The Sum of Things
by Robert
M. Brown
I thought I could see the bombs going off 20,000 feet below, but that was my imagination. Our Kittyhawk fighters could only carry a few bombs; not enough to make much impression on the war-torn landscape of central Greece. The most I could see as the Deuces made their run was some puffs of dust and smoke.
The sight was still irresistibly fascinating to me. Did I have any relatives down there, on the receiving end of those bombs? If things had gone a little differently might I be down there myself, part of Mussolini's reluctant legions?
"Sebastiani, stay with us, hey?" said Glenn Duncan through my headphones. Our squadron leader, sounding a little annoyed.
With reason. I had lagged behind the rest of the squadron, and drifted off to the right. I didn't bother acknowledging, but adjusted my course and dropped Kimberly's nose a little to pick up some speed.
I went back to scanning the skies. We were supposed to be flying cover for our sister squadron, not watching the show. More immediately, the possibility of hostile strangers within a few hundred yards was more important than what might be happening to hypothetical relatives nearly four miles below.
At least the weather was good, with only a few scattered clouds. Spring in the Aegean could see some dirty weather, but this was a nice flying day. I could see all the other planes in my formation, two diagonal lines of heavy-jawed Kittyhawks, all but one blazoned with the flaming bat of the squadron insignia. My wingman, Jim Blackwater, gave me a thumbs up which I returned.
"We've got bandits," said Duncan, as if pointing out rain clouds on the horizon. "Ten o'clock low. Pull your thumbs out and let's get 'em."
I glanced over Kimberly's gauges while my hands ran though the routine of clearing for action almost of their own accord. Drop the belly tank, flip the gun switches live, slide the throttle group forward. The engine revved up smoothly, with no hesitation.
I could see the bandits now, several thousand feet below, moving to intercept the Deuces as they strafed the Italian lines. It looked like there were at least twenty enemy fighters. Macchi Folgores, the best they had.
There was a time when the Devil Bats could put thirty planes in the air, but no longer. We were flying eight planes that day, and the Deuces had started with ten. If they'd lost any in their ground attack we would be even more outnumbered, and they might very well have. Mussolini had been trading oil for German weapons and some very good anti-aircraft guns had shown up in the Italian lines recently.
There was more radio chatter, but I didn't pay much attention. Colonel Johnston, our group commander, was flying with us today and Duncan had to confer with him before making any decisions.
When Duncan finally turned us loose we fell on the Italians like hawks hitting a flock of pigeons. They were so focused on the Deuces that they never saw us diving on their tails until it was too late.
I settled my gunsight right behind one unsuspecting Macchi's cockpit and when the range looked right cut loose with a long, two second burst.
The lightly built Folgore shuddered like a cat shaken in a dog's jaws. Armor piercing incendiary rounds flashed as they punched through the plane's skin and great chunks peeled away. He started to roll, slowly spiraling down in a smoking arc. The pilot didn't get out.
After that first pass the fight broke up into an undignified brawl, with planes roaring by in every possible direction. It was easy to tell the good guys from the bad, at least; nothing else in the sky had the Kittyhawk's great carnivorous mouth. Its profile was nothing like the sleek Folgore, though men in combat can make the damnedest mistakes sometimes.
Everybody seemed to be chasing everybody else. An Italian got on my tail and I shook him off. Someone I never saw put a slug through my canopy within a couple inches of my head, ripping a chunk out of my instrument panel. I took a few shots myself, and might or might not have actually hit anything.
I got on a Folgore's tail and put in a long burst, strikes flashing all down the side of his fuselage. Tracers whipped over my head from behind and I broke right to shake whoever was on my tail, but it wasn't an Italian. Another Kittyhawk roared by, pouring more fire into the Folgore I had just shot up. I caught a glimpse of the Kittyhawk's tail number as he passed. One hundred. Colonel Johnston, our illustrious leader, had just stolen my kill.
Most of the radio chatter that passed through my headphones was too confused to bother sorting out, but I did hear Johnston say, "Scratch one guinea."
A messy fight, but it didn't last as long as it seemed at the time; the Italians never recovered from the shock of our first pass. They scattered and broke off as soon as they could.
Kimberly was running damned hot by the time it was over. I opened the cooling flaps and eased back on the gas as we formed up to head home. Wind whistled through a fist-sized hole in the canopy. Navigation worried me a little, with Kimberly's heading indicator reduced to bits of trash on the cockpit floor, but the compass was good enough for easy flying and I could always just follow the other planes.
