Hell's Gate(4)
My lips are dead and I must pray . . .
He surveyed the battlefield through a red filter, for his tears were blood. And his last conscious perception was the sound of ten thousand people dying.
CHAPTER 1
Who Goes There?
Let us not go over the old ground,
Let us rather prepare for what is to come.
—MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO
Trinidad, West Indies
One month earlier
January 19, 1944
The wings of the great bird painted a shadow on the rainforest canopy. In the trees, a male capuchin monkey shrieked a warning and the members of his troop reacted instantly. While younger males mimicked the bitonal call, a dozen females knotted together and shielded their young. Juveniles that had lately begun to explore their arboreal habitat now clung shivering to their mothers’ hair with both hands and feet. The adults shifted position on the branches, craning their necks to see the jagged patches of sky that showed through holes in the ceiling of foliage. After reaching a terrifying pitch, the cries of the winged hunter faded quickly. The bird was moving off. There would be no attack. The juveniles braved a look upward, then scurried away from their parents, posturing and chattering to send a message that they hadn’t been frightened at all. The adults in the troop ignored them; they had already resumed their incessant search for fruits, nuts, and flowers.
As the dual-engine Bobcat followed the Aripo valley south, the mountain forest of Trinidad’s Northern Range gave way to savanna, with its scattered assortment of shrubs and stunted trees. In the cockpit, and nearly five hours out of Havana, Captain R. J. MacCready gripped the controls of the camouflage-colored Cessna with aggravated impatience, unaware of the havoc his plane had caused for the capuchins living below.
The C-78 Bobcat was a light personnel transport, with a cabin capacity of five, but on this trip there was only one passenger—a Major Fogarty, who seemed content to sleep through the entire flight. As a result, MacCready hadn’t spoken for several hours—which might have been a record, had anyone bothered to keep track of such things. Although zoology was his favorite topic of discussion, MacCready was known to range at a moment’s notice from the mechanics behind kangaroo jumps to what might have existed in the seconds before the birth of the universe. Whether he was debating the existence of the Loch Ness Monster with someone he had bumped into on the street, or lecturing a classroom full of sixth graders on the wonders of the new injectable antibiotics, it did not matter. It was all so interesting. But recently not everyone appreciated the breadth of MacCready’s knowledge or his oratory skills. “The man’s sense of wonder has been replaced by something darker,” said an anonymous academic, quoted in the press. The article went on to call him “an oratorical and conversational sniper.” Outwardly, MacCready referred to his new title as a strong aversion to bullshit. Inwardly though, he would have given up all of life’s triumphs and titles, including his Ph.D. from Cornell, if even one person he truly loved were still alive.
As they began their descent toward Waller Field, MacCready radioed the tower for clearance. Fogarty was finally showing signs of life, pressing his face against the cabin window as the Army Air Forces base loomed nearer, eating up more and more of the horizon.
To MacCready, Waller Field resembled a series of ragged scars torn into central Trinidad’s Caroni Plain. He wondered how long it would take for the savanna to reclaim the base once the war ended and the Allies went home. Too long, probably.
MacCready received his landing clearance, but as he took the Cessna down for a final approach, something thudded against the starboard engine, splashing the cockpit window on that side with streamers of red. Simultaneously, the plane was yanked hard to MacCready’s right. He glanced over his shoulder, but his view of the struggling engine was partially obscured by blood.
MacCready reacted automatically, feathering the starboard propeller. The blades angled into the wind, reducing drag, and he gunned the port-side engine, simultaneously slamming hard on the left rudder. The Cessna responded—pulling back to port until finally, it was holding a straight line toward the runway. The entire episode had occupied all of five seconds.
“Now that’s something you don’t experience every day,” MacCready called back toward the cabin.
There was no response, so he shot a quick glance at his passenger—and while he could not be absolutely sure, it appeared that Fogarty had somehow curled himself into a fetal ball.
“Never mind,” MacCready said to himself.
Crew chief Eddie Dykes knew that the wet season was ending because his men had stopped bellyaching about the rain and mud and started bellyaching about the heat and humidity. His ground crew at Waller Field had staked out the available shade around the landing strip and now the game was to see who could remain out of the sun the longest. Although it was only 10 A.M., the temperature at the base—a center for American military operations in the South Atlantic since 1941—had risen to 90 degrees Fahrenheit, with humidity to match. As the Cessna banked and circled the landing strip, Dykes had been alone on the tarmac, shielding his eyes against the glare.
“Uh-oh,” he said to himself; then he whistled loudly to signal his crew. The Army’s “Bobcat,” known less affectionately as “Rhapsody in Glue,” or “Flying Formation of Cessna Parts,” was struggling. The drone from the starboard engine had suddenly shifted from a high-pitched whine to a sputter, and it appeared that the plane wanted to sway and stagger in its course. Keeping his gaze skyward, Dykes sensed someone approaching from behind.