The uneven battle continued for a full eight minutes while the military spectators on the ground watched, spellbound. The strange aerial dogfight slowly drifted eastward over the shoreline, and the final round began.
Pitt was sweating now. Small glistening beads of the salty liquid were bursting from the pores on his forehead and trickling in snail-like trails down his face. His opponent was cunning, but Pitt was playing the strategy game too. With infinite patience, dredged up from some hidden reserve in his body, he waited for the right moment, and when it finally arrived he was ready.
The Albatros managed to get behind and slightly above the Catalinia Pitt held his speed steady and the other pilot, sensing victory, closed to within fifty yards of the flying boat’s towering tail section. But before the two machine guns could speak, Pitt pulled the throttle back and lowered the flaps, slowing the big craft into a near stall. The phantom pilot, taken by surprise, overshot and passed the PBY, receiving several well placed rounds In the Albatros’ engine as the carbine spat at near point-blank range. The vintage plane banked in front of Pitt’s bow, and he watched with the respect one brave man has for another when the occupant in the open cockpit pushed up his goggles and threw a curt salute.. Then the yellow Albatros and its mysterious pilot turned away and headed west over the island, trailing a black streak of smoke that testified to the accuracy of Giordino’s marksmanship.
The Catalina was falling out of its stall into a dive now, and Pitt fought the controls for a few unnerving seconds before he regained stable flight. Then he began a sweeping, upward turn in the sky. At five thousand feet he leveled off and searched the island and seascape, but no trace of the bright yellow plane with the maltese cross markings was visible. It had vanished. A cold, clammy feeling crept over Pitt. The yellow Albatros had somehow seemed familiar. It was as though an unremembered ghost from the past had returned to haunt him. But the eerie sensation passed as quickly as it had arrived, and he gave out a deep sigh as the tension faded away, and the welcome comfort of relief gently soothed his mind.
“Well, when do I get my sharpshooter’s medal? said Giordino from the cabin doorway. He was grinning despite a nasty gash in his scalp. The blood streamed down the right side of his face, staining the collar of a loud, flowered print shirt.
“After we land I’ll buy you a drink instead,” replied Pitt without turning. Giordino slipped into the co-pilot’s seat. “I feel like I’ve just ridden the roller coaster at the Long Beach Pike.”
Pitt could not help grinning. He relaxed, leaning back against the back rest, saying nothing. Then he turned and looked at Giordino, and his eyes squinted. “What happened to you? Were you hit?”
Giordino gave Pitt a mocking. a sorrowful look.
“Who ever told you that you could loop a PBY?”
“It seemed like the thing to do at the time,” said Pitt, a twinkle in his eye.
“Next time, warn the passengers. I bounced around the main cabin like a basketball.”
“What did you hit your head on?” Pitt asked quizzically.
“Did you have to ask?”
“Well?”
Giordino suddenly became embarrassed. “If you must know, it was the door handle on the john?
Pitt looked startled for an instant. Then he flung back his head and roared with laughter. The mirth was contagious, and Giordino soon followed. The sound rang through the cockpit and replaced the noise of the engines. Nearly thirty seconds passed before their gaiety quieted, and the seriousness of the present situation returned.
Pitt’s mind was clear, but exhaustion was slowly seeping in. The long hours of flight and the strain of the recent combat fell on him heavily and soaked his body like a numbing, damp fog. He thought about the sweet smell of soap in a cold shower and the crispness of clean sheets, and somehow they became vitally important to him. He looked out the cockpit window at Brady Field and recalled that his original destination was the First Attempt, but a dim hunch, or call it a hindsight, made him change his mind.
“Instead of landing in the water and rendezvousing alongside of the First Attempt, I think we’d better set down at Brady Field. I have a foreboding feeling we may have taken a few bullets in our hull.”
“Good idea,” Giordino replied. “I’m not in the mood for bailing.”
The big flying boat made its final approach and lined up on the wreckage strewn runway. It settled on the heat baked asphalt, and the landing gear bumped and emitted an audible screech of rubber that signaled the touch-down.
Pitt angled clear of the flames and taxied to the far side of the apron. When the Catalina stopped rolling he clicked off the Ignition switches, and the two silver bladed propellers gradually ceased their revolutions and came to rest, gleaming in the Aegean sun. All was quiet.
He and Giordino sat stone still for a few moments and absorbed the first comfortable silence to penetrate the cockpit after thirteen hours of noise and vibration.
Pitt flipped the latch on his side window and pushed it open, watching with detached interest as the base firemen fought the inferno. Hoses were lying everywhere, like highways on a roadmap, and men scurried about shouting, adding to the stage of confusion. The flames on the F-105 jets were almost contained, but one of the C-133 Cargomasters still burned fiercely.
“Take a look over here,” said Giordino pointing,
Pitt leaned over the instrument panel and stared out of Giordino’s window at a blue Air Force stationwagon that careened across the runway in the direction of the PBY. The car contained several officers and was followed by thirty or forty wildly cheering enlisted men who chased after it like a pack of braying hounds.
“Now that’s what I call one hell of a reception committee,” Pitt said amused and broadly smiling, Giordino mopped his bleeding cut with a handkerchief. When the cloth was soaked through with red ooze he wadded it up and threw it out of the window to the ground. His gaze turned toward the nearby coastline and became lost in the Infinity of thought for a moment Finally he turned to Pitt. “I guess you know we’re pretty damn lucky to be sitting here.”
“Yes, I know,” said Pitt woodenly. “There were a couple of times up there when I thought our ghost had us”
“I wish I knew who the hell he was and what this destruction was all about?”Pitt’s face was a study in speculative curiosity.
“The only clue is the yellow Albatros.”
Giordino eyed his friend questioningly. “What possible meaning could the color of that old flying derelict have?”
“If you’d studied your aviation history,” Pitt said with a touch of good-natured sarcasm, “You’d remember that German pilots of the First World War painted their planes with personal, but sometimes outlandish, color schemes.”
“Save the history lesson for later,” Giordino growled. “Right now all I want to do is get out of this sweat box and collect that drink you owe me.” He rose from his scat and started for the exit hatch.
The blue stationwagon skidded to a halt beside the big silver flying boat and all four doors burst open.
The occupants leaped out shouting and began pounding on the plane’s aluminum hatch. The crowd of enlisted men soon engulfed the aircraft, cheering loudly and waving at the cockpit.
Pitt remained seated and waved back at the cheering men below the window. His body was tired and numb but his mind was still active and running at full throttle. A title kept running through his thoughts until finally he muttered it aloud. “The Hawk of Macedonia.”
Giordino turned from the doorway. “What did you say?”
“Oh nothing, nothing at all,” Pitt let his breath escape in a long audible sigh. “Come on — I’ll buy you that drink now.”