The Eleventh Man Page 7

  Warily the base commander took another look at Ben. "That's a shame, I'm sure. What about the article you said you'd do on Eisman?"

  "His turn is coming. Will that be all, sir?"

  The flight board still was not doing Cass or him any favors. Chalked slots swarmed with on-time departures and arrivals across the entire vast trellis of routes into and out of East Base, every B-17 and P-39 and all the birds of the air evidently having enjoyed a day of fine weather for flying, with the lonely exception of squadron WASP 1 still sitting in murderous fog in Seattle. Swearing to himself, Ben banged out of the Operations building. He hit the communications section next, to send off the piece on Vic, remembering to threaten the wire clerk with certain demotion and possible dismemberment if he didn't keep a civil tongue toward Jones.

  Back out in the dusk breeze where the runway yawned empty, he stood there so sick with the mix of worry and love he felt incapacitated. Nothing prepared a person for this. The way he and Cass had fallen for each other was as unlikely as a collision of meteors. But since it had happened, as hard to sort out, too. The hunger of love. There was no limit to it. Finally he decided there was nothing to be done but call it a day until further word on her flight. His body agonized that there was little hope now of seeing her tonight, even if her squadron lifted off before sunset in Seattle; his brain tried to fight down the wave of desire and encourage the fog to hold so Cass would bunk there for the night instead of flying blind into murk and mountains.

  Jake Eisman wasn't bunked in anywhere, he could count on that. Halfway up the whitewashed walkway to the Officers' Club, Ben caught the sound of his penetrating baritone—in their playing days, Jake was restricted to whispers in the huddle lest he be heard the length of the football field—in the mob of song emanating from within; the O Club always tuned up drastically when a planeload of pilots returned from the Alaska run. Ben never ceased to marvel at how fertile the war was for songs. He intended to write about this someday, just for the havoc to be created at Tepee Weepy by lyrics such as Jake was enwrapped in at the moment:

  Oh, the Russians are drinking in Fairbanks,

  While we fly through snow, ice, and shit.

  When we land they shout out, "Thanks, Yanks!

  Now watch us bomb Hitler,

  And Himmler,

  And Fritzie,

  And Mitzi,

  While you fly through snow, ice, and shit!"

  Central as a vat in the bibulous bunch ganged around the piano and hoisting another drink at the end of each chorus, Jake jerked his head toward the bar as soon as he spotted Ben. They hadn't seen each other for a week and the ATC's largest and possibly most boisterous pilot always came back from the far north with more Alaska tales than Robert Service. Tonight Ben was more than ready to let the conversation flow from that direction. Ordering a beer for himself and another as reinforcement for Jake, he drifted to their usual corner table while the bass-and-baritone crowd around the piano roared through a final chorus like sea lions.

  Tense as he was about Cass, he didn't manage to have the best face on things when Jake showed up at the table. Jake plainly had been here indulging in beer and song long enough to be justifiably somewhat askew. His dark hair flopped to one side—on him it looked good—and his tie was loosened. His breast pocket nametag was a radical number of degrees off angle; a hand-lettered last name only on everyone else, his as ever notified the world in full: LT. JACOB EISMAN.

  "What's eating you, scribe?" The big man roughed Ben's shoulder with a mitt of a hand as he went around to a facing chair. "A three-day leave don't agree with you? Send the next one my way, and you can freeze your ass over the Yukon while I party."

  "Why would they hand me an airplane when they barely trust me with a pencil?" Ben roused himself and got busy deflecting the topic of his leave. "No substitutions allowed anyway, you ought to know that. Grandpa Grady himself told me within this very hour you are the pride of the ATC—"

  "Only because I slipped him tickets on the fifty-yard line for the Homecoming game."

  "—so there you go, who'll mush the flying dogsleds north if not you? The serum must reach Nome, Nanook."

  Jake snorted. "Alaska runs on vodka these days, ain't you heard?"

  "War is heck," said Ben, cracking a smile in spite of himself.

  "I'll clink to that." Jake tapped Ben's beer bottle with his own, drained what he had left, and reached for the next bottle. "Been meaning to ask you, Ben friend. If I'm so all-fired popular, when do I get my moment of fame again?"

