W E B Griffin – Men at War 4 – The Fighting Agents

As Darmstadter was strapping himself in, Canidy appeared momentarily in the cabin to wedge a canvas Valv-Pak between one of the seats and the fuselage ribs. Then he disappeared. The plane shook as the left engine started to turn, then caught.

From where he was sitting, Darmstadter could look out the small window where the waist gunner position had been faired over with Perspex. Though he couldn’t see much, he did see Sgt. Draper standing beside Commander Bitter, both of them with their hands raised in farewell. And then there was nothing to see but the edge of the taxiway as the B-25G trundled to the threshold of the runway. Then he saw a fire at the end of the runway. He unstrapped himself for a better look, and saw that it was a GI can–a No. 10 tin can–and that the fire burning in it was gasoline. Pressing his head against the Perspex, he looked as far as he could down the runway. It was lined at fifty-foot intervals with naming GI cans.

He realized that the burning sand-and-gasoline-filled cans were the runway lights Canidy and Dolan had been talking about. They would not “light” the runway, in the sense of illuminating it, but they would provide an indication where the runway was. He quickly counted cans. He got to fourteen. That meant seven hundred feet. Not nearly enough to take off.

And at that moment, having completed the run-up of engines, the B-25 started to move.

As Darmstadter watched with something approaching terror, the dull glow of another burning can appeared through the fog, and then another. Despite the thick fog, he realized, it would be possible to take off by staying on the runway between two lines of burning GI cans.

And then the rumbling of the undercarriage suddenly stopped. A moment later the nose of the B-25 lifted, so steeply that he fell against the seat that he was supposed to be strapped into, and he heard the whine of the hydraulics as the gear was retracted.

The reddish glow of the burning cans disappeared; there was nothing whatever to be seen through the Perspex window now but gray.

Darmstadter found the heavy sheepskin flying gear, put it on, and plugged it in. Then he put earphones over his ears and adjusted the oxygen mask, with its built-in microphone, over his lower face.

“Do you read?” he asked.

“We have been calling you, Lieutenant,” Canidy’s dry voice came through the earphones, “with no response. We thought maybe you’d had a last-minute change of heart.”

“Sorry, sir,” Darmstadter said.

“I was putting on the sheepskins.”

“We’re passing through eight thousand,” Canidy said.

“I’ll let you know when we pass through ten. Make sure the oxygen is working.”

Darmstadter opened the valve and felt the cold oxygen in his nostrils and throat.

“Oxygen okay,” he said.

“Couple of things,” Canidy said.

“Make sure you’ve got a walk-around bottle and a spare. We’re going way up, so stay on oxygen.”

“If you feel like it,” Canidy went on, “and it might be a good idea, move around a little. Wave your arms, bend your legs. But don’t work up a sweat. If you do that, the sweat will freeze and weld your skin to the oxygen mask.

Then it will smart when you try to take it off.”

“Yes, Sir,” Darmstadter said, chuckling.

“And stop calling me “Sir,”” Canidy said.

It grew colder very quickly as the B-25 maintained its climb.

And by the time the B-25 leveled off, and the sound of the engines changed as they throttled back and leaned off for cruising, it was bitter cold in the fuselage, and the bulky, sheepskin, electrically heated flying suits and boots did not provide comfort, only protection from frostbite and freezing.

Every fifteen minutes or so, Darmstadter got out of the leather-upholstered, civilian airline seat and, within the limits- of movement the flexible oxygen hose gave him, stamped his feet and flailed his arms around. Carefully, for he believed what Canidy had said about working up a sweat and freezing the mask to his face.

They had been airborne an hour when Canidy came over the intercom and asked him to bring up some coffee. Darmstadter hooked up a portable oxygen bottle and found the wooden crate that held two narrow-mouthed stainless steel thermos bottles of coffee and one much larger, wide-mouthed thermos holding sandwiches in waxed paper. He took one of the thermos bottles and two china mess-hall cups forward.

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