How the hell could we have missed them?

And where Kates and Vals are found, so almost certainly there are Zeroes.

Where the hell are the Zeroes? Above us, for Christ's sake?

Pickering touched the throttle and started to pull alongside Galloway again, but that didn't happen. Galloway came out of the turn and pushed the nose of his Wildcat down.

Pickering followed him. His eyes dropped to the instrument panel and he made the calculation mentally.

I have thirty, thirty-five minutes' fuel remaining. Galloway probably has another five minutes over that; he can coax extra minutes of fuel from an engine. Cut that time considerably by running it at full throttle, or Emergency Military Power.

We're going to have time for one pass, that's all. Knock down what we can in one pass and then head for the barn.

Where the hell is the rest of the Cactus Air Force? They were supposed to take off at 11:15. Earlier, obviously, if there had been a warning from Buka, or from another Coastwatcher station, or even from the radar. As close as these Japanese are to Henderson, they should have spotted them with the radar.

Jesus Christ! Did we break our ass to make sure Buka stayed on the air and now something has happened to them?

An alert Kate tail gunner spotted them and opened fire. His tracers made an arc in the air before they burned out.

At too great a distance, you stupid bastard!

But as they grew closer, they came in range, and other tail gunners opened fire. And now the tracers were closer and there were a hell of a lot more of them.

Pickering depressed the trigger on the stick.

Jesus Christ, what's the matter with me, I'm not even close to him?

He edged back on the stick, and then again.

The tracer stream moved into the fuselage of the Kate, just forward of the horizontal stabilizer, and then, as if with a mind of its own, seemed to walk up the fuselage toward the engine.

There goes a piece of the cowling!

And then smoke suddenly appeared, and the Kate fell off to the left. Before it flashed out of sight, the smoke burst into an orange glow.

Got him! Where the hell is Galloway?

He saw Galloway already below the formation of Kates, almost into the formation of Vals. There was a Zero on his tail, gaining rapidly as Galloway decreased the angle of his dive.

Sonofabitch!

Pickering grabbed the microphone.

"Charley, behind you!"

Pickering threw the stick to the left and shoved the throttle to FULL EMERGENCY POWER. It didn't seem to be working; it took forever to get behind the Zero, and by then he was firing at Galloway.

Pickering depressed his trigger.

Galloway turned sharply to the right, increasing the angle of his dive.

The Zero, trying to follow him, flew into Pickering's tracer stream. He came apart.

There was smoke coming from Galloway's engine.

Oh, shit! No!

Galloway continued his dive toward the sea. Pickering followed him.

The Cactus Air Force-whatever airplanes could get into the air- appeared, climbing toward the Japanese.

Too goddamn late!

The Japanese were over Henderson.

Galloway's engine was no longer smoking.

Jesus Christ, what did he do, shut it down?

Pickering looked behind him. He could see bombs falling from the Vals.

Galloway was almost on the deck.

Oh, shit, he's going in!

Galloway leveled off at no more than 200 feet over the sea and began a straight-in approach to Henderson.

As Pickering started to level off to follow him, he saw bombs landing on the dirt fighter strip. He looked at his gas gauge. He had five, six minutes remaining.

He moved the landing-gear switch to LOWER and pulled the Wildcat up sharply. The crank spun furiously as gravity pulled the gear down.

Twenty seconds later, his wheels touched down. Five seconds later, he felt the Wildcat lurch to the right.

Oh, not that! God, I don't want to die that way!

It straightened out a little, and then he went off the runway into a section of pierced steel planking and spun around, once, twice... The gear collapsed in the turns. The propeller hit the dirt, and the engine screamed and stopped.

Am I still moving?

No. This sonofabitch isn't going anywhere....

He unfastened his harness and scrambled as quickly as he could out of the cockpit. He ran twenty-five yards and then threw himself down on the ground, waiting for the Wildcat to explode.

It didn't.

There were explosions, but those were bombs landing on the airfield.

He raised his head to look at the field. There was a huge orange glow and dense black smoke. The Japanese had put at least one bomb in the fuel dump.

He saw a jeep coming across the field to him through the smoke and the detonations of the Japanese bombs.

It slid to a stop beside him. A Corpsman jumped out.

"You OK?" the Corpsman asked.

"I'm fine," Pickering replied.

The Corpsman lay down beside him.

"I think we're better staying where we are," he said matter-of-factly. "Look at that fucking gasoline burn!"

[ONE]

=SECRET=

FROM: COM GEN 1ST MAR DIV 1305 13OCT42

SUBJECT: AFTER-ACTION REPORT

TO: COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF, PACIFIC, PEARL HARBOR INFO: SUPREME COMMANDER SWPOA, BRISBANE

COMMANDANT, USMC, WASH, DC

1. AT 1140 13OCT42 A TWO (2) F4F4 PATROL OF VMF-229 INTERCEPTED A PREVIOUSLY UNDETECTED

JAPANESE FORCE CONSISTING ESTIMATED AS TWELVE (12) VAL; TWELVE (12) KATE AND FIFTEEN (15)

ZERO AND ENGAGED.

2. ENEMY LOSSES: