“All right, Mac. If you see the bomber, crackle right away.
Got it? If you see crackle, call us right away. Got it? Over.”
“Got it, Andy. L-4 to Huguenot, over and out.”
“Over and out.”
The railroad embankment below them went around a wide
arc and separated deceptively into two. One of the lines had
been pulled up years back, but the marks of the long-ago
stacked and burned ties still striped the gravel bed, and it
would have been impossible for a stranger to tell from the
air whether or not there were any rails running over those
marks; terrain from the air can be deceptive unless you know
what it is supposed to look like, rather than what it does look
like. Martinson, however, knew as well as McDonough which
of the two rail spurs was the discontinued one, and banked
the Cub in a gentle climbing turn toward the mountain.
The rectangular acres wheeled slowly and solemnly below
them, brindled with tiny cows as motionless as toys. After
a while the deceptive spur line turned sharply east into a
woolly green woods and never came out again. The mountain
got larger, the morning ground haze rising up its nearer side,
as though the whole forest were smoldering sullenly there.
Martinson turned his head and leaned it back to look out
of the corner of one eye at the back seat, but McDonough
shook his head. There was no chance at all that the crashed
bomber could be on this side of that heavy-shouldered mass
of rock.
Martinson shrugged and eased the stick back. The plane
bored up into the sky, past four thousand feet, past four