Pickering picked the microphone from his lap.
"Cactus, Eastern Airlines rolling." The aircraft slowly began to gain speed. It was over the Recommended Maximum Gross Weight for the temperature and available runway length. And the runway was not smooth concrete but wet dirt, patched here and there with pierced steel planking.
Galloway was more than a little worried about blowing a tire, but he kept that to himself As soon as he could, he eased forward on the wheel to get the tail wheel off the ground.
Then he kept his eye on the end of the runway, dropping his eyes every second or so to the airspeed indicator, which had come to life at 40 knots.
The speed climbed very slowly. But then Galloway sensed life in the controls. He eased back on the wheel, felt the airplane want to try to fly, and then eased the wheel back just a hair more.
The heavy rumbling of the undercarriage suddenly quit.
"Gear up!" he called.
Pickering took his hand from the throttle quadrant and dropped it to the wheel-shaped landing gear control ten inches down and to the rear. He put it in RETRACT.
The wheels took a long time coming up. On Jack Finch's orders, the pilot who had flown the airplane to Guadalcanal from Espiritu Santo had also tested and timed how long it took to get the gear up with the added weight and wind resistance o the skis. It hadn't taken appreciably longer than normal, a tribute to the strength of the hydraulic system.
A moment before he expected the GEAR up light to go on, Galloway ordered, "Flaps Up!"
The GEAR up light went on as Pickering moved the flap-control lever.
"Gear up," Pickering's voice came over the earphones, and then a moment later, "Flaps retarded." The airspeed indicator needle pointed at 110. Galloway put the airplane into a shallow climb to the left and kept it there until the surf on the Guadalcanal beach passed under his wing.
Then he straightened it out, retarded the throttles, and set up a shallow climb.
It was just about 900 miles in a straight line from Henderson to Port Moresby on New Guinea, but Galloway was planning for at least a thousand-mile flight, in case he ran into weather, and because he knew that flying dead reckoning, the airfield was probably not going to be where he expected it to be.
To conserve fuel, he would cruise somewhere around 8,000 to 10,000 feet and at an indicated 180 knots. A thousand miles at 180 knots translated to right at six hours. That would give them an Estimated Time of Arrival at Port Moresby of 1700, 1710. The worst possible case-if they failed to find the field for another hour or so-would still see them on the ground at 1800. Before nightfall.
There was plenty of fuel. An R4D in this configuration could officially carry twenty-eight fully loaded paratroops, or 5,600 pounds. Galloway's experience during the C47/R4D acceptance tests had taught him that was a very conservative estimate of Maximum Gross Load.
Dillon had told him five people would be going into Buka.
That would be less than 1,000 pounds, because they would not be fully equipped paratroopers. But call it a thousand anyway.
And they would have with them an already weighed 950 pounds of supplies. So call that a thousand pounds, too. That left 3,600 pounds of cargo lift weight available.
More than that, really. Galloway had concluded that the Maximum Gross Weight erred on the side of caution by about 20 percent (a thousand pounds). So that left him 4,600 pounds.
AvGas weighed about seven pounds a gallon. And he had auxiliary fuel tanks mounted inside the cabin over the wing root. He'd ordered these filled with 600 gallons of gasoline.
One of the Rules for Over Water Flight that Captain Galloway devoutly believed in was that as long as you could get the airplane to stagger into the air with it, there was no such thing as too much fuel aboard. If necessary, they could fly to Australia.
Galloway turned to Pickering.
"Can you hear me?" Pickering nodded.
"You've never been in one of these before?"
"Not sitting up front," Pickering said.
"They're a very forgiving airplane," Galloway said.
"That's nice," Pickering said. "May I ask a question?"
"Shoot."
"From the movies I've seen, people are supposed to be asked to volunteer for a mission they can't be told about." Galloway smiled.
"You volunteered the day you joined The Corps," he said.
"And again when you went through P'Cola. You had two chances to say no."
"Where are we going?"
Galloway threw the map into his lap. "First stop, Port Moresby. It'll take us about six hours-"
"We have that much fuel aboard?" Pickering asked, and then realized the stupidity of his question. "I guess we do, don't we?"
"-and then-turn the chart over-Moresby to Buka and return."
"The Japanese hold Buka, right? Where are we going to land? Or are we going to land?"
"We're going to pick up some people and equipment at Moresby and fly to Buka. We'll land on the beach, off-load the people and their equipment, and pick up three passengers." Pickering looked at him. "Christ, you're serious!" Galloway nodded.
"There's something I think I should tell you, Captain," Pickering said. Charley picked up on the "Captain"; Pickering usually called him "Skipper."
"You're not Alan Ladd or Errol Flynn, right?"
"No," Pickering said. "I used to think I was a pretty good pilot."
"You are. With the Zeke you shot down this morning, that made five, you're officially an ace."
"That's not what I meant," Pickering said. "I mean, when I got my first ride in a Yellow Peril at P'Cola, the IP thought I was a wiseass-"
I can certainly understand that, Mr. Pickering.
"-and tried to make me airsick, and couldn't. So he turned it over to me and told me to take it back to the field and land it and I did; and then he was really pissed because he thought I already knew how to fly and hadn't told anybody."
"No kidding?"
"No kidding," Pickering said. "I had no trouble learning to fly the Wildcat, either, and... shit, just before I came over here, I took my grandfather's Stagger Wing Beech up, the first time I'd ever sat behind the wheel, buzzed Marin County, and then flew under the bridge."
"You flew under the Golden Gate Bridge?" Galloway asked incredulously.
Pickering nodded.