"Pardon me?"
"Remember the Bell fighters the Army had on Guadalcanal?"
"Yes, Sir. Some of them were P-39s and some were P-400s. I never under-stood that," the Captain said, adding, "I guess you were on the 'Canal, Sir."
"Right at this moment, I almost wish I still was," Clete said. "Do you know how to fly a C-56, Captain?"
"Before I came into the Corps, I flew Lodestars for Transcontinental and Western Airways. Los Angeles to Dallas."
"Are they hard to fly?" Clete asked. "Let me put that another way. How much time would it take you to teach someone who's never even been in one how to fly one?"
"Give me someone with a thousand hours, including a couple of hundred hours' twin-engine time, say, in the C-45, three, four days, including six hours or so in the air."
"How much could you teach me between now and dark?" Clete asked.
"I don't understand."
"And I can't explain very much, except that I'm here to pick up a C-56. I thought I was supposed to pick up a C-45, which I can fly. If that Air Corps colonel who's supposed to give me an hour of touch-and-goes sees that I don't know my way around the cockpit, much less how to fly one, he's going to give we trouble. I can't blame him. But a lot depends on me taking off out of here in that airplane as soon as it's dark."
The Captain looked at him for a good thirty seconds.
"You're OSS, right?"
"If I was, do you think I would say so?"
"There's a Lodestar in a guarded hangar freshly painted red with Argentine numbers. There's four guys in the BOQ. three of whom look suspiciously like sergeants, that don't talk to anybody but themselves. And the first thing I heard when I landed here in my R5D was that the OSS was here."
R5D was Navy nomenclature for the Douglas DC-4 (Army C-54), a four-engine, fifty-passenger transport aircraft with a range of 3,900 miles and a take-off weight of 63,000 pounds.
"Maybe they are. I just wouldn't know."
"What makes you think that Air Corps colonel is going to let me try to teach you how to fly the Lodestar?"
"I'll just tell him you are," Clete said.
"If I were a suspicious man, I would think that you must be OSS. Most ma-jors don't get to tell full bull colonels anything but 'Yes, Sir.'"
"Don't put me on a spot, please. And I'm sorry, but I have to tell you that if anyone hears you saying you think somebody's in the OSS, or about how this C-56 is painted, or who is flying it, you'll probably spend the rest of the war in the Aleutian Islands."
"In four hours, Major, maybe I can teach you to make a normal takeoff and a normal landing under perfect conditions. That's all."
"What would you say if I said I have to put that airplane into a dirt strip?"
"I would say don't try it."
"What I said was 'I have to put that airplane into a dirt strip.'"
"In that case, I think we should get to the flight line just as soon as we can."
"What's your name, Captain?"
"Finney."
Clete raised his hand and signaled Colonel Wallace to join them.
"Colonel," Clete said, "it turns out that Captain Finney is a C-56 IP. If you have no objection, I'll shoot my touch-and-goes with him."
"Whatever you wish, of course, Mr. Frade."