9
////// Ben Mallory’s P-40E
Off the east coast of Saa-lon
April 9, 1944
“Flashy Leader, Flashy Leader, this is Flashy Two. Over.” Amid the noise of the big Allison V-1710 engine, Colonel Ben Mallory wouldn’t have recognized the Dutch pilot’s voice over the SCR-284 radio, accent or not, without his flight number. But Lieutenant Conrad Diebel was Two, so he knew who was calling. He held the Squeeze to Talk switch on the throttle knob.
“This is Flashy Leader. Go, Two,” he replied.
“Flashy Leader, I’m having engine trouble . . . again. Over.”
Ben closed his eyes and cursed. “Same problem as before, Two?” he asked.
“Yes.” Even over the noise, Diebel’s single word dripped disgust.
“All right. Try to get your ship back to the strip. If you can’t make it, set her down on the beach north of Trin-con-lee. Over.” He didn’t say what Diebel should do if he couldn’t make the beach. He could bail out over land if he had to, but nobody would be nuts enough to do it over water. The 3rd Pursuit Squadron of the Allied Army Air Corps had taken flasher fish as their mascot, even painting the scary fish on the noses of their precious few P-40Es, resulting in a nostalgic similarity to the Flying Tigers of the AVG on another world. But the ferocious nature of real flashies, such as teemed in the shallows around Saa-lon, prevented any notion of winding up in the water alive.
“Wilco, Flashy Leader,” Diebel said. “Flashy Two, out.”
Ben smoldered. Diebel was a strange duck, but a damn good pilot. He needed him and his plane for this strike—not to mention operations to come—but the 3rd Pursuit had been out on a limb for weeks now, and still had no spare parts or real mechanics. They were getting desperately low on fuel and ordnance too. The fuel had always been a problem, but they were down to the nastiest dregs, and most of Mallory’s nine P-40s were down because of it. Now Diebel’s ship was down for the count, and that left Ben with a total of three airworthy planes. Soupy’s ship had remained behind to guard against Grik zeppelins, but that left Ben’s strike with only his and Shirley’s planes.
He took a deep breath. Well. We’ve done our best. The 3rd had been tasked with slaughtering Grik ships coming to Kurokawa’s aid at Madras, and to the best of his knowledge, nothing had gotten through in daylight except a few of the giant ironclads that his squadron had been specifically ordered to avoid. It wasn’t believed he had anything that would hurt them—yet—and it was much preferred that nothing his advanced fighters attacked should survive to report to the enemy.
But this convoy, spotted by PatWing 4, and swift feluccas posted as pickets, was a big one, and that could mean bad news for General Alden. It had to be stopped. Nancys had pounded it for two days, but Ben was short of Nancys too, and the weary planes he had left at Trin-con-lee were just as liable to fall out of the sky as his sick P-40s. Still, judging by the CW chatter he was picking up, the Nancys were doing a number on the wooden “Indiamen” transports of the enemy, with their simple incendiaries, although two had been shot down by what sounded like an improved shotgun-mortar device like they’d first seen in combat for Ceylon, and then behind protected ports on the battleships in the fighting for India. The simple weapons were short-ranged and had been fixed before, but now it appeared the enemy had developed some way of quickly aiming them.
Columns of smoke in the hazy distance marked the position of his targets, and a sudden meteor of fire indicated the “new” enemy weapons had struck yet another of the attacking two-seat floatplanes. Ben gritted his teeth. “Cat Lead, Cat Lead, this is Flashy Leader,” he said. The Nancys’ backseat OCs, or observer/copilot/wireless operators, could hear him, but could only transmit in Morse. The Allies had TBS (Talk between Ship) sets now, but they were too big for the planes. “Concentrate on the wooden ships!” A few moments later, he pieced together the CW response: WE DO X THEM HAVE MOST PLANE KILLING GUNS X THEY IS SIX ARMORED CRUISERS FOR YOU X WE DO OUR JOB XXX.
Ben grunted. Implied was “We’ll do our job; you do yours.” But now he had only two planes to destroy six tough targets. “Acknowledge, Cat Lead,” he said. “Just try to stay out of range of the damn things! Out!” He looked at the P-40 off his port wing. “Did you get that, Flashy Three?”
“I hear,” came Shirley’s squeaky reply. Shirley was from B’mbaado, and her real name was Niaa-Saa. She was a tiny little thing and had to sit on two parachutes just to see through her gun sight, and had to have extensions attached to her rudder pedals so she could reach them, but of all his Lemurian P-40 pilots, only Soupy was maybe just a little better. She was already better than Ben had been when he shipped out for Java on the old Langley a long time ago and a world away.
“Then try to conserve ammo as best you can—and don’t get too close!”
They approached the convoy out of the setting sun, and the panorama that gradually resolved itself was stunning. It had been a big convoy this time, and it stretched southward almost as far as he could see. Happily, most of the ships were marked by towers of gray smoke that added to the haze, but quite a few were still underway in little defensive clumps of three to six. A few Nancys still wheeled overhead, occasionally swooping to drop incendiary bombs, but most had already turned back for Trin-con-lee to refuel and rearm. They’d be lucky to get back in time for a final strike before the sun went down. With a sinking feeling, Ben knew there was no way they could stop the entire convoy. They’d get most of it, they already had, but some would get through this time. He shook his head. It couldn’t be helped. His little “stepchild” air force had too few planes and pilots, and even if they’d already geared up to make some really neat flammable sap (or something) incendiaries for the Nancys locally, they were still short of gas, and the plucky little planes could only carry so much ordnance per sortie—and each sortie racked up time on overused engines and airframes. It was a harsh, unforgiving equation, and this time the Grik had simply sent more ships than they could kill.
