“Steer straight north from the end of the lake,” Dolan said when they had
found Lake Scutari, and then he got out of his seat.
“I think it’s time to get rid of another drum.”
It. Janos had been shown how to pump fuel from the fifty-five-gallon drums into the main tanks. One of the drums had been semi permanently installed, with a line running from its bottom to the main aircraft tank. Fuel from it had been pumped into the main tank, and then that fuel was replenished from other fifty-five-gallon barrels.
The empty tanks didn’t weigh much, but they could not be completely drained, and Dolan was worried that the avgas sloshing around in them would create fumes that would be dangerous. He had gone back into the cabin several times to make sure that as soon as each drum had been emptied, Janos had thrown it out.
The ground seemed to glow white about that time, and after a moment Darmstadter figured out what it was–the moonlight reflecting back from snow on the ground. That meant they were approaching the mountains in Montenegro, the highest of which was about 7,500 feet. There would be at least 1,500 feet between them and the highest peak, but it was important that they know when they passed over it, so they could safely descend.
Darmstadter had been worried that Dolan would want the controls after they started down and were flying on the deck. There was no question that Dolan was a better and more experienced pilot. But there was also no doubt that he had had a heart attack and might have another But Dolan lived up to what he had promised Douglass: that he would “work the road map in the right seat and let the kid fly.”
The only specific instructions Dolan gave him were course changes, and several times the “suggestion” that it would be “okay to go down another couple hundred feet.”
According to the Corps of Engineers’ map (which the Corps had apparently borrowed from Le Guide Michelin), this part of Hungary was sparsely populated. There were here and there a few lights to be seen, but there was no way of telling whether they were a few lights in violation of a village blackout, or lights in single farmhouses.
At 0500, as the sky to the east was starting to glow dull red, Dolan unstrapped himself again and got off the copilot’s seat.
“In eight minutes, maybe ten,” he said, “we should see a few lights. That’ll be Pecs. Or maybe Athens. If you see something round, that’ll be Rome.”
Darmstadter knew he was expected to laugh, and did.
“This has gone so well, I’m afraid to believe it,” Dolan said.
“I’ll go back and tell our passengers. Janos said he wanted fifteen minutes to suit up.”
Dolan was back in his seat before they came onto Pecs, and he was the first to see it.
“Go down on the deck, “Dolan now ordered.
“Put that line of hills between us and Pecs. It’s damned near impossible to tell the direction of an airplane if you can’t see it. And the more confused we can leave these people, the better.”
Darmstadter concentrated on flying as close to the ground as he dared between lines of hills. It was light enough now to make out individual trees, and here and there a road and fields.
And then, surprising him, he flashed over a stream, then a cut-over section of hillside, then above that a meadow on a plateau.
“Christ, is that it?”
“It should be, “Dolan said, “but I don’t see any panels.”
Darmstadter glanced quickly at him. Dolan had a headset on and was working the controls of the radio.
“Not a goddamned thing,” he said.
“What do I do?”
“Stay on the deck under the hill lines,” Dolan ordered.
“And make another pass over it. I’ll go see what I can see from the door.”
Five minutes later, from the other direction, the C-47 approached the meadow.
There was no doubt now that they had found their destination. A pile of tree limbs was burning furiously at the near end of the meadow by the cut over area, the wind blowing the smoke across the meadow and into the forest.