As he walked down the narrow aisle of the hut, somewhat awkwardly because of the boots, Sergeant Draper’s door opened and she looked out.
Her heavy bathrobe was unfastened, and he could see her nipples standing up under her cokon nightgown.
“I don’t think going on a mission was quite what Dick had in mind for you, Commander,” Sergeant Draper said.
“Is that your concern, Sergeant?” Biter snapped.
“I suppose not,” she said, taking his words as a question and not a reprimand.
He nodded curtly to her and went out to the jeep.
The briefing was well under way by the time D’Angelo’s sergeant led him to the briefing room. He immediately understood that he could not catch up by listening to the off ficer delivering the lecture, so he began to study the map covering the wall. He couldn’t read the name of either the target or the alternate from the map, but they were well inside Germany.
The bomber path was jagged rather than in a straight line. He guessed this was in order to fly around known heavy antiaircraft installations.
And then the lieutenant colonel on the little stage was holding his pointer in both hands in front of him–like a cavalry officer’s riding crop, Bitter thought–and said, “That’s it, gentlemen. Good luck.” D’Angelo came to him.
“Good morning, Commander,” he said.
“Good morning, sir,” he said.
“You’re going with Danny Ester,” D’Angelo said. “Come on, I’ll give you a ride out to the line.” D’Angelo dropped him without a word under the nose of a B-17F sitting just outside its sandbag revetment.
Bitter saw that it had been christened “Danny’s Darling.” The enlisted members of the crew were already there beside a pile of parachutes. They were wearing unfastened sheepskin high-altitude gear.
“Good morning,” Biter said.
The only response was a nod from one of them.
He took a closer look at “Danny’s Darling” itself. It was almost new, but there were seven bombs (each signifying a mission) and four swastikas (each signifying a confirmed downed German aircraft) painted on the fuselage just below and forward of the cockpit windshield. Just below these was a painting of a raven-haired, long-legged, hugely bosomed female. There were three large patches on the fuselage. The ship had been hit, and by something larger than machine-gun fire.
For the first time he remembered that he had not, as he had promised, wrieen Sarah the moment he arrived in England. And he also realized that he was right now torn between two obligations, There would have been no question of flying a mission he had been ordered to fly. He was an officer.
But he hadn’t been ordered aboard this B-17. As Sergeant Draper had pointed out, it “wasn’t what Canidy had in mind for him.” And if he got killed, that would deprive Joe of his father, as well as Sarah of her husband.
Did he have any right to endanger his life when it affected the lives of other people? Did he really have to make this mission so as to beeer discharge his duty with the flying bombs, or was he simply being a romantic fool?
It was very easy for Ed Biter to conclude that he was a professional warrior, and what professional warriors did was go to war.
He put Joe and Sarah from his mind. Major Danny Ester and the officer crew arrived on a weapons carrier a few minutes later. Ester introduced him, then went through a perfunctory examination of the crew’s gear, and then ordered everybody aboard.
IX [ON8] Fers ld Arsy Xir Corpn Btatiod 10 January 1943 One of the crewmen helped Bitter put the Browning. 50-caliber machine gun in its mount, then asked him if he had ever fired one before.
“Yes,” Biter said.
That was not the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. But at Annapolis he had fired an air-cooled. 30-caliber Browning machine gun.
Functionally they were the same. And he’d fired enough rounds from the two fixed. 50-caliber Brownings mounted in the nose of his Curtiss P40 Warhawk in Burma and China to acquire some expertise with the trajectory and velocity of the bullet. The only difference was that if he had to fire this weapon, he would aim the weapon itself rather than the whole airplane.