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were testing it. The enlisted men, more aware of their mortality than the officers, were always afraid that the krauts would catch the cargo plane on radar, would follow it and bomb the shit out of the runway and the camp. The Stukas were friendly. The Stukas, for some reason, only wanted the bridge. But a flight of German night planes couldn't be counted on to limit its objectives. So the enlisted men sweated out each landing and each takeoff, suffering from the same terminal disease that afflicted Beame: hope. They didn't understand that nothing improved, that it wasn't any use sweating out anything. Whatever would happen would happen. Then, when it did happen, that was the time to sweat.
        The cargo plane's engines grew even louder now, tantalizingly near, though the plane remained beyond the patch of open sky that the surrounding woods permitted them.
        "It's close," Slade said.
        Suddenly, the big aircraft was there. It came in so low over the pines that Kelly had difficulty separating it from the black trees. It carried only two running lights, one on each wing tip, and it seemed more like some gigantic bird of prey than like a machine.
        "Here comes the plane," Slade said, though everyone had already seen it. Nothing ever improved. Not even the lieutenant.
        "He isn't putting it down fast enough," Lieutenant Beame said. He thought: Christ, it's going to plow right through us, knock us down like three bowling pins at the end of an alley.
        The DC-3 slanted in fast, correcting.
        "Not enough," Kelly said.
        The pilot had not cut back. The props churned as thunderously as when the craft had slipped in over the trees.
        "What the hell's he doing?" Lieutenant Slade demanded.
        The big plane roared toward them, a prehistoric behemoth bellowing a mindless battle cry. Its tires were still off the rugged, oiled strip. The tiny running lights on its wings seemed, to Kelly, to swell until they were gigantic searchlights.
        "Run!" Beanie shouted. But he couldn't run. He could only stand there, hypnotized by the onrushing plane, blinking at the half-seen blur of the whirling props.
        The pilot gave up on it. The craft rose sharply, tilting dangerously toward the dark earth, swooped over the three men and the trees behind them, racketing away across the forest.
        "He's going to try again," Lieutenant Slade told them.
        Able to run now that it wasn't necessary, Beame turned and loped into the trees, bent and vomited on a patch of wild daisies.
        The moment the DC-3 had passed over them, all the fear went out of Major Kelly. Temporarily, at least. He had watched the plane plunging toward them, and he had been sure that he would die in seconds. The whole situation had that ironic touch which was so much a part of the war: surviving the Stukas and the Germans, he would now be slaughtered accidentally by his own people. When he wasn't, when he realized that the plane had passed over and left him unhurt, he chose to take his safety as an omen. If he had not been killed that time, he would not be killed the next. The pilot would put his ship down, and everything would go as planned. He would survive. For tonight, anyway. Maybe he would be blown to bits the first thing in the morning, but for the remainder of the night, he could rest easy.
        The engine noise of the DC-3 faded, moving around them, then grew in volume again as the pilot made his second approach.
        "Here he comes again," Slade said, unnecessarily.
        Beame, back from vomiting on the daisies, said, "God."
        The transport came into sight again, over the trees. It slanted in much more quickly than it had before. In fact, it angled too sharply, touched the runway at too high a speed, bounced. Tires squealed. The walls of the forest threw back echoes that sounded like anguished human cries. The aircraft shuddered, touched again, bounced again. The third