The blue was absolute. From the Plexiglas bubble of his cockpit, Jack Riley saw nothing but an endless, perfect dome of sky meeting the deeper, shimmering blue of the Pacific. Below, the sun hammered the water into a sheet of hammered silver. The only sound was the steady, reassuring drone of the Pratt & Whitney R-2800 Double Wasp engine, a 2,000-horsepower heart beating in the chest of his F4U Corsair. It was the sound of safety, the sound of heading home.
The danger was over. The escort run had been a milk run, just as Leo had predicted. No bandits, no flak, just a clean transit back to the carrier. Jack allowed himself a moment to relax his grip on the stick, rolling his shoulders in the cramped cockpit. He was a creature of checklists and caution, but even he could admit the tension had bled out of the air an hour ago.
His radio crackled, pulling him from his thoughts. Leo's voice, smooth and confident as ever, filled his headset. "Told you it'd be a quiet one, Jack. The flyboys in Tokyo are sleeping in today."
Jack scanned the horizon, a habit too ingrained to switch off. "Quiet is good, Leo. Just means we all get back for a hot meal. Keep your eyes open anyway."
"Always," Leo's voice came back, a hint of laughter in it. Jack could picture the easy grin on his wingman's face, the flash of white teeth. They were a study in contrasts—Jack, the steady, by-the-book lead; Leo, the charming, intuitive ace who flew by the seat of his pants. A perfect team. "Got a letter from Sarah you'll want to see when we're down," Leo added, his tone casual. "Looks thick."
Jack's heart gave a familiar squeeze at the mention of her name. But the words pricked at him. Leo was their go-between, the friend who brought the mail out on the supply launches. A necessary arrangement, but one that always felt like a small intrusion, a reminder that Leo stood between him and the woman he was fighting to get back to. He keyed the mic to reply, to say something light, but never got the chance.
A violent, percussive thump-thump-thump ripped through the airframe. The stick shuddered in his hand as cannon shells tore a line of ragged holes across his port wing. His body reacted before his mind could—a hard bank to the right, kicking the rudder, his eyes snapping to the rearview mirror. His training screamed Zero, but there was no red sun painted on the wings of the plane peeling away behind him.
He saw the unmistakable shape of another Corsair, its gull wings catching the sun as it banked away sharply, thin wisps of smoke trailing from its cannons.
Leo's plane.
For a full second, his brain refused to process the information. It was a mistake. A stray round. A mechanical failure. Anything but the truth that was staring him in the face. He jammed the transmit button.
"Leo! Talk to me! I'm hit! Are you hit?"
The only reply was the hiss of empty airwaves. The silence was an anvil, crushing the last vestiges of his disbelief. Leo was gone. The betrayal was absolute, a clean, silent amputation of everything Jack had understood about his world.
Then his own world fell apart. A hydraulic line must have been severed. The controls went mushy, then dead. The Corsair, mortally wounded, nosed over into a gut-wrenching spiral. The perfect blue sky and the silver ocean became a spinning, nauseating blur. A fire warning light flashed a frantic, crimson pulse on his console. The scream of tearing metal was the only sound in his ears as the port wing, shredded and weakened, folded back on itself with a sickening lurch. He was a passenger now, strapped inside a falling coffin. His last conscious thought wasn't of Sarah, or of home, but of the single, agonizing question that burned hotter than the fire licking at the engine cowl.
Why?
The impact was a cataclysm of water, metal, and force. Then, utter blackness.
He floated in the void, a disembodied consciousness. The roar of the engine and the shriek of tortured steel faded, replaced by a new sound, rhythmic and gentle—the chugging of a train on its tracks.
The blackness dissolved into the warm, golden light of a late afternoon sun. He was standing on a train station platform, a year earlier. The air smelled of coal smoke and his mother's perfume. He was in his crisp new officer's uniform, the wool still scratchy against his neck. And in his arms was Sarah. She felt so real, so solid, her head tucked under his chin, her hands clutching the front of his jacket. He could feel the fine tremor running through her as she tried not to cry.
"You'll write every day?" she whispered into his chest.
"Every single day," he promised, his voice thick. "I'll be back before you know it. We'll get that little house with the picket fence."
She looked up at him, her eyes bright with love and unshed tears. "Just come back, Jack. Just come back to me."
He kissed her, a deep, desperate kiss filled with all the promises of the future they were supposed to have. And as he held her, the scene pulled back, just a few feet. Leo stood there, also in uniform, a wide, supportive smile plastered on his face. He was there to see his best friend off to war. But the smile didn't reach his eyes. They were fixed on Sarah, locked onto her with an unnerving intensity. It wasn't the look of a friend. It was a look of raw longing, of hunger, of something that bordered on ownership. In the memory, Jack had been oblivious, wrapped in his own world of love and departure. But now, from the darkness, he saw it for what it was: the seed of a poison that had been growing all along.
The warm memory shattered. An explosion of pain ripped him back to the present. Water surged into his mouth, a vile cocktail of salt, blood, and aviation fuel. He choked, gagging, his body convulsing.
His eyes flickered open. The world was a painful, blurry smear. A green canopy of jungle leaves swam into focus against a white-hot sky. He felt the grit of sand and the sharp edge of a rock digging into his back. Twisting his head, he saw he was tangled in the white silk lines of his parachute, half-submerged in the impossibly turquoise water of a lagoon. His left leg was bent at an angle that defied nature. Just offshore, the wreck of his Corsair was a blackened, smoking ruin, hissing as the tide washed over its mangled frame.
The raw realization hit him like a physical blow. He was alive. He was wounded. And as his gaze swept across the empty crescent of beach, the silent, impenetrable wall of jungle, and the vast, indifferent ocean stretching to the horizon, he understood that he was completely and utterly alone.