Chapter 3

Vella La Cava

VMF 214 HQ

0930 hours

Three hours after the squadron lifted off on its first mission to pinpoint the elusive SOS, Kate sat in the shade of a palm tree near the line with Hutch and Micklin. The rugged blue fighters came in low in pairs, setting down on the La Cava airstrip amidst sprays of mud when landing gear couldn't avoid the worst of the holes. Chewing his cigar in agitation, Micklin stomped off to see what damage them college boys had inflicted on his planes this time. Kate had tried explaining the parameters of the morning's flight without overstepping boundaries of the informal security clearance Moore trusted her with. The best she could do was assure Micklin it was a recon, not combat, patrol.

"That don't matter none, Miss Kate," the line chief growled. "Them boys could turn a Sunday school picnic into a combat mission."

Privately, Kate agreed and she let out a sigh of relief when the Black Sheep were safely back on the ground. The RPMs of the huge radial engines throttling down was music to her ears as she walked out to meet the men.

"We didn't find a damned thing out there," Casey said in answer to her unasked question as he jumped down off his bird's wing.

"Just a lot of empty water full of a lot of sharks," French echoed.

"What a waste of time and fuel," Boyle grumbled. "We could have been on a legit patrol but Lard has us chasing ghosts."

"Did you hear the SOS?" Kate asked.

They all fell silent.

"Yeah," Casey said. "We heard it. But we couldn't establish radio contact and we couldn't see anything that indicated anyone was there. Anyone human, at least. There's nothing out there but a few scrawny little islands with scrawny little trees."

"Technically, Lawrence, it's an atoll," Anderson began.

"So the islands are big enough to support plant life?" Kate interrupted before Anderson launched into a discourse on the geology of the Southwest Pacific. Greg joined the group, looking grim, followed by Gutterman and Bragg. The assemblage made its way up the steps into the relative cool of the Sheep Pen.

"There are trees on the bigger islands but nothing to write home about," Jim said.

"That means there's a fresh water source," Kate said. "If any of McBride's men made it there after they ditched . . ." She trailed off, biting her lip and hoping against hope there was still a chance for the doomed pilots of the 237.

Greg shook his head. "I doubt it, Cameron. There's nothing to indicate anyone had ever been there. No debris washed up on the beaches, no sign of downed aircraft inland. And none of that explains the SOS. Best thing I can think of is the Japanese know McBride's's boys bought the farm there and they set up a repeater station in hopes of luring in additional search crews." He scowled. "Like us."

"The signal was pretty faint," Anderson said.

"And there was a lot of interference," Casey confirmed. "We tried all the comms channels but couldn't raise anyone. It was like talking to a ghost. One minute it was there, the next it was gone."

Don and TJ pulled bottles of beer out of the refrigeration unit and handed them around. The men collapsed into chairs, looking despondent. The Black Sheep did not take failure lightly and even though they'd come back with planes and pilots all in one piece, they hadn't achieved the mission objective.

"We searched the coordinates and all the water around them," Greg said, "but maybe we missed something. We'll go back out tomorrow and do it again."

XXX

The next day

1400 hours

Kate's darkroom

"See anything?" Greg looked over Kate's shoulder as she gently tipped the photo back and forth in the basin of developer. His presence ignited a quiet little hum in her blood, an awareness of him even when he wasn't touching her. She enjoyed it for a minute, thinking about the potential of that ever-present energy, then forced herself to focus on the job at hand.

The second sweep of the Rendova coordinates again found nothing beyond trees, sand and volcanic rocks. This time, A Flight swept the search grid while B Flight flew cover. Hutch had mounted a camera on Greg's plane and he'd shot a series of high and low altitude photos, hoping the still frames might reveal something they'd not been able to detect while in motion.

"Can't tell yet." She tipped the basin so the developing chemicals washed evenly over the sheet of photo paper. Slowly, the image revealed itself, an irregular black and white pattern of trees and beachhead. Unlike the usual recon film she processed, there were no manmade structures—no vehicles, primitive air strips, planes or ammo dumps hiding under camouflage netting. She shook her head. "I don't see anything but I don't know what I'm looking for."