With a sick feeling, he had to consider breaking off. Chances were, no matter how much damage they did, the two modern planes would be seen this time—and reported. But could the Grik report what they’d seen well enough that Kurokawa would understand the significance? Even if they did, would only two planes alarm him enough to alter or escalate whatever plans he might have? Maybe. The final question became was “maybe” big enough? Those armored, steam-powered cruisers had proven extremely vulnerable from the air, but they could match the Allied steam frigates, or DDs in a straight-up fight, despite the Allies’ better gunnery and new fire control. He wished he had a better idea of the big plan to retake Madras so he could better evaluate the consequences of exposing his P-40s now—but he did know his planes would be a big part of that effort, and his orders to remain undiscovered implied that surprise would be a key element of the plan.
“Damn it!” he said aloud. He and Shirley would still be invisible in the sun, but he could see a couple of the cruisers now; steamers as long as Walker, with masts and sails. They were slow and beamy, but mounted heavy guns—and their ironclad hulls sported what looked like a formidable ram at the bow. They could be very bad news for his friends. But they were vulnerable from the air. . . .
“Shirley,” he said at last, “we’ve got to let them go. We can’t get them all, and they’ll see us.”
“But Col-nol! They right there! I get at least three!”
“You can’t know that. Hell, your guns might jam and you might not get any. We can’t risk it. Orders.”
“But . . .”
“Lieutenant Niaa-Saa, we’re breaking off to prevent observation of these aircraft,” he said harshly. “That’s an order from me. Over and out! Cat Lead, sorry to leave the party. Get as many as you can, but don’t be heroes. We’ll have new planes soon, and we need people who can fly ’em! Flashy Leader out.”
The flight back to the coast of Saa-lon was longer than Ben remembered. He loved his P-40s, but not for the first time now, he cursed the day he’d ever heard of them, lying in crates aboard the beached Santa Catalina in a Tjilatjap swamp. What good were they if he couldn’t use them? Adar had been right all along when he implied they’d be “hangar queens,” and the effort it took to get them would be better spent building their own planes. His mood darkened further when they crossed the coast and he saw Conrad Diebel’s plane standing on its nose on the sandy beach north of Trin-con-lee. Conrad waved at them as they passed, so they knew the Dutch flier was okay, but the plane would have a ruined prop, at least. He’d have to send palkas down to tow the ship all the way through the cruddy ex-Grik city and out to the grass strip they operated from. Shit.
He and Shirley lined up on the strip, and, with canopies open and gear and flaps down, their engines grumbled and blatted as they throttled back to land. Ben felt the jolt of touchdown, and heard the rumble of the landing gear as he quickly lost speed. Almost at a stop, he goosed the engine and worked the pedals to bring the nose around and head toward the revetments they’d built to protect the planes in case the Grik ever surprised them with a zeppelin raid. In front of his own revetment, he spun the plane around, facing away from it, then cut the engine. Even as the prop wound down, he stood in the cockpit, yanked his leather helmet and goggles off his head, and practically flung them at his approaching ground crew in frustration. Suddenly, he blinked when he saw who stooped to pick them up.
“Commander Greg Garrett?” he exclaimed, amazed. There’d been no warning that the man and his little task force (TFG-2) had arrived, only that he was on the way.
Garrett held out his arms and looked at himself. “Yep,” he said in mock astonishment. “I guess it is me! Good to see you too, Colonel.”
Ben hopped down and shook the man’s hand. “Boy, are you a sight for sore eyes! We’re down to exactly two ships, and little more than spitballs to throw at the Grik. I sure hope you brought some stuff along.”
Greg nodded. “A little. We escorted a couple of freighters in with fuel, a few crated Nancys, and some of the ground crew kids from Kaufman Field. They brought you some ammo, and the most critical spares you asked for—a few weeks ago.” He gestured vaguely east in the dwindling light. “Good thing we missed that swarm of ships you were after! We must’ve just squeaked past.”
Ben frowned. “You’d have done more damage to ’em than I could, and as for the list, I need ten times that now.”
Greg nodded. “Sorry. Things are a mess. Sergeant Dixon’s en route to Andaman with every little thing your heart could desire, but it’ll still take a while to reach you.”
Ben shrugged. “Hey, I’m one to bitch. I’ve been on my own hook longer than I hoped, but my jam’s not a patch to yours! Hell, do you even know where you’re going?”
“Not really.” Greg chuckled. “I’ve been admonished to ‘go west, young man!’ and that’s about it.”
“No shit?”
Greg laughed. “My instructions are a little more specific than that! I’m sorry to miss the show brewing here, but I’ve got an exciting mission, my pick of a crew, a sound DE consort—and my old Donaghey, of course! What more could I ask?”
“A lot,” Ben grumbled, shrugging out of his parachute and looking around. “Hey, Soupy!”
“Sur?”
“Take this, wilya? You’re in charge—of whatever there is to be in charge of. Commander Garrett and I are going down to Trin-con-lee to arrange transport for some supplies he brought us—and a certain stranded Dutchman.” He looked at Greg. “When do you sail?”
“Hopefully, the day after tomorrow.”
“Good,” Ben grinned. “That means you don’t have to wake up early! You got anything to drink on that tub of yours?”
“Why, Colonel! You know ‘spirits other than medicinal or sufficient to decontaminate water’ are against regulations on Navy ships!”
“That’s okay, the Navy ’Cats and the guys from PatWing Six have raised a joint like the Busted Screw in town. The seep’s no good, but the beer’s drinkable.” He looked back at Soupy. “You know where to find me, but I may not be back tonight. Commander Garrett and I are old friends, and we’ve got a lot of woes to compare!”