And then, matter-of-factly, he had told Darmstadter where they were going-but not why-and pointed out their course on a chart.

And then he had told him, patiently, even kindly, as a flight instructor teaches a student pilot, how it was planned for them to find Vis and what would happen if things went wrong.

Canidy explained that the OSS agent with the British SOE force on Vis had a radio transmitter-receiver capable of operating on the frequencies used for aviation. Using the radio direction-finding equipment on the B-25G, they would home in on Vis very much as they would home in on Newark Airport after a flight from Washington.

With several significant exceptions: "The trouble with RDF transmitters," Canidy said, "is that they can be picked up by anybody tuned to that frequency. For example, German or Italian aircraft. A curious Luftwaffe pilot looking for the way home from a patrol over the Adriatic might come across the signal from Vis and wonder what the h.e.l.l it was."

"The worst possible scenario is that two pilots, or for that matter, two ground stations, might hear the Vis transmission at the same time and mark their position and the relative position of the Vis transmitter on a chart. If they did that, all that would have to be done would be to put the chart marks together. Triangulation. You with me?"

Darmstadter nodded. He knew that without actually following a signal to its source, the location of the transmitter could be easily determined. "Triangulation" simply meant the drawing of straight lines on a chart from two different points of reception toward the source of the signal. The intersection of the straight lines indicated the location of the transmitter.

"So what they're going to do to reduce the odds of getting caught," Canidy said, "is to go on the air as little as possible. The first signal we'll listen for when we get close enough will be on the air for only five minutes. Then it will go off and come back on fifteen minutes later for sixty seconds on a different frequency and using different call letters."

He handed Darmstadter a typewritten list.

There were three columns. The first gave times, starting at 1500 and ending at 1745. Sometimes there was nineteen minutes between transmissions, and sometimes as little as eleven minutes. But there were no two intermissions alike. The second column listed the frequency of the transmissions. No two of these were alike. The third column listed the three-letter identification code that the transmitter would send, endlessly repeating them for the period of time it would be on the air.

"Clever," Darmstadter said.

"It presumes our guy on Vis has the transceiver, and that it's working, and that we'll be able to pick it up when we have to," Canidy said.

"And if we don't?" Darmstadter asked.

"That could pose some problems," Canidy said. "You'll notice that the Point of No Return on the chart is here, and the point where we hope we can pick up the Vis RDF transmitter is here."

Darmstadter saw that the first place they could hope to pick up the direction-finding signal was at least two hundred miles from the Point of No Return.

"And if we don't get the RDF signal?"

"Then we go down on the deck and try to find it by dead reckoning," Canidy said.

"That would be kind of hard, wouldn't it?" Darmstadter asked.

"Think positively, Darmstadter," Canidy said dryly. "But since you posed the question, I think it would be impossible. "

"And then what?" Darmstadter asked.

"Then you have a choice," Canidy said. "You can take the airplane over the Yugoslav mainland, bail out, and take your chances that the partisans might get you before the Germans do. If the partisans get you, you're home free. If they don't, you'll have to take your chances with the Germans. "

"What do you mean by that?"

"You tell them you were on a bombing raid, got lost, and bailed out when you ran out of gas. If they believe you, you sit out the war in a Stalagluft [a prisoner-of-war camp for aviation personnel]. If they don't, you're in trouble."

"And where are you and Dolan going to be while I'm taking my chances with the partisans?"

"Dolan and I will have drawn the 'Go Directly to Jail, Do Not Pa.s.s "Go" and Do Not Collect $200' card," Canidy said matter-of-factly. "We can't get captured."

"Why not?" Darmstadter blurted.

"Because the Germans can find out anything they want to know from anybody, if they put their mind to it," Canidy said. "And there are certain things that Dolan and I know that you don't, and that the Germans shouldn't."

"What are you going to do," Darmstadter asked, horrified, "to keep from getting captured?"

Canidy ignored the question. Instead, he handed Darmstadter another typewritten sheet of paper.

