“Is he dead? “he asked softly.
Canidy straightened, still on his knees, and nodded.
“What the hell were you thinking of, sitting down?” Canidy asked.
“He had an attack just before we landed at Cairo from Vis,” Darmstadter said, and then answered Canidy’s question: “I couldn’t kick the equipment bags out myself.”
Two of the parachutists appeared at the door of the aircraft. They had stripped out of their black coveralls and except for the carbines they held in their hands looked like civilians.
“Jesus!” one of them said when he saw Dolan.
Canidy got off his knees and looked around the cabin for something to put over Dolan’s body. He saw nothing.
“Give them the equipment bags,” Canidy said to Darmstadter, then turned to the team.
“Take them into the woods. I don’t suppose there’s an ax in there?”
“Whole fucking kit of engineer tools. Even a power saw,” one of them replied as Darmstadter lowered one of the long, padded bags onto his shoulders.
“And C-2?” Canidy asked.
“Hundred pounds of C-2, in two-pound blocks,” the parachutist said as he headed for the cover of the pine forest, staggering under the weight.
The second parachutist took a bag as the other two members of the team trotted up.
“The lieutenant’s in pain,” he said.
“Pretty bad. Should we give him morphine?”
“Not yet,” Canidy said.
The parachutist gave Canidy a dirty look.
“Christ, he hurts! They never should have made him make this fucking jump!”
“He’s not dead,” Canidy said.
“We’ll be, if we don’t get this airplane out of here before it’s spotted.”
Then he looked at Darmstadter.
“You can get it out of here?”
“No problem,” Darmstadter said immediately, confidently.
A wild thought popped into Canidy’s mind, and he asked the question:
“Loaded?”
“With what?”
“People. The team. Three others.”
“Yeah,” Darmstadter said, and then anticipated the next question: “I’ve got about two hours’ fuel aboard. If I can find Vis, that gives me a thirty-minute reserve.”
“What do you mean, if you can find it?”
Darmstadter pointed out the door. Canidy looked. It had begun to snow:
large, soft-looking flakes.
“Dolan was navigating by reference to the ground,” Darmstadter said.
“Roads and railroads. I won’t be able to see the ground. And I’m not sure I can find Vis just using a compass.”
“That kind of snow won’t last long,” Canidy said reassuringly.
… fine, he thought angrily, that fucking snow is just what we don’t need!
And then he realized that exactly the opposite was true. The snow was just what he did need. It would obscure the tracks the landing gear had made on the meadow. And, if he was right, and it left just a dusting of fresh snow atop the inch or two on the ground, it wouldn’t interfere with a takeoff.
“Start it up,” he ordered.
“I’m going to find a place to hide this big sonofabitch.”
As he ran into the center of the meadow, looking for a break in the trees, someplace where the C-47 could be taxied to, he wondered whether his decision to use the Gooney Bird to get out of here was based on sound military reason (Darmstadter couldn’t find Vis–he could; it was an available asset and should be used) or whether he subconsciously saw it as a lifeboat with himself as a drowning sailor, and was irrationally refusing to let it go, as drowning sailors will fight to get into an already loaded lifeboat, not caring that their weight will swamp it.
He snapped out of that by telling himself the decision had been made and there was no going back on it now.
He found no place to hide the airplane, now sitting where it had stopped with engines idling and Darmstadter looking out the window, waiting for instructions.
Canidy ran back to it and signaled Darmstadter to turn it around, then guided him to the edge of the forest, stopping him only when the nose was in the trees and the propeller on the right engine was spinning two feet from a thick pine trunk.
Three of the team members were watching him. He wondered if they were simply curious or had already decided he was crazy.