W E B Griffin - Men at War 2 - Secret Warriors

by Secret Warriors(Lit)

  "You weren't listening,' Canidy said.

  "I can't go. I know too much."

  "So what happens now?" Canidy nodded again toward the station chief and Colonel Stevens, who were hovering around the telephone.

  "We wait for the phone to ring," Canidy said. "Jesus Christ," Whittaker said. The phone never rang. But ten minutes later, after Canidy had looked at his wristwatch yet again, a motorcycle messenger arrived outside the hangar. "I don't like that," Canidy said. "How do you know what it is?" Whittaker asked. "If it were good news," Canidy said, "they would have called and said something mysterious that would have let him know. Shit, they're down. They've probably been down for hours." The chief of station took the message, read it, and handed it to Colonel Stevens. They exchanged no more than six words, and then Stevens waved Canidy and Whittaker over to them. As they approached, the station chief took the message back from Stevens. "We can't wait any longer," Stevens said.

  "We have just been authorized to take any risk considered necessary."

  "Such as sending two fighter pilots to Africa in a C-46? " Canidy said.

  "The risk, Major Canidy," the station chief said coldly, "is that you would find yourself being interrogated by the Germans. it has been decided that the mission is worth running that risk."

  "So we go?"

  Canidy asked. "Yes, Dick, as soon as you can get in the air," Stevens said. "I want to see you alone a moment, Whittaker," the station chief said. "I'll go wake up the engineer and tell him to wind the rubber bands, Canidy said, "Colonel, where's the flight plan?"

  "The engineer has it," Stevens said.

  Ten minutes later, Canidy called the Croydon tower and reported that NATS Four-oh-two was at the threshold of the active and requested takeoff clearance. "NATS Four-oh-two, hold your position. I have a C-54 trying to land at this time."

  "Roger, Croydon," Canidy said.

  "Four-oh-two holding on the threshold. Whittaker got out of his seat.

  "Don't go anywhere without me," he said.

  Canidy wondered where the hell he was going, then realized that Whittaker needed to take a leak. Whittaker came back as an Air Transport Command C-54 roared past and touched down. C'I hope the rubber bands don't break and we have to come back," Canidy said.

  "I'd hate to try to land here in this shit, He looked at Whittaker as he spoke. Whittaker was extending a small snub-nosed Smith & Wesson revolver toward him. "Put this where you won't shoot yourself," he said." Where'd you get that?" i'the station chief gave me one, and he gave the engineer one. I just took that one away from the engineer."

  " Why? " "Because when the station chief gave me mine, he said I was to use it on you in case it looked as if you were going to fall into enemy hands, and I figured he probably told the engineer the same thing." Canidy looked at him incredulously. Whittaker nodded. "Jesus Christ," Canidy said.

  "Yeah," Whittaker said. "NATS Four-oh-two, you are cleared for takeoff.

  Maintain a heading of two-seven-zero magnetic until you reach seven thousand feet." Canidy looked over his shoulder at the engineer.

  "Stand by to give me takeoff power," he said into his microphone. Then he released the brakes, tapped the throttles enough to get him onto the runway, and lined up with the white line down the center. "Give me fall takeoff power," he said to the microphone, then switched to transmit.

  "Understand two-seven-zero, seven thousand. Navy A.T.C. Four-oh-two roiling" The C-46 began to gather speed very quickly, and he felt the controls come to life. just as he lifted off, he saw the C-54 that had just landed taxiing toward the terminal area.

  The C-54 stopped three minutes later in front of the terminal. Ground crewmen pushed steps to the door. An officer with colonel's eagles on the --Mo. Unar1ran epaulets of his trench coat ran through the rain from the terminal and up the stairs. It took the flight attendant longer than he expected to open the door, and he was drenched when he finally stepped inside the aircraft. "Gentlemen," he said, "welcome to the European Theater of Operations. We are delighted to have so many distinguished members of the press with us. We have buses waiting for you, which will take you to the press center, where we will serve breakfast. By the time breakfast is over, '11 have your luggage sorted out and in your rooms. I must remind you we that from this moment you are subject to both censorship and military authority, Now, if there are no questions that won't wait, gentlemen, I suggest you begin to debark the aircraft." The last distinguished gentleman of the press off the aircraft wore a pink skirt beneath her brand-new green tunic with the shiny war correspondent brass pins. There was an official hat that went with the ensemble, but Ann Chambers thought it made her look ridiculous, and she had already 'lost" it. She carried a canvas suitcase, a typewriter, and a Leica camera that had cost her an arm and a leg in Washington just before she left. Well, here I am, Ann Chambers thought.

