For Love and Country by Candace Waters

Author:Candace Waters
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Howard Books
Published: 2020-03-23T16:00:00+00:00

Sixteen

THE FIRST THING LOTTIE saw when she walked into the repair bay was a snarl of twisted, blackened metal.

It took her a minute to realize that that snarl of blasted steel had once, in fact, been a plane wing.

Like the repair hangar in San Diego, this one, at Kaneohe, just a short distance from Pearl Harbor, had a giant door that opened to the world outside, filling the entire place with the tang of the sea air, the sun-warmed breezes, and the faintest trace of the pink plumeria that grew in patches around the base. But unlike the one in San Diego, it opened almost directly onto the harbor and the ocean beyond, with no major structures to block the view of the sparkling blue water from the workshop.

But that wasn’t the biggest difference from the shop she’d grown used to in San Diego. The biggest difference was that, on every plane she could see from where she was now standing, she saw actual signs of battle: not just the twisted steel of the plane wing that was closest to her, but tail ends ventilated by bullet holes, cracked windshields, sprays of shot all along the belly of one bomber.

The problems she’d grown expert in fixing in San Diego were all mechanical—the work that was necessary to keep a fleet in shape far from the heat of battle.

But she’d never seen planes with damage like this before.

“How did it even stay in flight?” she murmured, mostly to herself, as she looked back at the twisted wing that was closest to her. She wasn’t an expert in aerodynamics, but she couldn’t imagine a plane doing anything but falling out of the sky when it was compromised like that.

“What, missy?” someone said from behind her. “Don’t you know how a plane works?”

When Lottie turned to see who’d said it, she caught sight of a skinny guy with a narrow face and greasy blond hair. He gave her a nasty view of his teeth, with something between a leer and a grin, as he scampered by, heading toward the knot of men inside the hangar at the beginning of the day.

Color rushed to Lottie’s cheeks, and hot words rose to her lips. She’d known that she wouldn’t be welcome in this shop, either. But she hadn’t thought the trouble would start so early in the day.

But before she could say anything, she heard another voice behind her. This one had a Midwesterner’s faint twang. “The pilot,” the voice said. “He could have bailed out, but he didn’t want to lose the plane. So he risked his life, bringing her down safe.”

When Lottie turned to look, she was surprised to see a man about her own father’s age, with a lined face and salt-and-pepper hair. It came as a pleasant surprise after all the guys she’d been spending so much time among, who were usually not much more than boys themselves.

But she couldn’t tell from his expression whether he was pleased or not to be dealing with a woman in the shop.

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