"Oh?"

"I wish she was, but all she is ... is a very nice lady."

"I see."

"I'll be at the airport on time, Sir."

"Goodnight, Steve," Banning said.

He got in Pickering's Jaguar. Steve stood on the porch until both cars had disappeared down the driveway, then went looking for Daphne. He suspected that she would probably be sort of hiding in the sitting room. It would have been very embarra.s.sing for her if Lieutenant Donnelly had seen her. He would have gotten the wrong idea.

Daphne Farnsworth was not in the sitting room. Nor in the toilet off the corridor. Nor in the kitchen, Nor anyplace.

Jesus! What she did was walk all the way to the G.o.dd.a.m.ned road, so that she can try to catch a ride!

He ran to the Studebaker. Daphne's bag was not in the backseat.

She's even carrying her G.o.dd.a.m.ned suitcase!

He got behind the wheel, squealed the tires backing out and turning around, and raced down the drive between the ancient elms. She was not in sight when he reached the highway. He swore, and then drove toward Melbourne. Once he thought he saw her, but when he got close it was not Daphne sitting on her suitcase, but a pile of paving stones, neatly stacked by the side of the road.

Finally, swearing, he gave up, and drove back to The Elms.

At least she didn't have to carry that heavy G.o.dd.a.m.ned suitcase; I would have carried it to her in the morning.

And that would have at least given me the chance to say "so long."

When he got back to The Elms, he saw there was only one light on, on the second floor. That meant Lieutenant Howard and his girlfriend had gone to bed. Together.

Jesus, talk about good luck! Having your girlfriend right here. But then he considered that. Maybe it would be better if she wasn't here, especially since she knows what's going to happen tomorrow. The minute they were alone, she probably started crying or something, and that would be hard to deal with. And then he considered that again. At least they could put their arms around each other and not feel so f.u.c.king alone.

Steve went into the library. He thought he would write his mother. But when he was sitting at the little writing table with a sheet of paper in front of him, he realized that was a lousy idea.

What the h.e.l.l can I write? "Dear Mom, I'm fine. How are you? I've been wondering when I'm going to get a letter from you. Nothing much is happening here, except that I'm living in a mansion outside Melbourne; and tomorrow or the next day they're going to jump me onto an island called Buka. I don't even know where it is."

I can't even write that. This whole thing is a military secret He thought about going into the kitchen and maybe making himself an egg sandwich, but decided against it; the last time he'd done that, he'd awakened Mrs. Cavendish, and he didn't want to do that tonight.

He went up the broad staircase to the second floor, and down the corridor to his room.

Tomorrow night, or maybe the night after that, I'll be sleeping in the G.o.dd.a.m.ned jungle with bugs and snakes and Christ knows what else. I should have known a good deal like this couldn't last-a room of my own, with a great big bed all for myself.

He pushed open the door to his room and turned on the light.

Yeoman Daphne Farnsworth was in his bed, with the sheet pulled up around her chin.

"Jesus Christ!" Steve said.

"I saw you drive off in the car," Daphne said. "I didn't know when, or if, you would be back, so I decided to go to bed and worry about getting into Melbourne in the morning."

"I was looking for you," he said. "When I couldn't find you downstairs, I thought you had probably tried to hitch a ride into Melbourne."

"Oh," she said.

"I'm going to jump onto some island called Buka."

"I know. I heard."

"How come you took your bag out of the car?" Steve blurted. "I mean, you must have-"

"I know what you mean," she said, very softly.

"Jesus!"

"I didn't want you to be alone tonight," Daphne said. "If that makes you think I'm some kind of a wh-"

"Shut up!" he said sharply. "Don't talk like that!"

"And I didn't want to be alone, either," she said.

"Once, in the car," Steve said, "we were talking about something, and you leaned close to me and put your hand on my leg, and I could smell your breath and feel it on my face, and I thought my heart was going to stop. . . ."

They looked into each other's eyes for a long moment.

Finally, softly, reasonably, Daphne said, "Steve, since you have to be at the airfield at half past six, don't you think you should come to bed?"

(Two) Port Moresby, New Guinea 0405 Hours 8 June 1942, When Flight Sergeant Michael Keyes, RAAF, went to the tin-roofed Transient Other Ranks hut to wake him, Sergeant Steve Koffler, USMC, was awake and nearly dressed, in greens that still carried the stripes of a corporal.