The Deuces had lost someone to ground fire and one of ours, Sam Duffy, hadn't rejoined after the dogfight. I couldn't complain about my problems; I was still alive.
Our main base was at Maleme, on the northwestern coast of Crete. Literally; the airstrip came right down to the beach. A lousy place for it from a tactical viewpoint, but there aren't many places on Crete with enough level ground to spread a picnic blanket, much less build an airstrip. The Italian Navy had only tried shelling us once, and gave it up as a bad effort when the Angels -- our ex-Navy pilots -- showed them what a 500 pound bomb could do to a cruiser's deck. Maleme was far enough back from the front that we had to work from temporary bases during the day, but that made it even more secure.
Landing at Maleme was like coming home. Despite our losses the mood was jubilant as pilots stood around their planes slapping each other on the back and replaying the fight with their hands. They had a right to be proud; we'd shot down a dozen Italian fighters, besides the damage the Deuces had done.
But the Italians could replace those losses overnight. There were no more of us. The American Greek Volunteer Group was wearing away, like a knife sharpened too many times.
I leaned against Kimberly's wing. A dull ache filled the space behind my eyes, an aftereffect of the sharp changes in altitude I'd made during the day. I squeezed my temples, trying to relieve the pain, and watched Colonel Johnston walk off with a couple of his cronies.
"Debriefing in fifteen, boys," he called. His eyes met mine for a second. "Don't be late."
I closed my eyes. That seemed to help.
"I saw what happened up there," Jim Blackwater said.
"Yeah?" Jim had an uncanny ability to follow everything that went on in a dogfight. "Not much to talk about is there?"
"Son of a bitch tries to take money out of my pocket like that," Jim said with elaborate casualness, "he'd best watch his brass ass."
The Greeks were paying each of us $600 a month, with a bonus of $500 for every plane we shot down. Losing that kill to the Colonel would cost me half the price of a new car.
"It's not about the money," I said. Not just about the money. My headache was fading. I opened my eyes and noticed for the first time a cluster of construction equipment on the other side of the airstrip. The setting sun made weird shapes of the mixers and bulldozers.
"I wonder what all that's about."
Jim shrugged. "Hey. That looks like Daniel." He pointed out a truck picking its way through the swarming ground crew.
"I thought he was still in Egypt," I said. But who else could have found a Dodge half-ton on Crete?
The open-topped truck stopped and Daniel Patterson tipped his hat to us. "Gentlemen," he said. "You look as if you could use a drink and I know just the place."
I looked at the HQ building, where the other pilots were gathering. "We'll miss debrief."
Jim laughed and jumped into the back of the truck. "What are they going to do, Ed, court-martial us?"
I hesitated for a moment, not really wanting any trouble. Then I saw Johnston miming with his hands how he had made his kill that afternoon. "Let's go," I said.
The London Bar was an odd place with pictures of British Navy ships on the walls and a Chinese cook. There were more flies than customers and it wasn't exactly clean, but the food was cheap and good. The wine tasted funny, and the licorice flavored ouzo was even stranger, but that didn't stop us from drinking either.
"How was Egypt?" I asked.
"Hot, dusty, and full of Egyptians," Daniel said. He sipped cautiously at his ouzo and pronounced it acceptable with a shrug. "We brought five more planes back. You should request one of them, Eduardo. That old crate of yours is about ready to fall apart."
" Kimberly is fine," I said. "I'll stick with her."
Daniel probably had more flying hours than the rest of the squadron put together, despite not having a proper military background. He'd dropped out of Harvard to fly against the Fascists in Spain and had been flying ever since. Normally I listened very carefully to his professional advice, but I was unreasonably attached to Kimberly.
"Your funeral, my friend." Daniel looked around the bar then lowered his voice. "I picked up a few other things as well," he said.
Jim and I leaned a little closer. "Go on," Jim said.
"I had some time on my hands in Port Said so I took a little tour of the city's finer establishments," Daniel said. His eyes were on the tower of matchsticks that his hands were idly fashioning. "I ran into some of our countrymen there a couple of days ago; sailors off a pair of American freighters which had just come up the Canal. They're being loaded up with supplies for the Greek Army, and the sailors talked about getting ready to transport refugees. There are quite a lot of those, you know, piled up around Athens and causing our employers no end of concern."
I blinked in surprise. "They're sending American ships that close to the fighting? Who thought that was a good idea?"
