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1 • • • Prologue Prologue 5 MARCH 1944 LALAGHAT AIRFIELD, ASSAM, INDIA TIME: 1800 A waxing, gibbous moon was just rising in the east, promising a measure of light in what otherwise would be near-total darkness. But a thickening haze was obscuring even that dim source, blurring the horizon and making the upcoming mission, already hazardous in the extreme , exponentially more dangerous. Added to the low visibility was the suffocating humidity, a dampness that made even normal breathing seem like sucking air through a wet sponge. The darkness and the dankness seemed to have merged into a single entity, an inky viscous element, dense and implacable, simultaneously both friend and foe. As an ally the night would cloak their movements; as an enemy it would similarly mask the small jungle clearings into which they must fly. For the past two days tough-looking men—uniformed men with beards, in bush hats and other accouterments of war—had landed at Lalaghat, transforming the rough airfield into a raucous circus. Those men stood now in groups, smoking, chatting quietly, checking and rechecking their equipment. Punctuating their calm murmur was a cacophony of braying mules being coaxed or pushed into ugly squat cargo gliders, honking horns as jeeps raced up and down the grass strip, and shrill whistles blown by officers trying to organize their commands. 2 • • • Prologue Lined up on one side of the wide grass runway were rows of Douglas C-47 Skytrains, the ubiquitous cargo plane called Gooney Bird by irreverent Americans and Dakota by the more staid British. All were painted a dull olive drab; some sported white stars in blue circles on their wings and fuselages; others were marked with red, white, and blue concentric circles, denoting the mixture of U.S.Army Air Force and Royal Air Force aircraft. About a dozen Gooneys displayed five white parallel stripes wrapped at an angle around the fuselage just forward of the tail. Painted on their nose sections was a variety of garish, brightly colored art featuring scantily clad young women; a few displayed comic-strip characters . They carried names like “Tail Wind” and “Peaches” and “Hairless Joe” and “Queen of the Ozone,” artwork and names provided by cocky young American fliers a long way from home. The nose art granted a degree of pathos and humanity to the otherwise stark and utilitarian instruments of war. Outnumbering the cargo planes were dozens of slab-sided Waco CG4A cargo gliders arranged wingtip to wingtip on the opposite side of the grass strip. They were graceless flying machines, able to stay aloft only so long as they were towed behind a C-47. Once released from their tugs, they became carriages without horses and had only one flight profile: descent. They were somber machines, and many would make only a single flight. They were considered expendable, throwaway haulers of men and machines and weapons. In the relative quiet of his cockpit, Col. Johnny Alison peered through the wide flat windscreen of the Waco at the tow rope snaking from the nose of his glider to the tow hook beneath the tail of the C-47 now parked fifty yards in front of him; the cargo plane’s pilot was revving its engines and inching down the makeshift runway, the tow rope slowly straightening. A blast from the whirling props of the tug sent dirt and debris pinging against the Perspex windscreen, and Alison reflexively shut his eyes before once more staring intently at the C-47 and the tow rope. The tug’s pilot was Capt. Jake Sartz Jr., a veteran Hump pilot who never got excited; he was a good match for the unflappable little fighter pilot-turned-gliderman. Competence bred confidence, and confidence augured well for success. Alison surely felt the familiar tightening in his stomach, the old tenseness that he had experienced so often, in so many parts of the globe. It was not fear. It was a rush of adrenaline, the reaction of the human body to the anticipation of action or high stress levels. He was no stranger to perilous missions and no novice at night flying: a veteran fighter pilot, he had downed seven Japanese aircraft while flying with the U.S. 14th Air Force under Claire Chennault, destroyed more on the ground, and 3 • • • Prologue survived crash-landing his P-40 Warhawk in the Xiang River.Alison had served in England, Russia, the Middle East, and China; throughout it all he had not just survived, he...

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