第1章 The Last Run

The B-24 Liberator shuddered as flak detonated just forty feet off the port wing. Lieutenant James Callahan gripped the bombing seat handles until his knuckles went white, then forced his fingers to relax. Shake, and you miss. Miss, and eight men die. He had learned that lesson on the run over Ploesti six months ago, and he would carry it to the grave. The mission had been classified top secret, which in practical terms meant that none of them — not Callahan, not his crew, not even most of the intelligence officers back at base — knew exactly what they were dropping on. The briefing had been cursory: a Japanese supply depot on a small island in the central Pacific, code-named Iwo-koa, which had been receiving unusual quantities of fuel and ammunition. The target was to be saturated with high explosives and napalm, and then they were to return to their base on Kwajalein Atoll before the Japanese could mount any kind of effective response. Simple enough. Routine, even, for a crew that had flown twenty-three combat missions together. But something about the target had felt wrong to Callahan from the start. The intelligence reports had been contradictory, the photographs grainy and unclear, and the island itself seemed to disappear from radar in ways that no legitimate military installation should. When he had asked his squadron commander about it, the man had simply smiled that tight, practiced smile and said, "Trust the intel, Lieutenant. Your job is to drop the bombs and come home. Everything else is classified." Now, as he looked down at the island through the glass nose of his bomber, Callahan wondered what "everything else" really meant. The flak was heavier than it should have been for a supposedly stripped garrison. The anti-aircraft batteries seemed to be positioned with a precision that suggested they knew exactly where the bomber stream would appear. And the smoke rising from the target area was black and thick, smelling of something that was not quite fuel and not quite explosives. "Contact! Flak at two o'clock, high!" his gunner called from the nose turret. "Copy. Hold steady, boys," Callahan said into the interphone. "Ten seconds to the target." The radio operator's voice crackled back, tight with adrenaline. "LZ-47, LZ-47, this is Callahan. We are in on the run. Flak heavy around the target. No visual yet. Repeat, no visual on the target." "Callahan, maintain course and altitude. The boys on the island need this drop. Over." Callahan looked out the glass nose. Below, through gaps in the smoke and cloud, he could see the palm-fringed shoreline of an island he had never heard named. Intelligence had called it Iwo-koa — a small Japanese holding position three hundred miles east of Truk, supposedly stripped to garrison strength. The payload in his belly told a different story: high explosives, incendiaries, and enough ammunition to make anyone on that beach regret their birth. "Target in sight! Two miles!" the bombardier shouted from his blister beneath the aircraft. "Brace for impact!" Callahan yelled, and the world narrowed to the instrument panel and the trembling needle that would tell him when to let go. The B-24 dropped through a wall of black smoke. The flak was everywhere now — bursts of orange and gray popping along the fuselage like angry hornets. One round struck the starboard engine, and the radial coughed, sputtered, then died with a sound like tearing canvas. "Engine two is out!" the flight engineer screamed. "I see it! Compensating with three and four!" Callahan wrestled the controls. The Liberators were not known for their agility, but this one was still flying, still alive, and he intended to keep it that way. "Breaking away! Breaking away!" the radio operator called. Callahan pulled back on the yoke and banked hard to port, putting the smoking engine away from the threat. Behind them, the other six aircraft in their squadron formation peeled off in varying degrees of chaos. Two were already trailing smoke. One was simply gone — a fireball that bloomed and then vanished into the ocean. "Maintain formation! Stay tight!" Callahan ordered, but he knew the formation was broken. It was always broken after the first pass over defended territory. They climbed hard, the remaining three engines screaming, and for a moment Callahan allowed himself to believe they had made it. The anti-aircraft fire was lighter now, further ashore. The island was shrinking beneath them, a green jewel wreathed in black smoke. Then the radar operator's voice came over the intercom, pale and trembling. "Contact! Radar contact! Two o'clock high! Closing fast!" Callahan looked. Through a break in the clouds, he saw them — zero fighters, twin-engine, silver bellies catching the sun. They were already in attack position, diving from five thousand feet. "Fighters! Fighter attack! Dive! Dive!" The B-24 shuddered as Callahan pushed the nose over. The g-force pressed him into the seat. The zero fighters pulled up into a rolling turn, guns blazing. Tracer rounds stitched lines of fire across the sky, some passing so close Callahan could see the pilots helmets. The tail gunner opened up, his .50 cal barking in a steady rhythm. For a moment, it seemed like he might get a kill — a zero spun away from the formation, trailing smoke. But then another one dove past the B-24 left wing, and Callahan saw the muzzle flash from its belly guns. Something exploded in the right wing. The aircraft lurched violently, and Callahan fought the yoke to keep it level. Fuel was spraying from a ruptured tank, igniting in a long orange tongue that licked along the wing trailing edge. "Mayday! Mayday! We are hit! Engine three is on fire! We are going down!" The radio operator's voice was already gone — replaced by static and the sound of wind rushing through a ruptured fuselage. Callahan looked back through the cabin. Through the open door where the radio room had been, he could see the ocean below, endless and blue and terrifyingly close. "Abandon ship! Abandon ship!" he shouted into the interphone, though he knew most of them could not hear him over the engines scream and the wind. The B-24 was dying. It was dying fast. Callahan could feel it in the way the aircraft trembled, in the way the remaining engines were working harder and harder to keep the massive bomber aloft. He had maybe ninety seconds before the thing went into the water, and he needed to be out of it before then. He unbuckled and crawled toward the emergency hatch, his body moving on instinct, every drill from every training base flashing through his mind. Get to the hatch. Pop the latch. Jump. Pull the cord. Swim away from the parachute. Wait for rescue. The world ended in a roar of fire and metal, and then there was only water, and cold, and darkness.