Wings of a Flying Tiger
By Iris Yang
In the summer of 1942, Danny Hardy bails out of his fighter plane into a remote region of western China. With multiple injuries, malaria, and Japanese troops searching for him, the American pilot’s odds of survival are slim.
Jasmine Bai, an art student who had been saved by Americans during the notorious Nanking Massacre, seems an unlikely heroine to rescue the wounded Flying Tiger. Daisy Bai, Jasmine’s younger cousin, also falls in love with the courageous American.
With the help of Daisy’s brother, an entire village opens its arms to heal a Flying Tiger with injured wings, but as a result of their charity the serenity of their community is forever shattered.
Love, sacrifice, kindness, and bravery all play a part in this heroic tale that takes place during one of the darkest hours of Chinese history.
Excerpt
“Get
the hell out of there, Jack. Now!” Danny Hardy barked into the radio.
Through
the debris that erupted from the enemy plane he’d shot down, he gazed at a
flaming aircraft emblazoned with tiger’s teeth. God, please, he silently prayed, hoping to see his wingman pop out
of the airplane any second.
Danny
hadn’t heard Jack’s voice on the radio since he’d been hit, but that didn’t
stop him from calling out again: “Jack, bail out!”
Minutes
ago Jack Longman had sent two Japanese aircraft spinning down to earth, but now
his plane was on fire. Two Zeros flanked him. He’d been hit from both sides.
Fire blazed from the fuselage tank of his P-40 and roared into the cockpit. His
airplane remained level for only a moment then plunged, nose down, toward the
earth. Rolling back the canopy, Jack leaned left and tumbled out of the plane,
which was now wreathed in smoke. When he opened his parachute, part of his body
was on fire.
Danny
let out a relieved breath when he saw Jack’s tall figure drop out of his
airplane. One corner of his lips tilted upward. But before his smile had formed
completely, to his horror, a Japanese fighter dropped on Jack, firing a
heartless spray of bullets.
“No!”
Danny cried. His heart thundered. Waves of panic spread throughout his body. It
all had happened too fast. He wasn’t close enough to catch up with the
Japanese. Helplessly, he watched as his best friend was strafed to death while strapped in his parachute.
“Jack!”
A lump formed in the back of his throat and burned as Danny tried to choke back
tears. He couldn’t let the enemy get away. He roared after the Japanese. His
P-40 wasn’t as versatile as the enemy airplanes, but it was faster in a dive.
Flying Tigers were trained to exploit that advantage.
Within seconds, he caught up with one of the two fighters that had killed Jack.
He brought his guns in line for a shot from the rear. Before the Japanese pilot
realized his fate, Danny poured a salvo directly into his cockpit. Flames
erupted from the Zero. A fireball spun earthbound.
This
maneuver exposed Danny’s P-40 to the other Japanese fighter, who fired at him
from the left. An explosion blasted his left wing, and the plane shook. At the
same time, bullets riddled his cockpit. One of them grazed his scalp; others
buried themselves in the instrument panel. Blood gushed from his forehead,
covering his goggles and blocking his sight. Red spots spattered the white
scarf around his neck.
Pulling
his stick with his right hand, and lifting his left to wipe the blood off his
goggles, he realized that his left arm and leg had been injured by shrapnel. In
the midst of the white-knuckled fight, the excruciating pain hadn’t hit him
until now.
Switching
to his right hand, Danny pulled off his goggles. Once he could see, he checked
his left wing. What he saw made his blood run cold. The explosion had left a
hole two feet in diameter, halfway between the wingtip and the root. He was
astonished the wing was still attached.
The shock didn’t last long. No time to waste. He was trained
as a fighter pilot, and fighting was second nature.
Ignoring
the throbbing pain, Danny hauled his P-40 into a tight turn. Advancing the
throttle, he flew toward the enemy fighter who had shot at him. His engine
roared. The force jammed him into his seat. Bullets ricocheted through his
plane, flashing like firecrackers. But nothing deterred him. Swooping toward
the fighter, he thumbed on the gun switch and opened fire. His tracers strafed
the front of the Zero.
The
Japanese seemed startled by the American pilot’s comeback. The bravery of the
American Volunteer Group, the Flying Tigers, was well known by this time, the
summer of 1942, but this Tiger was completely insane. The little airman
flinched, yet held his course.
