Night Moves (Doc Ford) - By RandyWayne White Page 0,49
need to get photos, then figure out the best way to preserve it.” I stepped away so Tomlinson could take a look, adding, “Because the tube’s smashed doesn’t prove a wounded man used it. You’re guessing. More likely, it was damaged in the crash. See how delicate the needle is?”
“Ten yards from where we found the parachute harness?” Tomlinson argued. He gestured toward his little Mac laptop, where he’d opened several photos. “You knew what it was, didn’t you?”
I cleaned my glasses, then sat in front of the laptop, seeing photos of parachute harnesses issued in the 1940s and another of a small yellow box labeled Solution of Morphine WARNING: May Be Habit Forming! Beneath the box was a syrette tube of malleable metal, the needle protected by a glass tube and a safety key. The die stamp matched what I’d seen through the microscope.
I leaned back and said, “The D rings and clips told me it was some kind of harness, but the canvas fooled me. I could have sworn it was leather.” After scrolling through several more photos, comparing what we’d found melded into a tree with vintage harnesses, I added, “These are so simple compared to what they issue at Fort Bragg. Integrated parachute systems, sort of like BC vests for diving. But, yeah, I suspected.”
Tomlinson stooped beside me, the scent of patchouli not as strong as usual. He’d done his homework and pointed out similarities that seemed to prove we’d found what the old Army Air Corp called a Quick Attachable Chest harness. A remnant of red material at the shoulder, he claimed, proved the harness had been produced after 1943. Then he turned toward the door, asking, “You want a beer?” and left me alone to try to picture the unlikely scenario he was suggesting.
Just before his Avenger crashes, a pilot or crewman throws open the heavy canopy and jumps into the darkness. His chute opens, but he’s so badly injured when he lands he needs morphine. Or he finds an injured crewmate and injects him with the morphine. All possible but for one glaring detail: on a stormy night, how in the hell had a parachute drifted down within fifty yards of where the Avenger had crashed? Where pieces of the airplane had landed, anyway. Even if the man had jumped at a crazy low altitude, the parachute would have put on the brakes while the plane rocketed onward. Unless . . . unless there was a strong tailwind and the chute had followed the same trajectory and landed after the plane had crashed or—as I still suspected—broke up before hitting the ground.
I was interrupted by the sound of the screen door banging open and I looked around to see Tomlinson, fresh beer in hand, a wild smile of discovery on his face. “We’re idiots!” he said. “All three of us, it was right there and we missed it!”
I edged my chair back to create more space. “Are you okay?”
“Move . . . move—I’ll show you!”
Tomlinson couldn’t wait to get at the computer, so I stood and got out of his way. It took him awhile, but he finally brought up a photo of an Avenger taken in the 1940s. Then he opened a photo he’d taken of the tail rudder we’d found, a portion of a 3, or possibly an 8, faintly visible. He touched his finger to one, then the other. “Now do you understand?”
No . . . but I was working on it. In the old photo, the bomber appeared pristine, painted black or navy blue, the number 79 stenciled in white, huge, on the tail. The shot was taken from the plane’s starboard side. In Tomlinson’s photo, the rudder section Dan had found was also shot from that side. The top edge of the rudder was crowned with a hinge but otherwise flat, angled slightly aft. Distinctive. No chance the number we’d revealed was upside down.
My eyes moved back and forth. Finally, it hit me . . . a detail so damn obvious that I could only agree with Tomlinson.
“Absolute idiots,” I said. In the old photo of Avenger 79, the number 7 covered the rudder. The 9 covered the solid section of the tail. On the port side of the tail, though, the numbers would have been reversed. To prove it, I ripped a sheet from a notepad and just for the hell of it wrote 36 on both sides of the paper—the ID number of one of the