With a swallow, he asked, “How do we get home, sir?”

“We don’t have thirty yards, do we?”

“And the engine is stopped.”

“I wasn’t really thinking then,” Ripley said. “I am now.” He put his hands on his hips, and drummed his fingers against his scorched wool tunic.

The clouds were thickening. When had his orphans last eaten? Lee’s gaze fell on Lenore. “We lighten her.”

Ripley, too, looked her way. Raindrops pelted her canvas wings, and the winds brought down cinders and ash, which stuck to the men’s faces. “Lighten her? That’s a fatal idea,” he said. Because, with the gasoline tank already half empty, there was only one way to lighten the airplane.

“We lighten her, and take off in twenty yards,” Lee said.

“The propeller—”

“I’ll start it.”

“You can’t possibly do that,” Ripley said.

“I have to.”

“But if you can turn over the prop, and we lighten her … and then we get into the air—”

“Where it’s raining,” Lee said, with a dry chuckle that Ripley acceded to.

“Yes. That, too.”

Lee nodded. Flying through storm clouds. Enemy planes. This was impossible.

“Two hours ago, I might have let fate roll over us,” Ripley said. “Right. Off we go.”

Lee climbed into the cockpit and brought out the set of spanner wrenches. He apologized to the puppies for jostling them as he leaned over the Scarff ring mounted on the rear. As he reached out to loosen the first bolt, Ripley waved a hand.

“Duncan?”

“Yes?”

Ripley ran his fingers over his mustache. Lee was puzzled, until he realized: Ripley was nervous. For Lee was, to save them weight, about to detach the Lewis machine guns. And then, for balance, he would also toss the Marlins away. Which would leave them without weapons.

Lee attacked the bolts, which had frozen into place long ago. Twice, the spanner skidded off the slippery metal, and he skinned his knuckles against the Lewises’ central housing, and then, suddenly, the guns tumbled onto the ground.

He dumped the ammo next, and then skittered into the pilot’s cockpit, where he dismantled the Marlins’ foundations under the relatively dry shelter of the top wing. There was a tumble, the smack of metal against stone, followed by the snaking of the length of ammo to the ground. Now the plane was several hundred pounds lighter.

“Sir?”

“Yes?”

“I need you in your seat. So I can start the propeller.”

“Have you ever—”

“No.”

“Has anyone—”

“A couple of times. Someone in the 94th, I hear, started one by himself.”