He eased back on the wheel. The rumbling stopped. The nose turned to the left, and he made the necessary corrections.
He reached to the quadrant and raised the gear.
"Zebra Eight Four Three, you are directed to land immediately."
Clete took the earphones off his head and reached up and turned the navi-gation LIGHTS switch of OFF.
Porto Alegre passed under him.
He looked at Enrico, who had his eyes closed and was making the sign of the cross.
He flew to the edge of the city, then set a course for Santo Tome.
[TWO]
Above Rio Grande do Sul Province
Brazil
2145 IB April 1943
Captain Maxwell Ashton, Signal Corps, Army of the United States, got out of his seat and walked to the cockpit door of the Lockheed, opened it, and stood behind the pilot's seats.
"Presumably, mi Mayor, you know where we are," he said to Major Cletus H. Frade, USMCR. "I can't see a goddamn thing down there."
Clete turned to look at him.
"Enrico," he ordered, "let el Capitan have your seat."
Enrico unbuckled himself and got out of the copilot's seat. Clete had the feeling he was glad to go. He motioned Ashton into the seat and gestured for him to strap himself in, and to put on his headset.
"Not entirely," Clete said. He handed Ashton an aeronautical chart. "The last X shows where we should be."
"Should be?"
"We are navigating by what is known as dead reckoning," Clete explained. "-Which means that I know that we're making about 220 knots indicated about 10.000 feet above sea level and on a heading of 310 true. I also know that we left Porto Alegre about thirty-seven minutes ago. That, presuming there are no winds aloft, should put us-two minutes ago-where I marked the X on the chart."
"OK," Ashton said, after a moment to consider this. "What's the hook?"
"There are always winds aloft," Clete said. "The problem is one never knows what sort they are. They may be coming straight at us at, say, twenty knots, which would mean that we've been making 200 knots-not 220-over the ground. Or they may be coming from behind us, which would mean that we are making 240 knots over the ground. Most likely, they are coming from one side or the other, as well as from the front or back. When there are winds, so to speak, from the side, they will push us off course, to one side or the other."
"I came up here to be reassured, thank you, very much, mi Mayor," Ashton said. "When you got this thing into the air, I thought there might be a slight pos-sibility that you actually knew what you're doing."
"What I'm actually trying to do is find the town of Carazinho," Clete said. "It's about a hundred and sixty miles northwest of Porto Alegre. You see it?"
Ashton found it on the map.
"Yeah," he said. "And there's nothing around it for miles. What happens if we miss it?"
"Because there's nothing around it, that increases our chances of finding it. We'll look for a glow on the horizon, starting about now. If, since there is noth-ing else for miles, there is a glow, it will probably be Carazinho."
"Then what?"
"Then we change course to 270 true-due west-and start looking for an-other glow, which, with a little bit of luck, will be either a village named Ijui or a town called Sao Angelo. If we hit Carazinho, it will probably be easier to find Ijui and/or Sao Angelo because there is a highway between them, down which, I devoutly hope, there will be a stream of cars, trucks, and buses, headlights on high."
"Is this the way airplane pilots normally steer?" Ashton asked.
"No. Normally, there's a radio direction finder. There's a loop antenna-it looks like a doughnut-which can be turned. You look at a meter, and when the strength of the radio signal is strongest, you can tell the antenna is pointed at the transmitter. So you just steer toward the transmitter."