"I don't either." Greg studied the photo. After a few minutes, he turned toward her and teased loose hair back from her face. "Hell, I can think of better ways to spend our time." Leaning in, he kissed the curve of her neck.

Her pulse skyrocketed in agreement. "You're not helping."

He chuckled and traced a slow line of kisses up her throat. "Are you going to throw a beer can at me?"

Kate shot him a look. He was referencing the night Jim had made an ill-timed pass at her in this very darkroom shortly after she arrived on La Cava. "Get your facts straight, it was a tin of film cannisters." She rested her hands lightly on his arms. "I'm not going to throw anything at you as long as you behave."

Greg kissed her and murmured, "I don't hear you complaining, sweetheart."

She returned the kiss, flicking her tongue across his as she wrapped her arms around his neck.

Someone knocked. Without extracting herself from Greg's embrace, Kate double checked to be sure her photo paper was in its sealed container, then called, "Come in."

The blackout curtain rattled and Jim stepped through. He took one look at them and said dryly, "Hope I didn't interrupt anything."

"You're not interrupting anything because there's nothing to interrupt. I've got better sense than to go around kissing men in my darkroom," Kate said in spite of clear evidence to the contrary.

Both men laughed. Kate turned and poked Jim in the stomach. "Get out of my way, Gutterman. Make yourself useful and move that print to the tray of fixer."

"Bossy woman. What do you see in her?" Jim asked as he picked up a pair of tongs and moved the photograph.

"She has her moments," Greg said.

Kate ignored them both. She fixed a negative in the enlarger, positioned a piece of photo paper and set the timer. The timer dinged and someone knocked, then rattled the doorknob.

"Hey, Pappy, you in there?" Casey called.

"Don't you dare open that door, Larry Casey," Kate said and slid the picture into the developer.

"Lard's on the horn," Casey shouted. "Wants to talk to you about today's mission."

"Tell him to read the damn report I sent in triplicate two hours ago," Greg replied.

"He says he read it. What did it say?"

"That we haven't found anything."

"He wants to know why you haven't found anything. Katie, let me in, please, I'm tired of yelling through the door."

Kate transferred the print from developer to fix and opened the door. Casey stepped into the small room, which immediately became smaller.

"The more, the merrier." She waved a hand at the prints hanging from clothespins. "Maybe you can see something in this mess."

The three men studied the existing photos in silence while Kate printed the remaining negatives. Done, she stepped back to return the photo paper to the sealed box under the work bench.

"Ouch!" Casey yelped when she stepped on his toes.

"Sorry," Kate apologized. "I'm not trying to get rid of you but shouldn't you get back to Lard? Is he still on the line?"

"He's not going anywhere," Casey said dismissively.

"Do you have the final shots?" Greg asked.

"Coming out of the water bath right now." Kate turned to pin up the photos and trod heavily on Jim.

"You did that on purpose," the Texan grumbled. "Greg, trade me places."

The men shifted in the narrow room and Greg's hands briefly squeezed her waist in passing.

"You know, I could have printed these by myself and brought them out to you," Kate said as she finished cleaning the processor and stowing her chemicals and equipment. "It would have been a lot less hassle."

"I think you like hassle," Greg said.

She didn't argue.

XXX

While Kate printed photos with entirely more help than she wanted, the rest of the boys gathered in the Sheep Pen.

"Whattaya reckon is out there?" TJ asked. "You really think McBride's boys are sending an SOS from the grave?"

"What's the point of that?" Bragg countered. "If they're already gone, we can't rescue 'em."

"And if they're out there, we can't find them, either," Anderson said dismally. "This mission is becoming an excursion into the realm of the paranormal."

"My grandpappy in Tennessee believed in ghosts," Bragg said after a moment. "Said he'd seen a couple of 'em."

"You told me your grandpappy brewed 'shine, too," French said. "Drink enough of that and he'd see all sorts of things."

