Jonah Watch by Jack; Cady Page A

Abner 's yeoman Wilson when Adrian once more swung against the pier. The rescued flyer was by then removed to an ambulance; the dead man lay enclosed in the back of a paddy wagon, his arms still grasping after his last enemy. On Adrian 's fantail, Racca, obsessed, leaned on a hose as he flushed the deck. The straight-stream nozzle rose against his braced arms like a living creature struggling to snap away—a creature that could become high-bending, a tall snake arching and cracking and wielding sharp and deadly blows.
    "We got the guy talking," Howard said. "His plane dunked first. That meant that the others were somewhere up ahead."
    "We figured we might go back out," Wilson said.
    "We found another raft. Upside down." Howard seemed to be still looking, staring, absorbing the fact of a buoyant, bouncing, yellow raft, high-riding with futility. "Those were brand new planes. Fitted out with the wrong fuel gauges."
    "So who do you kill?" Wilson's huge, chalky face seemed dispassionate as he gazed across the pier at Racca who directed the shattering water that knocked salt and the invisible traces of the dead from the decks. Then Wilson seemed to remember whom he was with. He looked at Howard, and he was helpless, angry, momentarily passionate. "So who do you kill, who?" He dropped his eyes, muttered. "I don't know why we put up with this, don't know."
    "It was a carnival," Howard told him. "Amon was like a fruit salad. The new guy was ready to fight. Snow was working on that man in a way that I'd have been embarrassed."
    "Snow talks funny. That guy talks funny." Wilson was uncomfortable. He looked as though he feared that a deadly but familiar beast was about to come woofing from a cave.
    "I don't mean that," Howard said. "There wasn't anything like that."
    "Planes with bad fuel gauges."
    "I was rubbing the guy's legs," Howard said. "Snow was putting on hot packs and rubbing his back and belly and crotch arteries."
    "I guess you got to."
    "That Snow just kept whispering." Howard spoke in a low voice, as though he still heard Snow's whispers, still stood beside Snow as they worked on the flyer; still attempted to sense meaning from Snow's broken, husky whispering, and the small, busy hands that moved with the certainty of a pump as the flyer's circulation was restored. "He just kept whispering, ‘torpedoes, torpedoes, torpedoes,' just over and over."
    "He got blowed up once. He was just scared."
    "No," Howard said. "I don't understand everything I saw, but Snow wasn't scared."
    "He only loves torpedoes."
    Howard, almost wordless before the suspicious fact of near revelation, seemed resigned to the uselessness of speech. "I'm glad I missed that war."
    "Stick around for the next one, chum. We can't have you being glad." Wilson paused, thought about it. "In the next one," he said, "try not to trust anybody's gauge but your own."
    Across the pier, on Adrian 's boat deck, Conally appeared from behind the house. He was followed by Brace. Conally began unfolding the boat cover while Brace stood like a lank shadow as he waited to accept instruction on cleaning and securing and making ready the boat.
    "Your boy looks okay now," Wilson said.
    "No, he doesn't. You'd have to know him." Howard flipped vaguely through the small package of mail collected for him by Wilson. He looked at Wilson, as if they were about to share a secret, and then changed his mind. "He's kind of jammed up, is all." Then Howard changed his mind again. "We've got a mess going with that kid. It started just after we picked up the first guy."
    The small boat, lap straked and carrying on its bows the placid information that it belonged to cutter Adrian , had seemed like a minor revolutionary battering at the gates of the gray, patriarchal sea. The boat was a small white smear on the water, and it seemed as uncertainly fixed as was Brace on his first search and rescue.
    "He was actually doing pretty good," Howard told Wilson. "He was making mistakes, but he was