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“Well, whatever the number, I think I have put my life at enormous risk sufficiently for one day. Call the tower and get taxi instructions to Hangar Three.”
Cronley did so.
When he had finished talking to the tower, and they were approaching Hangar Three, Lieutenant Colonel Wilson said, “I didn’t hear the proper response, which would have been, ‘Yes, sir,’ when I told you to call the tower.”
“Sorry.”
“And the proper response to my last observation should have been, ‘Sorry, sir. No excuse, sir.’”
“With all possible respect, go fuck yourself, Colonel, sir.”
Wilson laughed delightedly.
“I wondered how long it would take before you said something like that,” he said. “Your patience with your IP during this phase of your training has been both commendable and unexpected.”
Cronley, smiling, shook his head and said, “Jesus Christ!”
Wilson asked innocently, “Yes, my son?”
A sergeant wanded them to a parking space on the tarmac between another L-5 and a Piper L-4.
They got out of the Stinson. Wilson watched as Cronley put wheel chocks in place and tied it down.
“Now comes the hard part,” Wilson said. “Making decisions. Deciding what to do is always harder than actually doing it.”
He waved Cronley toward a small door in the left of Hanger Three’s large sliding doors.
Inside, as Cronley expected them to be, were both of what he thought of as “his Storchs.” They had been flown from Kloster Grünau, with a stop in Munich, to Sonthofen that morning by Kurt Schröder and Max Ostrowski.
They were being painted. Perhaps more accurately, “unpainted.” Wilson had told him what was planned for the aircraft: Since it might be decided—Wilson had emphasized “might”—to use the Storchs to pick up Likharev’s family in East Germany, the planes would have to go in “black,” which meant all markings that could connect the planes with the U.S. government would have to be removed.
That would have to be done now. There would not be time for the process if they waited for a decision about which airplanes would be used.
This meant the XXIIIrd CIC identification Cronley had painted on the vertical stabilizer after he’d gotten the planes from Wilson had to be removed—not painted over. Similarly, so did the Constabulary insignia Wilson had painted over when he gave the planes to Cronley. And the Star and Bar insignia of a U.S. military aircraft painted on the fuselage had to go, too. Removed, not over-painted. And when that was done, both would have to be painted non-glossy black.
When Cronley stepped into the hangar through the small door, Schröder and Ostrowski were sitting, Ostrowski backwards, on folding metal chairs watching soldier mechanics spray-painting the vertical stabilizer on one of the Storchs.
When Cronley started for them, Wilson touched his arm and pointed toward the hangar office.
“Our little chat first. You can chat with them later.”
Cronley was surprised when he entered Wilson’s office to see Major Harold Wallace and former Oberst Ludwig Mannberg. Wallace was standing next to a corkboard to which an aerial chart, a standard Corps of Engineers map, and a great many aerial photos were pinned. Mannberg was sitting at Wilson’s desk.
Wilson was apparently as surprised to see them as Cronley was.
“To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?” Wilson asked.
Wallace gestured at the corkboard.
“I decided the best place to do this was here.”
“How’d you get here?”
“You see that C-45 parked on the tarmac?”
“Yes, I saw it.”
“I wouldn’t want this to get around, but I have friends in the Air Corps,” Wallace said. “I borrowed that.”
