‘After all, you’re doing all this for them.
They ought to be willing to do something for you in return.’
‘What’s fair is fair.’
‘What’s fair is fair.’
‘They could take turns, sir.’
‘They might even take turns flying your missions for you, Milo.’
‘Who gets the credit?’
‘You get the credit, Milo.
And if a man wins a medal flying one of your missions, you get the medal.’
‘Who dies if he gets killed?’
‘Why, he dies, of course.
After all, Milo, what’s fair is fair.
There’s just one thing.’
‘You’ll have to raise the number of missions.’
‘I might have to raise the number of missions again, and I’m not sure the men will fly them.
They’re still pretty sore because I jumped them to seventy.
If I can get just one of the regular officers to fly more, the rest will probably follow.’
‘Nately will fly more missions, sir,’ Milo said.
‘I was told in strictest confidence just a little while ago that he’ll do anything he has to in order to remain overseas with a girl he’s fallen in love with.’
‘But Nately will fly more!’ Colonel Cathcart declared, and he brought his hands together in a resounding clap of victory.
‘Yes, Nately will fly more.
And this time I’m really going to jump the missions, right up to eighty, and really knock General Dreedle’s eye out.
And this is a good way to get that lousy rat Yossarian back into combat where he might get killed.’
‘Yossarian?’
A tremor of deep concern passed over Milo’s simple, homespun features, and he scratched the corner of his reddish-brown mustache thoughtfully.
‘Yeah, Yossarian.
I hear he’s going around saying that he’s finished his missions and the war’s over for him.
Well, maybe he has finished his missions. But he hasn’t finished your missions, has he?
Ha!
Ha!
Has he got a surprise coming to him!’
‘Sir, Yossarian is a friend of mine,’ Milo objected.
‘I’d hate to be responsible for doing anything that would put him back in combat.
I owe a lot to Yossarian.
Isn’t there any way we could make an exception of him?’
‘Oh, no, Milo.’ Colonel Cathcart clucked sententiously, shocked by the suggestion.
‘We must never play favorites.
We must always treat every man alike.’
‘I’d give everything I own to Yossarian,’ Milo persevered gamely on Yossarian’s behalf.
‘But since I don’t own anything, I can’t give everything to him, can I?
So he’ll just have to take his chances with the rest of the men, won’t he?’
‘What’s fair is fair, Milo.’
‘Yes, sir, what’s fair is fair,’ Milo agreed.
‘Yossarian is no better than the other men, and he has no right to expect any special privileges, has he?’
‘No, Milo.
What’s fair is fair.’
And there was no time for Yossarian to save himself from combat once Colonel Cathcart issued his announcement raising the missions to eighty late that same afternoon, no time to dissuade Nately from flying them or even to conspire again with Dobbs to murder Colonel Cathcart, for the alert sounded suddenly at dawn the next day and the men were rushed into the trucks before a decent breakfast could be prepared, and they were driven at top speed to the briefing room and then out to the airfield, where the clitterclattering fuel trucks were still pumping gasoline into the tanks of the planes and the scampering crews of armorers were toiling as swiftly as they could at hoisting the thousand-pound demolition bombs into the bomb bays.
Everybody was running, and engines were turned on and warmed up as soon as the fuel trucks had finished.
Intelligence had reported that a disabled Italian cruiser in drydock at La Spezia would be towed by the Germans that same morning to a channel at the entrance of the harbor and scuttled there to deprive the Allied armies of deep-water port facilities when they captured the city.
For once, a military intelligence report proved accurate.