The Last Heroes

by W. E. B Griffin

  ‘‘I’ve been trying to get through to the American consulate, ’’ Eric said, turning more serious. ‘‘The Rabat lines keep going out, but sooner or later they’re going to make a mistake, and I’m going to yell like hell at whoever answers the consulate phone. In the meantime, I’m safe.’’ He saw the look on el Ferruch’s face, and added: ‘‘Aren’t I?’’

  ‘‘No,’’ el Ferruch said simply. ‘‘Ahmed Mohammed has learned that the Germans’ patience is exhausted. They’re going to come for you probably tonight, and the Sûreté and Deuxième Bureau are going to look the other way.’’

  ‘‘And?’’ Fulmar said.

  ‘‘I saw the pasha of Marrakech this morning,’’ el Ferruch said. ‘‘About you.’’

  ‘‘And?’’ Eric repeated.

  ‘‘Somewhat reluctantly, he gave me permission to take you to Ksar es Souk.’’ He added, significantly, ‘‘Provided I can get you to Ksar es Souk.’’

  ‘‘You needed his permission?’’ Fulmar asked. El Ferruch nodded. ‘‘What the hell would I do at Ksar es Souk?’’

  ‘‘I don’t know, since there’s no tennis court and no women,’’ el Ferruch said. ‘‘None that you could go after, in any event.’’

  ‘‘Why don’t you get on the telephone, call the consulate, say you’re me, and have them send somebody to get me?’’

  ‘‘Because I have been told not to,’’ el Ferruch said.

  "By the pasha?" Eric asked. El Ferruch nodded. ‘‘Why not?"

  ‘‘I went to ask his permission to take you to Rabat,’’ el Ferruch said. ‘‘He doesn’t think you should leave Morocco right now. The reason the telephone lines are out for you is that Thami el Glaoui doesn’t want you talking to your consulate. ’’

  ‘‘Why, that miserable, crazy sonofabitch!’’ Fulmar fumed.

  ‘‘Don’t say that out loud, Eric,’’ el Ferruch said coldly.

  ‘‘What does he want from me?’’

  ‘‘I told you, he doesn’t want you to leave Morocco right now.’’

  ‘‘Well, fuck him!’’

  ‘‘You have two choices: You can go back to Germany—I can’t stop you from walking out of here. Or you can give me your word you will not try to contact the Americans, and return to Ksar es Souk with me.’’

  ‘‘Give you my word?’’

  ‘‘That presumes, of course, that I can get you past the thugs from the Sicherheitsdienst.’’

  ‘‘Give you my word?’’ Fulmar repeated. ‘‘Whose side are you on?’’

  ‘‘This is the real world, Eric; won’t you ever learn that?’’ el Ferruch said. ‘‘And in the final analysis, I am on my own side. I went as far as I can, asking Thami el Glaoui to help you.’’

  ‘‘I made the crazy old bastard a lot of money,’’ Eric said petulantly.

  ‘‘You made yourself what you think is a lot of money in the process. What you made for el Glaoui is less than what watering his golf course costs in a month.’’

  Fulmar glowered at him.

  ‘‘You’re an ass sometimes, Eric,’’ el Ferruch said nastily. ‘‘An ungrateful ass!’’

  They locked eyes for a long moment; then Fulmar shrugged, giving in.

  ‘‘The one thing I don’t want is the German Army,’’ he said. ‘‘How are you going to get me out of here? In addition to the Sicherheitsdienst people, there is also a pair from the Deuxième Bureau out there sitting in a Citroën just outside the gate.’’

  ‘‘Before we go any further, do I have your word?’’

  ‘‘OK, Christ. Sure.’’ He held three fingers extended at the level of his shoulder. ‘‘Boy Scout’s honor,’’ he said. ‘‘How’s that, you prick?’’

  Sidi el Ferruch slapped his face as hard as he could.

  ‘‘Don’t forget again where you are, and what you are, and who I am,’’ el Ferruch said.

  Fulmar balled his fists, and for a moment el Ferruch thought he was going to punch him. But in the end, Fulmar relaxed his fingers.

  ‘‘OK,’’ he said, his voice strained. ‘‘I give you my word of honor. Before I try to get in touch with any Americans, I’ll tell you first. Is that good enough?’’

  ‘‘Don’t expect to impose on the friendship between us,’’ el Ferruch said.

