Clash by Night Read Online Free PDF Page B

water stained ceiling. The humidity corroded everything in this climate. Although the base command had repair details painting and refurbishing constantly, the whole place was in a continual state of scabrous decay. As he shifted he heard the rustle of paper in his breast pocket, and removed a letter he had received that day from a girl he’d known at college in Evanston. He tried to read it once more by the beacon’s intermittent light, but gave up, refolding it and putting it away. He remembered it well enough anyway: chatty, suggestive, uninspired. She was a nice girl, but already picking out the wallpaper for her little white house with the picket fence. All she needed was a husband to fit into the picture.  
    He sighed dismissively, his mind returning to the mission. He could do it, he felt that with an atavistic passion, with the certainty of a saint. He could do it cold, whatever it was, if only they would give him the chance.
    The first shimmer of dawn was appearing in the patch of sky he could see from his window, and he accepted that he would not sleep that night. He laced his fingers behind his head and waited for reveille. If he had to face another week in this steaming greenhouse, chain smoking and ticking off the long summer hours which passed with agonizing slowness, he would go mad. The world was boiling up around him and he was longing to kick over the traces and jump into the fray. Why should he be stuck in the Carolina flatlands, growing a heat rash, when there was so much to be done? He was tired of waiting; he wanted to get into it now .
    Gray light was filling the squad room, but nobody stirred, nobody moved. Soldiers slept like the dead until forcibly roused. Harris sat up and pulled off his skivvy, wiping his sweating face with it. He was always hot in this place. He thought longingly of the cool breezes off Lake Michigan, fresh and invigorating. Even a Chicago winter now seemed attractive in retrospect. Then the cool breezes became Siberian headwinds, and the temperature often plunged below freezing at Halloween and remained there until Easter. But his recollection was selective. He remembered roaring blazes in stone fireplaces, the sledding races, the soothing, cleansing whiteness of the first snowfall. He conveniently forgot the paralyzing ice storms and getting up at five-thirty to scatter rock salt on the sidewalk before his father’s hardware store. It would never have occurred to him that he was homesick, though he had all the symptoms of that disease; he just didn’t like the climate of North Carolina, that was all.  
    He closed his eyes and rubbed the shirt over his damp hair, and then mopped his upper body, jingling his dog tags with the motion. He glanced at his watch. Reveille was in five minutes. He stretched and wondered how long he would have to wait before getting some kind of word on his candidacy for the mission.
    * * *  
    As it turned out, he didn’t have to wait long. Of the men present for Forrest’s announcement, thirteen asked to go on the mission, and the commander interviewed only half of them during the following week. Five days after Harris notified Gray that he wanted to be considered he was ushered into Forrest’s office, where Forrest and Lieutenant Gray were already there. He presented himself, saluting, and then waited for direction. Gray nodded to him and then quietly left the room, shutting the door behind him.
    “Sit down, Captain,” Forrest said, shuffling through a pile of papers on his desk. “You may smoke if you like.”  
    Harris lit up gratefully and noticed that his fingers were trembling.  
    He wanted this very much.
    “I have your records here before me, Dan, and they create an impressive picture. Top grades in college, second in your class at Quantico, flight school at Cherry Point, 150 safe jumps,” Forrest began, perusing the file and then looking up at Harris. He nodded his head slightly, tapping the manila folder with a nicotine stained