The Mary Jane Mission Read online

  “I hope it doesn’t have to come to that.”

  MacDonald gave the two a despairing stare. The copter hit an air pocket, shaking the men. “I hope it doesn’t either.”

  * * * *

  KYOTO

  David picked up Toshika in front of her apartment building. She got into his Porsche and closed the passenger door with a firm slam. David greeted her with a light kiss on the lips.

  “Thanks for coming,” she said. “I appreciate it.”

  “No problem.” David put the sports car in gear and sped away in the night. “I’d like to meet your family friend. What did you say his name was?”

  “Paul Mason. Colonel Paul Mason.” Toshika looked at him with concern. “I should warn you. The colonel’s mind isn’t always clear. Last time I saw him he didn’t even remember me. But, you know, he’s in his nineties.”

  “So, how did your family get to know him in the first place?”

  “After the war he quit the air force, moved to Japan and invested in Mitsubishi, the same company my father worked for.”

  “Big company. He must be a rich man.”

  “He is, and his kids and grandchildren are out to get his millions.”

  David drove through the northern suburbs of Kyoto, over a bridge that spanned the Kamo River, past the beautiful Kyoto Botanical Gardens. A mile beyond, he slowed at a sprawling one-story building nestled inside a cluster of neatly-trimmed trees. He pulled into the parking lot near the lobby.

  Following Toshika down an empty corridor, David was led to a room near the kitchen. Inside was a pale, thin, wrinkled old man in a wheelchair. He was dressed in a nightshirt and appeared to be staring out through the long, wide window at the slowly setting sun. Toshika approached the man slowly, so as not to startle him. As she got closer, he turned to her.

  “Hello, colonel,” she said loudly, keeping in mind that he was hard of hearing.

  The old man smiled. “Oh, yes, Toshika.” He stuck a bony hand out for her to touch. His voice was rough. “My daughter just left. Did you see her?”

  “No, I didn’t, colonel.” Toshika didn’t know if she really had been there or if he was imagining it. But at least he had recognized her today. That didn’t occur too often. “I brought a friend with me.”

  “Who?”

  “David Shilling.”

  The colonel held out his hand and David shook it lightly. The old man looked pleased.

  “Would you like to watch some TV?” Toshika asked.

  “Yes, I would like that.”

  Toshika positioned herself behind the old man, gripped the handles to the wheelchair and went through the door, David walking alongside.

  There were others in the large TV room, two old women and three visitors in their thirties. They were all glued to a news bulletin on Typhoon Matilda. David and Toshika pulled up chairs on either side of the colonel in one far corner, facing the TV set.

  “He likes it when he hears about old times. We may be in luck. It sounds like he might remember a few things today,” she whispered to David.

  Toshika carried on some family small talk for fifteen minutes with the colonel, who remembered her father and asked how he was doing. After she ran out of things to discuss, she glanced at David.

  “Colonel,” David began, “I hear you were with the air force during World War Two.”

  The man’s eyes brightened for a moment. “Yes, I was.”

  “David’s father flew B-29s,” Toshika interrupted.

  The colonel turned to David.

  “He didn’t fly them, actually, he worked on them,” David continued. “He was ground crew.”

  Raising his finger, the old man tried to find the words. “What was your father’s squadron?”

  “The 509th Composite Group.”

  “What?”

  “You’ll have to speak louder,” Toshika advised.

  “The 509th Composite!”

  The colonel’s face sparkled. “I did some work for them. Yes, I did. They dropped the atomic bombs, you know.”

  “That’s right, sir, they did.” David paused. “You were with the 509th?”

  “Yes.”

  Toshika smiled at David. She hadn’t seen the colonel this attentive in weeks.

  “Which aircraft was your father’s? Did it have a name?”

  “It sure did. The Mary Jane.”

  The colonel’s mouth dropped open in shock.

  “Colonel, are you all right?” Toshika wanted to know.

  “The Mary Jane had a bomb, too,” the colonel said. “A big bomb.”