The door opened and a crowd of men in work clothes tumbled through. They descended on a couple of nearby tables and I was surprised to hear them swapping dirty jokes in English.
"I saw something else, yesterday," Daniel continued, watching the newcomers. "I saw our esteemed Colonel Johnston. He did not see me, of course."
"Johnston?" Jim and I said together, and exchanged looks. "He was supposed to be in Athens yesterday, meeting with the Greek high command," I said.
"Was he?" Daniel smiled. "How strange then that I saw him having dinner in Egypt. I don't know who they were, those fellows he was dining with, but they were wearing the most horrible suits I've ever seen," he said, in a tone normally reserved for such phrases as 'they eat their young.'
He downed the rest of his ouzo. "It gives one pause, to wonder who is paying for our invaluable services."
"Well, the Greeks," I said. "Who else?"
"Ed, the Greeks don't have any money," Jim said. He topped off his glass then passed the bottle to Daniel. "Someone is giving them the money to cover our payroll."
"Exactly," Daniel said. "And who--"
One of the men at the next table leaned over. "Say, you're those Yank mercenaries, aren't you? The Flying Spartans."
"That is what the newspapers call us," Daniel said, and I checked my glass for a sudden accumulation of frost.
"We're with the AGVG," Jim said. "I don't remember seeing you guys around before."
"Captain Bill Saxton, Two Five Royal Australian Engineers, at yer service." He winked. "On leave of absence, you understand. We're taking a little vacation, touring scenic old Greece, and doing a bit of charitable aerodrome building and improvement while we're here. Eh, lads?"
The other Aussies offered an impressive variety of suggestions as to what Saxton could do with Greece, airfields, his vacation, and certain items of construction equipment.
"See? Nothing they like better than building air--"
We ducked a storm of thrown bottles, only some of which were empty, and I thought for a moment a full scale riot was going to break out, but Saxton laughed at what seemed to be a running gag between him and his men.
"Damn fine piece of work you lads did yesterday," he said when the storm had cleared.
"The Angels finally took those bombers up," I explained to Daniel. "Worked over some oil tankers. Mussolini made a speech about it. He seemed pretty angry."
"And about time somebody gave these damn Eyeties a bloody nose, too," Saxton said. He flicked his cigarette butt away. "Mussolini's like a damn vulture. 'Oh, we're neutral,' he sez. 'Not part of the war at all, you fellows just carry on without us.' While they ship Hitler so much oil he can bathe in the damn stuff, and gobble up little bits and nuggets of land when they think nobody's looking. 'You don't mind if we take this little Tunisia off your hands, do you Mr. Vichy? No? How about this here Corsica? You weren't using that, were you?'" The Australian engineer grimaced and reached for another bottle of wine. "Bloody sickening it is. Damn cowards."
Cowards. My father had spent two years in the Italian Army in the Great War. In his shabby desk at home, buried with the newspaper clippings and other clutter, there was an old cigar box full of the medals he had earned. Medaglia Al Valore Militare, Croce al Merito di Guerra...
"Those oilfields down in Libya, they're not all that far from Egypt, are they?" Jim asked.
"Oh no, not far at all." Saxton laughed. "We could just pop right over the border there, knock all those oil rigs right down. We could do that thing right easy, if it weren't for about three hundred and fifty thousand Italians waiting to kick our bloody bums if we were to try something that stupid." He took a deep breath, let it out in a boozy sigh. "And not just Italians either, you know. There're Germans running around Libya too. Not supposed to be there. Not officially there at all, any more than I'm here."
"That oil's the thing, isn't it?" Daniel poured some water into his ouzo, watched it turn milky white. "Without that oil, and what the Germans will give him for it, Mussolini would be just another insignificant dictator. And Germany...well, without gas for his planes and tanks, Hitler wouldn't have amounted to much either, would he? Most likely he never would have gotten past you fellows and the French back in '40."
The conversation was beginning to depress me. My father had worked in Libya after the last war, guarding Standard Oil's exploration teams, and later their wells and pipelines, from Bedouin tribesmen who weren't quite ready to admit that the desert belonged to Italy. He'd done a good enough job that the Standard Oil people helped him get into the U.S. after he made a few incautious remarks and we had to flee Italy one step ahead of the Blackshirts.
It wasn't like he was responsible for the oil being discovered there. Standard Oil was looking everywhere back in the '20s, after the British locked them out of Iraq. But he had been a part of it, and now half of Europe was in flames.