"There will be a bombing raid by B-25 aircraft on the boot of Italy," he said. "Here're the details, what you would be expected to know if you had gone on the mission. Memorize as much as you can, especially your unit, your aircraft number, your departure field. Use your imagination for the names of the crew. I think you can probably get away with it."

"And what, exactly, are you and Dolan going to do?" Darmstadter asked.

"To coin a phrase," Canidy said, "we'll cross that bridge when we get to it."

"I'd really like to know," Darmstadter persisted.

Canidy thought it over a moment before replying.

"They gave us a pill," he said. "Actually, it's a small gla.s.s vial, filled with what looks like watery milk. When you bite it, it's supposed to work before you feel the little pieces of gla.s.s in your mouth. The idea is that we're supposed to bite it when it becomes clear we're not going to make it to Vis. But what I think we'll do is bail out over the mainland and take a chance the partisans will find us before the Germans do. If we land in the lap of the Wehrmacht, then we'll bite the pill."

"What the h.e.l.l do you know that makes suicide necessary? " Darmstadter blurted.

Canidy had not responded.

Just over an hour before, Canidy had turned on the radio direction finder. By then, the three of them had relieved for each other at the controls at roughly hourly intervals, and Dolan was then sitting in the pilot's seat. At first, the signal strength indicator needle on the instrument panel had made no response as Canidy turned the crank that rotated the loop antenna mounted atop the fuselage.

Then the needle jumped, just perceptibly, and he reversed his cranking motion, aiming the antenna at the source of the radiation. The needle on the signal-strength indicator crept very slowly, barely perceptibly, upward as the signal strength increased.

And then, very faintly, over the static in his earphones, Darmstadter began to be able to recognize one Morse code letter, Dah-Dah-Dah, D, and then another, and finally a third, until there was in his earphones, endlessly repeated Dah-Dah-Dah Dit-Dit-Dit-Dit Dah-Dah-Dah. He wondered if DHD meant something, or whether it had been selected because it was a long, readily recognizable string of letters.

"I don't think," Canidy's voice came dryly and metallically over the earphones, "that's what they call 'right on the money.' "

Dolan looked up at the roof of the cabin, at the needle on the antenna rotating mechanism. Then he put the B-25G into a very gentle turn, in a very slightly nose-down att.i.tude, and made small adjustments to the throttle and richness controls.

Finally, his voice came metallically over the earphones.

"f.u.c.k you, Canidy."

A moment later, he straightened the B-25 on a course corresponding with that indicated on the radio direction finder, made a minute adjustment of the trim wheel, and then touched his intercom mike b.u.t.ton again.

"And if you can refrain from walking up and down, Darmstadter, like a pa.s.senger on a ferry boat, I would be obliged."

Then he folded his arms on his chest.

The B-25 dropped very slowly toward the layer of cotton wool far below them.

The indicator needle on the signal-strength meter suddenly dropped back to the peg.

"You've lost the signal," Darmstadter said.

"That's probably because they've stopped transmitting," Dolan said dryly.

The B-25 flew on, in a very shallow descent.

Eleven minutes later, when they were still above the cloud cover, there was a one-minute transmission from Vis, and Dolan made a tiny course correction to line the plane up again on course before the signal-strength meter fell back to its peg again.

They were in the cloud bank when Vis came on the air again. Darmstadter could see about one inch past the windshield. There were a dozen or so drops of condensation on the window frame just past the Plexiglas, for some mysterious aerodynamic reason undisturbed by the air through which they were pa.s.sing at an indicated 290 knots. But beyond the drops of condensation there was nothing but a gray ma.s.s.

"You don't want to go down to the deck and see if we can get out of this s.h.i.t?" Canidy asked. It was a question, Darmstadter understood, not a suggestion, certainly not an order.

Dolan shook his head, "no," in reply, and then, a full minute later, spoke.

"If it looks like it's working, don't f.u.c.k with it," he said.

