The Mediterranean Caper (Dirk Pitt 2)

Giordino gave Pitt a mocking. a sorrowful look.

“Who ever told you that you could loop a PBY?”

“It seemed like the thing to do at the time,” said Pitt, a twinkle in his eye.

“Next time, warn the passengers. I bounced around the main cabin like a basketball.”

“What did you hit your head on?” Pitt asked quizzically.

“Did you have to ask?”

“Well?”

Giordino suddenly became embarrassed. “If you must know, it was the door handle on the john?

Pitt looked startled for an instant. Then he flung back his head and roared with laughter. The mirth was contagious, and Giordino soon followed. The sound rang through the cockpit and replaced the noise of the engines. Nearly thirty seconds passed before their gaiety quieted, and the seriousness of the present situation returned.

Pitt’s mind was clear, but exhaustion was slowly seeping in. The long hours of flight and the strain of the recent combat fell on him heavily and soaked his body like a numbing, damp fog. He thought about the sweet smell of soap in a cold shower and the crispness of clean sheets, and somehow they became vitally important to him. He looked out the cockpit window at Brady Field and recalled that his original

destination was the First Attempt, but a dim hunch, or call it a hindsight, made him change his mind.

“Instead of landing in the water and rendezvousing alongside of the First Attempt, I think we’d better set down at Brady Field. I have a foreboding feeling we may have taken a few bullets in our hull.”

“Good idea,” Giordino replied. “I’m not in the mood for bailing.”

The big flying boat made its final approach and lined up on the wreckage strewn runway. It settled on the heat baked asphalt, and the landing gear bumped and emitted an audible screech of rubber that signaled the touch-down.

Pitt angled clear of the flames and taxied to the far side of the apron. When the Catalina stopped rolling he clicked off the Ignition switches, and the two silver bladed propellers gradually ceased their revolutions and came to rest, gleaming in the Aegean sun. All was quiet.

He and Giordino sat stone still for a few moments and absorbed the first comfortable silence to penetrate the cockpit after thirteen hours of noise and vibration.

Pitt flipped the latch on his side window and pushed it open, watching with detached interest as the base firemen fought the inferno. Hoses were lying everywhere, like highways on a roadmap, and men scurried about shouting, adding to the stage of confusion. The flames on the F-105 jets were almost contained, but one of the C-133 Cargomasters still burned fiercely.

“Take a look over here,” said Giordino pointing,

Pitt leaned over the instrument panel and stared out of Giordino’s window at a blue Air Force stationwagon that careened across the runway in the direction of the PBY. The car contained several officers and was followed by thirty or forty wildly cheering enlisted men who chased after it like a pack of braying hounds.

“Now that’s what I call one hell of a reception committee,” Pitt said amused and broadly smiling,

Giordino mopped his bleeding cut with a handkerchief. When the cloth was soaked through with red ooze he wadded it up and threw it out of the window to the ground. His gaze turned toward the nearby coastline and became lost in the Infinity of thought for a moment Finally he turned to Pitt. “I guess you know we’re pretty damn lucky to be sitting here.”

“Yes, I know,” said Pitt woodenly. “There were a couple of times up there when I thought our ghost had us”

“I wish I knew who the hell he was and what this destruction was all about?”Pitt’s face was a study in speculative curiosity.

“The only clue is the yellow Albatros.”

Giordino eyed his friend questioningly. “What possible meaning could the color of that old flying derelict have?”

“If you’d studied your aviation history,” Pitt said with a touch of good-natured sarcasm, “You’d remember that German pilots of the First World War painted their planes with personal, but sometimes outlandish, color schemes.”

“Save the history lesson for later,” Giordino growled. “Right now all I want to do is get out of this sweat box and collect that drink you owe me.” He rose from his scat and started for the exit hatch.

The blue stationwagon skidded to a halt beside the big silver flying boat and all four doors burst open. The occupants leaped out shouting and began pounding on the plane’s aluminum hatch. The crowd of enlisted men soon engulfed the aircraft, cheering loudly and waving at the cockpit.

Pitt remained seated and waved back at the cheering men below the window. His body was tired and numb but his mind was still active and running at full throttle. A title kept running through his thoughts until finally he muttered it aloud. “The Hawk of Macedonia.”

Giordino turned from the doorway. “What did you say?”