Fine went quickly up the ladder and snatched the first-aid kit from its mounting just for-ward of the door. When he saw Nembly on the toilet, he realized for the first time that the C-46 was without a competent pilot.
He went back down the ladder and rolled Wilson onto his back. First he applied a pressure dressings pad of bandage attached to cloth-to Wilson’s head to stop the bleeding. Then he found an ammonia ampoule, snapped the top, and put it under Wilson’s nostrils. Wilson groaned, shook his head, tried to sit up, and then cried out in agony as the broken ends of the bones of his left arm ground against each other.
“Oh shit!” Wilson said.
“It hurts.” Fine found a morphine syringe in the first-aid kit and injected Wilson in the buttock. There was a hospital, the airport manager told Fine, run by Catholic nuns. They put Wilson in the cab of the truck and took him there, a fifteen-minute drive over a very bumpy road. Twice Wilson asked to stop so that he could throw up. With infinite gentleness, but no local anesthetic, two very obliging nuns, wearing thin cotton robes and headpieces, cleaned and sutured the deep cut in Wilson’s forehead, and then, making him scream despite the morphine, set his broken arm and wrapped it in a heavy plaster of parts cast. Wilson sat up, his face gray and covered with beads of sweat.
“It’s a hell of a place to be marooned,” he said.
“But it looks like this cockamamy operation is suspended again, at least until we can cure Nembly of his terminal shits.”
“There’s a schedule,” Fine said. “Is the schedule that important?”
Wilson asked after a moment. “I think so,” Fine said. “Well, I can sit there and work the flaps, I suppose,” Wilson said. Four hours after they landed at Bissau, they took off again. When he had it at cruising altitude and trimmed up, Fine went back in the cabin to check on Nembly.
He was off the portable toilet, but not far from it, curled up under blankets.
As he went back to the cabin, Fine consoled himself that even the worst case of diarrhea probably wouldn’t last more than twelve hours. By the time they reached Luanda, Nembly would be well enough to take the controls. When he had strapped himself in the pilot’s seat, Wilson asked him if there was any Benzedrine.
“I’m getting pretty damned groggy,” he said. “Why don’t you get some sleep?” Fine said.
“And take the Benzedrine when you wake up? I can handle it for a while.”
“I’ve just got to take a couple of winks,” Wilson said, making it an apology. He fell asleep almost immediately. Fine found the Benzedrine.
It was guaranteed to keep you awake, he had been told, the price being that you slept like you were dead when they wore off. He decided against taking any yet. He would wait until he really needed one.
There was very little to do in the cockpit. The C-46 was on autopilot on a southeasterly course that took them over the South Atlantic. It was twenty-four hundred miles, say ten hours, from Bissau to Luanda.
He knew he could not expect to hit it using only dead reckoning. It was like flying from Pensacola to Boston and back with no reference to anything on the ground and with no assist from navigational aids. They were also now out of oxygen, which meant that he could fly no higher than 12,000 feet, which in turn meant the fuel consumption was considerably higher than it would have been at 20,000. He drank all but what he guessed were two cups of the now-cold coffee in the thermos. He had to leave some for Nembly, he knew, presuming he recovered, or for Wilson if he didn’t, He dozed off, caught himself, shifted in the seat, and flexed his legs and arms. He thought that perhaps if he took the plane off the autopilot and flew it, that might keep him awake. He really didn’t want to start taking the Benzedrine just yet.
He woke up, he didn’t know how much later, looked at the altimeter, and felt bile in his throat. The altimeter indicated 7,000 feet, He knew what had happened. He had dozed off, apparently with the airplane trimmed in a very slight nose-down position. Losing this much altitude was bad, but it would have been worse if the nose had been elevated as much as it had been depressed. If that had happened, they would have just as gently climbed 5,000 feet, which would have taken them to 17,000. From 13,000 up there would have been increasing oxygen starvation. He would have been unconscious at around 14,000, and at 17,000 they would have all been dead. He reached for the trim wheel and set up a slight nose-up altitude. Then he popped three of the Benzedrine capsules into his mouth and washed them down with a swallow of cold coffee. Benzedrine was no longer an option for later use; he needed it now. He took the C-46 to 10,000 feet, then went aft again to check on Nembly. If anything, he was worse. Whatever was wrong with him, Fine decided, it had nothing to do with Spanish peppers. But when he got back to the cockpit, Wilson was awake. “Is there any coffee left?” Wilson asked.