Just before midnight, Hudson switched on the plane’s radio transmitter and called the landing strip at Unhao.
“Keep your eyes dead ahead for the next few minutes,” he told Biff. “I always get a thrill out of it.”
Biff did as he was told. He peered intently through the windshield into the night. Clouds had obscured the moon, and all was darkness. Not a light could be seen anywhere.
Suddenly, as if by magic, the letter “X” blazed out of the jungle, twenty miles ahead. It was so startling that Biff gasped in amazement.
“Our landing field. I told them we’d be in in about ten minutes and to turn on the lights. We have two runways. One from southwest to northeast. The other from southeast to northwest. They bisect in the center, forming a perfect ‘X.’ I think it’s a wonderful sight.”
“It sure is,” Biff replied.
For the next few minutes, Jack’s entire attention was devoted to the landing. The plane swooped out of the dark, flashed over the landing field, circled and entered its final glide path. Biff felt the lurch which told him they had touched down. Jack taxied the plane toward the hangars.
“Well, here we are,” he said to Biff. “Welcome to Unhao.”
Despite the excitement of landing in this strange isolated spot in Upper Burma, Biff couldn’t hold back a yawn. He was just plain, dog-tired. It had been four nights since he had slept in a bed. Oh, he had slept. But sleeping in a sitting position, he told himself, would never replace the good, old stretch-out type of snooze.
Native servants swarmed around the plane. Biff and his gear were deposited in a jeep standing by. Jack hopped behind the wheel. The jeep, with natives clinging to every possible foot and hand-hold, headed through the night toward Headquarters House, a quarter of a mile away.