  ‘‘Oh, don’t worry about that,’’ Fulmar said sarcastically. ‘‘Just tell me how you’re going to get me out of here.’’

  ‘‘The Germans are not paying any attention to the natives, and the Deuxième Bureau will not interfere with me unless I give them cause,’’ el Ferruch said. ‘‘So the trick is not to give them cause.’’

  Five minutes later, Sidi el Ferruch, accompanied by one of his Berber guards, whose lower face was masked in the Berber tradition, rode the elevator down to the lobby, where Najib Hammi was waiting along with four other Berbers. They walked across the lobby and went outside and entered the automobiles in which they had arrived.

  There was a Sicherheitsdienst agent in the lobby, but he paid little more than perfunctory attention to the small group of natives who came out of the elevator, chattering like gossiping women.

  Across the street from the Hôtel d’Anfa, one of the Deuxième Bureau agents pointed his finger at them as he counted them like sheep. He was satisfied. Seven had gone into the hotel, and seven had come out.

  In twenty minutes they were out of Casablanca on the Atlantic coast road to El Jadida. There they turned onto the road which would take them—via the Tizi-n-Tichka pass— through the mountains. The road was narrow, unpaved, and there were no barriers. The French Foreign Legion had built it using only picks and shovels.

  The trip to the palace of the pasha of Ksar es Souk took them all night.

  Kunming, China 18 December 1941

  When the P40-Bs and the First and Second Squadrons of the American Volunteer Group began to land at Kunming, Wingmen Canidy and Bitter were waiting for them. They had been there three days. Canidy and Bitter had been officer- and deputy-officer-in-charge of moving the ground element from Toungoo to Kunming.

  The ground element of the American Volunteer Group had made the first leg—about 350 miles—of the trip to China aboard a special train, made up of thirty-three flatcars, a dining car, and three first-class passenger cars.

  ‘‘Army bodied’’ (canvas-roofed flatbed) Studebaker and International two-ton trucks (some olive drab with Chinese Army insignia, some with the CAMCO legend on their doors, and some unmarked), all loaded to capacity, were chained to the flatcars. So were two aircraft-fueling trucks, a fire truck, half a dozen Chevrolet pickup trucks, four jeeps, and three Studebaker Commander sedans, one of them Canidy’s.

  The train passed through Mandalay shortly after midnight, and arrived at Lashio, the eastern terminus of the Burma Road, as dawn was breaking.

  While the Americans of the AVG group ate breakfast in the dining car, the vehicles were unloaded from the flatcars and inspected by a team of American mechanics. Six of the trucks and one of the pickups were judged unfit to make the trip. They would follow with subsequent convoys.

  As Canidy was being given instructions for the road trip, the CAMCO Twin Beech D18S appeared in the sky, and thirty minutes later John B. Dolan, carrying two canvas suitcases, walked up to Canidy’s Studebaker and asked if he had room for a hitchhiker.

  Once the convoy set out it averaged 20 mph over the Burma Road, and it took them forty-four hours to drive its 681 miles. This included a ten-hour overnight stop. The road was too narrow and too dangerous to drive in the dark.

  At more than a dozen places along the road, they had seen human chains of Chinese manhandling cargoes of trucks, which had gone over the edge back up the steep mountainsides. And there had been three large black gashes burned in the thick vegetation where fuel trucks had exploded and burned.

  In the Studebaker, Dolan volunteered to explain how the American Volunteer Group would have to function now that the United States was in the war.

  They were supposed to have one hundred pilots.
They had eighty. There were supposed to be about three hundred people in the support element. There were just over one hundred thirty. And there would be no more ‘‘volunteers’’ released from the Army and the Navy and Marine Corps to ‘‘work for CAMCO.’’

  Of the one hundred P40-Bs shipped from Buffalo, seventy-five remained. Ten were simply missing, probably riding the Orient in the hold of some freighter, or on the bottom of the sea in ships sunk by the Japanese. Twelve had been wrecked beyond repair in training. Of the seventy-five aircraft now in AVG hands, twenty were grounded, more than likely permanently, because of missing parts.

  When they reached Kunming, very early in the morning, smoke had been still rising from the fires started by the Japanese bombing attack the previous day. The Japanese tactic was to bomb the city with incendiaries. They knew that fires were going to cause more physical and psychological damage than high explosives.