It sounded more as if Dolan was thinking aloud than replying to Canidy, or, Darmstadter thought a moment later, as if Dolan had called that old pilot's cliche from the recesses of his memory to rea.s.sure himself.

The point of the needle on the vertical speed indicator was indicating a descent only on close examination; on casual glance, it seemed to indicate level flight. The needle on the altimeter moved counterclockwise very slowly. But it was moving, and they were going down.

Twenty-odd minutes later, during another Vis transmission, Canidy said, "I wish that transmitter wasn't working quite that well."

It took Darmstadter a moment to understand what he meant. Then he did. The needle on the signal-strength meter was now resting against the upper-limit peg; there was no way to judge if they were moving ever closer to the transmitter. The signal-strength meter was accepting all the signal strength it was capable of.

When the altimeter indicated 12,000 feet, Canidy pulled his oxygen mask free from his face and rubbed his cheeks and under his chin with his fingers. When Darmstadter removed his own mask, the fresh air pa.s.sing through his nostrils and mouth seemed warm and moist. Dolan did not take his mask off. Darmstadter wondered if this was a manifestation of the declaration he'd made earlier, "if it looks like it's working, don't f.u.c.k with it," or if Dolan's concentration was on other things and he simply hadn't noticed they were at an alt.i.tude where it was safe to fly without bottled oxygen.

And then, suddenly, startlingly, they dropped out of the cloud cover. There was an ocean down there, and land to the front and the sides.

Canidy frantically searched through his aviator's briefcase and came up with a handful of eight-by-ten-inch glossy photographs. Dolan ripped his oxygen mask off.

"What was that you were saying, d.i.c.k, about 'right on the money'?" he asked.

"Jesus," Canidy said. "And I was right on the edge of agreeing with David Bruce that they shouldn't let old men like you fly."

The two looked at each other and beamed.

"Take her down to the deck, and make your approach around that hill on the left," Canidy said.

"Hey," Dolan said, annoyed, "I'm driving."

But he lowered the nose of the B-25, until they were no more than a thousand feet off the choppy seas of the Adriatic, and made a wide, sweeping turn around the hill Canidy had indicated.

When they crossed the rocky beach, they immediately encountered the steep hills of Vis; so an indicated alt.i.tude of one thousand feet, which was based on sea level, put them no more than two or three hundred feet over the side of the hill, and then the level valley on sh.o.r.e.

"Go strap yourself in," Dolan ordered. "Quickly."

Reluctantly, Darmstadter made his way back to the leather-upholstered pa.s.senger chairs in the fuselage. He had just sat down, and was fumbling for the seat belt, when the nose of the B-25 lifted abruptly. Ignoring the seat belt, he pressed his nose against the Plexiglas.

There were fifteen or twenty people on a crude runway, their arms waving in a greeting.

Then Dolan stood the B-25 on its wing and began a one-hundred -eighty-degree turn. As the plane leveled off, there came the sound of hydraulics as the flaps and gear came down, and the engines changed pitch.

Darmstadter got his seat belt in place just as the plane touched down. There was a far louder than he expected rumble from the landing carriage, followed immediately by the change of pitch as the engine throttles were r.e.t.a.r.ded. And then the plane lurched as if something had grabbed it.

Instantly, Darmstadter's view through the Plexiglas disappeared in a gross distortion, and then almost as quickly the distortion seemed to be wiped away. He realized that what had happened was that water, a great deal of water, had splashed against the window.

The plane was now braking hard. Darmstadter felt himself being pressed against the upholstery of the rear-facing chair.

And then it stopped for a moment and then turned around. As Darmstadter unfastened his lap belt, the engines died. The silence, broken only by the faint pings and moans of cooling metal, was surprising.

"Vis International Aerodrome," Canidy called cheerfully from the c.o.c.kpit. "Connections to Budapest, Voodapest, Zoodapest, and all points east. Thank you Thank you for flying Balkan Airlines." for flying Balkan Airlines."

