Somewhat to Darmstadter's surprise, he had been an apt pupil. Dolan's only criticism had come right at the start, "Don't try so hard. It's not that hard to fly, and you're a better pilot than you think you are."
He had made mistakes, of course, but after Dolan had shown him what he was doing wrong, he had not made that particular mistake again. He had had the most trouble, not surprisingly, in landing. The B-25G came in a lot hotter than the C-47, and if the power settings were not right on the mark, it dropped like a stone. The Gooney Bird was a very forgiving aircraft; the B-25 was not.
But he'd shot hour after hour of touch-and-go landings until his technique satisfied Dolan. Then he'd spent another two hours trying to touch down right at the end of the runway and to bring it to a complete stop as quickly as possible.
He was aware that he had not been able to accomplish that to Dolan's satisfaction. And he was embarrassed about that, even after he told himself that he should not be. What Dolan was asking would have been difficult for a good, experienced pilot, and he knew he was neither.
They heard the crunch of automobile tires a minute before they could see the glow of headlights in the fog. But then the distinctive grille of the Packard limousine appeared.
"I stopped to get the latest forecast," Canidy said by way of greeting.
"I presume that the rubber bands are all wound up and we can go?"
"It'll take five minutes to light the runway," Dolan said.
"It'll take that long to warm it up," Canidy said.
"Tell them to light it."
Darmstadter was confused by that. There were no landing field lights at Fersfield. If there were, he thought, he would have seen them.
Commander Bitter and It. Kennedy drove up in a jeep.
"I would suggest that you wait until you've got at least a thousand feet," Bitter said.
"But Weather says it's going to be this way until noon, maybe later."
"I think we can get off," Canidy said. He turned to Darmstadter.
"Get aboard, Darmstadter," he said.
"Strap yourself in the seat that faces backward."
Then he gestured for Dolan to precede him aboard. It was more than a gesture of courtesy, Darmstadter saw. He was telling Dolan that Dolan would function as aircraft commander.
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," Ca
nidy'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.