Wingmen (9781310207280) by Ensan Case Read Free Book Online Page B

door.
    “Duane?”
    “Yeah,
Skipper?”
    “CAG’s coming
through in the morning. Update the training sked on the bulletin
board and take down the acey-deucy skeds, okay?”
    “Sure, Skipper.
Anything else?”
    “Not at the
moment, Duane. See you in the morning.”
    The door opened
suddenly, bumping Duane’s foot, and Sweeney came through. Excusing
himself to the lieutenant, the yeoman huddled over the skipper’s
desk, and the two men launched into an earnest discussion of the
Squadron War Diary. Duane shook his head a little sadly and
left.
     
     
7
    Fred Trusteau had
learned by the age of ten, and by necessity, that intelligence can
compensate for a lack of brute strength and a bully mentality, both
of which uncannily occurred in all those people who were bigger
than he. His own unstated Law of the Jungle told him it was best to
simply avoid these unpleasant people as much as possible, to become
instead more intelligent, and if possible to reveal his superior
mentality only when it wouldn’t incite the bullies to retaliation.
Usually, though, Fred would not reveal it in front of those to whom
it mattered the most—his teachers.
    He had had this
problem quite recently. The teacher was an instructor in Primary
Flight Training, in which Fred received eighty hours of flight time
in that classic craft known lovingly as the Ryan Yellow Peril. He
had wanted almost desperately to be closer to the man, but the
teacher had other students as well and hardly noticed Fred. When he
was off duty, he drove home to a wife and three kids, leaving Fred
in a barracks full of noisy flight students, many of them bullies,
who spent their spare time telling dirty, untrue stories and gaping
at poorly composed pictures of girls with cleavage showing. Fred
had survived that lonely period with flying colors by being smarter
than almost all the other students. That, at least, was
gratifying.
    Fred had picked
up on bridge in January of 1942, when most of the war news—after
you scraped aside the stories about all-American heroes fighting
against overwhelming odds and taking half the enemy fleet down with
them—was bad. He had just entered the world of flying at the level
known as Flight Preparatory Training, a college-campus affair with
classes in physics, aerodynamics, air navigation, and Naval
Orientation at San Francisco State College. (“The aircraft carrier
is a supporting vessel designed to provide assistance to the
capital ships of the fleet in the areas of scouting and
reconnaissance and possibly protection from enemy submarines,” said
the Naval Orientation instructor, a doddering, retired captain who
would have failed Fred had Fred spoken what was on his mind. Always
full of discretion, he put it instead into the required term paper
on sea power: “The Japanese failed at Pearl Harbor because the
planes which did the scouting were unable to force the American
battleships into the open sea, where the resulting engagement may
have been disastrous to them.”)
    Bridge gave the
intelligent player limitless opportunities to triumph over the big
guys; only, alas, the big guys never played the game. The hottest
thing for the other fliers in spare-time activities, aside from
female conquest, was acey-deucy, a cup-pounding, dice-flying,
pure-chance derivation of backgammon which Fred learned in ten
minutes but never seemed to win. He searched around wherever he
went for other bridge players. They were few and far between, so he
was looking forward to the game with the skipper and Levi and
Bagley with more than a little anticipation. He even showered and
shaved before going.
    Fred showed up
early at the skipper’s private room and tried to be at ease with
his commanding officer while the older man put on his shirt and
combed his hair. Fred glanced around at the slightly cluttered
space, mildly embarrassed about catching the Skipper in what
amounted to a condition of undress. Jack appeared not to
notice.
    “You finish up
at Pensacola?”