Meanwhile MacNab radioed a mayday call, giving their location, bearing, and intended course, then reported “urgent living cargo.” Macurdy removed the handcuffs and put a life jacket on the corpse; a lot better to bring in a dead Voitu than none at all. When he had the laces tied, he got back in front again. “How’s your goat-eared buddy?” MacNab asked.
“Dead. His name was Trosza. He wished me well, and shook my hand. That’s when I did it to him.”
MacNab recognized contrition when he heard it; he nodded and said nothing more until, a few minutes later, he repeated his mayday with a new location and bearing. And got an answer. Three destroyer escorts operating out of Termoli were on an intercept course. Macurdy resisted asking what the prospects were. In the distance he could see the Abruzzi coast now, farther ahead than he liked.
Again MacNab repeated his mayday, with location and bearing. “I’m at 3,600 feet,” he finished, “and starting my letdown.”
“The engine hasn’t quit,” Macurdy pointed out.
“I have to land crosswind, and have fuel left to maintain steerageway. Otherwise forget it. The weather’s worse than predicted. Those are storm seas down there.”
Several miles farther on, Macurdy made out the three warships moving toward them in the distance, and wondered if they’d seen or heard the plane. The altimeter read 640 feet, and MacNab had cut power, radioing that the shi s were in sight and on course. Short minutes later they were dose above the water. No way in hell, Macurdy realized, could they refuel in waves like those. MacNab touched her down, running parallel with the seas along a crest, skipping once. Contact slowed them abruptly, and shortly they were an enclosed boat, not an aircraft. Rolling heavily, they rose like a cork on a large wave, then slid sideways into the trough. Macurdy didn’t know if they were in trouble or not.
“How’s it look?” he asked.
“If the fuel holds out, we should be okay.”
“Should I inflate a life raft?”
“Not in the plane. I’ll tell you when.”
The fuel nearly did hold out. The destroyer escorts were perhaps a half-mile away when the engine quit. Almost at once the Widgeon weather-vaned, the wind on the rudder surface turning her into the seas. She nosed into the next wave, water washing over the windshield. With a pang of fear, Macurdy wondered if they’d recover, but the plane rose, shedding graygreen sea water, then slid into the trough and buried her nose in the next wave, staggering again as it washed over her.
“Get in back,” MacNab ordered, “and be ready to evacuate through the cabin door, with the life raft. I’ll tell you when. It’ll be a helluva lot easier for them to take us aboard from a raft than from the plane. As you go out, then pull the inflation cordand for chrissake hang onto the lifeline! Pull yourself on if you can, but the important thing is to hang on to that lifeline.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll be right behind you.”
“What about Trosza?”
“I’ll bring him out. You get the raft out.”
Macurdy waited at the door, the pilot close behind, gripping Trosza’s collar. “Now!” MacNab barked, and Macurdy opened the cabin door just as the Widgeon nosed downward into the trough. The abrupt change in tilt drove him back, and briefly water poured in. As the plane rose again, he made it out the door, face down on the rubber raft, gripping the lifeline with one hand, pulling the inflation cord wi the other. Then he was in the water and under it, shocked by its cold. The raft popped to the surface, Macurdy somehow spread-eagled on top. MacNab was not with him, and he looked re around as best he could.
Long seconds later Macurdy saw him; he’d gotten out. The plane was riding another wave, tail higher, the open cabin door briefly clear of the water again, then it behind the crest. Macurdy rolled off the raft on the side toward the pilot, who was swimming laboriously toward him. Keeping a death grip on the lifeline, Macurdy tried with some success to stroke toward him. After a minute their hands -met and gripped, then MacNab reached the lifeline and held on, coughing and gagging on salt water.