That was the mission on which Yossarian lost his nerve. Yossarian lost his nerve on the mission to Avignonbecause Snowden lost his guts, and Snowden lost his guts because their pilot that day was Huple, who was onlyfifteen years old, and their co-pilot was Dobbs, who was even worse and who wanted Yossarian to join with himin a plot to murder Colonel Cathcart. Huple was a good pilot, Yossarian knew, but he was only a kid, and Dobbshad no confidence in him, either, and wrested the controls away without warning after they had dropped theirbombs, going berserk in mid-air and tipping the plane over into that heart-stopping, ear-splitting, indescribablypetrifying fatal dive that tore Yossarian’s earphones free from their connection and hung him helplessly to theroof of the nose by the top of his head.

　　Oh, God! Yossarian had shrieked soundlessly as he felt them all falling. Oh, God! Oh, God! Oh, God! Oh, God!

　　he had shrieked beseechingly through lips that could not open as the plane fell and he dangled without weight bythe top of his head until Huple managed to seize the controls back and leveled the plane out down inside thecrazy, craggy, patchwork canyon of crashing antiaircraft fire from which they had climbed away and from whichthey would now have to escape again. Almost at once there was a thud and a hole the size of a big fist in theplexiglass. Yossarian’s cheeks were stinging with shimmering splinters. There was no blood.

　　“What happened? What happened?” he cried, and trembled violently when he could not hear his own voice in hisears. He was cowed by the empty silence on the intercom and almost too horrified to move as he crouched like atrapped mouse on his hands and knees and waited without daring to breathe until he finally spied the gleamingcylindrical jack plug of his headset swinging back and forth in front of his eyes and jammed it back into itsreceptacle with fingers that rattled. Oh, God! he kept shrieking with no abatement of terror as the flak thumpedand mushroomed all about him. Oh, God!

　　Dobbs was weeping when Yossarian jammed his jack plug back into the intercom system and was able to hearagain.

　　“Help him, help him,” Dobbs was sobbing. “Help him, help him.”

　　“Help who? Help who?” Yossarian called back. “Help who?”

　　“The bombardier, the bombardier,” Dobbs cried. “He doesn’t answer. Help the bombardier, help thebombardier.”

　　“I’m the bombardier,” Yossarian cried back at him. “I’m the bombardier. I’m all right. I’m all right.”

　　“Then help him, help him,” Dobbs wept. “Help him, help him.”

　　“Help who? Help who?”

　　“The radio-gunner,” Dobbs begged. “Help the radio-gunner.”

　　“I’m cold,” Snowden whimpered feebly over the intercom system then in a bleat of plaintive agony. “Please helpme. I’m cold.”

　　And Yossarian crept out through the crawlway and climbed up over the bomb bay and down into the rear sectionof the plane where Snowden lay on the floor wounded and freezing to death in a yellow splash of sunlight nearthe 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 continuallystriving 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 Orrwas out looking for gaskets and disclosed the plot he had formulated to murder Colonel Cathcart. He neededYossarian’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 tofind 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 incombat 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 wasflabbergasted. “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 wererunning, and his palpitating crimson lower lip was splattered with a foamy dew. “There must have been close toa hundred men in the group who had finished their fifty-five missions when he raised the number to sixty. Theremust have been at least another hundred like you with just a couple more to fly. He’s going to kill us all if we lethim 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 toconstrain them from waving. “Thursday morning when he’s due back from that goddam farmhouse of his in thehills, I’ll sneak up through the woods to that hairpin turn in the road and hide in the bushes. He has to slow downthere, and I can watch the road in both directions to make sure there’s no one else around. When I see himcoming, 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 myLuger and shoot him in the head until he’s dead. I’ll bury the gun, come back down through the woods to thesquadron 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 myselfthe day after tomorrow.” His voice was accelerating with emotion and rising again. “I’d like to shoot ColonelKorn in the head, too, while we’re at it, although I’d like to spare Major Danby, if that’s all right with you. ThenI’d murder Appleby and Havermeyer also, and after we finish murdering Appleby and Havermeyer I’d like tomurder McWatt.”

　　“McWatt?” cried Yossarian, almost jumping up in horror. “McWatt’s a friend of mine. What do you want fromMcWatt?”

　　“I don’t know,” Dobbs confessed with an air of floundering embarrassment. “I just thought that as long as wewere murdering Appleby and Havermeyer we might as well murder McWatt too. Don’t you want to murderMcWatt?”

