In those days we got our weather reports by phoning the next airfield and finding out if it was raining there.” Johnson grinned. “More reliable than the met forecasts we get now.”
Alex knew them all over the globe-the barnstormers and bush pilots who made their livings walking the wings of fabric-and-wood biplanes and slept out under the wings of their Jennies. “I’m surprised you opted for bombers then.”
“No future in single-seaters, Skipper. The war ain’t going to last forever. When it’s over they’re going to need cargo pilots, not peashooter jockeys. Old Pappy’s always thinking ahead, see.” He shook his head. “Besides I’ll tell you something else-if I’m going to get shot at while I’m up there I’d just as soon be in one of these babies.”
“It’s a big slow target for the enemy.”
“But a Fort’s damn near impossible to shoot down with anything less than a direct artillery hit. You can knock out three of the four engines and the son of a bitch will still fly. You can knock off half a wing and still keep it airborne. That’s a forgiving airplane, it ain’t like a lot of these slapped-together military designs-the thing about a Fort, it wants to fly. There’s never been an airplane like that B-17. Probably never will be again. And you’ve got ten machine guns poking out of those turret-blisters all over the airplane from nose to tail and top to bottom. I’d hate to be the Nazi peashooter that had to go up against a flying gun platform.”
Tickle Johnson in his enthusiasm and he was off like a candidate on the Fourth of July. Alex listened with half his attention and soaked up the warmth of the cozy rustic room.
Then Alex said, “All right, Pappy, suppose I give you a target about nine feet wide and eighty feet long moving at anywhere from twenty to sixty miles an hour-on the ground, in a straight line. Suppose I paint a big bright X on top of it. Can you hit it with bombs?”
“Skipper, I could drop a doughnut into a coffee cup from ten thousand feet with a B-Seventeen and a good bombardier. What is it you want me to hit? Sounds like a bus.”
“Something like that. But it’s not a matter of hitting it two out of three or nine out of ten. You’ve only got one crack at it. What gives you the best odds of destroying it?”
Spaight came in and sat down on the bench, listening with interest. Pappy Johnson said, “Just one bus, right? Not a whole convoy of them.”
“We’ll start with one. What’s your opinion?”
“Well ideally you’d want a squadron of planes. That way you’d cancel out the chance of error.”
“You know how big our bomber force is, Pappy.”
“Three planes. Well that’s plenty, what the hell, one target? One lousy bus?”
“You’ve got to train my people to hit that target, Pappy. That’s your job.”
“Then I’d go in treetop and set delay fuses on the bombs. Armor-piercing noses on the bombs so they’ll penetrate the roof of the bus instead of bouncing off.”
“Treetop?” Spaight said. “In a four-engine bomber?”
“Skipper wanted to know the best odds. I’m giving them, General. I didn’t say it was the only way to do it. But it’s the best.”
He came awake just once. The sun was drilling right down through the nose perspex. Hard silver reflections shot back against his eyes from the ocean far below. John Spaight said, “Christ look at all that water.”
“That’s only the top of it.”
Pappy Johnson’s voice crackled on the intercom:
“You want to get out and walk back to Texas, General?”
“I wouldn’t mind. I’m beginning to get the feeling I’ve signed on with a pack of lunatics.”
“Just keep that in mind,” Alex said. “It’ll probably help explain some of the things you’re going to have to do.” Then he went back to sleep.
PART FOUR:
1
In the latitudes of northern Scotland there was daylight until after ten o’clock and they made landfall by twilight with the formation intact, the three Fortresses in a V-triangle with the three transports riding below and behind them.
Alex stretched his limbs one at a time in the confined space.
Spaight was muttering in the throat mike: “If you wanted a sardine why the hell didn’t you draft one?” Spaight had that trait: every morning he made a joke-a sour joke about the weather or a caustic joke about the food. Somewhere in him was a core of bitterness; underneath the hard competence there was dissatisfaction. Alex hadn’t got too close to it but he had the feeling Spaight had been born with an impulse toward perfection and felt unfulfilled whatever he did. He was introspective and if he’d been more of a golfing backslapper he’d have had two or three stars instead of one but the fact that he had one at all was testimony to his extraordinary talent for organizing people and commanding their loyalty. He lacked a head for imaginative tactics but he had the genius of a first-rate staff officer: if you told him what had to be done he would produce everything that was needed for the job and put it all in the right place at the right time. Spaight was married and thrice a father but he kept his family rigidly segregated from his professional existence and he hadn’t once mentioned his wife since they’d left Washington. He was a soldier and she was a soldier’s woman and that was the way the game was played.
Pappy Johnson came on the headset. “Picking up some radio chatter from the Channel. I’ll cut you in.”
Static in the earphones and then he picked up the voices, quite distinct-a very calm crisp Welsh voice, “Break right, Clive, the bugger’s on your arse.”
He could hear the banging of the cannons and the fast stutter of machine guns above the whine of pursuit engines and then the same voice again, still dispassionate: “I’ve taken some tracers-on fire. I’m bailing out. Due east of Dover-I can see the cliffs. Someone save me a pint of bitter and a pair of dry drawers.”
In his imagination he could see the Spitfires and Messerschmitts in the twilight wheeling among the barrage blimps; the Heinkels in ponderous formation lining up for London and the Hawks and Spitfires trying to get at them before they could drop their sticks of bombs through the swaying beams of the searchlights.
There was a break in the static and Johnson said, “Sorry, I’ve got to change the frequency and get landing instructions.”
Spaight said, “You’ve got to hand it to those bastards.”
They were dropping across the mountains of Scotland in slowly fading twilight; the hillsides were indeterminate, dark and heavy. The B-17 thundered lower between the ranges and finally he saw the lights of the runway through the perspex. The bomber descended toward them like a climber on a sliding rope.
The runway was rough; the plane bounced and pitched along the center stripe between the cannister lights. A small van came shooting onto the gravel and curved in to intercept, running fast down the edge of the runway with a big FOLLOW ME sign across its rear doors, Turning on its tail wheel the bomber went along slowly after the van, unwieldy and awkward on the ground. Pappy Johnson was complaining into his radio: “This runway’s got a surface like a goddamn waffle. This Jesus shit airfield wouldn’t get certification from the civil air board of the corruptest county in Mississippi!”
The FOLLOW ME van circled to indicate their parking place and Johnson cut the engines. It was dusk now and the tower was carping in a crisp Scottish voice: “Let’s get the rest of the wee birds down now, lads-we want to switch off these lights, don’t we now.”
He inched painfully to the hatch and lowered himself by his arms. The leg had gone very stiff. Ground crewmen climbed into the bomber and Pappy Johnson stopped by the running board of the van to look back at it the way he might have looked at a woman.
The driver gave a palm-out salute. He saw to their seating and drove them down the gravel strip and decanted them beside a wooden hangar, and sped away to meet the next plane.