  Now the question is, where's Dick Canidy?

  I TWO I Over Exeter, England 0715 Hours August 19,1942

  The P-38, with flaps down to dirty it up enough to slow it to the speed of the C-46, appeared so suddenly that Canidy was a little shaken.

  They were over the soup, and the early-morning sun made the thick layer of clouds beneath them look like an endless layer of cotton batting.

  Canidy reached forward, took the cans from the throttle quadrant, and held one to his ear. "Good morning big fat Navy lady," the cheerful voice of the fighter pilot said. "Good morning Canidy replied.

  "There seems to be some doubt that big fat Navy lady could find the ocean by its lonesome," the fighter pilot said.

  "We have been sent up to lead you to it." Whittaker grabbed his microphone. "This is Admiral Wellington," he said.

  "Not only are you fifteen minutes late to the rendezvous point, but you have an intolerable notion of toper radio procedure. I recommend that you take up a position five P him re yar s above and in front of this aircraft, and maintain radio silence until directed otherwise." The flaps went up, the P-38 moved ahead, and the fighter pilot came back on the air. "Tangerine, this is Tangerine Leader. Form on me in a V formation," he said, considerably less cheerful. There were six P-38s in Tangerine, and they quickly formed a V five hundred yards above and ahead of the C-46. Whittaker went back on the radio. "Tangerine Leader, drop back to the rear of the formation," he ordered. Very slowly, the other aircraft in the flight passed the P-38 that had been the point of the V. When the leader was trading the formation, Whittaker went back on the radio again. "Tangerine Six," he ordered, "wiggle your wings."

  The wings of the last P-3 8 on the right of the V dutifully dipped to the left and then to the right. "Tangerine Leader," Whittaker went on, "exercising due caution, move up behind Tangerine Six, until such time as you have your nose up his ass.

  Tangerine Leader's P-38, which had begun obediently to ease up behind Tangerine Six, now moved to the center of the V, and then back to the point. "Let that be a lesson to you, Tangerine Leader," Whittaker said.

  "Never try to fuck with a couple of old fighter pilots. "Score one for the Navy," Tangerine Leader said, chuckling. "We have enough benzene to stick with you for maybe two hours. We were already up here when they sent us looking for you. Hope that helps."

  "We're glad to have you," Canidy said, meaning it. German fighter aircra from fields in Normandy and Brittany patrolled the Atlantic off the western coast of England.

  "What are a couple of old fighter pilots doing flying that thing?"

  " One of us stole a car," Canidy said," and we are being punished. The P-38s left them over the Atlantic when they were about halfway between Brest and Cape Finister on the western coast of Spain. Two and a half hours later, without incident, Canidy put the C-46 down at Lisbon.

