“Aw, come on, fellas, any air controller in the area. We have two Marine F4-U’s up here ready, willing, and able to shoot up anything you think deserves a shot.”
And again, there was no reply.
Pick switched to the air-to-air frequency.
“Can you believe that, Billy? You think they’re asleep? Maybe too proud to call on the Marines?”
“There has to be a reason,” Dunn replied.
When he’d heard Pick calling, Dunn had thought there would be far more calls from the ground than they could possibly respond to.
“To hell with it,” Pick said. “Let’s go shoot up a choo-choo. ”
A “choo-choo”? Now, what the hell?
“Say again?”
“You never saw those wing camera shots of the Air Corps shooting up trains in Europe? I always wanted to try that, but I never saw one damned choo-choo in all of War Two.”
“There was one on the ’Canal,” Dunn said, with a clear memory of an ancient, tiny, shot-to-pieces steam locomotive in his mind’s eye, “but somebody shot it up before I had a chance. Is there a rail line around here?”
“I found a couple in my trusty Navion,” Pick reported. “Let’s hope we get lucky.”
Ten minutes later, they got lucky.
“Nine o’clock, Billy,” Pick’s voice came over the air-to-air.
Dunn looked.
A train, a long train—mixed boxcars, flatcars, and tank cars—powered by two steam locomotives, was snaking along a river.
“I’m going to break left and get pretty close to the deck, and then turn back,” Pick said. “I’ve got dibs on the locomotive. In the unlikely event I miss, you can try on a second pass.”
"Dibs on the locomotive”? Are you never going to grow up? Good God, you’re a Marine field-grade officer!
“I’ll be on your tail, Pick,” Dunn said over the air-to-air.
And then Pick surprised him again, by rapidly picking up speed, as soon as he had broken to the left.
You can hit a lot more if your throttles aren’t at the firewall. You know that. What the hell is the matter with you?
Pick completed his turn, and not more than 500 feet above the undulating terrain, turned back toward the train—
—from three or four cars of which came lines of tracer shells.
My God! Why didn’t I think about antiaircraft fire?
You make a much harder target if you’re flying as fast as it will go.
You knew there would be counterfire.
How?
My God, Pick, did you do a dry run in that little Navion?
You did. You crazy sonofabitch, that’s exactly what you did!
Streams of tracers erupted from Pick’s Corsair’s wing-mounted .50-caliber Brownings.
Dunn saw them walking across the rice paddies and the river toward the locomotives. Steam began to come from the rearward locomotive’s boiler. He moved the nose of his Corsair to the rear of the train and pressed the firing button on the stick. The Corsair shuddered with the recoil.
Just as he picked up his nose, the locomotive exploded.
“Goddamn, Billy! Look at that!” Pick’s delighted voice came over the air-to-air.
A second later, there was an orange glow from one of the tank cars, and a split second after that, an enormous explosion.
Dunn flew for half a second through the fireball, and then was on the other side.
He saw Pick’s Corsair climbing steeply and got on his tail again.
“Did you see that sonofabitch blow up?” Pick’s voice asked, excitedly.
“I saw it. We also got what had to be a gasoline tank car.”
“You got the tank car,” Pick said. “I got the choo-choo.”
“Whatever you say,” Dunn replied.
“Your ADF working?” Pick asked.
Dunn checked.
“Affirmative,” he said.
“Mine isn’t,” Pick replied matter-of-factly. “I guess I lost that antenna.”
“Any other damage?”
“The gauges are all in the green,” Pick said. “There’s some openings in the wing I don’t remember seeing before, but I don’t see any gas leaking. Do you think you can find Kobe, Colonel?”
“Get on my wing, Pick,” Dunn ordered.
He advanced his throttle and pulled his Corsair beside Pick’s.
Pick’s canopy was open. He had a long cigar in his mouth, and was using the cockpit lighter to fire it up. The lighter was technically called “the spot heater,” because smoking was supposed to be forbidden in the cockpit. Ignoring all that, Pick had the cigar going, then he raised his eyes to Dunn and waved cheerfully.
Dunn shook his head and moved ahead of him, on a course for Kobe.
[FOUR]
In her capacity as a journalist, Miss Priestly decided it was her duty to meet the two Corsairs when they returned from the first Marine aviation combat sortie in Korea.
The first thing she thought was that she was really going