Read the following text then answer the questions.

Clive Cussler's The Devil's Sea

The Pratt & Whitney radial engines rasped and hunted as they struggled to inhale the high-altitude air. A pair of the venerable Twin Wasp fourteen-cylinder aircraft motors, produced by the thousands during the war, powered the unmarked C-47 transport as it buffeted through a stormy night. Absent any cargo in the rear fuselage[1], the plane, known as the Skytrain, was particularly susceptible to the fickle air drafts it battled above the top of the world.

“Scraping twenty-two thousand feet in altitude,” Delbert Baker drawled from the copilot’s seat, a toothpick dangling from his lips. Dishevelled and moon-faced, he had the droopy-eyed gaze of a man who would yawn if a space alien tapped him on the shoulder. “Engines ain’t too happy.”

“We’re well under our ceiling, even if the motors don’t seem to think so,” the pilot said crisply. The antithesis of his copilot, James Worthington sat upright in a clean, pressed flight suit, his grip tight on the plane’s yoke. Yet he was equally impervious to the bumps and creaks of the empty cargo plane as it was knocked around the violent sky. Though unseen mountaintops passed just beneath the plane’s belly, Worthington remained as calm as a man playing checkers.

Like Baker, Worthington had plenty of experience flying over the Himalayas in transports. Both had regularly flown the Hump during World War II, when the U.S. Army Air Force supplied arms and supplies to the Nationalist Chinese from bases in India. Now they flew for the CIA, but the dangers of crossing the towering mountain range in marginal weather had not lessened.

Worthington tapped a pair of red-knobbed handles protruding between their seats, assuring they were pulled fully back. The throttle quadrant controlled the engine fuel mixture. They were set to their leanest settings for the crossing of the world’s tallest mountain range.

Their headsets crackled with the voice of their navigator, seated in a compartment behind them. “About twenty minutes to Lhasa. Maintain current heading.”

The airplane suddenly bounced like a roller coaster flying off the rails. Baker glanced out his side window at a steady snowfall pelting the wings. “Hope our boys turn the lights on.”

Worthington nodded. “They’ll be hiking across the Himalayas on their own if they don’t.”

The plane soldiered on through the night, the pilots fighting sudden drafts that would send the craft hurtling upward. Less frequent, but more precarious, were the sharp downdrafts that struck without warning.

Soon they approached their target, and Worthington began descending, knowing the highest peaks were now behind them. Through the cold black night, a handful of lights appeared on the ground, glowing like distant candles.

“This must be the place,” Baker said.

The navigator provided a new heading, and Worthington adjusted their flight path, turning over the scattered lights of Lhasa. Tibet’s historic capital, it was a colourful but dusty city that stretched along the narrow Kyichu River Valley at an imposing elevation of twelve thousand feet. The country’s one and only official airport lay eighty miles to the northeast, but Worthington had no intention of making a formal arrival in the Chinese-occupied territory. Instead, he guided the C-47 toward an ad hoc landing strip created for the mission by friendly locals, who had secretly cleared rocks from an open plain on the town’s west side.

The snow diminished, then ceased altogether, as Worthington flew low over the city, both aviators scanning the ground through the broken cloud cover.

“There, ahead, to the right.” Baker pointed out the windscreen. The toothpick in his mouth suddenly twirled, the first indication of tension.

Worthington saw it, too. A pair of faint blue lights, lined up perfectly east to west, with a long black patch between them.

Baker squinted at the distance and lowered the landing gear. “Not sure they gave us the two thousand feet we asked for.”

Worthington shook his head. “Too late to argue now.” He aligned the nose of the Skytrain with the nearest light and reduced speed. A brisk headwind seemed to bring the plane to a standstill, while rocking the wings. Worthington waited until the blue light disappeared beneath the nose, then called to Baker. “Landing lights.”

Baker flicked on the plane’s lights as the craft descended. With the skilled hand of a surgeon, Worthington countered the angry winds and eased the plane lower.

The landing lights showed a flat, dusty field as the tires kissed the ground a yard past the blue light. The C-47 bounded over the uneven surface as it slowed under Worthington’s hard braking, its tail wheel licking the dust. The pilot guided the aircraft to a stop shy of the second blue light, then spun around and jostled it across the field to the first light. He turned the plane into the wind for takeoff and cut the engines.

Baker opened his side window and looked across the field. To the south were lights from several houses, but otherwise all was dark. There was no one waiting for them. “Either we’re early,” he said, “or our passengers are late.”

“Or not arriving at all,” Worthington said. “At least there was no welcoming committee waiting.” He cocked an ear, then slid open his own side window. He turned to Baker with a grimace and shook his head.

Over the murmur of the gusting winds came the unmistakable popping of gunfire in the distance.

[1] Fuselage – main body of the aircraft.