Danny banked the droning Piper Cub in wide, lazy circles through the cloudless sky. It was March; spring had come early to Judaea tufting the rugged, rusty terrain with light green. As Danny circled, he kept his eye peeled for a sign of the ground party that was supposed to meet him.
The Piper Cub had had its two passenger seats pulled out and its doors removed to facilitate loading cargo. That was good for the ground crew but a little breezy for the pilot. Danny was wearing chino pants and a long-sleeved shirt, his leather jacket and goggles. The Cub was loaded with four hundred pounds—the maximum weight—of ammunition, food and medical supplies. When he received his signal he would set down on a nearby stretch of dirt road, unload and get the hell out of there before an Arab raiding party closed in.
He saw the dust cloud formed by two trucks coming out of a ravine. He waited for the signal that would identify the trucks as friendly, meanwhile noting how the hilly, arid country below reminded him of south Texas, where he had some flight training. Then a hand-held mirror began winking at him and he concentrated on the sequence in order to assure himself that it was the right signal.
There was no better plane than a Piper Cub for this sort of work, Danny knew. His initial flight out of Teterboro had unnerved him. The big DC-3 might as well have been an ocean liner; it just wasn’t the sort of airplane a fighter jock could feel good in. He prayed to God that he wouldn’t ever have to fly anything like that.
He wasn’t in the Holy Land a week before they hurried him to a sideshow called the Palestine Flying Club in Tel Aviv. There Danny was interviewed by a former RAF pilot named Aaron Remez. He had been supplied with Danny’s records by good old Milty of Lion Airways. He asked Danny a few questions, sympathized with his complaints about the DC-3 and promised him that an operation much to his liking was in the works. In the meantime they had something to keep a hotshot pilot occupied.
He was hustled to Lod Airport, where the embryonic air force of the soon-to-be Jewish state sheltered in a ramshackle hangar. That was where Danny and his Piper Cub fell in love at first sight. Flying the Cub was the perfect way to ease back into the air.
He began to bring her in for the landing. The road was two lanes wide and rutted in places. There was a much better landing strip not far away, at the Ezyon settlements in the Hebron hills. That was where the supplies in the Piper were going. The problem was that the settlements were surrounded by hostile Arabs trying to starve out the settlers. Two truck convoys had been massacred trying to reach the outpost. An airlift, meager as it might be, was the best that could be done for them.
Danny came in with full flaps and just a little power, keeping his air speed way down. As the tires kissed the earth he cut his engine, raised his flaps and stood on the brakes.
He was taxiing sedately as the trucks screeched to a halt. Two men hopped out of the cab of each truck. They were young and intense, dressed in baggy cotton clothes, sandals and wide-brimmed hats. They wore long sideburn locks as a sign of their orthodoxy and toted Sten guns.
Danny stepped out of his airplane and went to greet them, the old Webley revolver in its busted-up flap holster bouncing on his hip.
“Shalom,” one of the settlers grinned.
Danny unzipped his leather jacket and pulled his goggles down so that they dangled from his neck. “How you doing?”
The settler smiled. “We’ll do better now that you’ve come. That was a nice landing.”
“Nice!” Danny exclaimed. “From touchdown to full stop less than two hundred feet. You won’t ever see better.”
“I’m sorry you could not use the strip we built.”
“Yeah, well, maybe next time. It’s a little unfriendly over there right now. Not even the Arabs could miss a Piper with massed machine guns and heavy-shot antiaircraft fire.”
He helped the settlers load their trucks. When it was done he asked, “You guys will be okay getting back?”
The one who spoke English shrugged. “We got out okay. Go. We will stay to cover you until you are airborne. Shalom, comrade. God be with you.”
“You too, pal.” Danny climbed back into the Piper and took off. He waggled his wings in a good-bye salute and headed back to Lod, about fifty miles away. As he flew he found himself wondering how those settlers were going to make out. Since his arrival in Palestine he’d flown dozens of these pipsqueak airlifts to rural settlements. To him it was like the cavalry surrounded by Apaches in the old West. The problem was, this time it was the Indians who had the modern weapons and the good guys who were stuck with bows and arrows.
There was no way to supply all the settlements. There were only a handful of Pipers in the country to carry the precious supplies that could be spared from the cities. A lot of those settlements were stuck for water as well as food and weapons. Four hundred pounds of water was a spit in the bucket out in the desert, but carrying even that much meant Danny couldn’t bring anything else.
He fingered the bullet hole in the windscreen. It had happened a few weeks ago, shocking the hell out of him, though he wasn’t touched. It gave him pause. That was just one bullet. What must dog-fighting be like with an opponent’s machine guns ripping after you? He knew the British were supplying the Arabs with the most modern of weapons but had taken solace in the notion that the enemy was untrained in their use.
Now he fingered the bullet hole, thinking that at least one guy down there had been practicing his target shooting.
Back at Lod he set down close to the Palestine Flying Club’s hangar. The airport was still under British control, but the authorities either believed or were willing to pretend that the club’s reason for existing was purely recreational.
The British Danny had met were a strange group. One thing about them was that you couldn’t generalize. After listening to Herschel for so long, Danny arrived expecting to find a bunch of Nazis, and while it was true that some of the British had nothing to learn from Hitler, there were others who seemed deeply embarrassed about England’s treatment of the Jews.
As Danny cut the engine he glimpsed Dov Gretz, the club’s operations officer, waving at him from the office. He was chatting with a young man.
“What’s up?” Danny asked, taking off his jacket and lighting a cigarette. “Everything went fine, if that’s what you’re—”
“You still want to fly a fighter?” Gretz asked.
“Yeah, sure.”
“All right. I’m taking you off supply runs. Roy here will take your Cub. You two should get along. He also has no Hebrew.”
“What happens to me?” Danny asked.
“You go for training—”
“Hey, I’ve had training.”
“Not in these you haven’t.”
“What are they, Spitfires?”
“Nope. Messerschmitts.”
Danny froze. “You’re shitting me. Messerschmitts?”
“ME-109’s.”
“Kraut planes! All the fighters you guys coulda come up with—Spitfires, Mustangs—what was the matter, you couldn’t find any Jap Zeros?”
“That’s what we’re getting,” Gretz said. “You want in or not?”
“Sure, sure. Where am I taking training, the Black Forest?”
“Czechoslovakia. Pack your bag and you’re out of here.”
“You’re not kidding, are you? I can’t wait. Come on, Roy, I’ll take you up. The Piper’s a beauty, but there’s a few things about her you oughta know.”
They walked to the hangar where the Piper was parked. Roy stared at the cowling. “What is that painted on it,” he asked, “an apple?”
“Nah, that’s a cherry,” Danny said proudly. “I did it myself.” He smacked the black lettering beneath it.
CHERRY STREET MARKET
We deliver
“That’s coming off,” Roy warned.
“Suit yourself, pal,” Danny said coolly. “I’m gonna paint it on my—Messerschmitt.” He shuddered and made a face.