"Mussolini would still be trying to play in the big league," I said. "I think he feels a need to, you know, measure up to Hitler." I held my thumb and forefinger about two inches apart.
And what was I doing? A lot of men had gone home and rejoined the service when the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor, but not me. Who was I trying to measure up to?
"I wonder what he's going to do now," Jim said. "The Germans are mopping up the Russian oil fields right now and they'll have them back in service in a year or so. Hitler won't need Mussolini's oil then."
"I wonder what we're all going to do," Saxton said. "We're a bloody lot of fools for being here, aren't we?"
"There's no fool like a drunken fool," Daniel said. "Another round here."
"Lousy weather," Jim said.
The clouds to the north were a bit ominous. "I don't know." I nodded towards where our Australian friends were leveling ground in preparation for their expansion of Maleme airfield. "It seems safer than being on the ground with a bunch of hung-over Australians operating heavy equipment."
Jim and Daniel chuckled. "I hear the Colonel didn't want to fly this patrol today at all," Daniel said. "But then he decided to lead it himself."
"Huh." Jim looked over Kimberly. "I see you got a new canopy on her, at least. You sure you don't want to take a different plane up?"
I shrugged. "I can do without the heading indicator and everything else works fine. She'll bring me back if anything will."
Daniel smiled. "Your faith is touching, my friend. I hope that neither the plane, nor the girl you named her for, let you down."
I grinned back. "The girl Dear Johned me last week, but I've still got hopes for the plane."
I decided, about five minutes after the storm broke, that my faith had been misplaced and that I was an idiot.
There was no visibility at all, just a thick gray soup that obscured everything outside my cockpit. The turbulence was bad and I was reminded of why the Kittyhawk had both a heading indicator and a compass; the free-floating compass was easily confused. Heavy winds tossed Kimberly around like a drunk on a roller coaster and the compass spun wildly, showing a heading of north one second, south the next.
"Sebastiani, you doing okay?"
"Doing fine, Blackwater. Thanks." No sense worrying anyone. Nothing they could do anyway.
I concentrated on flying. The storm was a nasty one, with rain like standing under a faucet, and more lightning than I cared to see even when I wasn't in the middle of it. I tried for a few minutes to climb above the storm, but the turbulence got even worse and I decided to drop down below the clouds.
That helped. It was still raining like hell, but I could see. Most importantly, I could see that there was not a mountain fifty feet in front of me. Open sky was the most wonderful thing I'd seen in weeks.
But where the hell was I? The clock showed that I'd only been in the clouds for about a quarter hour, though it seemed like much longer. I couldn't have gotten too far off course. Could I?
The wind was still brisk and I had a devil of a time holding Kimberly steady while I checked my map, but I managed it without crashing and with only a modest amount of swearing.
The Straits of Salamis; that was the strip of water below me. I'd been flying northwest instead of north. No wonder I didn't see the rest of the squadron anywhere; they were probably near Athens, about fifty miles to the northeast.
I banked Kimberly around to set her on what I hoped was the right course to rejoin. If I was lucky I could do so before anyone noticed I was gone. Or I ran into any Italian fighters.
The worst of the storm was past now and I soon saw movement to the east; a pair of ships steaming south from the port of Piraeus. The American ships Daniel had mentioned? I decided to check them out. It was more or less on my way.
I flew by the ships at about 3,000 feet, close enough to see the Stars and Stripes, and the decks crammed with wet, miserable people, thousands of them. Daniel's freighters sure enough. I silently wished them well and turned Kimberly to the north. It was past time to get my ass back to the squadron, before Johnston chewed it off.
I set Kimberly to climbing, gaining back some of the altitude I'd given up for my look at the ships, and out of habit took a quick look around. The rain was easing up as the storm blew on to the south and visibility was improving.
There was a cluster of planes off to the west. If I hadn't turned back when I did I'd have flown right into them. I clicked my throat mike.
"Sebastiani here. Do we have any planes operating west of Piraeus? Over."
There was a long static filled-silence before I got an answer. "Colonel Johnston here. Negative. There are no planes in that area. And where the hell are you?"
"I was blown off course in the storm." I circled, gaining altitude and watching the approaching aircraft. "Ah, I'm looking at about six...no, eight planes here."
The silence stretched out even longer this time. I waited, sweating, watching the planes, my altimeter, and the ships. The rest of the squadron could get there in about five minutes, if they hurried. Would that be soon enough?
