“Of course, I’ll do the map for you.” Then he added hastily, “But don’t go for paper now.”
“Sure. I’ll get that later. But right now I want you to tell me everything you can remember about that last trip with Tommy.”
“I could never forget any detail of it. Did you know it was Tommy’s last mission before he would be free to go home?”
Nancy’s heart almost stopped beating for a moment. “No, I didn’t! He had written us he was almost through, however, and would be coming home soon.”
“It’s that last flight that generally gives our pilots the jitters,” Bruce explained. “And the last five or six are no picnics.”
“I can well imagine that.”
“Naturally we had our bird tuned up and checked down to the last bolt. She took off, singing as sweet as any lark as we flew into the northwest. We had spilled our load on some Jap oil tankers and were on our way back when those nasty Zeros knocked one of our engines out of commission.”
“How about the crew?”
“O.K. then, but the next hail of fire got our co-pilot, Jack Turner. Tom kept his head until the other engine began to sputter. For a while he tried to make it closer to our own territory, but it was no go.”
Nancy was folding the hem of the sheet into tight little creases while she listened tensely. “Then you had to jump?” she asked.