Lieutenant Howard had tried to fix it so they could be together overnight, but the Aussies hadn't let them. Steve had told Howard not to worry about it. He thought Howard had enough to worry about, like making his first jump, without having to worry about him having to sleep by himself.

"Briefing time, lad," Sergeant Keyes said.

"OK.".

"First, breakfast, of course. The food here is ordinarily b.l.o.o.d.y awful, which explains the stuff we brought with us."

"I'm not really very hungry."

"Well, have a go at it anyway. It's likely to be some time before steak and eggs will be on your ration again."

"Some time," s.h.i.t. By tonight I'm probably going to be dead.

"I guess I better put this on now, huh?" Steve said, holding up an RAAF flight suit, a quilted cotton coverall.

"Yes, I think you might as well," Keyes said.

Steve put his legs into the garment and shrugged into it. There were the chevrons of a sergeant of the United States Marine Corps on the sleeves, and the metal lapel insignia of the Corps on the collar points. Staff Sergeant Richardson had taken care of that yesterday in Townesville, when Steve and the crew of the Lockheed Hudson were packing the Hallicrafters set and loading it into the airplane.

He had also given Steve a Colt Model 1911A1.45 pistol. Steve suspected that Staff Sergeant Richardson had given him his own pistol; only the officers and a couple of the staff sergeants had been authorized pistols. He thought that had been a very nice thing for Staff Sergeant Richardson to do.

Steve had decided the best-really the only-way to take his Springfield along was to drop it with the antenna set; it and his web cartridge belt and two extra bandoliers of .30-06 ammunition and a half-dozen fragmentation grenades had been wrapped in cotton padding, and then that bundle had been strapped to the antenna parts.

Now that Richardson had given him the pistol, at least when he got on the ground he would have a weapon right away. There was no telling how quickly he could get the Springfield out of the antenna bundle. If he could find it at all.

Steve took a couple of foil-wrapped Trojans from a knee pocket in the flight suit, ripped one of them open with his teeth, unrolled it, and then tied it around the top of his boots. Then he bloused the left leg of the flight suit under it.

As he repeated the process for the right leg, Flight Sergeant Keyes said rather admiringly, "I wondered how the h.e.l.l you did that to your trousers."

"They call it 'blousing,'" Steve said.

He strapped Staff Sergeant Richardson's pistol belt around his waist, and then tied the thong lace around his leg through an eyelet at the bottom of the holster.

"Ready," he said.

"Good lad," Keyes said. "We have to get hopping."

They left the tin-roofed hut and walked across the airfield to the mess. Based on his previous experience-in the movies- with what war should look like, Port Moresby was what Steve had expected to find when he got off the Martin Mariner in Melbourne. The people here went around armed, and they wore steel helmets. There were sandbags all over the place, at the entrances to bomb shelters, and around buildings, and to protect machine-gun positions. This place had been bombed.

Their airplane, the Lockheed, had been pushed into a revetment with sandbag walls. There were other airplanes, none of which was very impressive. There were three bi-wing English fighter planes, for instance, that looked as if they were left over from the First World War.

In the mess hut, Sergeant Keyes took his arm and guided him into an anteroom under a sign that said, OFFICERS. Lieutenant Howard and the rest of the airplane crew were there: the pilot, who was a "flying officer," and the navigator, who was a sergeant, and the gunner, who was a corporal. Steve decided that in the RAAF, if you were a flyer, you got to eat with the officers.

But he quickly learned that wasn't the reason Sergeant Keyes had taken him in the Officers' Room.

"Good morning, Sergeant," a voice said behind him. "About ready to get this show started?"

Startled, Steve looked over his shoulder. There was another RAAF officer, an older one, with a bunch of stripes on his sleeve, standing by the door.

He's at least a major, or whatever the h.e.l.l they call a major in the RAAF.

"Yes, Sir," Steve said.

"We're running a bit behind schedule, so I'll just run through this while you eat, all right?"

"That'll be fine, Sir," Lieutenant Howard said.

The officer gestured to the navigator, who picked up a four-by-four sheet of plywood and set it down on the table.

"Sit here, Sergeant," the navigator said, indicating a chair at the table beside Howard. Steve saw that Howard had already been served his breakfast, but hadn't eaten much of it.

Steve sat down. The old RAAF officer went to the map.

"Here we are, in Port Moresby," the RAAF officer said, pointing. "And here's where you're going.