　　Yossarian took a firm stand. “Look, I might keep interested in this if you stop shouting it all over the island andif you stick to killing Colonel Cathcart. But if you’re going to turn this into a blood bath, you can forget aboutme.”

　　“All right, all right,” Dobbs sought to placate him. “Just Colonel Cathcart. Should I do it? Tell me to go ahead.”

　　Yossarian shook his head. “I don’t think I could tell you to go ahead.”

　　Dobbs was frantic. “I’m willing to compromise,” he pleaded vehemently. “You don’t have to tell me to goahead. Just tell me it’s a good idea. Okay? Is it a good idea?”

　　Yossarian still shook his head. “It would have been a great idea if you had gone ahead and done it without evenspeaking to me. Now it’s too late. I don’t think I can tell you anything. Give me some more time. I might changemy mind.”

　　“Then it will be too late.”

　　Yossarian kept shaking his head. Dobbs was disappointed. He sat for a moment with a hangdog look, thenspurted to his feet suddenly and stamped away to have another impetuous crack at persuading Doc Daneeka toground him, knocking over Yossarian’s washstand with his hip when he lurched around and tripping over thefuel line of the stove Orr was still constructing. Doc Daneeka withstood Dobbs’s blustering and gesticulatingattack with a series of impatient nods and sent him to the medical tent to describe his symptoms to Gus and Wes,who painted his gums purple with gentian-violet solution the moment he started to talk. They painted his toespurple, too, and forced a laxative down his throat when he opened his mouth again to complain, and then theysent him away.

　　Dobbs was in even worse shape than Hungry Joe, who could at least fly missions when he was not havingnightmares. Dobbs was almost as bad as Orr, who seemed happy as an undersized, grinning lark with hisderanged and galvanic giggle and shivering warped buck teeth and who was sent along for a rest leave with Miloand Yossarian on the trip to Cairo for eggs when Milo bought cotton instead and took off at dawn for Istanbulwith his plane packed to the gun turrets with exotic spiders and unripened red bananas. Orr was one of thehomeliest freaks Yossarian had ever encountered, and one of the most attractive. He had a raw bulgy face, withhazel eyes squeezing from their sockets like matching brown halves of marbles and thick, wavy particolored hairsloping up to a peak on the top of his head like a pomaded pup tent. Orr was knocked down into the water or hadan engine shot out almost every time he went up, and he began jerking on Yossarian’s arm like a wild man after they had taken off for Naples and come down in Sicily to find the scheming, cigar-smoking, ten-year-old pimpwith the two twelve-year-old virgin sisters waiting for them in town in front of the hotel in which there was roomfor only Milo. Yossarian pulled back from Orr adamantly, gazing with some concern and bewilderment at Mt.

　　Etna instead of Mt. Vesuvius and wondering what they were doing in Sicily instead of Naples as Orr keptentreating him in a tittering, stuttering, concupiscent turmoil to go along with him behind the scheming ten-yearoldpimp to his two twelve-year-old virgin sisters who were not really virgins and not really sisters and who werereally only twenty-eight.

　　“Go with him,” Milo instructed Yossarian laconically. “Remember your mission.”

　　“All right,” Yossarian yielded with a sigh, remembering his mission. “But at least let me try to find a hotel roomfirst so I can get a good night’s sleep afterward.”

　　“You’ll get a good night’s sleep with the girls,” Milo replied with the same air of intrigue. Remember yourmission.”

　　But they got no sleep at all, for Yossarian and Orr found themselves jammed into the same double bed with thetwo twelve-year-old twenty-eight-year-old prostitutes, who turned out to be oily and obese and who kept wakingthem up all night long to ask them to switch partners. Yossarian’s perceptions were soon so fuzzy that he paid nonotice to the beige turban the fat one crowding into him kept wearing until late the next morning when thescheming ten-year-old pimp with the Cuban panatella snatched it off in public in a bestial caprice that exposed inthe brilliant Sicilian daylight her shocking, misshapen and denudate skull. Vengeful neighbors had shaved herhair to the gleaming bone because she had slept with Germans. The girl screeched in feminine outrage andwaddled comically after the scheming ten-year-old pimp, her grisly, bleak, violated scalp slithering up and downludicrously around the queer darkened wart of her face like something bleached and obscene. Yossarian hadnever laid eyes on anything so bare before. The pimp spun the turban high on his finger like a trophy and kepthimself skipping inches ahead of her finger tips as he led her in a tantalizing circle around the square congestedwith people who were howling with laughter and pointing to Yossarian with derision when Milo strode up with agrim look of haste and puckered his lips reprovingly at the unseemly spectacle of so much vice and frivolity.

