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  Chelavenki! Ex-American helicopter pilot shot down three times in Vietnam, later a chopper pilot flying deer cullers, including Jed, in the Southern Alps of New Zealand, a mercenary organiser and later a business consultant back in the States. He looks straight back into her brown eyes and chooses to say nothing about all that. He can always find out later what has gone on there.

  “If you want me to help, I’ll need everything you have. I’ll have to do some research and get back to you in a few weeks,” he announces decisively. Now he doesn’t have to work hard to keep his eyes level with hers. Adventure is calling.

  “That’s fine. I’m heading off to Sydney for a while but can meet when you are ready.”

  “Bear in mind Alexander, this will cost you. Allowing for airfares, vehicle, fuel, supplies and incidentals, you could be up for at least ten thousand dollars with no guarantee of success.”

  “I don’t care. I’m willing to have a go. It’s the only lead I have. I want to at least try. I expect to cover expenses and will pay you ten thousand on top for your efforts.” Her tone makes it plain she has already thought things through.

  The lady has time and money to burn, Jed assesses. He acknowledges the urge to locate her grandfather. He’d come across other families searching for closure over relatives missing in action over the vast expanse of Northern Australia, New Guinea and the waters in between. The reasons were their own, but important to them.

  Jed hesitates, but not out of doubt. He doesn’t want to seem too eager. After exploring twenty-six crash sites from World War II, here is a chance at an unrecorded site, a war grave. He is keen.

  “It would mean a lot to me to find him,” she says. “My mother cut her father out of her life totally and said little about him. Grandma always blamed my mother for his death in a weird, convoluted way. I copped the effects all through my childhood. From what I know, I think I’m a bit like him. Maybe I can settle some ghosts for her and also for me.”

  Her voice has taken on a soft quality and Jed senses an 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 3rd Naval Fleet and 11th 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 sun. He saw no other aircraft and assumed the one below to be a straggler from the main group that had made good its escape.

  He pushed the control column forward and to the right to dive upon the unsuspecting bomber. He tried to reduce the deflection angle as he dived down for a high tail attack because the mixture of 7.7 mm machine guns and 20 mm cannon that armed his aircraft were mismatched in trajectory. He used the manoeuvrability of the Zero to place him in a good firing position as well as to avoid the twin fifty-calibre machine guns in the top turret. As a veteran of the war in China, he didn’t need to fire any ranging shots.

  As the Zero built up speed in the dive out of the sun, his thumb felt for the small rocking lever on top of the throttle that selected machine guns and cannon when pushed forward. As the range closed between the aircraft, his finger touched the firing button on the front of the throttle handle. He pressed it and watched the tracers slam into the bomber and felt the vibration of the guns. With a strong but gentle pull on the control stick he pulled through the vertical and rolled inverted for another diving, slashing attack against the bomber. He sensed the bomber skidding away from him as the pilot kicked rudder. He hit the firing button again and briefly saw some flashing strikes among the misses. He rolled upright, slammed the throttle forward for full power from the Sakae engine, working the rudder and ailerons for a steep climbing turn to position for an attack from three quarter rear to avoid the tail guns. He saw his shells punch into the fuselage of the bomber and then suddenly the stream of dancing fire stopped as the ammunition ran out.

  He pulled the throttle back and kicked the rudder side to side to slow the aircraft so that he could formate off the port wing tip of the wounded bomber. He could see the dorsal gunner slumped inside the shattered Perspex of his turret, lifted his goggles and calmly lit a cigarette while he studied the aircraft. He could plainly see the damage it had sustained, the blood that splattered the inside of the dorsal turret, the shattered windscreen and the dying engine. He continued to study the bomber with its high-set gull wing and beautiful lines communicating power and purpose. He admired the punishment the aircraft had taken yet still managed to keep flying. Even he had to acknowledge that Japan’s own Mitsubishi bomber would have been a flaming wreck spiralling down to the ocean bel
ow with far less damage. He knew that after Pearl Harbour, American industry would pump out aircraft like this by the thousand. Nippon must consolidate its new empire so that American supply lines became too long to manage. He understood that peace was better for both countries, but if the war continued modern Samurai like him would do their duty.