"I believe in ghosts," Boyle said. "My ma's sister died in a car wreck and the next night, she showed up at the foot of my ma's bed and told her to go to her house and look in the bottom of her sewing basket."

"Did she do it?" French asked.

"Yepper, found five hundred bucks her sister had hidden from her lazy ass husband under the mending."

The boys pondered that for a while, then Anderson said, "We lived in a house once where my little brother's bedroom door wouldn't stay shut. No matter how many times we closed it, it was always open in the morning. We found out there'd been a fire in the house years before and a boy died from smoke because the door lock jammed and he couldn't get out of that room. We just left it open after that. It felt like somebody was looking out for my little brother."

"Not all haunts are friendly that way," Bragg said. "My grandpa told a story about living in a house where he'd got rolled out of bed in the middle of the night."

"That wasn't a ghost," TJ cracked, "that was your grandma telling him to get the hell off her."

When the laughter quieted down, Anderson sobered. "Gotta wonder if McBride's squadron is reliving their last minutes, sending the SOS for help that never came. By the time air/sea rescue got there after the storm, there was nothing left. They didn't even find wreckage. They must have ditched so far out the tides didn't even pull it in."

"But what if that signal's legit?" TJ persisted. "Where's it coming from? Sometimes it's faint. Sometimes it's stronger."

Before anyone could share an opinion, the door to the darkroom opened and Kate emerged, followed by Greg, Jim and Casey. She tossed the day's recon photos on a table. "Knock yourselves out, gentlemen. Do you see anything in these that would give a clue to what's going on?"

The boys gathered around to study the photos, muttering and shaking their heads.

"How long we gonna keep flying out there to look at nothing?" Boyle asked.

"Until I can say without a doubt there aren't any Allied forces seeking help in the area," Greg said with steel in his voice. "If the tables were turned and we were the ones on that rock, no food, scant water, injured, limited communication, would you want to be written off after a couple of fast fly-bys? That's what the first rescue mission did and I'm not convinced they didn't miss something. Until we pinpoint that signal, we go back. Every day."

"That's gonna draw attention," Jim said. "Tojo's gonna figure out we're looking for something and he'll come looking for us." The boys nodded in agreement.

"Then we don't make it routine." Greg paced the room. "We fly the sweeps at different times, come in from different vectors. If we hear the SOS we keep trying to make radio contact. First sign of enemy fighters, we get the hell out and live to do it again."

XXX

0200 hours

Kate's tent

Dot dot dot dash dash dash dot dot dot

Kate tossed on her bunk as the SOS played repeatedly in the background of her dream. Radio messages broken by static overrode the scream of tearing metal and flashes of lightning illuminated dark water. Her lungs burned with a desperate will to live as that water pulled her down, deeper, deeper, then inexorably released her to a current that seized her unresisting limbs. Her battered body broke the surface. She gulped air in frantic lungsful, felt hands drag her from the ocean's grasp onto the sand. Someone was shouting to get off the beach before the tide swept in. She grabbed a fellow pilot and clinging to each other, they broke into a staggering run, every cell of her body screaming with pain and fear as water rose around her calves. Something struck her leg in a glancing blow and staggering, she dared a glance back. The shattered partial wing of a plane floated on the foaming tide as it rose higher, now churning around her thighs. She dug in her boots and ran although it felt like she wasn't moving at all. Through it all, the infernal SOS, pounding into her brain over and over and over until she thought her head would explode.

Kate woke, shaking in the dark.

They were out there. Alive. But for how long?

She inhaled slowly, letting the familiar sounds of the base at night calm her. She sat up on the edge of her cot and stared at the dim outlines of her hands and legs. Nothing hurt. Nothing bled. She was safe in her tent—or as safe as she was likely to get—yet the memory of injury and fear clung like the humid night air.

