Fire Eye Read Free Page A

intangible fragility beneath the strength. He is intrigued. “I have a school vacation coming up in a couple of months. I can take a week of long service leave before and after. That gives us a month. If I decide it’s a goer, can you do it?”
    She stands up with a decisive nod, ending the meeting, and offers her hand. Shaking it professionally, Jed still notes the feel of her skin, the warmth of her touch and the strength of her fingers.
    They walk to the elevator, joining the queue for the next lift, and talk superficially about the view during the long ride down to the ground floor. They walk out into the sunlight and stand on the pavement next to the bustle of the Gold Coast traffic.
    “You’ll need this,” she offers, delving into her bag and taking out a bulky packet of photographs and slides. “I’ll wait for you to be in touch.”
    In return he gives her his card and lingers a little longer than necessary before she turns and walks off without looking back. Jed wants to talk to her more but shies off from asking her to catch up in the evening. He can’t help noticing that she walks with relaxed grace. The cut and texture of her blouse and slacks allows just a hint of the firm, shapely body and legs hidden beneath. She moves with the grace and controlled movement of a dancer.
This lady knows that less is a whole lot more
.
    After his last mistake, marrying too fast, he has avoided getting involved with another woman. Four months of promise followed by two years of alcohol-fuelled hell is a hard lesson. Everyone makes mistakes but he married his biggest one. However, Alexander is tickling his fancy and it isn’t just her body. He is tantalised by the visual and intellectual seductiveness of their encounter.
    Hopping into his hired, red, two-door Monaro coupe, Jed feels his settled life has been disturbed by the encounter. He hopes he is thinking with his brain and not another part of his anatomy. Regardless of the woman, he is not going to be able to resist this opportunity. Picking up some pocket money for having the adventure is just an added bonus.
     
     
    April 14 1942, north of Darwin, Australia
     
    Second Lieutenant Isao Tahana of the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Force rested his left hand on the throttle while his right gently caressed the control stick of his Mitsubishi A6M2 Zero-Sen fighter. He was cruising on patrol at one hundred and eighty knots, burning a miserly sixteen point four gallons of fuel every hour. He was reaching his maximum endurance, one of the outstanding features of the Zero fighter. Experimentation by dedicated Nippon pilots showed the ability of the A6M2 to use its very long range to reach the Philippine Islands and still retain fuel for useful combat time. This saved the use of aircraft carriers and freed them up for other tasks.
    When the 3 rd Naval Fleet and 11 th Kôkukantai Air Fleet hit the Philippines from bases in Taiwan in December 1941, they flew missions the likes of which had never been seen before. Their fighters appeared in places totally unexpected and caught the Americans and British by surprise. These flights would not be surpassed until the advent of the very long-range missions undertaken by P-51 Mustangs in 1945 and the long-range mission flown by P-38 Lightnings to hunt down Admiral Yamamoto, mastermind of the attack on Pearl Harbour. All this was in the future. Isao lived in the Samurai dreamtime, the peak period of the Zero and the Japanese fighter pilots’ reputation.
    He scanned the sky from left to right and saw below, at two o’clock, the fleeting shape of an aircraft silhouetted against the dark blue of the ocean. The twin tails gave it away immediately. One of the new American devil bombers that had arrived in the Philippines only three days ago to attack the loyal soldiers of the Empire was now running for home in defeat. He scanned the sky around him once again, a habit that had kept him alive, noting the position of the American bomber and the