  That particular question had more behind it than Ben wanted to deal with. Juggling the Supreme Team pieces into some kind of monthly sequence was always tricky, even without what had happened to Vic and what waited in the file after his. Now this. He said shortly, "Dex is next. No cutting in line."

  Jake leaned in, covering the table like a cloud but grinning as he came. "Where is he, Ben? C'mon. Where's the dexterous one putting in his war?"

  "Goddamnit, Ice, will you lay off that? I still can't tell you. They'd have me cleaning latrines from here to eternity if I did." And you wouldn't like knowing.

  "That rich sneak," Jake was saying appreciatively. "He's in something like the OSS, isn't he. Greased his way in there with the other blue-blood daredevils. The glamorous war, that'd be his. Parachuting into Krautland in the dark of the moon with a knife between his teeth. That it?"

  "Have another beer, Jake."

  With lazy grace Jake signaled to the bar for another round apiece. "Top secret, huh? Tell Dex to bag a few of the bastards for me."

  Just then the hubbub in the club went up several more notches as yet another flock of pilots came rollicking in. Several of them were shorter guys, fighter plane jockeys who looked even more compact beside the brawn of the bomber pilots, and their particular reason for celebration, Ben could overhear, was that they hadn't had to bounce through the air to the cold of Alaska, only Alberta. Edmonton was the first hop for P-39s, with their limited fuel tanks, and Canadian reserve pilots in need of flying time sometimes ferried the planes onward up the long chain of bush-country airfields to Fairbanks. These flyboys swarming the bar were home from an easy day's work before dark. Glazed, Ben stared past them out the club's picture window to where the defining lines of evening were making the buttes across Great Falls stand out like oldest earthen fortresses. Sundown would reach Seattle in less than an hour, on top of fog. Consumed with fret about Cass, he tried not to hate the lucky fighter pilots elbowing to the bar.

  During this there had been a distinct lack of words from across the table, and he realized Jake had been studying him critically. A different kind of grin sneaked onto Jake now. "Benjamin, you've been holding out on me another way. But I found out about it, ho de ho. Can't fool Yukon Jake."

  Ben's insides lurched. He and Cass had tried to be as hard to spot as chameleons; how did they stand out all the way to Alaska? "You don't want to believe everything you—"

  Impatiently Jake wiped that away with a paw: "I have it on good authority. Shame on you, earning yourself a purple one in your spare time over there in the paradise of the Pacific. What are you, some kind of incognito hero?"

  "You're too swift for me," Ben exhaled in some relief, although Tepee Weepy did not want it made known that its supposedly unarmed correspondent had a combat exploit and a scar to show for it. "Where did you pick that up?"

  "Carlo the Friesian, who else." Jake sat back, folding his fire-log arms in satisfaction. "Probably comes as a surprise to arty-farty ends, but tackles can write and fullbacks can read. Letter from Carl the other day says you and him got a New Guinea welcome from the Japs and you came out of it with the wound, the Purple Heart, the commendation, the whole schmear. How come you didn't tell me about it?"

  Ben started to hide behind a swig of his beer, but was afraid it would come right back up. "It was just a graze." It was everything beyond that for the infantryman an arm's length away from him and Friessen. And the Jap. The memory churned in him. The grotesque hand-
to-hand struggle on that jungle trail. His three weeks of impatient mending on the hospital ship. "Don't look at me like that, Ice. I'd have told you about it sooner or later." Maybe. "It's not something I'm particularly proud of. Correspondents are supposed to stay out of the way of metal objects flying through the air."

  "That your next piece?" Jake pressed. "After Dex? Hell, I'll give up my spot to read about it. Carl said it was pretty hairy."

  Ben made a zipper motion across his lips, hoping it would end this.

  Jake gave a huge sigh of exasperation. "Then I might as well give you a bad time about something else while I'm at it. I read in the newsypaper you went calling on Grady's Ladies. So tell me, how's the hunting there?"

  Minimum honesty sounded innocent enough here. "Too many of them are married."

  "That's a sonofabitching shame, you know that?" Jake let out over the increased noise, the piano gang lustily singing a filthy tribute to Daisy in the grass. Ben squirmed and wished they would work their way to something that did not rhyme with Cass and the rest.

