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“Yes, sir. No problem.”
“I seem to recall hearing my friend say that ‘there are old pilots and bold pilots, but no old bold pilots.’”
“I’m a young, very cautious pilot, sir. I can get into Eschborn with no trouble.”
“Okay. I’ll meet you at Eschborn at half past eleven tomorrow morning. Come as a civilian.”
“Yes, sir.”
[ FIVE ]
When Cronley went from his quarters to the senior officers’ dining room, he saw that only one place was set at the table. Dunwiddie was on his way to Sonthofen, which meant he wouldn’t be here for supper. No plates for Gehlen and Mannberg meant they had already eaten.
Without waiting for me, and thus expressing—without coming right out and saying anything—their displeasure with me for countermanding Bischoff’s order about not changing Orlovsky’s shit bucket.
And probably conferring on how they can tactfully remind Major Wallace and Colonel Mattingly of my youth and inexperience in the hope he will tell me to pay attention to my elders.
Well, fuck both of them!
Cronley went into the bar, found the Stars and Stripes where Mannberg had left it earlier, went back into the dining room, and ate alone. He refused the offer of a drink, or a beer, as he would be flying first thing in the morning.
The mess was run by Tiny’s mess sergeant and two of his assistants. Tiny’s mess sergeant supervised—declared—the menu, and his two sergeants drew the rations from the Quartermaster, divided them between what would be eaten in the two messes, and those to be given to the families of Gehlen’s men.
Gehlen’s men did the actual cooking and all the other work connected with the two messes and the NCO club, including the bartending.
The only news that Cronley found interesting in Stars and Stripes as he read it over his grilled pork chops, applesauce, mashed potatoes, and green beans was that the PX was about to hold a raffle, the winners of which would be entitled to purchase jeeps for $380. The vehicles, the story said, had been run through a rebuild program at the Griesheim ordnance depot and would be “as new.”
The first thing Cronley thought was that he would enter the raffle. A jeep would be nice to have on the ranch outside Midland, if he could figure a way to get one from Germany to Texas.
That thought was immediately followed by his realization that he was never going back to the ranch in Midland.
Not after what happened to the Squirt . . .
He realized he had to put the Squirt, the jeep, and Midland out of his mind.
The first thing he thought next was that while he knew he had seen a chart case in Storch Two, which meant there was probably also one in Storch One, he hadn’t actually seen a chart, and a chart would be a damned good thing to have when trying to fly to Eschborn.
The first time he’d flown into Sonthofen he had made a straight-in approach on a heading of 270, the course Colonel Wilson had ordered him to fly. The first time he’d flown back to Kloster Grünau, he’d had Schröder with him, and since that was before Schröder had been vetted by General Gehlen and he hadn’t wanted Schröder to know where they were going, Cronley simply had taken off and set a course of 90 degrees, the reciprocal of 270, and flown that until he saw Schollbrunn ahead of him. He knew where Kloster Grünau was from there. On his second flight from Sonthofen, he’d done the same thing; the second time it was easier.
Flying to Eschborn is not going to be so simple. I am going to need a chart of the route showing, among other things, the available en-route navigation aids and the Eschborn tower frequencies so I can call and get approach and landing instructions.
Come to think of it, I have never seen an Air Corps chart.
Are there Air Corps charts and Army charts? Or does the Army use Air Corps charts? And what’s the difference, if any, between military charts and the civilian ones I know?
Jesus, am I going to have to call Mattingly back and tell him that on second thought I’ve decided to put off flying into Eschborn until I think I know what I’m doing?
He got up quickly from the table and walked out of the room and then the building. He saw one of the machine gun jeeps making its rounds and flagged it down.
“Take me to the Storches,” he ordered.
“The what, sir?” the sergeant driving asked as the corporal who had been in the front seat scurried into the back.
“The airplanes,” Cronley clarified.
Getting to the map cases in the airplane turned out to be a pain in the ass. The troopers had done a good job putting them under tarpaulins so they would be less visible from the air. Untying the tarpaulins so that he could get under them was difficult in the dark, and once he got to the chart case and looked inside, he knew that he would not be able to examine what it contained in the light of his flashlight. Sticking the nose of the jeep under the tarpaulin to use the jeep’s headlights proved to be difficult and then ineffective.
Finally, he stuffed the charts back into the case, removed it from the Storch’s cockpit, and made his way out from under the tarpaulin.
