The Fly Boys by T. E. Cruise Read Free Book Online Page A

a quick peck on the lips, swam over to the edge of the pool, and hoisted himself out.
    “Darling?” Erica called out gaily. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”
    “What?” Gold asked absently, standing by the deck chair. His head was full of sketches he was anxious to get down on paper.
     “Oh, I’m sorry, honey,” he added quickly, focusing on her. “I love you,” he called out.
    “You’re sweet,” Erica observed. “You also happen to be bare-assed naked.”
    Gold looked down at himself. “Oops!”
    Grinning foolishly, he grabbed his tangled robe and fumbled into it. Once he was decent he padded barefoot back toward the
     house. There was a drafting table in his study. The more he thought about the new wing design, the more convinced he became
     that it just might work.

CHAPTER 3
----
    (One)
    Santa Belle Airfield
    Solomon Islands
    22 October 1943
    Lieutenant Steven Gold smoked his first cigarette of the day slowly, meditatively. It was just a little after dawn. Steve
     was in his tent, freshly washed and shaved and dressed in a fresh set of khakis.
    The insects were setting up an unnerving metallic racket in the high grass beyond the base perimeter. The occasional screech
     of a jungle bird sounded like somebody being tortured. The tent’s vent flaps were open, but no breeze was stirring. Steve’s
     cigarette smoke rose straight up through the humid air to collect in a miniature fog against the ridgepole and green canvas.
     He could feel the temperature rising. His khakis wouldn’t be fresh for long.
    The day had started out badly an hour earlier, when some goddamned bug had bitten him on the ankle, shocking him out of a
     sound sleep. He’d rubbed some spit onto the swelling bite as he swore loudly and freely. There was no one around to disturb.
     The pilot who’d had the tent’s other cot had been shipped out with two broken legs after he’d cracked up his airplane.
    Steve was sorry the guy had been hurt, but didn’t particularly miss him. He didn’t mind being alone. He’d been here six weeks,
     but he hadn’t yet made any new buddies, although it had been great to renew his friendship with his squadron commander, Major
     Sam “Cappy” Fitzpatrick.
    What Steve did mind was the boredom of the daily routine on this sweltering hunk of volcanic rock in the middle of the Pacific.
     Santa Belle was a Marine-held island, which meant that the Marine VMF fighter squadrons got to hog all the action, while the
     single Army Air squadron on the base had to be content with practicing takeoffs and landings in its shiny new P-47 Thunderbolts.
    Steve liked flying his Jug, although he’d reserve final judgment on the airplane until he’d taken it into combat.
If
he ever got to see combat again. He was thinking he’d made the wrong decision when he’d agreed to join this so-called elite
     fighter squadron. If he was going to be kept out of the fighting, he might as well have gotten himself reassigned to Henderson
     back on Guadalcanal, where life was at least reasonably comfortable. On Santa Belle he had only the bugs and the stinking
     hot climate to distract him from his boredom.
    The Marines had endured a long, bloody struggle to wrestle away this pesthole of an island from the Japanese. As soon as the
     shooting had slowed, the Seabees had arrived to clear away the rusting wreckage of enemy fighters and bombers, and repair
     the ruined runways. The Seabees barely had time to finish laying down steel mesh over the first sandy airstrip when the dark
     blue, gull-winged Marine Corsairs began landing.
    Since then, the Seabees had branded onto the steamy rain forest a half-dozen more interlocking runways, interspersed with
     oases of palm trees, antiaircraft gun emplacements, and earth-banked protective revetments for parked planes. The bulldozers
     were still busy. The base would be a work in progress for some time to come. Everybody was still living out of tents. The
     only relatively substantial