Ki-43 was headed straight for Henry. He aimed, fired, and knew a bittersweet satisfaction when the aircraft took a hit and started to spin out.
“Cripes, they’re hard to hit!” he shouted into his mike, warning his squadron mates that the Ki-43 was every bit as maneuverable as the general had warned, and a challenge to the AVG. On previous missions the Japanese Ki-21 “Sally” bombers had been unescorted by the Ki-43 fighters and been easier targets.
Henry took out two more fighters, maneuvering to get the enemy bombers in his sights. One was in his line of fire but he needed to close the gap. After a tense five minutes of outshooting a second Ki-43, Henry fired on his first bomber of the mission. It didn’t go down right away, but when his ammo hit its fuel tank, a fiery ball engulfed the aircraft. Henry throttled back and turned to starboard, avoiding the debris of the explosion and coming face-to-face with a second bomber. He had to fly under the belly of the bomber and throttle back before he could line up on the bomber, firing into the cockpit as he raced by the port side of the war bird as it jerked into a nosedive.
“Come on, where are you?” Henry looked for more fighters to take out until the second wave of Japanese bombers showed up.
Thwack.
It was much quieter, stealthier, than Henry would have expected. His bird had been hit, and he watched in horror as smoke from the burning engine began to fill up his cockpit. He’d lost control of his plane, and was headed toward the ocean at deadly speed.
“No!”
He had to get back to Sarah.
The fighter who’d hit him was below him to starboard, obviously not concerned that Henry had a chance at survival. With what little maneuverability he had left in the bird, Henry tilted the wings to give him a chance of hitting the bastard. Henry gritted his teeth and pulled up on his throttle. Nothing.
“Damn it!”
He wasn’t in a dive; that was a small consolation. He’d lost too much altitude to bail out, however. He was going down with the aircraft.
The ocean raced past him and he made out several spots of white sand circling lush green growth on the horizon.
“Aim for the islands,” General Chennault told them during training at this last brief: if they had to go down, land on one of the uninhabited islands that surrounded southern Thailand.
Henry aimed for the one with the widest beach and prayed he’d be able to land without the bird flipping over and trapping him in the cockpit during the inevitable crash landing.
He had minutes until his fate was determined. Seconds, perhaps.
Sarah was going to kill him. If the crash didn’t.
Whidbey Island Thanksgiving Day
JONAS GROANED AS his oldest brother Paul swiped the basketball from his sweaty palms.
“You’re not going to get the house back, bro.” Paul dribbled the ball in the corner where his garage met the driveway. Paul’s know-it-all-attorney smirk irritated Jonas.
“Watch me.” Jonas held up his hands to catch the swift pass Paul attempted to make to Jim, and loped up to the basket to dunk the ball.
“Let it go, man, Paul’s right.” Jim caught the rebound and winked at his girlfriend, Lucy, before he attempted a long shot. Jonas intercepted the ball as it bounced off the rim.
“Stop showing off for your girl, fire-boy.” Jonas loved teasing Jim, the family fireman. Jim had always been fascinated by explosions as a kid—including blowing up their Lego models with firecrackers. The name had stuck when he went to firefighting school.
John, a successful landscaper and closest in age to Jonas, hovered behind Jonas, not allowing him to attempt a basket. Jonas long-bounced the ball to Paul.
Jonas had been back an entire two weeks from deployment, and they were all gathered at Paul’s house for Thanksgiving. He finally felt as though he was shaking off the last of his jet lag. He’d even made it through his first week at work. He laughed at how good it felt to be with his brothers, all four of them in the same place again. Thanksgiving dinner was going to be brutal when they sat down to the turkey Paul’s wife, Mary, was preparing with John’s wife, Jackie, but Jonas was grateful they were doing it together—all four of them in the same place again.
It was their first holiday season without Dottie.
“Are we sure they got the right person?”
Jonas’s question was as effective as a fire hose as his three brothers froze in their places. No one else had mentioned the arrest, the trial or the sentencing of the mentally imbalanced woman charged with Dottie’s murder. Apparently they didn’t expect him to, either.
“Go help Mary and Jackie in the kitchen, will you, Lucy?” Jim, the second oldest, spoke quietly to his girlfriend.
“Of course.”
They waited until the storm door closed and Lucy was safely out of earshot.
“Why the hell are you asking that now, Jonas?” Paul took over his eldest-brother role.
“Yeah, happy effing Thanksgiving. Pass the gravy.” Jim dribbled the ball.
“Give him a break, he wasn’t here.” John was quick as always to stick up for their little brother.
“Why don’t you all just kiss my ass? I was gone and I only know what you told me, which wasn’t a whole hell of a lot.”
“That’s because you were at war and didn’t need the distractions. The psycho woman who killed her was deemed mentally ill. Jackie has to diagnose these kinds of folks all the time.” John owned a thriving landscaping business on Whidbey. Jackie was a psychiatrist.
“Does that mean she’s locked up for life?” Jonas hated opening the wound for his brothers, but he had to ask the questions that email, internet searches and long-distance phone calls couldn’t answer for him. He needed to be with them, see their expressions. Needed to know that everything that could be done was done.
“She should be. Laws change all the time, and where she’ll be incarcerated may change. She’s criminally insane. She also got away with proving she never intended to kill Dottie.” Paul, ever the lawyer, kept his voice low, his expression neutral as he delivered the bombshell.
“What?” Outrage blasted through Jonas. “How do you kill someone deliberately by drowning and get the jury to agree that it was a mistake?”
Jim put a hand on Jonas’s shoulder. “You’re not asking anything we haven’t all gone over more than once. Dottie could conceivably have had a stroke while she was on that underwater treadmill.”
“AquaTracker.” Paul spoke up. Paul ran a good-size legal firm on Whidbey and knew the case inside out.
“Yeah, the AquaTracker in the physical therapist’s clinic. The murderer set Dottie up to go under the water, supposedly just for a few seconds. But it ended up being minutes, and at her age, Dottie didn’t stand a chance.”
Jim shook his head. “I was there with our fire engine, Jonas. Dottie was gone before we started CPR.”
“I’m so sorry I wasn’t here to help you all through the trial.” Jonas meant the words more than he was able to express. They sounded inadequate to him, though. They didn’t truly describe his visceral reaction to the murder of the woman he’d loved so much. The woman who’d taken him in and given him what he’d lost when their mother died unexpectedly, leaving their dad a widower at forty-four with four boys to raise.
“It’s worked out, Jonas. Believe me, it’s better that you, of all of us, weren’t here. You would’ve beaten yourself up for not being able to save her yourself.” Paul knew what it