"In eight minutes, maybe ten," he said, "we should see a few lights. That'll be Pecs. Or maybe Athens. If you see something round, that'll be Rome."
Darmstadter knew he was expected to laugh, and did.
"This has gone so well, I'm afraid to believe it," Dolan said.
"I'll go back and tell our passengers. Janos said he wanted fifteen minutes to suit up."
Dolan was back in his seat before they came onto Pecs, and he was the first to see it.
"Go down on the deck, "Dolan now ordered.
"Put that line of hills between us and Pecs. It's damned near impossible to tell the direction of an airplane if you can't see it. And the more confused we can leave these people, the better."
Darmstadter concentrated on flying as close to the ground as he dared between lines of hills. It was light enough now to make out individual trees, and here and there a road and fields.
And then, surprising him, he flashed over a stream, then a cut-over section of hillside, then above that a meadow on a plateau.
"Christ, is that it?"
"It should be, "Dolan said, "but I don't see any panels."
Darmstadter glanced quickly at him. Dolan had a headset on and was working the controls of the radio.
"Not a goddamned thing," he said.
"What do I do?"
"Stay on the deck under the hill lines," Dolan ordered.
"And make another pass over it. I'll go see what I can see from the door."
Five minutes later, from the other direction, the C-47 approached the meadow.
There was no doubt now that they had found their destination. A pile of tree limbs was burning furiously at the near end of the meadow by the cut over area, the wind blowing the smoke across the meadow and into the forest.
Dolan came into the cockpit.
"It's up to you now, kid," he said.
"The next pass is all we're going to get, or everybody will think we're having an air show up here."
Darmstadter smiled uneasily.
Dolan went back into the fuselage. There he would strap himself into a harness and take up a position by the open door. When Darmstadter turned the red light on--there were supposed to be red and green lights, but the green wasn't working--and then off, he would push the first of the parachutists through the door. When they were all gone, he would throw the three equipment bags after them.
Darmstadter made his approach very carefully, slowing the C-47 down as much as he dared, coming in very low and shallow over the tips of the trees in the forest, one hand on the Gooney Bird's wheel, the other on the toggle switch for the light for the door.
And then he flicked the toggle switch.
He thought he could sense a slight change in the controls, which would mean that he had lost 1,000 pounds of weight--five parachutists--from his gross weight, and that the loss had changed the center of balance.
He had a strange, wild, arrogant thought.
/ could have landed this sonofabitch in that meadow! The way the wind is blowing up from the stream, I was making maybe forty knots over the ground. I was going so slow I could see Camay's face! And I could have stopped it in plenty of time.
He looked over his shoulder into the aisle for Dolan.
He couldn't see him at first, and then he did.