  “It did.” That was news to David. “What kind of bomb?”

  “Plutonium.”

  David cleared his throat. He looked at the others in the room. No one seemed to be paying attention to them. What was going on here? “Plutonium? You mean it carried an atomic bomb?”

  Toshika nudged David with her elbow. “Don’t take to heart everything he tells you. He makes up stories.”

  “Yeah, but, did you see his face light up when I mentioned the name of my father’s bomber?”

  “So?”

  “Colonel, are you sure it was carrying an atomic bomb?”

  The man nodded, as if he understood the question perfectly.

  David was flabbergasted. He remembered his father once making reference to the fact that his B-29 had disappeared on a routine mission to Japan only days before the Japanese surrender. Could this senile old man really be telling the truth about Mary Jane? But who was this colonel? And how would he be privy to such information?

  “Sir, what did you do with the 509th?”

  The colonel leaned forward. “What?”

  “What did you do with the 509th?”

  “Intelligence.”

  “Intelligence?” David shot a glance to Toshika. Even she was surprised.

  “I wouldn’t necessarily believe all this,” she warned David.

  “Why not?” He turned to the old man. “How do you know all this about the Mary Jane?”

  Just then an elderly nurse in stark white walked into the room to announce that visiting hours were over.

  “How do you know all this stuff, colonel?” David asked again.

  The colonel waved his bony hand in the air. “I know all about it. Big hush-hush.”

  David felt every nerve in him tingle. “What was the target?”

  The nurse was now standing over the three of them. She started to take hold of the wheelchair’s handlebars. “Sir, ma’am, visiting hours are over.”

  “You’d better listen to her, David. They’re strict about visiting hours.”

  Looking up to the woman in white, he said, “Sure. Sorry. May I wheel him back in?”

  “I don’t see why not.”

  “Thank you.”

  David and Toshika took the colonel down the hall. The nurse went into the room first, enabling David to stop the wheelchair by the entrance, giving him time for one last try.

  “Colonel,” he asked one more time, “what was the Mary Jane’s target?”

  The old man’s face grew hard. He motioned with his finger for David to bend down. David moved his head so that his left ear was only inches away from the colonel’s lips.

  “Right here, mister,” the colonel whispered softly and clearly. “Kyoto.”

  Driving back to Toshika’s apartment, David rammed through the gears of his car.

  “So, the Mary Jane was actually on an atomic mission. What do you know?”

  Toshika laughed, shaking her head. “Like I said before, he makes stories up. I never know what to believe. Sometimes he recognizes me, sometimes he doesn’t. Look, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. There were only two atomic missions. Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That’s it!”

  “But why would he make the story up?”

  “He’s old. He’s imagining it.”

  “What if he’s telling the truth? He said my father’s crew was on an atomic mission. My father told my brother and me that the Mary Jane was lost on
a routine bombing mission to Japan. It disappeared and was never heard from again. Plane and crew. Come to think of it, we always got the feeling that dad was hiding something from us, that we weren’t getting the whole truth. Now this. What if my father’s bomber really was on an atomic raid? Geez!”

  Toshika shook her head. “What difference does it make now?”

  “It means a helluva lot to me. What if the Mary Jane was out on an atomic mission — the third atomic mission — and something went wrong along the way? What if it ran into mechanical trouble? She could have crashed into the Pacific. The colonel said it was a big hush-hush. The mission had probably started but it never succeeded.” David shrugged his shoulders. “The war ended soon after, anyway. So, they kept it all a secret. A big hush-hush.”

  “That’s if you can believe the colonel.”

  “I think I do.”

  “Oh, come on, David! It would have been recorded in the history books somewhere.”

  “But if something did go wrong and it didn’t get to the target, why would it be in the history books? Because it failed. Maybe the bomb detonated prematurely over the water. It could have been shot down by a fighter. Or ground guns. Anything.”

