He slapped himself across the side of the face. A downdraft of cold, heavy air made the gooney bird plummet. His stomach turned. Something stood beyond the swirl of rain — a heavier mass. He saw it once, and again, and lost it in the weather; but it was there, dark and solid in the sky, a mountain. He kicked the pedals and banked the wheel; he went into a climbing turn, but the spiral was a feeble one; number two was half-choked, and the gooney bird would not reach for higher altitude. His eyes flashed from the gray obscured sky to the instruments over again. He kicked the throttles up and back, trying to flush the clogged engine clear. The compass was swinging around dizzily. Number two roared with a burst of vigor, and he pulled the wheel into his belly, trying to gain altitude while the balky engine’s enthusiasm lasted. The altimeter needle swayed back and forth across the dial; he had the feeling he was somewhere above seventy-five hundred feet, climbing for eight thousand. It was hard to breathe; the plane’s speed sucked air out of the cockpit through the dotted streaks of bullet holes. He fought his way through a violent fit of trembling and reached under the seat for the Thermos jug of coffee. It made him think about Shannon. He said, “Mister, you were lucky after all. I don’t even know which direction we’re after.” He shook his head slowly. He said, “A fella wishes he’d had the chance to know you better, Mister.” He had not known Shannon well at all; he missed the man terribly. He would have to write to Shannon’s fiancée. He wondered what he could say. The whole world was tied up in a knot of rope and labeled “Classified — not for fiancées.” He uncapped the coffee jug and lifted it to his blue lips.
That was when he heard the crack of ice on the wings.
There was no sound like it; no one could mistake it for anything else. He read the outside-temperature gauge: twenty-nine degrees, if the gauge could be relied on.
The gooney bird ran in and out of thick clouds. It slammed around in the air, unsettling him; he heard a splintering racket, a rending crack. It stretched through time like the magnified noise of a long sliver being pulled slowly away from a dry wooden board. The plane rocked. Flying ice banged against the fuselage like the sound of empty metal drums falling down a long cement stair. The plane lurched as it lost the weight of ice chunks; he felt the slow, hard pull of the controls that came from a thickness of ice blunting the leading edges of the wings.
And he was afraid.
Ice could coat the propellers. It could weigh down the wings. It could form on the windshield and blind him. It could fill the engine airscoops, blocking the flow of air to the carburetors and killing the engines. It could coat the ailerons and elevators, the vital control surfaces by which he guided his flight. It could do any of these things; it could do several of them; it could conceivably do all of them. That was ice. And he was afraid.
He sought clear air, but there was no open sky without wet, ice-forming clouds. It was a murky sky, and he flew alone with a shuddering, ox-like airplane and a dead companion and a sky full of ice. The weight of it was pulling him down toward the mountains; he had lost at least six hundred feet of altitude in ten minutes. He could not climb above the clouds — the gooney bird’s engines ran flat-out and only just kept it in the air at all.
He reached for the controls that operated the leading-edge ice bladders; they expanded slowly and contracted, breaking slabs of ice away from the wings. Enormous pieces of ice spun away. He heard them bang against the airplane, jarring his ears. The compass steadied, and he discovered he was pointed due north — north over China. To the west and south-west stood even higher mountains between him and the neutral safety of Laos. He knew, with a sudden calm certainty, that he would never make it to Laos. He would reach the end of his flight somewhere in the course of the next half-hour, hard against a mountain peak, driven down by a crucifix of ice.
At lower altitudes, the air would be warmer. He had to cross the shortest axis of the mountains and head down toward the lowlands — that would melt the plane free. He looked at the fuel gauges — maybe another hour’s gas. In any event, it was not enough to reach Laos even in good weather. He had spent too much time fighting ice and tired engines.
“Back we go, Mister.” He banked around and pointed the craft southeast. It flew sluggishly, ponderously, awkwardly; but it flew. Rocks of ice banged hollowly along the fuselage. His face prickled with cold; there was no feeling left in his hands. He had a strange involuntary daydream: an eternity of waxen dolls smiling with sadistic courtesy. He awoke with a start. A blade of ice ripped away from the groin of left wing and fuselage. It rattled back along the plane, and when it broke against the tailplane the gooney bird bucked and started to sideslip. He fought back on course, headed back the way he had come, toward the interior and, beyond that, the sea. He watched the altimeter closely, and he prayed.
Chapter Twenty-seven
1115 Hours
The sky was cloudy still; there was no sun. Rain was a halfhearted trickle of droplets. The hum of an airplane was just audible, and Saville uttered a brief comment: “Think that’s McKuen?”
Nothing stirred in sight of the garage doorway; the city seemed a grave. There was a thin, distant rattle of gunfire, but it ended quickly. The city’s lights were out, all of them. J. D. Hooker uttered a short, dry laugh. “Captain, don’t worry about the puking flyer. With a thousand guns within a mile of us and we ain’t got a chance in a million of getting out of here.”
Saville said mildly, “Things are better than you think they are, Hooker.”
Corporal Smith sat by the truck. His head dropped back to rest against the tire. Sergeant Sun stood with a restless frown behind Saville and Hooker. Silence thickened, and then they heard the muffled tramp of quiet footsteps coming down the alley.
Tyreen turned into the garage. His mouth was clenched into a grim line. He crouched down, and Sergeant Khang came right behind him. Saville and Hooker and Sun completed the hunkered-down circle of men, and Tyreen spoke:
“It doesn’t look good.”
J. D. Hooker said, “What’d you expect, Colonel? A puking red carpet?”
Tyreen pointed to Sergeant Sun. “Close those doors.”
The light went down and out; they crouched in absolute darkness. “Parking lights,” said Tyreen. He heard someone picking a path across the floor. When the truck lights came on, he was surprised to see Corporal Smith getting out of the truck cab. Smith looked terrified. He came around and sat down directly beneath one of the softly glowing lights.
Tyreen drew a quick diagram on the floor. “This is the compound. Motor-pool buildings up on the hill here.” He ticked off locations on the square: “Barracks, supply sheds, artillery storage, ammunition dump outside here, weapons company set up alongside with mortars and mobile guns, more barracks over here, mess hall and kitchens. The whole east side of the compound looks like offices — headquarters, and things like that. Big parade ground in the middle, and the jail right down here, There’s a little shed inside with some noise coming out of it, probably a diesel generator to power the electric alarm fence. Any questions?”
J. D. Hooker said, “How many gooks we going to have to fight, Colonel?”
“Too many.”
“I’ll hold your coat,” Hooker said.
“We’ll have to divert them. The first job’s to find out where Captain Kreizler is right now. Sergeant Khang, that’s your assignment.”
Khang said, “I suppose I just walk down there and ask, huh?”