  Kunming’s only defenses against the aerial attack were a half-dozen batteries of 20-mm antiaircraft cannon, which the Japanese could easily fly around, and some .50-caliber water-cooled machine guns protecting the air base against strafing attacks. Since it was unnecessary for the Japanese to descend into range of the .50s, the machine guns were seldom fired.

  But the Kunming air base itself was far better militarily than anyone expected. There were solid revetments for the planes, and piles of stones and sandbags protected the maintenance buildings against anything but a direct hit. The runways were long and smooth. And because they were made of crushed stone, a bomb striking a runway would knock it out only until the hole could be filled with more crushed stone.

  It was literally hand-built. Thousands of people had spent long days, using only the most rudimentary hand tools, to build it.

  For the AVG itself, something like a U.S. military base had been established. There was a BOQ (called a hostel), with showers, dayrooms, a bar, and a library. There was a baseball field and tennis courts, a small medical facility, and even a pistol range.

  Dolan, Canidy, Bitter, and the others were not the first Americans at Kunming. They had been preceded by people from CAMCO and by more old China hands from Chennault’s staff.

  Since Canidy and Bitter had not been assigned to one of the three squadrons as the other pilots had, and since all the rooms in the hostel had been reserved for the squadrons, Canidy and Bitter moved in with Dolan and the support personnel, as they had in Rangoon.

  The operation of the airfield was under a Chinese major general, Huang Jen Lin, an enormous man who—Canidy and Bitter were promptly and significantly informed—was a devout Christian. General Huang spoke fluent English and seemed quite competent. After meeting Huang, Canidy and Bitter were immediately issued brand-new U.S. Army Air Corps horsehide flight jackets. On the back of these had been hand-painted a sort of signboard. At its top a legend in Chinese announced that the wearer was an American who had come to China to fight the Japanese, and that it was the duty of every Chinese to give him whatever assistance he required.

  The food in the mess was astonishing. Not only was it very good, but it was American. The Chinese chef had learned his trade as number-one kitchen boy aboard a U.S. Navy gunboat on the Yangtze River patrol. And there was something else in the mess Canidy found delightful: Chinese girls from the American Missionary College. They had been enlisted for service as interpreters. They were quite lovely, adored American food, spoke excellent English, and one of them, a slight, delicate, graceful girl, was receptive to Canidy’s invitation to come to his room and see what they could pick up on the Hallicrafter’s shortwave radio.

  Sensing that Ed Bitter really disapproved of what he had in mind, Canidy spent a moment with him before he left with the girl.

  ‘‘What’s the matter with you now?’’

  ‘‘Nothing.’’

  ‘‘Because they’re Chinese? Amazing thing about Chinese girls,’’ Canidy said, ‘‘they get better-looking by the minute. ’’

  ‘‘You don’t think you’re taking advantage of her?’’ Bitter asked. ‘‘That doesn’t bother you? For Christ’s sake, she’s from a missionary school. She doesn’t know what you want from her.’’

  ‘‘What I’m doing, Eddie,’’ Canidy said patiently, ‘‘is getting laid.’’ Then, grasping Bitter by the arm, he theatrically proclaimed, ‘‘Live today, Edwin, for tomorrow you may wish you were dead! Into the valley of death fly the noble ninety-five.’’

  Bitter was not amused.

  A few minutes later, Canidy had learned that General Huang’s thoroughness in providing for the needs of the Americans went so far as providing interpreters with supplies of foil-wrapped U.S. Navy-issue condoms.

  6

  Early in the morning of December 20, Canidy was awakened before dawn by a shy and giggling interpreter who shielded her eyes from the interpreter in his bed and sweetly singsonged that ‘‘Meester Crooooookshanks’’ would be happy if ‘‘Meeester Can-Eye-Die’’ would join him immediately at breakfast.

  Ham and eggs, pancakes, strawberry preserves, and good black coffee were already on the table when Crookshanks waved him into a chair. There was another pilot wearing an Air Corps green shirt and trousers, with a piece of white parachute silk tied as a foulard around his neck. There were wings, similar to Air Corps wings, with the flaming sun of China where the federal shield usually went. It was the first time Canidy had seen such insignia.

  ‘‘You know Doug Douglass, of course?’’ Crookshanks said.

