“Jigsaw Flight-go to stations.” That was the tower.
There were no runway lights. He saw Calhoun walking away dragging the chocks in the gloom; he taxied around in a tight circle and went bumping along toward the end of the runway.
He stood on the brakes and ran up each engine in turn-watching the gauges, using his ears. Inside him he felt the thrill he’d never lost in a thousand takeoffs: the Icarian desire to climb high, detached and free.
The green flare went up. He stood hard on both brakes. “Military power.”
Johnson thrust the four throttle handles forward. The rpm’s yelled at him, reaching 2700 and the plane quivered like a hound straining on a leash. Manifold pressure fifty inches… He let go the brakes and she burst forward, fishtailing a little until he steadied her.
He had to lift off within twenty-five seconds after reaching full power. The panel clock gave him eighteen seconds and the airspeed indicator gave him 75 knots; the tail wheel lifted off.
Pappy Johnson reached out and chopped the number-two throttle dead.
With the number-two prop feathered the imbalance of power wanted to slew her around to starboard and he had to stand on the left-hand rudder pedal.
Twenty-four seconds. He pushed the yoke forward. To hold her on the ground. Airspeed 80… 85… Twenty- eight seconds…
Ninety knots. He hauled back on the yoke.
She lifted off the ground and instantly he snapped, “Gear up! ”
Johnson hit the gear lever as if it were an enemy’s jaw. There was the fast whine of the gear-retraction motors and he felt the added lift when the drag of the wheels had been removed: 110 knots now and he banked to clear the phone cables.
He had 300 feet and she was climbing smoothly on three engines; he reduced to 2,600 rpm and forty inches of manifold pressure and climbed at 115 knots toward the planned cruising altitude of 4,000 feet. He cut the mixtures back, trimmed the controls, retracted the flaps and heard the flap-actuating motors grind.
After a while Johnson pressed the button on his control wheel to be heard on the intercom. Felix heard his mild voice: “Try eight thousand this time. Maybe we can bust through the soup.”
“May I have my engine back now?”
“No. We’ll fly the mission on three.”
“One experience with a teacher like you would be enough to make most pilots travel by railroad the rest of their lives.”
Johnson pushed the throat mike aside. “If I hadn’t thought you could handle it I wouldn’t have done it. Would I now?”
The plane burst through ten-tenths into brass sunlight. White cloud-tops rolled away to the horizons like a vast sea.
He set his controls to cruise at 165 knots at 8,000 feet. The other two planes caught up and took station behind him and to his right.
“Give us a course.”
Ulyanov already had it for him. Felix fed the information into the autopilot and spent the next half-minute adjusting the trim with the button until he liked the sound and feel of it.
Ulyanov said, “We’ll have to dead-reckon down to the target area.”
He checked the instruments. Head temps 210°. Airspeed okay. Artificial horizon level and steady. Pressures and rpm’s okay: in synch.
He took his hands off the controls and that was when it hit him. The cold sweat burst out all over his body.
“Jigsaw One to Jigsaw Flight. Acknowledge.”
“Jigsaw Two. I read you clear, Troop Leader.”
“Affirmative.”
“Jigsaw Three. Read you very well. What’s wrong with your engine?”
“Pappy’s amusing himself. Keep your receivers open. Eight minutes to descent. Out.”
The eight minutes went by too quickly and then he had to put the nose down and it took an effort of will. He had always competed in speed sports in which you could see what you were doing. Now he had to descend blind.
He tried to make light of it: “What if someone’s put a mountain in one of those clouds?”
“You’ve been here before.”
“Ulyanov, what’s my course?”
“Dead ahead sir.”
“You’d better be right.”
“Yes sir. I know.”
There was a crag somewhere to starboard that spired to nearly 3,000 feet. At least he hoped it was to starboard. He watched the clock. Ten seconds… five… Nose down.
The heavy plane mushed down through the weather bank and he couldn’t see a thing. Pappy Johnson said, “This stuff may be very close to the ground. You’ll have to come in right on the deck. Just be sure you keep your feet inside.”
The target zone was a meadow on top of a long ridge. At its highest point it had an elevation of 876 feet above mean sea level. The idea was to attack from exactly 1,000 feet altimeter-124 feet above the ground. In theory it made the targets easy to hit but in practice the ground turbulence made it pure hell. Cool air sank into the deeper shadows and warmer air lifted from the pale places. The aircraft bucketed and pitched like a racing car with a flat tire.
Johnson said, “You trying to scramble the eggs I ate this morning? Don’t tense up.”
“I can’t see where I’m going.”
“I know. Keep your nose down-keep on the rails.”
Felix dragged the back of his hand across his mouth.
Johnson said gently, “I told the old man you were the best in the outfit. Don’t make me a liar.”
But his aplomb had evaporated and there was no way to regain it. He pressed the Send button and had to clear his throat before he spoke. “Jigsaw One to Jigsaw Flight. Starting a nine-zero degree right turn. Guide on me if you can.”
He switched the set from liaison to intercom. “Pilot to bombardier. We’re on the briefed heading. Going down through 2,000 feet. You should be able to see your aiming point any time now.”
The plane growled steadily into a sea of matted grey.
Seventeen hundred feet; sixteen hundred. “Prepare to drop practice bombs.”
Chujoy’s voice crackled at him: “Bomb-bay doors open. Preparing to center P.D.I.”
That was the bombsight. At these altitudes a variation of as little as two feet in altitude could make a critical difference in the trajectory of the bombs.
Fourteen hundred. Thirteen-fifty. “I’m going to abort!”
“The hell you are,” Pappy Johnson snapped.
Thirteen hundred. Grey cloud rushed past the windscreen, beading up on the glass. Twelve-eighty: twelve- sixty…
Tendrils; it was breaking up…
Twelve-thirty and they were out under it-too low: the ground was right there…
Then his eyes adjusted to the perspective and he fought back the impulse to drag the yoke into his belly. He leveled off at twelve hundred feet. It wasn’t raining. Visibility was clear enough now; it was the ceiling that was bad-hanging down within two hundred feet of the ridge…
A stand of trees along the near rim; the open meadow and at the far end of it more trees-highland woods running down the slopes. And he could see the square old cars bumpety-bumping out across the meadow: four of them, their courses diverging a little because there was no one driving them. The men had been tenting there for three weeks now, setting targets for them. They’d turned the toys loose on the meadow and now it was up to the airmen to bomb the moving automobiles before they got across the thousand-foot meadow.
“Twelve hundred feet. We’re approaching the I. P,” Initial point of the bombardier’s run.
Pappy Johnson growled, “Do it good, Chujoy, or you go back by bus.”