  The dying bomber was so close he could see the face of the American pilot struggling to keep it flying. Isao looked into the eyes of the other pilot. He lifted his finger in salute to acknowledge the skill with which the American had fought his aircraft, pulled a tight turn to port and set a course back to base.

  He would let chance decide the fate of the bomber.

  Chapter Two

  Alexander stands at the lights waiting for them to change, watching the Monaro do a U-turn and blast through the intersection as the lights turn red. The power of the car is being exploited with controlled discipline and a hint of rebellion, pushing the boundaries to the limit. She gives a slight smile as she recognises a similar spirit. Visualising herself behind the wheel, she walks across the road into the foyer of her hotel, heading straight for the lift. While she is excited about taking the first step in the project, Alexander is also uneasy. Something is stirring within her soul. Instinct warns that Jed Mitchell could be trouble, big time trouble. She finds the key card for the unit and enters the room. Throwing her bag down on the couch, she kicks off her shoes and heads for the fridge to pour a glass of champagne.

  “How’d the meeting go?” asks her half brother Damian as he slouches in the armchair watching sport on the television, a coffee cup, two empty stubbies and a discarded packet of chips scattered on the floor around him.

  “Fine,” Alexander replies blandly as she finishes filling the glass and flicks on the kettle to make coffee. “There’s some research to do, but he’ll get back to me in a few weeks with his decision.”

  Damien flicks the remote to mute for a few seconds and calls out, “With any luck you can get on and do it and maybe sort out some issues.” He hits the button to reengage with the cricket.

  In response, Alexander kicks her shoes out of the way. Picking up the glass and bottle, she walks out to the balcony, falling back into the deck chair and resting her feet on another chair. Her feet are well-shaped but marred by the damaged toes of her right foot. She gives the foot a brief glance then looks down at the beach, sipping the champagne.

  She is aware of a stir of emotions she hasn’t felt before and lets them flow through her mind and body. She has learned to tease and play with men, then cut down using her incisive intellect, to leave them floundering. Attracting the desire of a man, to have them dangling in frustration at any time and place, is a victory that doesn’t need to be pursued any further. She feels that protective behaviour being threatened and is now floundering herself for an appropriate response.

  Something, however, is stirring within her. She doesn’t know what it is and has no idea how to start exploring it. She has just taken a huge step back into the world. A seed has been cast, sown with the silent hand of hope. Watered gently with time and fertilised with patience and a pinch of daring, it could flower into the new life she craves so desperately. She sips her champagne and lets a jumble of thoughts race randomly through her mind.

  April 14 1942, Northern Australia

  Kilchelski was just about finished. The blood soaking slowly into the towel was sapping his energy and his leg shuddered under the strain of maintaining pressure to counter the drag of the dead engine. Australia emerged as a blur on the horizon, but no familiar landmarks were visible. The coastline was a low band of mangrove with reddish, rocky hills in the distant background.

  The aircraft was down to four thousand five hundred feet and twelve miles out. He had no energy and little life left to even think about turning left or right to find civilisation. He knew life was draining away and that he had only minutes at best.

  The aircraft was dying as well, the port engine overheating with the strain of the last few hours and only four left alive in its shattered fuselage. Two of those could not speak English and had expected to reach safety from the Japanese onslaught. Instead, they had witnessed gruesome death as Japanese shells and bullets had smashed through the plane and exploded the flesh and bone of those they had hoped would be their salvation. They could sense the agony of the pilot and the dying shudders of the bomber, but lived with the faint hope they would yet survive.

  Naoji Menya cradled his six year old daughter in his arms, as he had for the last few hours amidst the mayhem—a long, lonely flight listening to the wind whistling through holes in the fuselage and the thundering roar of the engine. He had covered her eyes to protect her from the blood and gore splattering the inside of the aircraft and now sang a song from his childhood to distract her as the sorely wounded aircraft thundered on.

  With his free hand he checked his shoulder bag and took out the ancient wooden box that contained the key to a new life. He had offered it to the pilot to take his daughter to freedom and could not believe that the tall American had taken a look, holding the object in the palm of his hand where the sunlight had reflected in its centre like the flickering flames of a fire, and then given it back to him.

