Race of Aces by John R Bruning

Author:John R Bruning
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hachette Books
Published: 2020-01-13T16:00:00+00:00

Hands grabbed at him. Dazed, he heard an engine sound as he was pulled out of the water and dragged onto the deck of a Navy PT boat. He lay there as the sailors dressed his wounds, jabbering away at how they’d seen him knock down two Zeroes, then go straight in himself. “Damnedest thing we’ve ever seen,” one kept saying.

Did he save the cripple? Nobody knew.

McGuire was taken back to New Guinea and flown to a hospital at Port Moresby. Major Nichols found him there a short time later, lying in a clean bed, arms and hand covered in bandages. His eyes were shockingly blood-filled and blackened. His face looked like a hell-bound raccoon’s.

When he saw his squadron leader, he apologized at once for losing his aircraft. Nichols was pissed at that and had intended to chew Tommy out for it. But the moment he saw this twenty-three-year-old kid so badly hurt, that anger vanished.

“You know, if you took better care of your aircraft, things like this wouldn’t happen,” Nichols chided lightly. Then added seriously, “To hell with it, I don’t care about the airplane. I’m just happy to see you alive.”

As he listened to Nichols, McGuire felt a sense of comfort long absent. After losing his mother, bouncing from unit to unit as the man nobody wanted to fly with, he’d lived an unsettled, sad life separated by his quick tongue and braggart’s mouth from his squadron mates. Now, despite the pain pushing through the fog of morphine in his IV drip, he felt the warrior’s bond for perhaps the first time since drinking that bottle of Yellowstone with Gerald and Wally. It was a shame it had finally taken root now, when he would probably never see the 431st again. Nichols figured he’d be lucky to even get back in the air. He had a long and difficult convalescence ahead. They both knew that. But as Nichols told him how the squadron learned his fate and self-sacrifice from the PT-boat’s crew, how word was out that Tommy McGuire had taken on the entire Japanese Air Force alone, shooting three more planes down before they got him—well, the ordeal seemed worth it. It was the price of loving his brother warriors.

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