"I know. Navigator, the plan remains the same, except that I jump in ten minutes. Ignore all ground challenges on your way back to San Martin."

"I'm jumping with you," Hall said.

"No, you're not."

"If they shoot us down on the way back to San Martin, the negatives will fall into their hands, if they're not destroyed."

"Suppose we both jump and are both caught?"

"It's a chance I'd rather take, Diego." Hall opened the secret pocket in the visor of his Cuban Army cap. "Let me leave this set of negatives with Snub Nose. I have two more sets on me--in my Sam Browne and my boots."

"I have to think about it." Segador adjusted the harness of his parachute. Then he picked up his microphone. "Snub Nose," he ordered, "come back here. Adjust the _companero's_ parachute. He's jumping with me."

"_Bueno._ I'll show him how to use it, too."

Hall and Segador formally shook hands with the rest of the crew before they jumped.

For a few long seconds, plunging face downward, Hall could not think. He saw the plane pa.s.s over his feet, silver wings etched against the dark ceiling. He counted to seven, aloud, his voice lost in the wind. Then he pulled the release cord. There was the expected moment of tensing pain as the silk clawed at the night air and the straps of the harness cut into the insides of his thighs. In his mind's eye there was a picture he had forgotten: a sand-bagged office in London on a bright May morning, the English girl with the yellow crutch under her arm as she handed him the mail. Tear sheets on the series he'd done in Scotland. _Copyright 1940 by Ball Syndicate Inc., Somewhere in England, April 19, 1940._ This morning I took my place in line inside of a converted Lancaster, watched the man in front of me lean out and tumble into the clear sky, and then did exactly as he had done. I counted to ten, pulled my release cord, and ... And what a h.e.l.l of a pseudo-romantic way to make a living, he'd said to himself and to the English girl that morning.

But tonight there was nothing phony about sitting in a canvas sling, falling through a wet cloud, eyes peeled for the white of Segador's parachute. Tonight he was no Sunday supplement kibitzer taking a joy ride amidst men rehearsing for death. Tonight he was finally in the war, as a combatant.

The tricks he had learned in Scotland served him in good stead now. He was able to play the cords of the parachute, guiding the direction of his descent so that he followed Segador. There was little time to think of anything but the operation of the moment. Fortunately, it was a green night. Like Segador, Hall could see from a thousand feet that they were dropping over a sloping meadow. At about two hundred feet, they could see that they were going to land in the middle of a flock of sheep.

The sheep began to bleat madly and run about in circles, as first Segador, then Hall, dropped into their pasture. Segador broke free of his silk, ran over to help the American. "Careful," he said. "With so many sheep, there must be a herder around. Let me do the talking."

A man in a woolly sheepskin cape was following a cautious sheep dog toward the spot where they stood. He carried a rifle.

Segador allowed the shepherd to approach to within fifty feet. "_Hola!_"

he called. "We have disturbed your flock."

The shepherd said something to his dog, continued advancing slowly toward the two men from the sky.

"He is afraid we might be Germans," Segador said. "They hate the Germans worse than the devil in the country."

"Who are you?" The shepherd was now quite close to them. Hall could see at once that he was a Basque.

"Vasco?" Hall asked. He poured out a stream of Basque greetings. They served only to put the shepherd more on his guard.

"I saw you fall from the skies--like _quintacolumnistas_."

"That is true, _companero_," Segador said. "But we are not fifth columnists."

"Are you of the Republic?"

"Yes."

"The other. He is not of the Republic. His uniform is different, and he speaks the tongue of my fathers badly."

"He is of the Republic of Cuba. He is a friend of our Republic."

"You both have guns," the herder said. He looked at his dog, who stood between him and the intruders. "If you are friends, you will give your guns to the dog. I am without letters, but if you are friends, you can prove it to an educated man in our village."

"What is your village?"

"You have guns."

"They are yours, _companero_. See, I take mine. I lay it on the ground for your dog."

The shepherd addressed his dog in Euzkadi. The dog walked over to the gun, picked it up in his mouth, dropped it at the peasant's feet. He then made a trip for Hall's gun.

"You will walk in front of me," the shepherd said. "We will go toward that stile." He picked up the two pistols, shoved them into his skin bag.

Segador started to laugh. "I salute your vigilance, shepherd. We had two guns to your one. We could have shot you first. A coward would have run for help, first."

"Cowards do not serve the Republic," the shepherd said. He remained ten feet behind them, ignoring Segador's further attempts at conversation, marching them toward a thatched hut on the outskirts of a tiny village.

When they approached the hut, the dog ran ahead, started to scratch on the unpainted door.

An Indian woman with a mestizo baby in her arms stood in the doorway when the three men reached the hut. "Let them in, woman," the shepherd ordered.

The inside of the small hut was dark and bare. On a pallet in the far corner, Hall could see the forms of children huddled in sleep, how many he could not tell. There was a stone stove, a hand-hewn table and two benches. In another corner, a fragment of a tallow candle burned fitfully under a dim portrait. Hall realized, with an inward start, that the portrait was not of Jesus but of Anibal Tabio.

"Hold the gun."

The woman put the baby on the pallet with the other children, took the rifle in her hands.

"If you are of the Republic," the shepherd said, "you will allow me to tie your hands."

"We are of the Republic--and for the Educator, who is now dead."

The woman, who held the gun, backed away, closer to the picture, while her husband bound the hands of Segador and Hall behind their backs, and then connected all four hands with a third length of rope.

"Send your woman for the educated man," Segador said. "But hurry. We are on a mission for the Republic. We must not be delayed too long."

The shepherd took the gun from his wife. "Go then," he said to her.

"Bring Bustamente the Notary to this house."

Two of the children on the pallet were now sitting up, staring at the visitors with wide, frightened eyes. Segador grinned at them. His eyes were growing accustomed to the darkness. "Go back to sleep, _ninos_," he whispered. "We will play with you when you awake."

The kids ducked under the woolly coverlet, hiding their heads.

"Sit down," the shepherd said. "If you are friends, I will offer you the hospitality of this table." He started to roll a cigarette out of a fragment of newspaper.

"There are cigarettes in my pocket," Hall suggested. "Cuban cigarettes.

Perhaps you would like one."

The shepherd rose from his own bench without a word, found the cigarettes, put two in the mouths of Hall and Segador. He struck a rope lighter, started their cigarettes. Then, still without speaking, he finished rolling his own cigarette and lit it. "If you are fifth columnists," he said, "I spit on your cigarettes." There was no rancor in his statement; it was a polite expression of simple logic.

His wife returned in a few minutes. She was with a nervous little white-haired man who clung to the waistband of his alpaca trousers. He carried a shiny alpaca jacket in his free arm--this and the steel-framed gla.s.ses on his ancient nose were his badges of authority.