller blast, a faint grayish smoke coming from the engine, obviously not the blue smoke from a too-rich mixture or the nearly black smoke from an oil leak.

It disappeared shortly after the needles moved off their pegs and started to creep up to the strips of green tape indicating the safe operating zones for pressures and temperatures. He then realized what caused the smoke: preserving oil and greases being burned off what was almost a brand-new engine.

Canidy looked at Aldwood, gestured toward the instrument panel, and made an OK sign. Aldwood nodded and gave him a thumbs-up signal.

Canidy put the microphone to his lips. ‘‘Mingaladon Tower. CAMCO sixteen by the CAMCO hangars. Taxi and takeoff.’’

The control-tower operator came back immediately. A crisp British voice gave him the time, the barometer, the altitude, the winds, and cleared him to the active runway as number one to take off. Canidy released the brake and advanced the throttle. Too much. He had more than a thousand horsepower under his hand. The last time he had flown, he had less power, and in a much heavier aircraft. And the last time he had flown, he thought, had been more than three months ago.

Taxiing the P40-B was difficult. The seat was in a full-down position, putting him low in the cockpit. And the P40-B’s nose was high, so it was difficult to see out. Because he had to taxi by looking to either side of the taxiway, he immediately saw that controlling the plane on the ground by use of the rudder was a skill he would have to acquire by a lot of practice.

He reached the threshold of the runway and stopped. He ran the engine up, checked the dynamos, moved the stick and the rudder pedals through their movement arcs, and then pulled the goggles down over his eyes. He picked up the microphone.

‘‘Mingaladon Tower, CAMCO sixteen rolling,’’ he said, and then advanced the throttle and turned forward, and moved the fuel-mixture lever to the full-rich indent. The plane began to move. He felt himself pressed back against his parachute. The P40-B lifted off its tailwheel without any action on Canidy’s part. The slipstream was screaming past his ears, and he remembered only then that he hadn’t slid the canopy forward to close it. To hell with it.

Very carefully, he ruddered the ship to the center of the runway, and waited for the stick to come alive. And then, all of a sudden, it was. He inched back, and the wheels left the ground. Almost immediately, as he reached his hand out for the wheel-retraction control, his right wing dipped and the ship turned right. He corrected, wondering if that had been torque or gyroscopic procession, and knowing—as he felt the sweat of terror soak his khakis—that he would never forget to be ready for that again.

The wheels came up, more slowly than he would have expected, and unevenly, so that he had to correct for the difference in drag until they were both in their wells. He’d been holding the same elevator position, and the angle of climb increased. But the airspeed was holding.

He thought, pleased: The sonofabitch climbs like a goddamned rocket!

He took it to three thousand feet before pulling the throttle back to cruise. Then he leveled off, trimmed it up, and flew it for a couple of seconds with his hands and feet off the controls. After that he put it into a gentle climb.

He played, swinging the stick from side to side, using the rudder to make it crab through the air, getting the feel of it, until he had reached five thousand feet. He leveled off there and finally slid the canopy closed. The shrill whistle of the windstream was gone, and what filled the cockpit now was the dull roar of the thousand or so horses turning the three-blade prop in front of him.

A little later he pulled the stick back and climbed until he ran out of power and speed, and it stalled. It really shook when it stalled. He fell straight through it, pushed the stick forward, and waited for life to come back into it. The needle on the airspeed indicator pointed to 300, then 320, then 330, and then came to the red line at 340. He pulled back on the stick, and felt his stomach sink to his knees. There was a moment’s sensation of everything turning red, and then that passed, and he was flying level with the needle right on the red line.

‘‘Goddamn!’’ he said aloud, absolutely delighted. He took a quick look at the instrument panel to make sure all the needles were where they were supposed to be, and then put the ship first into a loop and when he came out of the loop a barrel roll, and when he still had all the airspeed he needed after that, into an Immelmann turn.

After what he thought was about ten minutes he reluctantly decided that he’d better get it back on the ground. He had been flying visually, keeping himself aware of the position of the gleaming, gold-covered Shwe Dagon Pagoda. If he could see that, he could easily find the field.

He flew to it, put it under his left wingtip at six thousand feet, and made a gentle circle descent to three thousand feet, for the first time looking at the ground with more than idle interest. He saw Rangoon sprawling to the south of the pagoda, and the river, stretching to the Gulf of Martaban. And he saw the thick, lush, deep green jungle.

It was beautiful. Burma was beautiful. The day was beautiful. The P40-B was beautiful. It was, he was sure, one of the best days of his life.

He called the tower and got permission to land.

The sonofabitch came in a lot faster than he thought it would, even with the flaps and wheels down, and he was much farther down the runway than he intended before he felt the bounce and heard the chirp when the wheels touched. And it took longer than he thought it would to get the tailwheel on the ground, too. The sonofabitch wanted to stand on its nose. He would have to remember that, too.

Bitter trotted over to the plane when he taxied it in line beside the others.

‘‘What happened?’’ Bi

tter asked, concerned. ‘‘We were about to go looking for you.’’

‘‘I was only gone ten, fifteen minutes,’’ Canidy said.

‘‘You were gone an hour and fifteen minutes,’’ Bitter said.

‘‘That’s one hell of an airplane, Eddie,’’ Canidy said.

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