“It could have been worse,” Foster allowed. “I’ve seen cadets try to head for Miami or New Orleans or Atlanta. But it could have been a hell of a lot better, too. If you want carrier duty, you’d better keep hitting the books hard.”
“Yes, sir. I will, sir,” Joe said fervently. Carrier duty-the chance to hit back at Japan as soon as he could-was the reason he’d signed up as a Navy flying cadet in the first place.
Lieutenant Foster slid back the canopy. He and Joe climbed out of the Texan. The flying instructor was a lanky six-footer. He towered over Joe, who barely made five-seven. That might have mattered if they were bashing at each other with swords. Who cared how big a pilot was? Joe had heard Southerners say, It’s not the size of the dog in the fight-it’s the size of the fight in the dog. What the Japanese had done since December 7 proved the same thing, but Joe wasn’t inclined to give a bunch of goddamn Japs credit for anything.
He eyed the Texan with a mixture of exasperation and affection. It was a big step up from the sedate Stearman biplane on which he’d done his primary flight training. No sooner had that thought crossed his mind than a Yellow Peril buzzed by overhead. The Navy painted all its Stearmans a luminous yellow to warn other pilots that trainees were in the air.
Yes, the Texan was a long step up from a Yellow Peril. It was a monoplane with a real metal skin, not the doped canvas covering a Stearman. It had a machine gun in the left wing root-the one Joe had used to blast away at the target another plane towed. It had bomb racks, too. It could do a pretty good job of impersonating a warplane.