  “OK,” Toshika sighed, “let’s say it did happen. Why a third atomic mission?”

  “According to the history books, your government didn’t surrender right after the Nagasaki mission. Maybe the United States were ready with a third bomb, and the target was Kyoto.”

  Toshika sighed. “If you say so. But I still don’t think so.”

  “I’m going to check into it.”

  “Really. What are you going to do?”

  “You’ll see.”

  * * * *

  At home, David went to his den and sat by the phone, while running the meeting with Colonel Mason through his mind one more time. What if the Mary Jane really was on an atomic mission? What a blockbuster! Had his father known this? What a coincidence bumping into Mason. Providing he was telling the truth.

  David tapped a number on his phone and waited until he heard a woman’s voice on the other end.

  “Hello.”

  “Gail? It’s David.”

  “I’m sorry, this isn’t Gail. But I’ll get her for you.”

  “Thank you.” Who was that? David wondered. He detected a French accent.

  “Hello.”

  “Gail?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s David.”

  “Hi, David. What’s up? How yuh doing?”

  “Good. Who was that who answered?”

  “General Cameron’s wife.”

  “You mean the General Cameron? Phil Cameron, the Hiroshima pilot?”

  “The same one.”

  Everywhere David turned today, it seemed the past was there. “Why is General Cameron’s wife at your house?”

  “The Camerons are visiting us for a few days. It seems your father knows the general quite well.”

  “Is that so.” David was learning new things about his dad by the minute. “So, dad is friends with General Cameron.”

  “Seems so.”

  “Anyway, listen, is dad there? I need to talk to him.”

  “Nope.”

  “Will he be back soon?”

  “Not for a couple days.”

  Then David realized that Cameron would probably know the story behind the Mary Jane. But would he talk. “Is General Cameron there?”

  “He’s gone, too.”

  Catching a strange tone to Gail’s voice, David continued. “Where are they? I need to reach dad... both of them. It’s important.”

  “How important?”

  “Very important. What is this?”

  “I’m not supposed to say where they are unless it’s important.”

  “Where are they, Gail? I need to reach them immediately.”

  “They’re out to sea on USS Midway.”

  “You’re putting me on!”

  “Not at all. It’s official US Navy business.”

  “OK, then, is Les around?”

  “He’s out to sea, too.”

  Annoyed, David sighed and rubbed his face. “Listen to me carefully, Gail. Can you relay a message to dad for me? It’s an emergency.”

  “Yeah, I can do that.”

  “You’ll have to jot it down word for word.”

  “Hold on.” There was rustling on the other end. “OK, I got a pen and paper. Shoot.”

  Chapter twelve

  USS MIDWAY

  USS Midway was built in the last year of the Second World War. Designated CV-41, she was an old carrier, as far as active carriers went. She and the equally-old USS Coral Sea were the only two carriers that formed the Midway Class in the modern US Navy.

  Midway had many things going against her. She displaced less tonnage than the other carriers, at 62,000 tons full load, compared to at least 80,000 tons for the others. Not only that, she was shorter in length and flight-deck width. While the other classes were over 1,000 feet in length with at least 252 feet of flight-deck width, Midway’s specs were 979 and 238, respectively. Midway also held fewer aircraft, seventy-five compared to around ninety, and fewer men, just under 3,000 compared to over 3,000 for the other classes. She had been home-ported in Yokosuka, Japan, since 1973. This year, she was celebrating her forty-fifth anniversary. Despite her advanced age, she was ready to deploy to the Indian and Pacific Oceans on very short notice. She could still hold her own if and when the crunch came.

  After midnight, Robert Shilling caught a great view of Midway through the porthole of the Super Stallion. He was tired and on the verge of being sick to his stomach from the bumpy, six-hour-plus flight across the water and was anxious to set foot on the carrier now below and to the side of him. A half mile from touchdown, the copter pilot throttled back to 130 knots and cruised at that speed until 100 feet off the deck, where he dropped down to 30 knots.

