For some time, Pitt lay staring in the darkness. There would be no more sleep tonight, he thought. Sitting up and leaning on one elbow, he reached over a bedside table, groped for his Omega watch and held it in front of his eyes. The luminous dial read 4:09. Then he sat up and dropped the bare soles of his feet on the vinyl tile floor. A package of cigarettes sat next to the watch, and he pulled out one and lit it with a silver Zippo lighter. Inhaling deeply, he stood up and stretched. His face grimaced: the muscles of his back stung from the backslapping he had received from the cheering men of Brady Field right after he and Giordino had climbed from the cockpit of the PBY. Pitt smiled to himself in the dark as he thought about the warm handshakes and congratulations pressed upon them.

The moonlight, beaming in through the window of the Officers' Quarters, and the warm clear air of early morning made Pitt restless. He stripped off his shorts and rummaged through his luggage in the dim light. When his touch recognized the cloth shape of a pair of swim trunks, he slipped them on, snatched a towel from the bathroom and stepped out into the stillness of the night.

Once outside, the brilliant Mediterranean moon enveloped his body and laid bare the landscape with an eerie ghost-like emptiness. The sky was all studded with stars and revealed the Milky Way in a great white design across a black velvet backdrop.

Pitt strolled down the path from the Officers' Quarters toward the main gate. He paused for a minute, looking at the vacant runway, and he noticed a black area every so often in the rows of multicolored lights that stitched the edges. Several of the lights in the signal system must have been damaged in the attack, he thought. However, the general pattern was still readable to a pilot making a night landing. Behind the intermediate lights, he could make out a dark outline of the PBY, sitting forlornly on the opposite side of the apron like a nesting duck. The bullet damage to the Catalina's hull turned out to be slight and the Flight Line Maintenance crew promised that they would begin repairs first thing in the morning, the restoration taking three days. Colonel James Lewis, the base commanding officer, had expressed his apologies at the delay, but he needed the bulk of the maintenance crew to work on the damaged jets and the remaining C-133 Cargomaster. In the meantime, Pitt and Giordino elected to accept the colonel's hospitality and stay at Brady Field, using the First Attempt's whaleboat to commute between the ship and shore. The last arrangement worked to everyone's advantage since living quarters aboard the First Attempt were cramped and at a premium.

"Kind of early for a swim, isn't it, buddy?"