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

The B-25 dropped very slowly toward the layer of cotton wool far below them.

The indicator needle on the signal-strength meter suddenly dropped back to the peg.

“You’ve lost the signal,” Darmstadter said.

“That’s probably because they’ve stopped transmitting,” Dolan said dryly.

The B-25 flew on, in a very shallow descent.

Eleven minutes later, when they were still above the cloud cover, there was a one-minute transmission from Vis, and Dolan made a tiny course correction to line the plane up again on course before the signal-strength meter fell back to its peg again y were in the cloud bank when Vis came on the air again. Darmstadter could see about one inch past the windshield. There were a dozen or so drops of condensation on the window frame just past the Plexiglas, for some mysterious aerodynamic reason undisturbed by the air through which they were passing at an indicated 290 knots. But beyond the drops of condensation there was nothing but a gray mass.

“You don’t want to go down to the deck and see if we can get out of this shit?” Canidy asked. It was a question, Darmstadter understood, not a suggestion, certainly not an order.

Dolan shook his head, “no,” in reply, and then, a full minute later, spoke.

“If it looks like it’s working, don’t fuck with it,” he said.

It sounded more as if Dolan was thinking aloud than replying to Canidy, or, Darmstadter thought a moment later, as if Dolan had called that old pilot’s cliche from the recesses of his memory to reassure himself.

The point of the needle on the vertical speed indicator was indicating a de scent only on close examination; on casual glance, it seemed to indicate level flight. The needle on the altimeter moved counterclockwise very slowly. But it was moving, and they were going down.

Twenty-odd minutes later, during another Vis transmission, Canidy said, “I wish that transmitter wasn’t working quite that well.”

It took Darmstadter a moment to understand what he meant. Then he did.

The needle on the signal-strength meter was now resting against the upper limit peg; there was no way to judge if they were moving ever closer to the transmitter. The signal-strength meter was accepting all the signal strength it was capable of.

When the altimeter indicated 12,000 feet, Canidy pulled his oxygen mask free from his face and rubbed his cheeks and under his chin with his fingers.

When Darmstadter removed his own mask, the fresh air passing through his nostrils and mouth seemed warm and moist. Dolan did not take his mask off.

Darmstadter wondered if this was a manifestation of the declaration he’d made earlier, “if it looks like it’s working, don’t nick with it,” or if Dolan’s con centration was on other things and he simply hadn’t noticed they were at an altitude where it was safe to fly without bottled oxygen.

And then, suddenly, startlingly, they dropped out of the cloud cover. There was an ocean down there, and land to the front and the sides.

Canidy frantically searched through his aviator’s briefcase and came up with a handful of eight-by-ten-inch glossy photographs. Dolan ripped his oxygen mask off.

“What was that you were saying, Dick, about ‘right on the money’ he asked.

“Jesus,” Canidy said.

“And I was right on the edge of agreeing with David Bruce that they shouldn’t let old men like you fly.”

The two looked at each other and beamed.

“Take her down to the deck, and make your approach around that hill on the left,” Canidy said.

“Hey,” Dolan said, annoyed, “I’m driving.”

But he lowered the nose of the B-25, until they were no more than a thousand feet off the choppy seas of the Adriatic, and made a wide sweeping turn around the hill Canidy had indicated.

When they crossed the rocky beach, they immediately encountered the steep hills of Vis; so an indicated altitude of one thousand feet, which was based on sea level, put them no more than two or three hundred feet over the side of the hill, and then the level valley on shore.

“Go strap yourself in,” Dolan ordered.

“Quickly.”

Reluctantly, Darmstadter made his way back to the leather-upholstered passenger chairs in the fuselage. He had just sat down, and was fumbling for the seat belt, when the nose of the B-25 lifted abruptly. Ignoring the seat belt, he pressed his nose against the Plexiglas.

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