  Although he didn’t advertise it, his English was as good as his Japanese. He heard the pilot say, “I don’t need that to do what is right,” as he got on with the final checks of the aircraft.

  In spite of being trapped in a dying bomber, he was grateful for even a slim chance at life and freedom for his daughter. It was more than he could have expected from the Japanese Army in the Philippines. He made a final decision, extracted the object from its nest in the box and hung the chain around her neck, tucking the stone under her blouse for extra safety. He dropped the box back in his shoulder bag before placing his arm once again around his daughter.

  Kilchelski had no idea whether he was east or west of Darwin, the engine was dying and his body was giving up. He set up the descent for straight ahead, descending at five hundred feet per minute and throttled back the manifold pressure and RPM to try to keep the engine alive for as long as possible. Ahead all he could see through the crazed Plexiglass was a shoreline of dark green mangrove and rocks backed by a wilderness of bush. He maintained the descent, aiming just left of a bluff. Without intercom he could not warn anyone still alive that he was proposing a forced landing, even if his passengers could understand him. He hadn’t heard from Brown, the tail gunner, since the Zero had pounded them with cannon and machine gun fire.

  Five miles out and at two thousand five hundred feet, a bay appeared to the left with an island and a flat expanse of mudflat. Kilchelski reduced pressure on left rudder and let the bomber drift to the right and then forced more left rudder to line up on the mudflat.

  A hell of a way to fly an aeroplane, he thought, left rudder only to point the nose and fight the drag of a useless engine.

  He gently pushed the propeller lever with his injured arm to full fine for a landing and adjusted the throttle to keep his landing spot centred in what remained of the windscreen, fighting pain and exhaustion. The port engine was running hot and oil fumes streamed out behind the wing in the airflow. He reduced power slowly, trying to squeeze the last remaining life out of the engine. At eight hundred feet the vibrations became so bad he had to shut the engine down, slamming the mixture control right back, feathering the propeller, and killing the master switch to shut down all the electrics to reduce the risk of fire and trimming for best glide speed. As a last thought, he unlatched the sliding canopy on his side from force of habit drummed into him during his training days. The pressure was building, demanding all his attention. He spared a few seconds to visualise the woman waiting for him in Brisbane, hoping desperately he would see her, and the child she was carrying, again.

  With both engines now dead, he relaxed his pressure on the left rudder to relieve the killing strain on his leg. Keeping the wheels up in case they dug into soft mud, he flew his baby into a belly landing, slightly nose
high. The tail touched first and slammed her down onto the mud. The plane slid across the tidal flat into the stand of trees and scrub on the slightly higher ground in the centre of the island. He had touched later and faster than intended and the thin trunks of trees on the high part of the island were bent or sliced apart by the wings as she buried her nose and most of the fuselage among the wreckage of the vegetation.

  Without adequate warning to brace themselves, or even understanding what was happening, the last remaining passengers were slammed into projections inside the aircraft, shearing flesh and breaking bones to end up as shattered human hulks on the floor of the aircraft.

  Brown, the waist gunner, had known what was coming and had tried to warn the survivors what to expect. Naoji Menya did his best to protect his daughter, but a forced landing was a completely new experience and he had no idea what to expect. In spite of his best efforts to secure himself, Brown was flung forward through the fuselage to smash against a bulkhead bracket, his blood leaving a splattered smear on the green-primed aluminium fuselage.

  For some time only the crackling of the cooling engine disturbed the peace of the tidal swamp. When this finally stopped, there was only the wailing cry of a child. The slithering gouges of the fuselage across the mud flats would be washed away by the next high tide and soon only the natural sounds of the wilderness would surround the wreckage for the next sixty odd years.

  Chapter Three

  Coming back into a high stress job after a few days away is like jumping onto a speeding train. Jed’s first day back at work is, as usual, full of the unexpected. He likes to be organised. In his job organisation is the secret to keeping his head above the turbulent, swirling rapids of school life. As usual, within moments of walking in the door everything changes.