"I was putting on the sheepskins."
"We're passing through eight thousand," Canidy said.
"I'll let you know when we pass through ten. Make sure the oxygen is working."
Darmstadter opened the valve and felt the cold oxygen in his nostrils and throat.
"Oxygen okay," he said.
"Couple of things," Canidy said.
"Make sure you've got a walk-around bottle and a spare. We're going way up, so stay on oxygen."
"If you feel like it," Canidy went on, "and it might be a good idea, move around a little. Wave your arms, bend your legs. But don't work up a sweat. If you do that, the sweat will freeze and weld your skin to the oxygen mask.
Then it will smart when you try to take it off."
"Yes, Sir," Darmstadter said, chuckling.
"And stop calling me "Sir,"" Canidy said.
It grew colder very quickly as the B-25 maintained its climb.
And by the time the B-25 leveled off, and the sound of the engines changed as they throttled back and leaned off for cruising, it was bitter cold in the fuselage, and the bulky, sheepskin, electrically heated flying suits and boots did not provide comfort, only protection from frostbite and freezing.
Every fifteen minutes or so, Darmstadter got out of the leather-upholstered, civilian airline seat and, within the limits- of movement the flexible oxygen hose gave him, stamped his feet and flailed his arms around. Carefully, for he believed what Canidy had said about working up a sweat and freezing the mask to his face.
They had been airborne an hour when Canidy came over the intercom and asked him to bring up some coffee. Darmstadter hooked up a portable oxygen bottle and found the wooden crate that held two narrow-mouthed stainless steel thermos bottles of coffee and one much larger, wide-mouthed thermos holding sandwiches in waxed paper. He took one of the thermos bottles and two china mess-hall cups forward.
He poured coffee and handed a mug to Canidy, who indicated with a jerk of his thumb that it should go to Dolan. Dolan took it, moved his mask away for a moment, sipped the coffee, and then put the mask back on.
"Shit," his voice came over the earphones.
"Burned my fucking lip!"
Darmstadter glanced at the altimeter, then looked at it again, more closely, to be sure he had read it right. It indicated 27,500 feet, which was three thousand five hundred feet higher than the "maximum service altitude" for a fully loaded B-25G, according to TM 1-B25G.
Had Canidy rigged the engines so they would function at that altitude? he wondered. Or was the greater altitude possible because the weight of the guns and the parasitic drag of their turrets and mounts was gone?
Then he thought that the only thing he knew for sure to explain what he was doing at 27,500 feet over the Atlantic Ocean was that they were headed for an island called Vis. He had a hundred questions in his mind about that, including.
how come there was a landing field in an area shaded in red--indicating "enemy occupied"--on every map he had ever seen of the Adriatic area.
And, of course, there was the big question: Why had they picked a C-47 pilot with a mediocre record like his to go along? It was almost impossible to accept the reason Canidy had offered, that they wanted to see if a pilot of his skill level could manage a takeoff and a landing on a strip that had a stream running through the middle of it.
Canidy surprised him by getting out of the copilot's seat and motioning him into it, then pointing to the altimeter, then handing him the chart.
That was the first time he'd seen the chart. They had politely but carefully kept him from seeing it before they'd left. Dolan had even kept him from attending the final weather briefing at Fersfield by going there before he came to Darmstadter's room to wake him up.
The chart for the first leg of the flight showed a course leading out to sea in a general south-southwest direction so they would pass no closer than two hundred miles to the coast of France, Then it turned southeast, with Casablanca, Morocco, as their destination.
There were cone-shaped areas drawn on the chart, the small end in France, the wide end over the Atlantic. Canidy explained that they indicated the normal patrol areas for German Messerschmitt ME109F fighters, based in France.
There were larger cones, which Canidy identified as the patrol areas for Geran Heinkel bombers used as long-range reconnaissance aircraft. The larger cones covered much of the B-25's projected route.
"The theory," Canidy said dryly, "is that the Heinkels fly at about ten thousand feet, which gives them their best look for convoys and the best fuel consumption.
And we hope that if one of their pilots happens to look up here and see us, he will decide that prudence dictates he keep looking for ships."