Not Today

Based on true events.

The Wildcat is bleeding.

I feel it in the stick—loose, then rigid. Sluggish through the left aileron. The hull groans when I bank, and the engine coughs like it’s got something stuck in its throat.

“C’mon, you sonofabitch!’ I command it. “This fight ain’t over.”

As if it understands the mission, the engine calms down as we climb.

There ain’t no one else up here. At least not on our side. It was only by chance that I was still here when the Japs got here. Some knucklehead had forgotten to fuel my plane. The others took off on the mission without me. I was pretty pissed off. Now I’m a different kind of pissed off. And these motherfuckers are learning real fast who it is they messed with today. If I don’t get this done, a whole lotta fellas on the boat below are gonna die and I ain’t having that on my conscience—dead or alive.

The last four Zeros dropped in flames at the business end of my guns. One of them went into the drink like a harpooned whale. Another I hit but I didn’t have the time to watch him fall outta the sky. Too busy killin’ one of his Jap brothers. Another disintegrated midair, raining steel. And now—only two left. Two Zeros. Coming in fast. I burned through my last belt of ammo two passes ago. They don’t know that.

I climb, banking south to catch a glimpse.

There they are.

Slick silver bodies. Red meatball on the wings. Climbing high, then diving hard toward the Lexington. Her guns are still turning, but there’s no time. If they get through, she’s done. The whole carrier group could go with her.

I reach forward and tap the photo of my mother, taped next to the fuel gauge. I blow her a kiss. “Not today, Ma!” I whisper more hopeful than I feel. She don’t need to know all that.

Just below her picture is the note my Pops had with him when he died. There’s still a spot of brownish dried blood in the upper right corner.

It’s been clipped to the dashboard of my bird ever since flight school. Yellowed, worn, corners soft. The cop gave it to me that day he told me I was the man of the house. The words seem appropriate up here in a crippled plane, facing off with two zeros and outta ammo. But I don’t want ‘em to be. That’s for sure:

“The clock of life is wound but once,

And no man has the power…”