For a few brief, intense moments, she'd been part of the 237's final mission. Where had that dream come from? She lived in a war zone. She'd survived air raids, watched pilots land aircraft in various degrees of disintegration and been at the hospital when wounded came in, torn and bloodied or burned beyond recognition, yet the war never invaded her dreams. Her nocturnal mental wanderings tended to take more inviting paths involving Greg.

Kate ran her fingers through her hair and breathed deeply. Her grandmother, Elspeth Cameron, who'd come over from the Scottish highlands to settle in Calhoun County, North Dakota, where Kate had been raised, claimed to have the Sight, the dubious ability to see things before they happened. This might have been more useful if her premonitions had been a bit more specific.

In late December of 1934, Elspeth told her neighbor, Agnes Plagmann, not to go to the New Year's Eve dance in town with her beau because Albert would be involved in a car wreck with fatalities on the way home. Agnes feigned a headache and stayed home that night, only to wake on Jan. 1 to the news Albert Ryan had indeed smashed up his Model T when he took the curve on Mills Creek Road too fast in the snow. There were casualties—four of Minnie Hinrichsen's prize Rhode Island Red laying hens were killed when Albert's car left the road and smashed into the Hinrichsens' chicken coop.

Kate's mother hadn't held with such nonsense and said misleading information was worse than no information at all. She was of the opinion Granny Cameron was losing her marbles and advised Kate to pay her no mind. So, at age 14, when Kate dreamed of a neighbor's barn burning to ashes, she kept her mouth shut.

It's not like the dream about the barn had been all that prophetic. The Kincaids' barn had indeed burned to the ground that August, courtesy of a lightning strike hitting a loft filled with hay, but it had been a hot, dry summer with storms that produced lots of lightning so it was bound to happen somewhere. Kate kept the fact she'd had the dream in March, when snow and mud lay thick on the country roads, to herself because honestly, she hadn't been able to tell whose barn it was. And she couldn't have stopped it from happening anyway.

Three years later, she had a vivid dream in which a farmstead was hit by a tornado. Two weeks later, a tornado took the Sorensens' house over in Sumner Township. But anyone who grew up on the high plains had had at least one nightmare in their lifetime about the violent storms so she wasn't sure that one counted for anything either. There'd been a few other dreams about things that came to pass but they were so inconsequential she was never sure the jumbled images that looped through her mind as she slept were actually foreshadows of coming events or her own imagination reflecting on the realities of life on the prairie.

As a teenager, Kate had not been granted the tolerance allowed eccentric, 90-year-old Granny Elspeth so she quickly banished odd dreams to the part of her mind reserved for things she didn't understand. What good was it to see vague images of things she couldn't prevent? Living in the middle of a world war brought enough mayhem without acting like she knew what was coming with the next sunrise. If she'd gone around telling people a mad man with a stupid little mustache in Germany was going to drop bombs on London, her family would have had her locked up.

Since joining the Associated Press and taking her first assignment in Great Britain, Kate's life had focused on the here and now as she reported on the reality of a world gone mad. There was no time to pay heed to dreams that were little more than wisps of possible future events that might or might not ever happen.

Well, there'd been one dream she hadn't forgotten, one she hadn't ignored, although like the others, it had made absolutely no sense. Until it did. For three nights in a row, she dreamed of a white dog and a handsome man with blue eyes. On the fourth day, she'd agreed to accept the Associated Press correspondent's assignment transferring her from an air base in Great Britain to Vella La Cava. When she'd stepped off the transport onto this rock, a white bull terrier had knocked her on her backside in the mud and she'd looked up from her ruined clothes into Greg Boyington's amused eyes. The shock she'd felt, sitting there in the mud, had been as much from the memory of the dream as from the impact of meeting Greg for the first time. She'd never told him about it. During the firestorm of her immersion into life with the Black Sheep, there hadn't been time and later, it hadn't seemed important.

But every single one of the dreams that had come true had been about things that happened in the future. She'd never had one that revisited scenes from the past. She froze. What if that dream hadn't been a reflection of the past? What if it didn't involve the 237 at all? What if it was a horrible image of something yet to come involving the 214?

