Catch-22 - Heller, Joseph [115]
‘I’m cold,’ Snowden whimpered feebly over the intercom system then in a bleat of plaintive agony. ‘Please help me. I’m cold.’ And Yossarian crept out through the crawlway and climbed up over the bomb bay and down into the rear section of the plane where Snowden lay on the floor wounded and freezing to death in a yellow splash of sunlight near the new tail-gunner lying stretched out on the floor beside him in a dead faint.
Dobbs was the worst pilot in the world and knew it, a shattered wreck of a virile young man who was continually striving to convince his superiors that he was no longer fit to pilot a plane. None of his superiors would listen, and it was the day the number of missions was raised to sixty that Dobbs stole into Yossarian’s tent while Orr was out looking for gaskets and disclosed the plot he had formulated to murder Colonel Cathcart. He needed Yossarian’s assistance.
‘You want us to kill him in cold blood?’ Yossarian objected.
‘That’s right,’ Dobbs agreed with an optimistic smile, encouraged by Yossarian’s ready grasp of the situation. ‘We’ll shoot him to death with the Luger I brought back from Sicily that nobody knows I’ve got.’
‘I don’t think I could do it,’ Yossarian concluded, after weighing the idea in silence awhile.
Dobbs was astonished. ‘Why not?’
‘Look. Nothing would please me more than to have the son of a bitch break his neck or get killed in a crash or to find out that someone else had shot him to death. But I don’t think I could kill him.’
‘He’d do it to you,’ Dobbs argued. ‘In fact, you’re the one who told me he is doing it to us by keeping us in combat so long.’
‘But I don’t think I could do it to him. He’s got a right to live, too, I guess.’
‘Not as long as he’s trying to rob you and me of our right to live. What’s the matter with you?’ Dobbs was flabbergasted. ‘I used to listen to you arguing that same thing with Clevinger. And look what happened to him. Right inside that cloud.’
‘Stop shouting, will you?’ Yossarian shushed him.
‘I’m not shouting!’ Dobbs shouted louder, his face red with revolutionary fervor. His eyes and nostrils were running, and his palpitating crimson lower lip was splattered with a foamy dew. ‘There must have been close to a hundred men in the group who had finished their fifty-five missions when he raised the number to sixty. There must have been at least another hundred like you with just a couple more to fly. He’s going to kill us all if we let him go on forever. We’ve got to kill him first.’ Yossarian nodded expressionlessly, without committing himself. ‘Do you think we could get away with it?’
‘I’ve got it all worked out. I—’
‘Stop shouting, for Christ’s sake!’
‘I’m not shouting. I’ve got it—’
‘Will you stop shouting!’
‘I’ve got it all worked out,’ Dobbs whispered, gripping the side of Orr’s cot with white-knuckled hands to constrain them from waving. ‘Thursday morning when he’s due back from that goddam farmhouse of his in the hills, I’ll sneak up through the woods to that hairpin turn in the road and hide in the bushes. He has to slow down there, and I can watch the road in both directions to make sure there’s no one else around. When I see him coming, I’ll shove a big log out into the road to make him stop his jeep. Then I’ll step out of the bushes with my Luger and shoot him in the head until he’s dead. I’ll bury the gun, come back down through the woods to the squadron and go about my business just like everybody else. What could possibly go wrong?’ Yossarian had followed each step attentively. ‘Where do I come in?’ he asked in puzzlement.
‘I couldn’t do it without you,’ Dobbs explained. ‘I need you to tell me to go ahead.’ Yossarian found it hard to believe him. ‘Is that all you want me to do? Just tell you to go ahead?’
‘That’s all I need from you,’ Dobbs answered. ‘Just tell me to go ahead and I’ll blow his brains out all by myself the day after tomorrow.’ His voice was accelerating with emotion and rising again. ‘I’d like to shoot Colonel Korn in the head, too, while we’re at it, although I’d like to spare Major Danby, if that’s all right with you. Then I