the price was right.’
‘The price,’ said Milo, ‘was outrageous—positively exorbitant! But since we bought it from one of our own subsidiaries, we were happy to pay it. Look after the hides.’
‘The hives?’
‘The hides.’
‘The hides?’
‘The hides. In Buenos Aires. They have to be tanned.’
‘Tanned?’
‘In Newfoundland. And shipped to Helsinki N.M.I.F. before the spring thaw begins. Everything to Finland goes N.M.I.F. before the spring thaw begins.’
‘No Money in Front?’ guessed Colonel Cathcart.
‘Good, Colonel. You have a gift, sir. And then there’s the cork.’
‘The cork?’
‘That must go to New York, the shoes for Toulouse, the ham for Siam, the nails from Wales, and the tangerines for New Orleans.’
‘ Milo.’
‘We have coals in Newcastle, sir.’ Colonel Cathcart threw up his hands. ‘ Milo, stop!’ he cried, almost in tears. ‘It’s no use. You’re just like I am—indispensable!’ He pushed his pencil aside and rose to his feet in frantic exasperation. ‘ Milo, you can’t fly sixty-four more missions. You can’t even fly one more mission. The whole system would fall apart if anything happened to you.’ Milo nodded serenely with complacent gratification. ‘Sir, are you forbidding me to fly any more combat missions?’
‘ Milo, I forbid you to fly any more combat missions,’ Colonel Cathcart declared in a tone of stern and inflexible authority.
‘But that’s not fair, sir,’ said Milo. ‘What about my record? The other men are getting all the fame and medals and publicity. Why should I be penalized just because I’m doing such a good job as mess officer?’
‘No, Milo, it isn’t fair. But I don’t see anything we can do about it.’
‘Maybe we can get someone else to fly my missions for me.’
‘But maybe we can get someone else to fly your missions for you,’ Colonel Cathcart suggested. ‘How about the striking coal miners in Pennsylvania and West Virginia?’ Milo shook his head. ‘It would take too long to train them. But why not the men in the squadron, sir? After all, I’m doing this for them. They ought to be willing to do something for me in return.’
‘But why not the men in the squadron, Milo?’ Colonel Cathcart exclaimed. ‘After all, you’re doing all this for them. They ought to be willing to do something for you in return.’
‘What’s fair is fair.’
‘What’s fair is fair.’
‘They could take turns, sir.’
‘They might even take turns flying your missions for you, Milo.’
‘Who gets the credit?’
‘You get the credit, Milo. And if a man wins a medal flying one of your missions, you get the medal.’
‘Who dies if he gets killed?’
‘Why, he dies, of course. After all, Milo, what’s fair is fair. There’s just one thing.’
‘You’ll have to raise the number of missions.’
‘I might have to raise the number of missions again, and I’m not sure the men will fly them. They’re still pretty sore because I jumped them to seventy. If I can get just one of the regular officers to fly more, the rest will probably follow.’
‘Nately will fly more missions, sir,’ Milo said. ‘I was told in strictest confidence just a little while ago that he’ll do anything he has to in order to remain overseas with a girl he’s fallen in love with.’
‘But Nately will fly more!’ Colonel Cathcart declared, and he brought his hands together in a resounding clap of victory. ‘Yes, Nately will fly more. And this time I’m really going to jump the missions, right up to eighty, and really knock General Dreedle’s eye out. And this is a good way to get that lousy rat Yossarian back into combat where he might get killed.’
‘Yossarian?’ A tremor of deep concern passed over Milo’s simple, homespun features, and he scratched the corner of his reddish-brown mustache thoughtfully.
‘Yeah, Yossarian. I hear he’s going around saying that he’s finished his missions and the war’s over for him. Well, maybe he has finished his missions. But he hasn’t finished your missions, has he? Ha! Ha! Has he got a surprise coming to him!’
‘Sir, Yossarian is a friend of mine,’ Milo objected. ‘I’d hate to be responsible for doing anything that would put him back in combat. I owe a lot to Yossarian. Isn’t there any way we could make an exception of him?’
‘Oh, no, Milo.’ Colonel Cathcart clucked sententiously, shocked by the suggestion. ‘We must never play favorites. We must always treat every man alike.’
‘I’d give everything I own to Yossarian,’ Milo persevered gamely on Yossarian’s behalf. ‘But since I don’t own anything, I can’t give everything to him, can I? So he’ll just have to take his chances with the rest of the men, won’t he?’
‘What’s fair is fair, Milo.’
‘Yes, sir, what’s fair is fair,’ Milo agreed. ‘Yossarian is no better than the other men, and he has no right to expect any special privileges, has he?’
‘No, Milo. What’s fair is fair.’ And there was no time for Yossarian to save himself from combat once Colonel Cathcart issued his announcement raising the missions to eighty late that same afternoon, no time to dissuade Nately from flying them or even to conspire again with Dobbs to murder Colonel Cathcart, for the alert sounded suddenly at dawn the next day and the men were rushed into the trucks before a decent breakfast could be prepared, and they were driven at top speed to the briefing room and then out to the airfield, where the clitterclattering fuel trucks were still pumping gasoline into the tanks of the planes and the scampering crews of armorers were toiling as swiftly as they could at hoisting the thousand-pound demolition bombs into the bomb bays. Everybody was running, and engines were turned on and warmed up as soon as the fuel trucks had finished.
Intelligence had reported that a disabled Italian cruiser in drydock at La Spezia would be towed by the Germans that same morning to a channel at the entrance of the harbor and scuttled there to deprive the Allied armies of deep-water port facilities when they captured the city. For once, a military intelligence report proved accurate. The long vessel was halfway across the harbor when they flew in from the west, and broke it apart with direct hits from every flight that filled them all with waves of enormously satisfying group pride until they found themselves engulfed in great barrages of flak that rose from guns in every bend of the huge horseshoe of mountainous land below. Even Havermeyer resorted to the wildest evasive action he could command when he saw what a vast distance he had still to travel to escape, and Dobbs, at the pilot’s controls in his formation, zigged when he should have zagged, skidding his plane into the plane alongside, and chewed off its tail. His wing broke off at the base, and his plane dropped like a rock and was almost out of sight in an instant. There was no fire, no smoke, not the slightest untoward noise. The remaining wing revolved as ponderously as a grinding cement mixer as the plane plummeted nose downward in a straight line at accelerating speed until it struck the water, which foamed open at the impact like a white water lily on the dark-blue sea, and washed back in a geyser of apple-green bubbles when the plane sank. It was over in a matter of seconds. There were no parachutes. And Nately, in the other plane, was killed too.
The Cellar
Nately’s death almost killed the chaplain. Chaplain Shipman was seated in his tent, laboring over his paperwork in his reading spectacles, when his phone rang and news of the mid-air collision was given to him from the field. His insides turned at once to dry clay. His hand was trembling as he put the phone down. His other hand began trembling. The disaster was too immense to contemplate. Twelve men killed—how ghastly, how very, very awful! His feeling of terror grew. He prayed instinctively that Yossarian, Nately, Hungry Joe and his other friends
