“That’s one way.”
“There you are,” he cried.
“He ditn’t say it was the best way.”
“You heard the captain. I didn’t say nothing about the best way. It don’t have to be the best way. The best way is different for everybody, right, Captain?”
Isbell nodded.
Coming to the officers’ area, the bus slowed down. When it stopped, Isbell and Cassada jumped off. The door groaned shut and like a battered metal curtain the side of the bus slid past them. They crossed towards their tent. Only the colonel’s was noisy. Many people were asleep, ready for departure the next day. Off for Rome or Marseilles, the first leg home.
“What time do you plan to take off?” Cassada asked.
“Let’s get going early. Right after breakfast.”
“I hate to leave here,” Cassada said.
“Maybe you picked up a thing or two.”
“Sergeant Bonney. I don’t know how much he really knows, but he wasn’t that far off.”
“It was a good week.”
“This was the best thing that’s happened to me since I’ve been in the squadron.”
Chapter III
Two of Pine’s pilots, Leeman and Sparrow, had taken off early and landed at Marseilles. Their planes were being refueled when Leeman came back from the metro office. Sparrow was waiting.
“All set? Are we ready to file?” he said.
Leeman was thin and known as the Deacon. He shook his head.
“Doesn’t look like we’re going anywhere today. The weather’s down.”
It was sunny and bright outside. Sparrow put down the paper.
“Come on,” he said, “what is it, five thousand and five?”
“No, we’re going to be here overnight.”
“What do they have?”
“It’s down to minimums. We might as well go into town.”
Sparrow lifted his cap and smoothed his hair. His legs were stretched out in front of him. “Minimums,” he said. Marseilles, though, was like that. Clear and fifteen and not another field open in Europe. Your only alternate is Marseilles—the countless times they heard that. “I’ll be damned,” he said. “Well, you know me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m ready. Call a cab.”
“We can go into Marignane,” Leeman said. “They have a hotel there.”
“Marignane?”
“It’s not that far.”
“Let’s go to Marseilles.”
“That’s a long way.”
“Come on, how much can it cost?”
“It’s not that. I want to be able to get off first thing in the morning if the weather breaks up there.”
“We can get up early.”
“No.”
“Oh, for God’s sake. Why go anywhere? We can stay here and curl up right under the wing. That way we won’t lose a minute.”
“I don’t want to drive all the way into Marseilles,” Leeman told him.
They were still there in mid-afternoon waiting to see if the weather would change. Four more planes from Tripoli had landed and the pilots had gone into town. Leeman finally gave up.
“Let’s go out and get our clothes bags,” he said.
Another two ships were in the traffic pattern, just breaking and turning to downwind. It was Isbell’s flight. They’d been delayed because of mechanical trouble. They landed and parked next to the planes already there.
“Must be weather,” Isbell said to Cassada as they walked to operations.
Leeman and Sparrow were just leaving.
“What’s the story?” Isbell said.
“Doesn’t look good up there,” Leeman told him. “I don’t think you’ll get home today.”
“Where are you headed for?”
“We’ve got a taxi coming. We’ll give you a ride if you want.”
“I think we’ll just have a look at things.”
The French forecaster repeated what he had told the others. There was the influence of a deep low, he said, down to Lyons, on which city he tapped a knowing finger. Elbows on the counter, Isbell looked at the surface chart. There were no station sequences. The regular teletype net had been out since the day before, the forecaster said.
The big chart was twelve hours old, a forest of purple numbers and knotholes of pressure. There might be an alternate in England. Isbell felt a slight temptation. There were pilots who were apprehensive about weather and others for whom dense rain and fog were a lure, part of a reputation.
“Don’t decide because of me,” Cassada said. He was standing beside Isbell. “I can fly your wing through any of that.”
Isbell felt the temptation.
“I’m with you, Captain.”
“We’d have to penetrate, who knows, maybe from thirty thousand,” Isbell said.
“I’ll touch down right beside you.”
There was the seductive image of the two of them, wheels folding birdlike beneath as they rose from the runway and headed north where no one else would go, where no one would dare to, but he was too wise to succumb to it. What was to be gained? Nothing useful.
“How much weather time do you have?” Isbell said.
“Actual weather?”
“Real weather, not under the hood.”
“Twenty, twenty-five hours.”
“Twenty-five?”
“Twenty. But the main thing is, how much do you have?”
Isbell looked at him. After a moment he acknowledged, “Plenty.”
“Why don’t we try it? We could always come back to Marseilles?”
“We can’t file with Marseilles as an alternate. We’d have to find something closer. I don’t know if we can find anything.”
“Couldn’t we stretch the regulations a little?”
“No.”
“Just to show these guys. Day, night, up, down, whatever, we do it better.”
For a moment Isbell saw them suddenly appearing beneath the heavy, low clouds like couriers and taxiing in with somebody, Grace maybe, maybe Dunning leaning out of the window of the Volksbus and calling up. Isbell couldn’t hear what they were saying. Chocks were being put under the wheels. He took off his helmet and cupped his ear.
“What?”
“We’d given up on you for today.”
Isbell looked up at the ominous clouds just above his head that represented the thing he was meant to avoid despite any pride: the act that was indefensible, that proved nothing.
He looked at Cassada, the blue of his eyes, a pure undaunted blue.
“You suppose they’re still out there?” Leeman asked.
Sparrow was pouring a beer. “What are you worried about?” he said.
“I just don’t want to be sitting around for nothing. I don’t want to have left Tripoli hours before them and get home a day later.”
“Yeah. Humiliating.”
“That’s the trouble with you.”
“What’s wrong?” Sparrow said. “I do what I’m told. You say Marignane—here we are. Captain Pine says log two hours every flight, I log two hours. What am I supposed to do?”
“Never mind.”
“I may not do everything on the dead run, but hey, the perfect wingman. I pad my flying time, I go to beer call, I know all the songs.”
Leeman interrupted him with a slight, dampening motion of his hand.
“Why don’t you have a beer?”
“Shut up a minute.”
“What is it?”
“You hear that?”
Sparrow looked at the floor. He heard nothing. A car went by outside. “What?”
“That’s them.”
Sparrow listened again.
“It’s somebody,” he said. “It might not be them. It could be French.”
“No.”
“How can you tell?”
“I know. I know Isbell.”
“Just by the sound of his engine? You’re all right.”
“That’s them,” Leeman repeated.