  "I mean, can you imagine a marriage like that?" Jake looked askance at the very idea. "The old lady gets up in the morning, puts on her flying suit and straps on her .45 and goes off to war. Wow."

  "Jake, something like that happens these days more than you might think." In the Excelsior Hotel some mornings, for instance.

  "I know you," Jake bridged right over that, pointing the neck of a bottle at him, "you were too busy scribbling things down to sniff out the needy bachelor girls for us needy bachelors. Myself, I never get a crack at our sisters in arms. I fly out, they fly in, round and round we go."

  Good thing, too. That's all I'd need next after Jones, you linking up with that she-wolf blonde in Cass's flight. "Airships that pass," Ben philosophized hopefully.

  "Besides, I don't need any of your hotshot WASPs," Jake stated with startling primness. Then leered goofily. "I've got something of my own going. Tell you about her sometime." Ben was surprised. It wasn't like Jake to be mysterious about any female conquest.

  "You made them sound pretty good, you know." This time Jake spoke soberly, and Ben went back on guard. "Like maybe they could handle the Alaska run, Ben buddy?"

  "All I say in the piece was some of them, all right, a bunch of them have as much flying time as any of you and if they were handed a map could quite possibly find their way to Fairbanks. But I didn't mean—"

  "I'm for it," Jake broke in. "Let the WASPs fly that run and send me after Germans. Sooner the better."

  Ben sat up. "Jake, serious a minute. Bombers over Germany get the guts shot out of them—when I was at St. Eval doing the piece on Moxie I saw them land with holes the size of boxcar doors. You really want in on that?"

  "If that's what it takes, hell yes. I don't like what Hitler has in mind for me if the crazy little dipshit wins the war."

  "Plenty of those bomber pilots end up bailing out over occupied territory," Ben said slowly. "POW camps are no picnic." His throat was tight as he tried to find a right way to say it. "What I hear is that the first thing they do is check dog tags to sort people out. No telling what they'd do to you, Ice."

  "You think that's not on my mind?" Jake replied in the quietest tone he was capable of. "But I figure it this way," the voice took on a calculating timbre, "those ack-ack assholes have to single me out from a lot of guys dropping bombs on them, first."

  Goddamn it, don't count on that. Half in despair, Ben stood ready to point out that the law of averages had not been any suit of armor for certain Supreme Team members so far, but Jake knew as much about that as he did, almost. It was always a mistake to see the workhorse fullback known as the Iceman, the sportswriters' consensus pick for All-American at that position in hallowed '41, as mainly a physical specimen. Jake stood 6'3" in stocking feet but the upper several inches were brain. The chips in his grammar from smelter work were deliberately maintained, Ben understood; in Black Eagle, the melting pot under the smokestack, someone like him had to make his words register on people high, low, or in between, as needed. Drinking with Jake was treacherous, but in any other human endeavor Ben would have trusted him with his life. Seven years they had been friends, since the high school all-star game that put them together on a team for the first time. Then hundreds of TSU football practices, banter, bull sessions, a long winning streak of camaraderie. Joshing arguments were nothing new between them; this had turned into something far beyond that. Ben felt he had to pierce the matter:

  "That's why you wanted me to hurry up and do the piece on you, isn't it. So you could wave it at somebody who might have some influence and say, 'Hey, I'm a famous guy, wouldn't it be great to have me over there bombing the balls off the Germans?'"

  "Couldn't hurt, could it?" Jake responded defiantly. Then just as quickly looked sheepish. "Sorry I asked. Sonofabitching war, I don't know what gets into a guy." He set about working himself toward normal with a boost of beer. "I mean it, though, about getting over there somehow. Ben? I'm not saying you got any pull, because if you did, you'd be up, up, and away like the rest of us, wouldn't you. But if you ever stumble across any, remember your poor deserving teammate, okay?" The old grin came back. "Who's gonna look out for me if not you? What's that poem"—Jake pronounced it pome—"'O Captain! My Captain!'"