"Buka is an island approximately thirty miles long and no greater than five or six miles wide. It is the northernmost island in the Solomons chain, just north of Bougainville, which is much larger. Where you are going, here, is 146 nautical miles from the j.a.panese base at Rabaul on New Britain. There is a j.a.panese fighter base on Buka, another on Bougainville, and of course there are fighters based at Rabaul, along with bombers, seaplanes, and other larger aircraft. From his base, Sub-Lieutenant Reeves has in the past been able to advise us of j.a.panese aerial movements as they have occurred. These reports have obviously been of great value both tactically and for planning purposes, and now that they have been interrupted, getting Reeves's station up and running again is obviously of great importance."

A heavy china plate was put in front of Steve. On it was a T-bone steak covered with three fried eggs, sunny side up. This was followed by a smaller plate with three pieces of toast and a tub of orange marmalade, and finally by a cup of tea.

I don 't like tea, hate orange marmalade, and, anyway, I'm not hungry. But unless I start eating that c.r.a.p, they're going to think I'm scared. I am, of course, but I can't let these Aussies see that I am. And maybe if I eat mine, Lieutenant Howard will eat his.

He unrolled a heavy paper napkin, took stainless-steel cutlery from it, and sawed off a piece of the steak and dipped it in the yolk of one of the eggs.

When he looked up again, he saw the RAAF officer was waiting for him to give him his attention again.

"On leaving Port Moresby, the Hudson will climb to maximum alt.i.tude, which we estimate will be about twenty thousand feet, and will maintain this alt.i.tude, pa.s.sing to the west of Kiriwina Island, until it nears Buka itself. There is nothing in the Solomon Sea, except, of course, the to-be-expected j.a.panese Navy vessels, and possibly some j.a.panese naval reconnaissance aircraft. The thinking is that at high alt.i.tude our chances of being spotted-or, if spotted, identified-by j.a.panese surface vessels will be minimal. Further, we expect that if j.a.panese reconnaissance aircraft are encountered, they will be at ten thousand feet or so, and will be directing their attention downward. And again, the chances of detection are minimal. Finally, if we are spotted by j.a.panese reconnaissance aircraft, the odds are they will be seaplanes or amphibians, which will have neither the speed nor the agility to pursue the Lockheed. In the worst-case scenario, detection and/or interception by j.a.panese fighter aircraft, we have the twin .303 Brownings on the Lockheed to protect ourselves. Are you following me, son?"

"Protect ourselves"? Bulls.h.i.t! You're not going.

"Yes, Sir."

"As I say, I think that on the way in, our chances of detection are minimal."

"Yes, Sir."

The navigator replaced the map of the whole area with a map of Buka itself. This one was drawn on white-coated cardboard.

"You've seen the photographs, I understand, of Sub-Lieutenant Reeves, and the message he cut out in the gra.s.s?"

"Yes, Sir."

"They were taken here," the RAAF officer said, pointing. "There is a natural field, a plateau, so to speak, in the hills. It is at 2,100 feet above sea level. It is approximately twelve hundred feet long and, at its widest, about seven hundred feet wide, narrowing to about five hundred feet near this end."

Jesus Christ! We're going to wind up in the f.u.c.king trees!

"Once the Lockheed nears the target area, it will make a rapid descent to 3,500 feet and approach the drop zone from the north. From the time the descent begins, of course, the chance of detection increases. We believe, however, that it will not be possible for the j.a.panese to launch fighter aircraft in time to interfere with the drop."

"What happens afterward?" Steve blurted.

"Well, you'll be gone, won't you?" the RAAF officer said.

"We'll hide in the clouds, Sergeant Koffler," Flight Sergeant Keyes said. "With a little luck, we'll have some at ten to fifteen thousand. Once we're in them, finding us will require a bit of luck on the part of the Nip."

"You will exit the aircraft at 3,300 feet, and the aircraft will have established an indicated airspeed of ninety miles per hour. If there are the expected prevailing winds, that will produce a speed over the ground of approximately seventy-five to eighty-five miles per hour."

"You can't get any lower than that? Thirty-three hundred feet will be twelve hundred feet over the drop zone. You can get yourself blown a long way if you jump at twelve hundred feet," Steve said.

"I'll put you in at any alt.i.tude you want," the pilot said.

"Eight hundred feet," Steve said.

"Done."

"Will there be enough time, if you jump at eight hundred feet, to activate your reserve parachute?" the RAAF asked.

"No," Steve said. "But I don't want us to get blown into the trees. We won't take the reserve."

The RAAF officer looked at him with his eyebrows raised for a moment.