No. She took a deep breath, held it and exhaled. Without a doubt, it was the men of the 237. She knew the boys of the 214 forward and backward. If it had been any of the Black Sheep, the voices would have been familiar. She couldn't explain it but she knew it.

Restless, she pulled on shorts and boots and made her way through the sleeping camp to the Sheep Pen. Inside, she turned on a single light and stood, gazing at the familiar, shabby interior of the base's social hub. When she'd first arrived, she'd been so determined to keep everything on a professional level. That had lasted until the punches started flying the first night she was here. Now the boys of the 214 were more than an assignment. They were family.

Bobby Boyle, whose enthusiastic book-making was probably responsible for the unit's collective gambling problem.

Larry Casey, who managed the squadron's blackmarket trades with the efficiency of a Wall Street broker.

Don French, a skilled gardener who tended a little vegetable plot behind his tent.

Bob Anderson, who insisted on calling her Katherine and beat her at chess with annoying regularity.

Jerry Bragg, who liked to talk about his little brothers and sisters back home on the family's dairy farm in Wisconsin.

TJ Wiley, whose schoolboy smile disguised a scheming intellect aimed at charming nurses out of their clothes.

Jim Gutterman, whose chronic sarcasm disguised a heart of gold.

And Greg. Above all, Greg. CO, lover, partner, an anchor in the maelstrom that comprised life in a front area. In a world where nothing was certain, her love for him was the only thing that didn't change between the rising and setting of the sun.

These men were family. Just like the 237 had been family to one another. And left family behind in the States to mourn their loss. Her mind looped back to the dream, replaying the final scene where hands pulled her from the surf onto a beach. Alive.

Behind her, the screen door squeaked open, then slapped shut. She knew from the weight of the footfalls who it was without turning.

He wrapped his arms around her waist and she leaned back against him, drinking in the scent of soap and the heat of his skin. For a long time, neither spoke.

Finally, she asked, "How'd you know I was here?"

"I saw the light. Bad dream?"

"Yes. No. Maybe."

He turned her to face him. "You want to explain that?"

She told him about it, haltingly, hesitant to read too much into it because for all its intensity, it gave no answers. What if, God forbid, it hadn't been about McBride's squadron at all, but some other ill-fated band of fighters in another part of the theatre? Pilots got shot down every day. The images she'd seen—felt—could have happened anywhere but she couldn't shake the sense of conviction it was the 237.

In 1938, William Kincaid's barn lit up the prairie sky with an inferno of orange flame. In 1940, the Sorensens huddled safe in their root cellar as the sky twisted overhead, exploding their home off its foundation. And now, in 1943, the men of the 237, swam and ran as if their lives depended on it. Her dreams, vague as they were, did not lie.

"They're alive," she said. "At least some of them."

Greg tipped her head up, cradled her cheek with one hand and said quietly, "Where?"

"I don't know. God help me, I don't know."

XXX

Two days later

1600 hours

Things are not getting better

"What's on your mind, Katie?" Greg's voice reflected the mental exhaustion the entire unit was feeling. The repeated failure of the recon sweeps to discover anything substantive had the whole base in a funk. The usual revelry in the Sheep Pen had been absent since the missions started, the boys retiring to their tents after mess to write to loved ones or seeking private solace in the arms of willing nurses. As much as Kate longed to steal away, wrap her arms and legs around Greg and take his mind off this latest stab of the war's knife, she knew he wouldn't leave his men at a time when he most needed to be available for them. She settled for the next best thing, sipping Scotch from a dented canteen cup in his tent, idly scratching Meatball while Greg formulated plans for the next day's mission. It would be their fifth. Lard was adamant about sending the Black Sheep back until they found something tangible.

Restless, with fragments of the dream still replaying in her mind, Kate shoved Meatball off her lap and paced the tent. Fortunately, Greg was a better housekeeper than she was and his quarters accommodated this activity much better than her own.