  Relieved, Ben responded in the same vein: "You're looking for pull from someone who took a demotion from civilian life, are you? Good thinking, Ice. Didn't I help you crib your way through the logic course any better than—"

  Jake was holding up a hand for silence. He cocked an ear at the preliminary commotion from the piano. "It's bad luck not to sing this one. Everybody in." Swinging his beer bottle to the beat, Jake joined in mightily to the swelling roar of music that filled the building:

  Bought the farm, bought the farm!

  Crashing the plane leads to harm!

  There was blood on the cockpit,

  and blood on the ground.

  Blood on the cowling,

  and blood all around.

  Pity the pilot,

  all bloody with gore,

  For he won't be flying

  That airplane no more.

  After the last chorus tailed off into drinking, Jake looked across at Ben. "You're not singing these days?"

  "Frog in my throat."

  "You really are off your feed. C'mon, Ben, it's just a song. Lets off the steam."

  "I know what it lets off, for Christ's sake." He shoved back from the table and popped to his feet. "Just remembered, I need to check something in Ops. A VIP flight I'm supposed to keep tabs on in case there's any brass worth interviewing. Be right back."

  He sprinted to the Operations building, slowing only as he walked into the room where the flight board covered one wall, hoping the clamor of his heart was not loud enough for the night Operations staff to hear. As ever, he whipped out his pad and stood there jotting random flight information, scanning the entire board like a good working reporter, but the chalked entry for WASP 1 midway down instantly had told him what he needed to know. Since meeting Cass he had never imagined looking forward to a bed without her in it, but the three white letters—RON—up there for blessed REMAINING OVERNIGHT did the job.

  Back at the Officers' Club, he veered to the bar. "Fill the tray," he told the barman.

  The bartender crowded beer bottles onto the round serving tray until there were ten or a dozen, Ben didn't bother to count. He picked it up and steered toward the table.

  Jake surveyed the forest of bottles on the tray. "What's all this?"

  "Anesthesia. I have something to tell you about Vic."

  4

  "I interrupted the greatest movie never made, didn't I," Cass's murmur came from the region of the hard-used pillow.

  "Immortality will just have to wait," Ben's came from where his head blissfully rested on her.

  "How many t's in that?"

  "You are a merciless woman." Still hazed over with the spell of their lovemaking, he lay clinging to her in the
wreckage of the sheets, every part of the two of them bare except for wrist-watches—they hadn't taken the time to unstrap those. Hers, the type with luminous numerals that was issued to pilots, showed she had slipped into the room at the Excelsior merely twenty minutes ago. Before he could even get up from the typing table to greet her she'd slid the bolt home on the door and turned to him saying, "I guess we have some catching up to do." In the next breath they were at each other, kissing every direction, and here in the aftermath the creaky room with its flung clothing and kicked-off bedcovers looked like the muss after a spirited rummage sale; the one spot their mess hadn't touched was the portable typewriter with the page of script Ben had been pecking away at, and he couldn't help knowing half of that was crossed out untidily as usual.

  "Bulletin for you." She was stroking the back of his head with a motion tender and tense at the same time. "This'll have to be another short night. I fly out again at 0600."

  "Why didn't you say so? I'd have moved the bed closer to the door."

  She chuckled and swatted him behind the ear. "Fool."

  "Probably."

  Mustering strength enough to lift himself onto one elbow, he gazed down at this woman he should not be with as if committing her every feature to memory. The attentive cheeky face that a few years back could have been of the calendar kind but now could serve on a recruiting poster; Cass was dramatically weather-tanned, a trace whiter around the eyes where the goggles masked her while flying. Dark brown hair naturally wavy, which she kept authoritatively short off her shoulders; she'd told him she cut it herself with a razor blade, there wasn't ever time to command a squadron and visit a beauty shop both. The invitation of her snug peach-perfect breasts, and the tomboy thrift of her body on down. Already he was hungry for her again, in a way beyond what they had just been doing in bed. Fresh from the night before, when his imagination had given her up for lost, the ache with her name on it cut through to his bones. Life without Cass? Last night had shown that wasn't life, it was barely existence. What kind of a passion pit was the dark of the mind, where he had struggled every way he knew and still ended up so far gone on this woman? And if they catch us at this, we're goners of another kind. Double jeopardy, Cass. The law of averages isn't doing the two of us any favors either.