Patience came running back and caught his hand and pulled him to the new cannibal, slowing as they got close.
"Steven," she said shyly, "I want you to meet my old friend Nathaniel Wallace. Nathaniel, this is Steven."
"Chief Signalman Wallace, Sergeant," the cannibal said, putting out his hand. "I've been looking forward to meeting you."
"You have?"
"You have a fine hand," Wallace said. "I tried to copy your style."
"I'll be goddamned."
[Two]
HENDERSON FIELD
GUADALCANAL, SOLOMON ISLANDS
1105 HOURS 7 OCTOBER 1942
Captain Charles M. Galloway ran the engines up, saw that all the needles were in the green, and looked back over his shoulder toward Major Jake Dillon. Dillon was standing behind the pilots' seats, wearing a headset. Galloway took the microphone from its holder and moved the switch to INTERCOM.
"Strap yourself in, Jake," Galloway ordered, jerking his thumb to show Dillon a fold-down seat behind him. "I don't want you in my lap if I have to try to stop this thing." He looked at Second Lieutenant Malcolm S. Pickering, in the copilot's seat.
"We have twenty degrees of flaps," he said, pointing.
"There's the gear control. The way we're going to do this is move onto the runway, run the engines up, remove the brakes, and see if we can get it to fly. You follow me through on the throttles. When I give you the word, you will raise the gear and then the flaps. Got it?" Pickering took his microphone and pressed the switch.
"Got it, Skipper."
"Call the tower," Galloway said.
Pickering moved the switch to TRANSMIT.
"Cactus, this is"-he stopped, searching the control panel in vain for the aircraft's call sign-"Eastern Airlines City of San Francisco on the threshold for takeoff."
"Eastern Airliner, you are cleared for takeoff as number one," the Cactus tower replied. The amusement in his voice came through even over the frequency-clipping radio.
Pickering dropped his microphone in his lap and watched as Galloway moved onto the runway, lined up with its center, stopped, locked the brakes, and put his hand on the throttle quadrant. Then he put his hand over Galloway's as Galloway ran the throttles forward to TAKEOFF POWER.
The engines roared and the airplane strained against the brakes.
Galloway released them, and the R4D started to roll. He pulled his hand from under Pickering's and put it on the wheel.
Pickering picked the microphone from his lap.
"Cactus, Eastern Airlines rolling." The aircraft slowly began to gain speed. It was over the Recommended Maximum Gross Weight for the temperature and available runway length. And the runway was not smooth concrete but wet dirt, patched here and there with pierced steel planking.
Galloway was more than a little worried about blowing a tire, but he kept that to himself As soon as he could, he eased forward on the wheel to get the tail wheel off the ground.
Then he kept his eye on the end of the runway, dropping his eyes every second or so to the airspeed indicator, which had come to life at 40 knots.
The speed climbed very slowly. But then Galloway sensed life in the controls. He eased back on the wheel, felt the airplane want to try to fly, and then eased the wheel back just a hair more.
The heavy rumbling of the undercarriage suddenly quit.
"Gear up!" he called.
Pickering took his hand from the throttle quadrant and dropped it to the wheel-shaped landing gear control ten inches down and to the rear. He put it in RETRACT.
The wheels took a long time coming up. On Jack Finch's orders, the pilot who had flown the airplane to Guadalcanal from Espiritu Santo had also tested and timed how long it took to get the gear up with the added weight and wind resistance o the skis. It hadn't taken appreciably longer than normal, a tribute to the strength of the hydraulic system.
A moment before he expected the GEAR up light to go on, Galloway ordered, "Flaps Up!"
The GEAR up light went on as Pickering moved the flap-control lever.
"Gear up," Pickering's voice came over the earphones, and then a moment later, "Flaps retarded." The airspeed indicator needle pointed at 110. Galloway put the airplane into a shallow climb to the left and kept it there until the surf on the Guadalcanal beach passed under his wing.
Then he straightened it out, retarded the throttles, and set up a shallow climb.
It was just about 900 miles in a straight line from Henderson to Port Moresby on New Guinea, but Galloway was planning for at least a thousand-mile flight, in case he ran into weather, and because he knew that flying dead reckoning, the airfield was probably not going to be where he expected it to be.
To conserve fuel, he would cruise somewhere around 8,000 to 10,000 feet and at an indicated 180 knots. A thousand miles at 180 knots translated to right at six hours. That would give them an Estimated Time of Arrival at Port Moresby of 1700, 1710. The worst possible case-if they failed to find the field for another hour or so-would still see them on the ground at 1800. Before nightfall.
There was plenty of fuel. An R4D in this configuration could officially carry twenty-eight fully loaded paratroops, or 5,600 pounds. Galloway's experience during the C47/R4D acceptance tests had taught him that was a very conservative estimate of Maximum Gross Load.
Dillon had told him five people would be going into Buka.
That would be less than 1,000 pounds, because they would not be fully equipped paratroopers. But call it a thousand anyway.
And they would have with them an already weighed 950 pounds of supplies. So call that a thousand pounds, too. That left 3,600 pounds of cargo lift weight available.
More than that, really. Galloway had concluded that the Maximum Gross Weight erred on the side of caution by about 20 percent (a thousand pounds). So that left him 4,600 pounds.
AvGas weighed about seven pounds a gallon. And he had auxiliary fuel tanks mounted inside the cabin over the wing root. He'd ordered these filled with 600 gallons of gasoline.
One of the Rules for Over Water Flight that Captain Galloway devoutly believed in was that as long as you could get the airplane to stagger into the air with it, there was no such thing as too much fuel aboard. If necessary, they could fly to Australia.
Galloway turned to Pickering.
"Can you hear me?" Pickering nodded.
"You've never been in one of these before?"
"Not sitting up front," Pickering said.
"They're a very forgiving airplane," Galloway said.
"That's nice," Pickering said. "May I ask a question?"
"Shoot."
"From the movies I've seen, people are supposed to be asked to volunteer for a mission they can't be told about." Galloway smiled.
"You volunteered the day you joined The Corps," he said.
"And again when you went through P'Cola. You had two chances to say no."
"Where are we going?"
Galloway threw the map into his lap. "First stop, Port Moresby. It'll take us about six hours-"
"We have that much fuel aboard?" Pickering asked, and then realized the stupidity of his question. "I guess we do, don't we?"
"-and then-turn the chart over-Moresby to Buka and return."