``I've got her as neat as I can,'' Donovan said, as he dropped the straps of the Seton harness over Greg's shoulders. ``But this goddamn climate. It's for carabao not airplanes.''

``We'll make out. Don't you worry, chief,'' Greg replied, wondering if he himself believed it.

``Yeah. See you,'' Donovan said as he jumped off the wing. The expression was his trade-mark, his open sesame to good luck, and his prayer that pilot and plane would always return. At the prearranged time, Greg started the engine and taxied out. From the time the chocks were pulled until the plane was out of sight, he knew Donovan would keep his back to the strip. He wondered where the superstition had originated that it was bad luck for a crew chief to watch his plane take off on a combat mission. Yet long before the scheduled time for return, Donovan would be watching for every speck in the sky.

Greg rumbled down the rough metal taxi strip, and one by one the seven members of his flight fell in behind him. The dark brown bombs hanging under each wing looked large and powerful. The pilots' heads looked ridiculously small. The control tower gave him immediate take-off permission, and the clean roar of the engine that took him off the rough strip spoke well of the skill of Donovan.

Greg's mission was the last to leave, and as he circled the ships off Tacloban he saw the clouds were dropping down again. To the west, the dark green hills of Leyte were lost in the clouds about halfway up their slopes. Underneath him the sea was a dark and muddied gray. Water splashed against his windshield as he led the flight in and out of showers. The metal strip they had taken off from was coal black against the green jungle around it. He possessed the fighter pilot's horror of bad weather and instrument flying, and he wondered, if the ceiling did drop, whether he and the other flights would be able to find their way back in this unfamiliar territory. He shivered in the warm cockpit.