The Best Alternate History Stories of the 20th Century Read Free Page A

that he wouldn’t go down if it happened to him.”
    “ ’Course he wouldn’t!” Matthews said.
    “You hope,” January said under his breath.
    “They let those Wright engines out too soon,” Haddock said seriously. “They keep busting under the takeoff load.”
    “Won’t matter to the old bull,” Matthews said. Then they all started in about Tibbets’ flying ability, even Fitch. They all thought Tibbets was the greatest. January, on the other hand, liked Tibbets even less than he liked Fitch. That had started right after he was assigned to the 509th. He had been told he was part of the most important group in the war, and then given a leave. In Vicksburg a couple of fliers just back from England had bought him a lot of whiskies, and since January had spent several months stationed near London they had talked for a good long time and gotten pretty drunk. The two were really curious about what January was up to now, but he had stayed vague on it and kept returning the talk to the blitz. He had been seeing an English nurse, for instance, whose flat had been bombed, family and neighbors killed.... But they had really wanted to know. So he had told them he was onto something special, and they had flipped out their badges and told him they were Army Intelligence, and that if he ever broke security like that again he’d be transferred to Alaska. It was a dirty trick. January had gone back to Wendover and told Tibbets so to his face, and Tibbets had turned red and threatened him some more. January despised him for that. The upshot was that January was effectively out of the war, because Tibbets really played his favorites. January wasn’t sure he really minded, but during their year’s training he had bombed better than ever, as a way of showing the old bull he was wrong to write January off. Every time their eyes had met it was clear what was going on. But Tibbets never backed off no matter how precise January’s bombing got. Just thinking about it was enough to cause January to line up a pebble over an ant and drop it.
    “Will you cut that out?” Fitch complained. “I swear you must hang from the ceiling when you take a shit so you can practice aiming for the toilet.” The men laughed.
    “Don’t I bunk over you?” January asked. Then he pointed. “They’re going.”
    Tibbets’ plane had taxied to runway Baker. Fitch passed the flask around again. The tropical sun beat on them, and the ocean surrounding the island blazed white. January put up a sweaty hand to aid the bill of his baseball cap.
    The four props cut in hard, and the sleek Superfortress quickly trundled up to speed and roared down Baker. Three-quarters of the way down the strip the outside right prop feathered.
    “Yow!” Fitch crowed. “I told you he’d do it!”
    The plane nosed off the ground and slewed right, then pulled back on course to cheers from the four young men around January. January pointed again. “He’s cut number three, too.”
    The inside right prop feathered, and now the plane was pulled up by the left wing only, while the two right props windmilled uselessly. “Holy smoke!” Haddock cried. “Ain’t the old bull something?”
    They whooped to see the plane’s power, and Tibbets’ nervy arrogance.
    “By God, Le May’s man will remember this flight,” Fitch hooted. “Why, look at that! He’s banking!”
    Apparently taking off on two engines wasn’t enough for Tibbets; he banked the plane right until it was standing on its dead wing, and it curved back toward Tinian.
    Then the inside left engine feathered.
    War tears at the imagination. For three years Frank January had kept his imagination trapped, refusing to give it any play whatsoever. The dangers threatening him, the effects of the bombs, the fate of the other participants in the war, he had refused to think about any of it. But the war tore at his control. That English nurse’s flat. The missions over the Ruhr. The bomber just below him blown apart by