Chuckling, Darmstadter got to the access hatch in the floor behind the c.o.c.kpit just after Canidy had dropped through it to the ground. Darmstadter jumped after him.

4.

HEADQUARTERS, 344TH FIGHTER GROUP ATCHAM ARMY AIR CORPS STATION, ENGLAND 1650 HOURS 16 FEBRUARY 1943.

When Lt. Colonel Peter Dougla.s.s, Jr., returned to his quarters from the postmission debriefing, the Underwood typewriter and the service record were waiting for him on the old and battered desk in his room.

It was SOP, Standard Operating Procedure. There was a system. There had to be a system. The SOP Lt. Colonel Dougla.s.s had set up was that in the case of pilots within a section, their section leaders wrote the letters, subject to review by squadron commanders. In the case of section leaders, squadron commanders wrote the letters, subject to review by the group exec. In the case of squadron commanders, or squadron executive officers, the group commander wrote the letters himself.

Dougla.s.s kicked off his sheepskin flying boots, sending them sailing across the small room in the curved-ceilinged Quonset hut. He took off his battered, leather-brimmed hat and skimmed it three feet toward a hook on the wall. It touched the hook, but bounced off and fell to the floor. He made no move to pick it up.

He reached into the pocket of the sheepskin flying jacket and came out with two miniature bottles of Old Overholt rye whiskey. Eighth Air Force SOP provided for the "post-mission issue of no more than two bottles, 1.6 ounces, bourbon or rye whiskey 86 proof or 100 proof to flight crew personnel, when, in the opinion of the attending flight surgeon, such issue is medically indicated."

The Eighth Air Force SOP went on to stipulate that "in no case is the issue of more than two bottles permitted" and that "wherever possible, the issue of medicinal whiskey will be made only after flight crews have undergone postmission debriefing."

And finally, the Eighth Air Force SOP stated that "medicinal whiskey so issued will be ingested in the presence of the prescribing flight surgeon."

Translated, that meant that unless you watched those crazy pilots, or, in the case of bombers, navigators, bombardiers, flight engineers, and aerial gunners, they were liable to h.o.a.rd their "bottles, 1.6 ounces" of medicinal whiskey until they had enough to tie a load on, or worse, share it with people not ent.i.tled to medicinal whiskey.

Lt. Colonel Dougla.s.s walked to the battered desk, pulled the drawer open, and carefully laid his miniature bottles in it. There were already a dozen other bottles there. It was the 344th Fighter Group commander's unofficial SOP to pa.s.s out his ration of medicinal booze to his pilots when he thought such issue was indicated for morale purposes. Sometimes he pa.s.sed it out to the enlisted men, too, in contravention of the spirit and letter of the Eighth Air Force SOP.

It bothered the h.e.l.l out of the ground crews when their plane and pilot didn't come home. And some took it worse than others.

Saving the miniatures to pa.s.s out as he saw fit did not represent any sacrifice, booze-wise, on the part of Lt. Colonel Dougla.s.s. He had his own out-of-supply-channels source of booze, and when he had a couple of medicinal postmission nips, he took them from a bottle of Scotch.

He shrugged out of the sheepskin, high-alt.i.tude flying jacket and threw it toward his bed. It, too, fell short of the target and slid to the floor. He left it there, then pushed the suspenders holding up the sheepskin trousers off his shoulders. He stood on one leg to pull the trousers off, then on the other leg to get them completely off. Then he threw them toward his bed. This time he made it.

He then picked up a telephone.

"Meteorology," he said when the operator came on the line. And then, a moment later, "What have we got, d.i.c.k?"

His weather officer predicted perfect-that is absolutely unflyable-weather in England and over the European landma.s.s for not less than forty-eight hours, and probably for as much as seventy-two or ninety-six hours.

"There's a stationary front, Colonel, a ma.s.sive chunk of arctic air, which, meeting with an equally ma.s.sive chunk of warm air from the Mediterranean-"