A Private Little War(105)

Southbend was the smaller of the two towns. Dirty flags snapped from the walls. The land around it was flat, gray-black, and ugly, denuded of trees by whatever mysterious industry went on within. Gouts of smoke rose from inside the walls. Through the spotting scope, it masked all but the most massive details, but when the wind blew just right, Carter swore he could see tarps, camouflage netting. He wondered if it was his imagination. Could be thatch. Could be someone’s washing. Could be nothing at all. Every pilot reported the same thing when flying just a little closer than they were supposed to. Everyone thought the same thing.

He thought about how much difference 250 pounds of modern high explosives would make if dropped in just the right place. Trouble was, he didn’t know which place was the right one.

He circled lower. Tommy Hill and Ernie were back along the river, trolling for action. He thought again about just buzzing the city, dropping indiscriminately, praying for fool’s luck—black smoke, secondaries, tongues of fueled flame. Lower. Closing his eyes, he imagined the perfect strike: the bloom of black and orange, action-movie style. Bodies and debris blown into the air. The whuff of tortured air.

His hands shook. In the hours since he’d talked with Eddie, the whole thing had begun to feel unreal. How could he die? He was the hero of this story—its main and most lovable character. He had guns. He had bombs. He had a fucking airplane. And some smelly, simple, backward abo monkey with a rock or a stick was going to kill him? No. That wasn’t going to happen. Eddie had been wrong. Carter stroked the red button of the bomb release taped onto the control stick with his thumb, running it over the smooth plastic, the simple plunger mechanism.

He rolled out then, climbed for the thin, high scratchings of the clouds, and flew awhile, sitting on his hands with the stick between his knees. Soon enough, he figured. And if not, he and Fenn would mutiny, lash Ted to a pole, raise their own air force, and blow the shit out of everything.





By the time Carter’s two/three turned for home, around midday, Connelly’s first and second companies were on the march back from the bridge. The planes passed over them on approach and waggled their wings in greeting. Connelly’s 3rd remained in place, securing Mutter’s Ridge from any reinforcement, and the fourth had been detailed as manual labor, off-loading the supply drop that’d come in on huge parachute skids while the flight was out. Carter saw them as he came drifting down to land, packing a supply train of ponies and wagons that were chewing up the dirt of C strip.

Postflight check was smooth. Vic was flagging planes straight into the longhouse, and she looked beautiful, standing there in pilot’s leathers over her coveralls, dark hair blowing out behind her in the mean, frigid crosswind that’d kicked up. She gave Carter a thumbs-up as he rolled past her. He smiled and saluted, something swelling in his chest, making him feel large in her regard. Like she’d been waiting just for him.

Ted’s debriefing was the quickest yet, done in passing as Carter jogged off the flight line, looking for Fenn and some coffee.

“Spot anything?” he asked, holding Carter by the shoulder and shouting into his ear over the roar of warming engines as the next flight due out taxied into position.

“Nothing,” Carter shouted back.

“Nothing?”

“Smoke at Southbend. Trees, water, rocks. Nothing. Connelly’s first and second are on their way in.”

“How long?”

“Before nightfall. Couple hours maybe.”

“Good. On your way, pilot.”

And that was that. Ted scampered off one way, into the traffic jam of planes coming and planes going, the choking breath of oil smoke and clatter of ammunition boxes. Carter went the other, jogging the length of the longhouse flight line, looking for Fenn, and heading in the direction of the armory.





Ted, still carrying his own terrible freight of bad news, having carried it farther and for longer than anyone else on the field, stumbled as he moved from pilot to pilot and plane to plane. He was exhausted. The bags under his eyes were dark and pouchy. His skin felt alive with something other than him. He hadn’t slept soundly in longer than he could remember because every time he lay down on his narrow cot and closed his eyes, he saw the columns of numbers that Eddie kept shoving at him every time he asked the little rat for help. With a pillow pressed over his face, throat open in a silent, never-voiced howl, he would hear the recordings of conversations with Eddie’s friends in the Flyboy legal department that Eddie had so kindly offered him—the explanations as cold and sad and matter-of-fact as bullets. He would lie back and try to think of his perfect, clean, white place, imagining the sloping walls and gentle curves and the taste of the sterile, recycled air as his chest rattled with mud; but, in the dark, he would feel some nameless and dark thing reaching for him, slipping through the night, seeking him out. It had fingers, this thing. Arms. And it wanted him badly. In it—in his cold imagining of it—this black monster possessed some combination of comprehension and malice. It brought an understanding that had eluded him for two years, but also some dreadful knowledge.