"Sebastiani, I'm ordering you to rejoin right now. If there are eight Italian planes over there you can't do anything about it by yourself. I've got word that a large flight of Italian bombers is headed for Athens and we're going to need every plane to stop them. Get back here."
I started to acknowledge, then remembered the first time we'd gone into action. Five months ago, near Ioannina in northern Greece. We'd bombed and strafed the Italian troops, then flown over the city on our way home. The people had come out of their basements and makeshift shelters, braving the Italian artillery to crowd into the streets and even onto the rooftops. They waved flags and cheered as we flew by and it was like nothing I'd ever seen before.
The Italians took Ioannina a few weeks later, despite everything we and the Greek Army could do, which pretty much summed up the whole war. The Greeks were fighting a hell of a fight, but they were losing all the same.
When I closed my eyes I could still see those people cheering us. Me. Were some of them on those ships below, trying to find a safe place in an unsafe world?
"I am engaging. Sebastiani out."
"Boy, what the hell do you think you're doing?" Johnston howled into my headphones. "I gave you an order. I will have your ass for this. Hell, I'll have you--"
I turned off the radio. "Once more into the breach, girl," I said and patted Kimberly's scarred instrument panel. "You won't let me down, will you?"
She responded with a growl as I shoved the throttle forward and we flew to meet the enemy planes.
In just a couple minutes I could see what I was up against. A flight of four bombers flew down on the deck, about a thousand feet above the waves. Sparviero torpedo bombers; that removed any doubt in my mind about their target. They were escorted by four fighters, who were climbing to meet me. I closed the cooling flaps and flipped my gunswitches live.
Eight planes. Four fighters. Hail Mary, full of grace...
I put Kimberly's nose down and let the speed build. I had an altitude advantage of about 10,000 feet and was going to need every bit of it; the Folgores were faster in level flight, and more maneuverable too.
They tried to put themselves in my way, and filled the sky with tracers, great flaming medicine balls that drifted towards me slow and lazy, then whipped by impossibly fast. We were closing too fast, though, and they had no time to get a good shot at me before I was through, past them and still alive.
Could I make it to the bombers before the fighters got turned around and on my ass? There was a long way to go. I didn't think I was going to make it.
Tracers flashed over my cockpit from behind. I cursed and began jinking Kimberly back and forth in a vain effort to throw off the fighters' aim. Sixteen machine guns back there; I couldn't dodge them forever.
Kimberly shuddered as something hit her. I kicked left rudder and yanked the stick right, throwing her into a desperate barrel roll. The Italians were close enough that I could hear their guns. Tracers were thick around me and slugs flicked through my left wing tip. I braced myself for the fatal one.
The tracers stopped, though the firing didn't. I kept Kimberly rolling and risked a dizzy look back.
The Italian fighters scattered like quail as a pair of Kittyhawks slashed through their formation. Colonel Johnston be damned; my friends had not forgotten me.
One Folgore spiraled towards the sea, trailing smoke. I left the other three to Blackwater and Patterson and flew on to meet the bombers.
The Sparvieros were in an echelon formation, the one on my right leading. I picked him for my target. A few nose gunners opened up, firing over the Sparvieros' center engine. They couldn't quite reach me. I checked my tail to see how Jim and Daniel were doing.
A Folgore had slipped away from them and was closing in on me. Too late, I thought.
The bomber very quickly grew to fill my windscreen. I could see the pilot clearly, even the look of horror on his face.
The Folgore and I fired at the same time. Bullet impacts flashed all over the bomber's center engine and cockpit as slugs tore up the left side of Kimberly's fuselage, thop, thop, thop, shattering most of the plexiglass on that side of the canopy. Fragments lashed my face and something hot hit me in the side, just under my left armpit.
"Vaffanculo!" I snarled, and pulled back hard on the stick. The Folgore pilot wasn't expecting that from a Kittyhawk. He shot past below me as I climbed straight up.
The Folgore barely avoided ramming head-on into the crippled bomber, which drifted out of formation, smoke pouring from its nose. I saw some of the crew tumble out the hatches and parachutes bloom.
After climbing for several seconds I rolled Kimberly 180 degrees and pulled the stick back again. I was now flying in the same direction as before, but a couple thousand feet higher and upside down. I spotted the Folgore circling below me and pulled back into an inverted dive, completing the loop.
There was blood in my left eye. I tried to wipe it away, but my left arm didn't want to work right. It hurt like hell. My whole side was wet.
The Folgore tried a climbing roll to get away, but I had the speed to stay with him and I did. He crossed my sights twice and I squeezed off a burst each time.