  The touchdown point was marked with flashing strobe lights. The LSO waved the helicopter down, while the pilot watched the mirrored approach carefully, the same landing device used by the fighter pilots during their recoveries. The Stallion pilot hit the deck a little too hard, giving the passengers a jolt. Ground crewmen outside rushed to secure the landing gear with restraining cables. One of the men motioned the pilot to cut the power. The engine noise and large whirling propeller slowed down and stopped.

  Inside, Shilling was the last one to release his safety belt, Mae West and helmet. He followed Cameron and MacDonald through the side door and onto the deck. A strong, cool wind in the 30-knot range hit his back. In the darkness, he saw the outlines of Midway’s Air Wing, several tightly parked F-18 Hornets, wings folded and safely stowed. He was excited at being aboard his first US Navy carrier, the same carrier that his son had called home many times.

  A tall officer with a round face greeted the three men, first with a salute to Agana’s CO. “Captain MacDonald, welcome to Midway. I’m the executive officer, Commander Vince Digano. Let me take you and your guests to Commodore Prentice.” Digano glanced up to the superstructure behind him. He was known as the XO, the ship’s president, the CO’s deputy, which meant he was Prentice’s mouthpiece, the man who did all the yelling at the department heads. He was the man who got things done. Some nicknamed him the Headhunter.

  “Thank you,” MacDonald replied. “Lead the way.”

  “Follow me, sir.”

  The recently-promoted Commodore William Prentice was waiting for the visitors on the bridge. He was seated in his upholstered chair to the port side of a large rectangular glass. From this position, he had a bird’s-eye view of the entire carrier deck. The ship had just finished a series of night launches and recoveries only thirty minutes before the arrival of the Super Stallion, with Prentice watching the entire operation from his perch. Some officers and NCO’s were with him now in the room full of electronic and computerized systems and consoles.

  Prentice was considered a hard-liner, a stickler for precision and detail. The sailors weren’t t
hat crazy about him, but he had a good rapport with his officers. He knew how to get the best out of them without stretching them beyond their limits. He was a fit man of medium height, with a rugged dark-brown complexion and black hair. He wore glasses over icy grey eyes. Along his left cheek ran a long scar, a souvenir from a barroom brawl in San Diego twenty years earlier, where he was jumped on by three civilians. MacDonald — a young fellow officer he didn’t know at the time — had come to his rescue. From then on, Prentice and MacDonald were friends for life. Prentice to this day still felt he owed MacDonald one.

  Prentice walked over to his friend and shook his hand. “It’s great to see you again. It’s been a while. What, two years?”

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  “So, who are your guests and what’s so damn important enough to bring you all the way out here?”

  “Will — Commodore Prentice,” MacDonald corrected himself, “I’d like you to meet Major-General Phillip Cameron retired, United States Air Force.”

  Prentice blinked. “General Cameron. It’s a pleasure. I thought you looked familiar. Welcome.”

  “Thank you,” Cameron answered. “Quite the flat-top, commodore, for one that dates back to the end of the Second World War.”

  “It’s still of use to the grand old navy. If our pilots can land on her, then they can land on the bigger ones. The Old Gray Lady can still perform.”

  “And,” MacDonald continued, “this is Lieutenant Les Shilling’s father, Robert Shilling. Incidentally, he was ground crew with the General’s old war outfit on Tinian, the 509th Composite Group.”

  “Is that so? Pleased to meet you, Mr. Shilling. Another pleasure.”

  “The pleasure is all mine, sir,” Robert said, holding out his hand, glancing at the commodore’s spotless working khaki uniform and officer’s cap. “Thank you for allowing a land lover like myself the privilege of seeing your ship.”

  “No problem at all.” The commodore’s handshake was as strong as a steel vice grip. “Mr. Shilling, I’d like to say to you that your son is one of the finest, most dedicated pilots in the whole US Navy. He’s a credit to the uniform he wears. And I compliment you in the raising of such a fine son.”