“If
you don’t ram into me, I’m going to ram you!” Danny shouted, sweating beneath
his sheepskin-lined jacket. He knew he shouldn’t do this—the Japanese pilots
were disciplined flyers; they were not cowards. And Danny had no intention of
dying. However, this Zero was the one
that had shot Jack down. Revenge was the only thing on his mind. He had no plan
to turn around.
Might as well take
someone with me if my number is up…
Although
he had lived only twenty-seven years, that was long enough to destroy twelve
enemy airplanes. “Let’s make this one the thirteenth!” he shouted, his hand on
the trigger and death in his eyes.
The
two planes were so close that Danny could see the stone-faced Japanese pilot
glaring at him. For what seemed like an eternity, they stared at each other.
Time slowed as their planes closed in. It was a contest of wills.
A
split-second before the crash, the wide-eyed Japanese pilot lost his nerve and
tried to peel away from a head-on collision, a maneuver which left him
vulnerable.
Danny
jumped at the chance and blazed with everything he had. His hand never left the
trigger. His tracers tore the Zero to pieces.
He
watched the enemy plane turn into a fireball. It streamed black and white
smoke, went into a rapid spin, and plummeted to Earth.
Danny
had no time to celebrate his success. Hits that he’d sustained during the death
match made his plane wobble like a drunkard. He had to abandon his P-40. As he
prepared to jump, he glanced down at the exotic highlands unfolding below him.
Yunnan Province of China was composed of magnificent mountains and sweeping
plains. He was over a mountainous region carpeted by lush green trees.
Somewhere beneath the shady canopy lay his best friend’s body, burned and
riddled with Japanese bullets.
Suddenly,
Danny changed his mind. By now, fewer and fewer of their aircraft remained
intact. God knows we need every single
one. Their air-worthy planes were already outnumbered—today four P-40s had had to fight two dozen
Zeros. Now, with Jack’s death, two airplanes would be gone if he bailed out.
Danny
felt exhausted. He grimaced. The injuries to
his head, arm, and leg were nasty, but something else was wrong. Could it be
the cold he’d come down with during the past few days? No matter how tired he was,
Danny refused to let his plane go down. Not without a fight. Not until he’d tried everything he
could. With one last look at his damaged left wing, he took a few deep breaths
and forced himself to lean back against his seat. His hand clutched the stick
in a death grip, and with what seemed
like a superhuman effort, he fought to stabilize the aircraft.
He
didn’t think about dying, he was too involved in keeping his P-40 in the air.
Setting his course toward Kunming, Yunnan’s capital, he tried to level the
plane. But it was so crippled, he could barely maintain control.
He
had managed to fly for twenty or thirty minutes, but the mental pain of losing
his best friend from childhood, the physical ache of his wounds, as well as that mysterious
illness―whatever it was―all crashed in on
him, and before long the aircraft would not respond to his commands. The stricken
P-40 snapped into a spin, and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t recover
it.
Now
he had no choice. With his last ounce of strength, he slid back the canopy. The
wind screeched and plastered the skin over his face. He was barely conscious
when he tumbled, head over heels, into space.
Iris Yang
Iris Yang (Qing Yang) was born and raised in China. She has loved reading and writing since she was a child, but in China creative writing was a dangerous career. As famous writers and translators, her grandmother and her aunt were wrongfully accused as counter-revolutionary Rightists, so Iris had to choose a safer path—studying science.
After graduating from Wuhan University and passing a series of exams, she was accepted by the prestigious CUSBEA (China-United States Biochemistry Examination and Application program). At age 23, with poor English, little knowledge of the country, and 500 borrowed dollars, she came to the United States as a graduate student at the University of Rochester.
Later, she received a Ph.D. in molecular biology, trained as a postdoctoral fellow at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, and worked at the University of North Carolina. Although she has published a number of scientific papers, she has a passion for creative writing, and her short stories have won contests and have been published in anthologies. Currently, Iris is working on a story based on her grandmother, who was the first Chinese woman to receive a master’s degree in Edinburgh in the UK. Iris now lives between Sedona, Arizona and Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Besides writing, she loves hiking, dancing, photography, and travel.
Xinhaunet • China Daily • AsAmNews • Global Times • ShenZhen Daily • The China Press (侨报) • The Straits Times • China Daily • Wuhan Capital •里仁社区酷播 (Clobar/Kuba)
Such a wonderful excerpt, Iris.
ReplyDeleteLovely! Beautiful cover:)
ReplyDelete