　　Milo insisted on leaving at once for Malta.

　　“We’re sleepy,” Orr whined.

　　“That’s your own fault,” Milo censured them both selfrighteously. “If you had spent the night in your hotel roominstead of with these immoral girls, you’d both feel as good as I do today.”

　　“You told us to go with them,” Yossarian retorted accusingly. “And we didn’t have a hotel room. You were theonly one who could get a hotel room.”

　　“That wasn’t my fault, either,” Milo explained haughtily. “How was I supposed to know all the buyers would bein town for the chick-pea harvest?”

　　“You knew it,” Yossarian charged. “That explains why we’re here in Sicily instead of Naples. You’ve probably got the whole damned plane filled with chick-peas already.”

　　“Shhhhhh!” Milo cautioned sternly, with a meaningful glance toward Orr. “Remember your mission.”

　　The bomb bay, the rear and tail sections of the plane and most of the top turret gunner’s section were all filledwith bushels of chick-peas when they arrived at the airfield to take off for Malta.

　　Yossarian’s mission on the trip was to distract Orr from observing where Milo bought his eggs, even though Orrwas a member of Milo’s syndicate and, like every other member of Milo’s syndicate, owned a share. His missionwas silly, Yossarian felt, since it was common knowledge that Milo bought his eggs in Malta for seven centsapiece and sold them to the mess halls in his syndicate for five cents apiece.

　　“I just don’t trust him,” Milo brooded in the plane, with a backward nod toward Orr, who was curled up like atangled rope on the low bushels of chick-peas, trying torturedly to sleep. “And I’d just as soon buy my eggswhen he’s not around to learn my business secrets. What else don’t you understand?”

　　Yossarian was riding beside him in the co-pilot’s seat. “I don’t understand why you buy eggs for seven centsapiece in Malta and sell them for five cents.”

　　“I do it to make a profit.”

　　“But how can you make a profit? You lose two cents an egg.”

　　“But I make a profit of three and a quarter cents an egg by selling them for four and a quarter cents an egg to thepeople in Malta I buy them from for seven cents an egg. Of course, I don’t make the profit. The syndicate makesthe profit. And everybody has a share.”

　　Yossarian felt he was beginning to understand. “And the people you sell the eggs to at four and a quarter centsapiece make a profit of two and three quarter cents apiece when they sell them back to you at seven cents apiece.

　　Is that right? Why don’t you sell the eggs directly to you and eliminate the people you buy them from?”

　　“Because I’m the people I buy them from,” Milo explained. “I make a profit of three and a quarter cents apiecewhen I sell them to me and a profit of two and three quarter cents apiece when I buy them back from me. That’sa total profit of six cents an egg. I lose only two cents an egg when I sell them to the mess halls at five centsapiece, and that’s how I can make a profit buying eggs for seven cents apiece and selling them for five centsapiece. I pay only one cent apiece at the hen when I buy them in Sicily.”

　　“In Malta,” Yossarian corrected. “You buy your eggs in Malta, not Sicily.”

　　Milo chortled proudly. “I don’t buy eggs in Malta,” he confessed, with an air of slight and clandestineamusement that was the only departure from industrious sobriety Yossarian had ever seen him make. “I buythem in Sicily for one cent apiece and transfer them to Malta secretly at four and a half cents apiece in order toget the price of eggs up to seven cents apiece when people come to Malta looking for them.”

　　“Why do people come to Malta for eggs when they’re so expensive there?”

　　“Because they’ve always done it that way.”

　　“Why don’t they look for eggs in Sicily?”

　　“Because they’ve never done it that way.”

　　“Now I really don’t understand. Why don’t you sell your mess halls the eggs for seven cents apiece instead offerfive cents apiece?”

　　“Because my mess halls would have no need for me then. Anyone can buy seven-cents-apiece eggs for sevencents apiece.”

　　“Why don’t they bypass you and buy the eggs directly from you in Malta at four and a quarter cents apiece?”

　　“Because I wouldn’t sell it to them.”

　　“Why wouldn’t you sell it to them?”

　　“Because then there wouldn’t be as much room for profit. At least this way I can make a bit for myself as amiddleman.”

　　“Then you do make a profit for yourself,” Yossarian declared.

　　“Of course I do. But it all goes to the syndicate. And everybody has a share. Don’t you understand? It’s exactlywhat happens wit............