I got lucky the second time. Bullet strikes flickered along the side of his engine compartment and a cloud of glycol poured out. With his coolant system gone he'd had it. The fighter leveled off and its canopy popped free. The pilot made a rude and very Italian gesture at me before he jumped.
Kimberly was starting to overheat. I eased back on the throttle, reaching across my body with my right hand, then yanked the lever to open the cooling flaps. A fighter pilot with two working arms was busy enough; it was damn near impossible with only one.
The remaining bombers were getting damn close to those ships.
I could hear the dorsal gunners firing even over the roar of my engine and the wind whistling through my shattered canopy, see the muzzle flashes and tracers. I jinked around a little to throw off their aim, but a few slugs still punched through my wings. The Sparvieros, stubborn bastards, were flying slow, right down on the deck, and I overhauled them fast.
The bomber on my right was the closest. I could see the dorsal gunner in his odd looking half-covered gun position, could see the tracers coming straight at me like meteors. Kimberly shuddered as she was hit. Fluid from a cut hydraulic line streamed in through the smashed-out canopy.
I laid my gunsight on his left engine and hit the trigger. The guns hammered and chunks of airplane fell away. I ruddered hard right and swept a line of fire down the wing, across the fuselage, and out to the right engine. Plane and gunner both came apart under the fifty-caliber jackhammer.
The son of a bitch still dropped his torpedo. He nosed into the sea right behind it a second later.
The stench of hydraulic fluid filled the cockpit, too strong for even a 250 MPH wind to clear. I banked sharply to try a shot at the other two, but their torpedoes were already running. I shouted and squeezed off a burst at long range, but it was too little, too late.
I didn't want to see, but I couldn't help it. A torpedo hit each freighter. They went up in great fountains of white water dotted with bits of debris.
Some of that debris was people.
Blackwater and Patterson swept over the remaining bombers a moment later, but I didn't stay to watch. I was weary to the bone and the only thing keeping me awake was the searing pain in my side. It was time to leave.
My faith was not entirely misplaced after all; Kimberly got me home, somehow. I don't remember landing, or much of anything else for days after.
Aside from losing a lot of blood I wasn't hurt all that badly and it was not long before I was able to hobble around. Colonel Johnston, I was relieved to find, had not executed me while I was unconscious.
"I had two dollars down for 'firing squad,'" Jim said.
We had taken over a table in what passed for an Officers' Club. I tried to find a comfortable position on the hard wooden chair. "There was a pool?"
Jim shrugged and offered me a beer. "Glad to see you up and around anyway."
"I'm not supposed to drink," I said as I took the bottle. "Doctor's orders." Cheap beer, but it tasted damn fine just then.
"Rest easy, Eduardo," Daniel said. "I heard -- just rumor you understand -- that Duncan had a talk with the esteemed Colonel Johnston. Told him that if any action was taken against you he would be advised to not share sky with any man in this squadron ever again."
"Did he?" I smiled, for the first time in days. "I wish I had been there to hear that."
"I heard some news too," Jim said. "On the BBC this morning. Roosevelt finally got Congress to declare war on Italy. It was that bit with the ships that did it. There was a newsreel crew in Piraeus and they caught most of the action on film."
Small black figures, pinwheeling through the air. I took another drink, to try and drown the memory.
"Some people will be quite relieved," Daniel said. He was sorting through the bundle of stateside newspapers someone had shipped him. "They'll be very happy to see Italy in no position to export any more oil. Very...convenient for them."
I stared at him. A horrible thought seeped into my brain along with the beer. "Daniel. Jim. Was there a flight of Italian bombers on its way to Athens?"
"If there was," Jim said, "they never made it. And we sure as hell didn't stop them."
"You think it was a set up," I said, hoping he would contradict me. "Who could do something like that?"
"Bastards with power, Eduardo." Daniel looked at Jim. "I believe our Cherokee friend here could tell us something about what bastards with power do."
Jim grimaced. "It's too late to get Columbus, but I can still make good money killing Italians. Present company excepted, of course." He slid another beer across the table to replace the one I'd emptied without noticing. "The folks in charge didn't get there by being nice, Ed. They use people. Use them up."
"The history of civilization in a nutshell," said Daniel. "At least we are well rewarded for our part."
"That can't be all there is," I said. But I couldn't help thinking, two thousand dollars for two days' work.
Daniel shrugged and raised his beer.
"One for all. And all for hire."
