«Which means Leahy and Nimitz think you're the guy who can do it,» Mclnerney said. «Proving once again that I was wrong when I told you you couldn't do the Corps any good.»
«You told me that because you believed it, Mac,» Pickering said. «And that's why I'm here. I want you to tell me what you believe, not what you think I'd like to hear.»
«Okay. I don't think you can do it. That blunt enough? The Gobi Desert is in the middle of nowhere, a long way from anything we control. How the hell are you going to put people in there? On camels?»
Stecker chuckled. «That's one of the options, Mac, but what Flem wants to ask you about is airplanes.»
«I don't need a map and a compass to measure the distance. I can tell you the Gobi Desert is beyond the range of any airplane in the inventory—Marine, Navy, or Air Corps. You didn't know that?»
«When you speak of range, you're talking round trips, right?» Pickering asked.
Mclnerney thought that over for a minute.
«A one-way mission, huh? Who are you going to find to fly it? More important, where will it go?»
«There's reliable information that a group of Americans is somewhere in the Gobi Desert, some of them Marines from the Legation Guard at Peking who didn't surrender. Most of these people are supposed to be retired from the Fourth Marines, the Yangtze River patrol, and the Fifteenth Infantry.»
«You're in contact with them?»
«Not reliably. We're working on that.»
«We're going to send decent radios to them, Mac,» Stecker said. «On camels.»
Mclnerney's eyebrows rose in either surprise or disbelief.
«We also have somebody who's been all over the Gobi desert,» Pickering said. «A gunnery sergeant who used to be in the Fourth in Shanghai. He tells us that a good deal of the Gobi Desert is not sand but flat rock. In other words, an airplane could land there.»
«Erring on the side of caution, how about 'crash-land'?» Mclnerney said sarcastically.
«Okay. Crash-land,» Pickering said. «As long as it delivers the weather station equipment in workable condition, we can write off the airplane.»
«If it gets that far, and I have serious doubts that it will, this weather station would be secret, right?»
«It would be better if it were,» Pickering said.
«If you sent an airplane on a one-way mission, the wreckage would stick out like a sore thumb in the desert,» Mclnerney said.
«Yeah, I guess it would,» Pickering said. «Let's fly an airplane there first, and then worry about concealing the wreckage. What should we use for an airplane?»
«That would depend on where the airplane is going to fly
from
,» Mclnerney said. «You have two choices. Russia, and you say that's out of the question. Or India.»
«Tell me about India,» Pickering said.
«The Air Corps is flying Curtiss C-46s from Sadiya—something like that, anyway. God, I'm not sure what I'm talking about.»
Mclnerney picked up his telephone. «Tony, bring me maps of India and China,» he said, hung up, and then went on: «They call it 'Flying the Hump.' Meaning they have to climb to sixteen thousand feet to fly over it, most of the way on oxygen. They fly supplies over the Himalayas into Kunming, China.»
«Kunming is in the south of China,» Stecker said. «The Gobi Desert is in the north, the far north.»
«I'll have to check the map, but I'm thinking, Jack, that the distances are about the same. A C-46 would have the range, especially if it wasn't planning to make a round trip.»
«Correct me if I'm wrong,» Pickering said. «But wouldn't you say that even if the Japanese can't shoot these planes down—«
«They shoot them down,» Mclnerney interrupted.
»—they keep track of them. Either themselves, or with informants, spies, on the ground?»
«Sure.»
«And wouldn't they notice if one of these C-46s routinely flying to Kunming suddenly went in the other direction?»
«Probably. But it wouldn't be the first aircraft to get lost out there. A friend of mine told me the pilots call it 'the Aluminum Trail,' because you can navigate by the wrecks of planes that have gone down.»
«But wouldn't you say they would go looking for an airplane, the wreckage of an airplane, that didn't head for Kunming?»
«Flem, you're going to have to get used to the idea that you don't have many options,» Mclnerney said.
Lieutenant Sylvester appeared with four maps packed in cardboard tubes.
Mclnerney came from behind his desk, pulled the rolled-up maps from the tubes, and spread them out on the floor. He and Stecker dropped to their knees. Pickering stood behind them.
«Here it is,» Mclnerney said, pointing. «I was right. Sadiya, in the Brahmaputra Valley. From there over the mountains to Kunming.» He traced the route with his fingers, and then, using his little finger and thumb as a compass, compared the distance between Sadiya and Kunming and Sadiya and the center of the Gobi Desert.
«Like I thought,» he said, «about the same distance. Five hundred miles, maybe five-fifty. A C-46 could make it, one-way, without any trouble.»
«Does the Corps have any C-46s?» Pickering asked.
«The Corps has a few, reluctantly contributed by the Air Corps, and none of which I— speaking for the Corps—am willing to give to the OSS for a one-way mission.»
Pickering did not reply directly. «What about the R4-D?» he asked.
«It has the range, but getting it over the mountains? Risky—damned risky— at best.»
«And you can't fly an R4-D through the mountains, or around them?»
Mclnerney shook his head. «You have to have the altitude to get over them.
The R4-D just doesn't have it. There's always exceptions to everything, of course. But so far as I'm concerned, you'd better forget about using an R4-D.»
Pickering dropped to his knees and put his finger on the map.
«That, General,» Mclnerney said, «is the Yellow Sea.»
«Yeah, General, I know,» Pickering said. «I used to be a sailor.»
«What are you thinking, Flem?»
«Catalina,» Pickering said. «Maybe two Catalinas. From fifty miles offshore, they would have more than enough range.»
«Not by the time they reached a position fifty miles off the coast. Not from any base where they are now operating.»
«They would if they met a submarine and took on fuel from it,» Pickering said.
«A rendezvous at sea?» Mclnerney said, doubtfully but thoughtfully. «I don't know, Flem.»
«The Catalina has a range of twenty-three hundred miles,» Pickering said. «It cruises at a hundred sixty knots, or thereabouts. And it can carry two tons of bombs.»
«It carries the bombs under its wings,» Mclnerney said.
«But it can lift that much weight, right? Two tons is a lot of meteorological equipment.»
«I thought you came here for my expert advice about airplanes.»
«We did. And you came up with the same arguments against using India as a base for C-46s that Jack and I did. You ever hear the true test of an intelligent man is how much he agrees with you?»
«I'm not agreeing with you. I am having unpleasant mental images of what would happen if you could talk the Navy into giving you a submarine