"What if the 237 got blown off course by that storm after they transmitted their last coordinates? What if they couldn't make any more radio contact because of electrical interference and being out of range? They were low on fuel, knew they weren't going to make the base at Rendova. Maybe . . ." she took a breath and kept going, ". . . maybe the planes that survived to that point made it to the outer bands of the storm but were so damaged they couldn't go on. The pilots knew they were going down one way or the other, and decided to take the chance and bailed."

Greg considered that. "So where are they? Because there's no one on those rocks we've been waving at."

Kate grimaced. Her theory was feasible but it didn't guarantee anyone had survived. A calculated ditch in the ocean with air/sea rescue coming on the double to fish you out was a risky proposition. She'd waited for various Black Sheep to be returned to base after just such an endeavor and they usually went straight to the hospital to be treated for collateral damage. Bailing in severe weather when no knew where you were and no one coming to find you before the sharks did would be virtual suicide.

Still, the dream still haunted her. Somewhere, somehow, at least some of those ill-fated pilots were alive.

"If you were stranded in enemy territory with wounded men, would you be running around lighting signal fires and spelling out SOS with driftwood on the beach? No, you'd be laying low, trying to get a signal out without attracting the wrong kind of attention. And praying to God the Allies found you first," she said stubbornly.

Greg rose from his chair. He wrapped his arms around her waist from behind and together, they studied the photos scattered across his desk, the black and white images taunting them as they searched for answers that drifted just out of reach.

"You've seen the film," he said. "We've flown search grids until we're blue in the face. There's no one there."

"No one you can see," Kate said quietly.

"We can't rescue ghosts." He sighed heavily and pressed his face into her hair. "And I'm starting to think that's the only thing left. I can't find any sign of life and I can't find the source of the SOS although we hear it every time, which damned well means we keep going back."

"If it was a Japanese trap, wouldn't they have come after you by now? Your boys are good but you can't hide a full squadron of Corsairs."

"They wouldn't necessarily come after the Black Sheep if they thought they could catch a bigger fish. If they know Halsey plans to send part of the Third Fleet through there, they might hold out for a bigger pay day."

"How much longer?" Kate swallowed hard. "Until you . . . stop?" She couldn't say the words give up.

Greg didn't answer for a long moment. His breath came warm against her neck and she let herself relax further into his arms. The solid heat of his body was an anchor amidst so much uncertainty.

"We'll fly one more sweep tomorrow, then I'm calling it. It's just a matter of time before we run into a Japanese patrol. All we're doing is burning fuel and making ourselves targets. Halsey's either going to have to find a different route or blast through there and take his chances."

"But what about the signal?"

Greg squeezed her shoulders and took up the pacing she'd abandoned, waving a hand in the air in frustration. "Hell if I can explain it. Malfunctioning equipment. Radio waves bouncing off the water. Maybe it is a Japanese trap but there aren't any air bases within range so they'd have to have scouts watching day and night to scramble a squadron off a carrier to catch us and they still probably wouldn't get there in time. That's a lot of work to ambush sixteen planes. That signal has got to be just an anomaly."

"What if it's ghosts?"

He stopped, pinned her with a hot blue glare. "I don't believe in ghosts, Cameron."

She rounded on him. "You would if you were Scottish. We invented ghosts. What if—?"

"Anyone ever tell you you ask too many questions?"

"No. What if—oh!"

Greg cupped her chin in his hand, slid the other around her waist and effectively silenced her. Kate melted into the embrace, letting his hands and mouth take her mind off things that appeared to exist without existing. She was reconsidering the possibility of the two of them going AWOL on the beach when Casey popped into the tent.

"Hi, guys! Oh, sorry." He paused, not looking sorry at all. "Thought you'd want to know Lard just landed."

Kate pulled back and laced together a string of profanity that would have made a sailor blush. Greg chuckled.

"Doesn't that man have the manners to call first?" she muttered.

"Would you have been here if he'd called first?" Greg asked, a knowing smile on his face.

"No," she admitted.

"Neither would I and he knows it. Go on now, get out of here while I see what's on his mind."

—To be continued—