The Soldier Spies (Men at War 3)

“Fuck him! What do you care what he thinks?”

“I’ll go,” Bitter said. “Leave it at that.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” Dolan said.

There was something in Dolan’s tone that annoyed Bitter. And then he remembered what General Lorimer had told him about Colonel Stevens ordering Canidy grounded when he wanted to fly the photorecon mission.

“Dolan, you stay off the phone tonight,” Bitter said.

“What?”

“You know what I mean,” Bitter said.

“Shit,” Dolan said.

“‘Shit, sir,’ Commander.”

“Canidy’ll have my ass if you get yourself blown away,” Dolan said.

“And I’ll have your ass if I don’t make that flight tomorrow,” Bitter said.

When he got to the hut, he could see Sergeant Agnes Draper through a window. Inside, he found her room and knocked on the door. She answered it with her hair down, wearing a heavy, old, and unattractive bathrobe, obviously chosen for warmth, not style.

“You’ll have to amuse yourself tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll be spending the day with the base commander. You fixed all right for everything? Money, in particular?”

“Yes, thank you, I am.”

“Good night, then, Sergeant.”

“Good night, Commander,” she said.

He went to his room, arranged the light as best he could over the bunk, and started to read the manual. Compared to what he had been used to in the Navy and the AVG, it was astonishingly simple, like a children’s book. The manuals Bitter had used presumed that the reader was a qualified pilot with a fairly advanced knowledge of aerodynamics, physics, meteorology, and mathematics. The Dash-One for the B-17 presumed the opposite.

This one was closer to the owner’s manuals in glove compartments of new cars than anything else. He quickly grew bored with it and turned the light off. But he couldn’t sleep. And he decided he couldn’t just lie in the dark and worry. That made things worse. So he turned the light on again and read the Dash-One until his eyes teared.

At three o’clock in the morning, he was awakened by a sergeant who told him he was Colonel D’Angelo’s driver and that he had been sent to take him to the briefing. The sergeant was carrying an armful of high-altitude clothing, bulky, crudely made sheepskin trousers, jacket, boots, and helmet.

As he walked down the narrow aisle of the hut, somewhat awkwardly because of the boots, Sergeant Draper’s door opened and she looked out. Her heavy bathrobe was unfastened, and he could see her nipples standing up under her cotton nightgown.

“I don’t think going on a mission was quite what Dick had in mind for you, Commander,” Sergeant Draper said.

“Is that your concern, Sergeant?” Bitter snapped.

“I suppose not,” she said, taking his words as a question and not a reprimand.

He nodded curtly to her and went out to the jeep.

The briefing was well under way by the time D’Angelo’s sergeant led him to the briefing room. He immediately understood that he could not catch up by listening to the officer delivering the lecture, so he began to study the map covering the wall. He couldn’t read the name of either the target or the alternate from the map, but they were well inside Germany. The bomber path was jagged rather than in a straight line. He guessed this was in order to fly around known heavy antiaircraft installations.

And then the lieutenant colonel on the little stage was holding his pointer in both hands in front of him—like a cavalry officer’s riding crop, Bitter thought—and said: “That’s it, gentlemen. Good luck.”

D’Angelo came to him.

“Good morning, Commander,” he said.

“Good morning, sir,” he said.

“You’re going with Danny Ester,” D’Angelo said. “Come on, I’ll give you a ride out to the line.”