“Something wrong, Janos?” It. Colonel Douglass asked him.
“That hatch isn’t big enough,” Janos said.
“There’s no way we can drop through that little hole.”
“We’ve dropped people through that hole before,” Douglass said.
“Only Fulmar,” Capt. Stanley S. Fine said, entering the conversation.
“The others went out the bomb bay. Before Canidy removed the racks and the door opening mechanism. And Fulmar jumped in with a British chute. No spare.
And it took him a long time to get through the door. If we could get them through the door, it would take so long they would land all over Hungary.”
“Jesus Christ!” Douglass said furiously.
“What the hell do we do now? How come this is the first time anybody thought about this?”
“The B-17 can’t land on Vis,” Fine said, answering that question before it was asked.
“What’s Vis?” FreddyJanos asked.
Fine and Douglass looked at each other before Fine answered, “An island in the Adriatic. Where we will pick you up when this operation is over.”
“Pick us up? We’re not going to stay?”
“No,” Fine said.
“It has been decided to bring you out right away.”
“Can I ask why?”
“You can ask, but I can’t tell you,” Fine said.
“I must be out of my mind,” Janos said.
“But that sort of pisses me off.”
“Jesus, that’s all we need, a hero,” Douglass said.
Janos felt his face turn warm with anger. With an effort, he fought it down by telling himself that Douglass, by any criterion, was a hero, and thus had the right to mock the word.
“I guess that sounded pretty dumb,” he said.
“Yes, it did,” Douglass said, not backing off.
“I just hope you can restrain your heroic impulses when you do get in there, and that you do just what you’re told, and nothing more.”
They locked eyes for a moment. Janos, for the first time, saw that Douglass could have very cold and calculating eyes. And he sensed suddenly that Douglass was judging him, and that if Douglass found him wanting–if Douglass concluded that there was a risk he would foolishly take once he was in Hungary–there was a good chance he would be left behind.
“Can a Gooney Bird land on this island?”Janos asked.
There was no response from Douglass. He continued to look at Janos with cold calculating eyes.
“What the hell,” Douglass said finally. There was even the flicker of a smile.
“When all the clever ideas fail, be desperate. Go by the book. Use a parachutist-dropping airplane to drop parachutists.”
“Can we get our hands on a C-47? “Janos asked.
“Yes,” Fine said, almost impatiently. He had seen a dozen of the twin-engine transports sitting on the field. There would probably be one they could have simply by asking for it. And if there was a problem, one would have to be “diverted from other missions.” The OSS had the ultimate priority.
“But does a C-47 have the range?”
“I don’t think it does,” Douglass said.
“I’m not even sure it will make it to Hungary. There’s no way one of them could make it to Pecs and then to Vis.”
“Where’s Darmstadter?”Pine asked.
“He ought to know.”
“He and Dolan are checking the weather,” Douglass said.
“What’s the priority?” Pine asked rhetorically.
“To get Janos’s team on the ground in one piece,” Douglass said.
“We could… ,” Fine began.
“I don’t know what I’m talking about, and I won’t until I know just what the Gooney Bird can do.”
“Well,” Douglass said, nodding toward a small door in one of the wide hangar doors where an MP, armed with a Thompson submachine gun, was checking the identification of It. Commander John Dolan, USNR, It. Henry Darmstadter, and Ernest J. Wilkins, “here comes the expert.”
“Well,” Wilkins said, cheerfully confident, as he walked up to them.
“God loves us, apparently. The immediate and twenty-four-hour weather over the drop zone is going to be perfect.”
Douglass laughed nastily.
“Darmstadter,” Fine asked.
“What’s the range of a Gooney Bird? Would a Gooney Bird make it one way to Pecs?”
“No,” Darmstadter said immediately.
“What’s wrong with the B-25?” Dolan asked.
“Canidy has cleverly modified the B-25 so that you can’t drop parachutists from it,” Douglass said, “or at least not a team of them, without scattering them all over Hungary.”