  ‘‘Sure,’’ Canidy said. Doug Douglass was short, crew-cutted, and young-looking. The first time Canidy had seen him had been on the ship on the way over. He had thought then that Douglass looked more like a Boy Scout than an officer and pilot. He had subsequently learned that Douglass was a West Pointer, one of those rare ‘‘natural’’ pilots. Douglass also shared (as much as could be expected of a West Pointer) much of Canidy’s amused scorn for Crookshank’s attempts to ‘‘shape up’’ the Flying Tigers.

  Canidy wondered if Douglass’s irreverence for proper behavior and the ‘‘wrong attitude’’ had earned him a place on Crookshank’s shit list.

  ‘‘What I’m going to do, Canidy,’’ Crookshanks said, ‘‘is send up early-morning patrols of two aircraft, to watch the area the Japanese usually come through.’’

  Canidy nodded.

  ‘‘There’s the ground spotter network, of course,’’ Crookshanks continued, ‘‘but we don’t really know yet whether that really works. And we don’t really know how well our air-to-ground communications are going to function. That’s what we hope to find out from you two.’’

  ‘‘When do we go?’’ Douglass asked.

  ‘‘First light, about fifteen minutes.’’

  ‘‘OK,’’ Canidy said. ‘‘Why me?’’

  ‘‘Because you’re a pretty good navigator,’’ Crookshanks said. ‘‘I want a pretty accurate position report, to compare with the ground spotter network’s report.’’

  ‘‘OK,’’ Canidy said.

  ‘‘Any other questions?’’

  ‘‘You plan to have me doing this regularly?’’

  ‘‘For the time being. You and Bitter can alternate. I plan to have an afternoon patrol, too. And we’ll rotate the pilots from the squadron who will fly with you.’’

  ‘‘I don’t like to fly pool airplanes,’’ Canidy said.

  ‘‘The only aircraft we have are assigned to squadrons. You’ll have to fly what’s available.’’

  ‘‘I don’t care which one,’’ Canidy said. ‘‘I would just like the same one, time after time.’’

  ‘‘I don’t see how I can arrange that,’’ Crookshanks said. He waited until Canidy nodded, and then went on. ‘‘Now, the way this will work this morning is that you will fly patrol until we send you a report of incoming aircraft from the ground spotters. You will then confirm sighting. When you have their location, you will so report by radio. We’re not sure about our communications, so while you’re reporting by radio, Doug will hightail it back her
e with the same information. You will remain in sight of the Japanese formation. ’’

  ‘‘OK,’’ Canidy said. ‘‘And what if we sight a formation before we get it from the ground spotters?’’

  ‘‘Same thing. Fix the location, course, altitude, and so on, radio it, and send Doug back here immediately.’’

  ‘‘OK,’’ Canidy said. ‘‘Am I supposed to attack the formation? ’’

  Crookshanks met his eyes. ‘‘Use your own judgment,’’ he said softly.

  Canidy nodded. Then he drained his coffee.

  ‘‘I’ll see you on the flight line in ten minutes, Doug,’’ he said.

  ‘‘If I’m late,’’ Douglass replied, ‘‘you just go on without me.’’

  Canidy smiled at him. At least he wouldn’t be going out for the first time with some damned hero, eager to do battle with the Dirty Jap.

  They found a Japanese formation before they were advised of its presence by ground spotters relaying the information through Kunming.

  They were on oxygen at fifteen thousand feet. Six thousand feet below, flying directly toward them between two cloud formations, were a dozen Japanese airplanes, too far away to be typed, flying in two uneven Vs.

  Canidy waggled his wings, and at the same time turned to look at Doug Douglass, who was flying two hundred feet off his right wingtip. Douglass was also waggling his wings and pointing ahead. Canidy nodded and held up his chart for Douglass to see. Canidy marked the location on his chart and went on the air long enough to transmit, once, the coordinates. Just the coordinates, not the altitude or direction or airspeed. He had no way to judge those. Doug Douglass would have to estimate their altitude, airspeed, and direction and report them as well as he could. It was possible that the Japanese would have their radios tuned to the same frequency they were using.

  Douglass bent his head over his lap, obviously marking down the coordinates Canidy had given him; then he raised his head and shook it exaggeratedly: OK.

  Canidy made a motion with his right hand: Go.