  THREE I Arrecite Field Lanzarote, Canary Islands 1800 Hours August 19,1942

  Fine, Wilson, and Nembly had been taken in the back of one of the trucks to an ancient stone barracks on Lanzarote, and held in a sparsely furnished basement room long enough for Wilson and Nembly to conclude th
at whatever Fine was up to, it wasn't going to work. They were going to be interned for God alone knew how long. There was no breeze in the room and the air was hot and humid. They were fed, three times, on speckled blue porcelain-over-tin plates. The first meal was sausage and peppers, a chunk of bread, and coffee. The second meal was ground meat and peppers, a chunk of bread, and coffee. The third meal was identical to the first. When the door to their basement room opened again, Wilson cracked, "Gee, I hope they serve peppers for a change." But this wasn't another meal. It was-a tall, aristocratic-looking officer in a well-cut uniform, who announced that he was Colonel di Fortini. Di Fortini went to each of them in turn, formally and expansively shook their hands, and told them, in vaguely British-accented English, that he was very happy indeed to have the pleasure of meeting them. Then he politely asked if he could have a word in private with Stanley S. Fine, took him to a corner of the room, and, whispering confidentially, said that he was sure Fine was aware of the arrangement made between certain mutual friends of theirs. Fine gave him forty thousand dollars. Colonel di Fortini very politely said he understood the figure agreed upon was fifty thousand dollars. Fine told him he had given the other ten thousand dollars to the officer who had met them on landing. Colonel di Fortini said that whatever Fine had given anyone else was between them, the figure that he had agreed to was fifty thousand dollars. There was something unreal, almost comical, about the conversation. All he has to do, Fine thought as he took another ten-thousand-dollar stack of bills from his money belt and handed it to di Fortini, is help himself I couldn't do a damned thing if he did. As Fine stuffed his shirt over the remaining forty thousand dollars in his money belt, di Fortini carefully distributed his five ten-thousand-dollar stacks of currency in his tunic pockets, then shook Fine's hand again. Then he gestured dramatically toward the door.

  Fine told him that it would be necessary to work on the engine, and that he would be most grateful if the colonel could arrange for a ladder to do so. "Your mechanical irregularity has been detected and corrected," di Fortini said, "by our very best workmen. It was a loose oil line." Fine said that he would like to have a look at the engine anyway, just to be sure there was nothing else wrong. "That will be unnecessary," di Fortini said.

  "You have my personal assurance that there is no longer any sort of mechanical irregularity." Fine decided not to press the point. If the leak had not been repaired, that would be evident when they started the engine. To insist on checking would have been an insult to Spanish pride, and they were in no position to insult anything Spanish. There was a little smoke when Wilson cranked the engine, but that was residual lost oil, and it disappeared before they had taxied back down the runway and turned around to take off. Wilson was flying. He didn't say so, but it was clear that he thought the runway much too short. He ran the engines to full takeoff power before releasing the brakes, and they were within a hundred yards of the end of the runway before he could get it in the air.

  There was nothing to worry about now, Fine thought, as they passed through 8,000 on their way to their cruising altitude of 9,000 feet, but two 44 small" problems. First, there was the very real possibility that the charming Colonel di Fortini had contacted his German friends in Morocco.

  300 a W.E.H. ariffin Second, they were now going to arrive at Bissau before daybreak. Arrangements had been made for them to land there at night, and the runway lights would be on to accommodate them. Now they were long behind schedule. Bissau would naturally have assumed that they had gone down in the drink, and there would be no one available to turn on the landing-field lights.

  Thankfully, there were no Germans, but there was another problem. As they reached 10,000 feet, Nembly began to complain of cramps. By the time they had climbed to 20,000 feet, his cramps had turned to diarrhea.

  With a portable oxygen mask clamped to his face, he had gone into the cabin to deal as best he could with the situation on the makeshift toilet.

  FOUR I Aero port de Bissau Portuguese auinea 0225 Hours August 20, 194a There was a radio direction transmitter at Bissau, a weak one. And when the CAT aircraft reached the area, they spotted a rotating beacon.

  But aside from a few faint lights-which could have been streetlights or anything-the beacon was the only aviation light, There were no runway lights. And there was no answer when Fine tried to reach the tower on the air-to-ground radio, There was an hour-thirty fuel aboard.

  Sunrise was at 0455, twenty-five minutes after they would run out of fuel, There was no alternative airport.

  They were flying two-minute circles around the flashing beacon, when all of a sudden approach lights and runway lights flickered, blinked, and then stayed on, and a voice came over the air.

  "Aircraft in vicinity Bissau aerodrome, this is Bissau tower." The runway was rough, narrow, short, and-when they finally slowed down enough in the landing roll-they saw that it was paved with some sort of shell.

  When they went into the cabin, Nembly was sitting on the makeshift toilet, hunched under a blanket. He was obviously quite ill.

  THE SECRET WARRIORS NM 301

  "Fucking Spaniards and their fucking peppers," Nembly said. One man was both tower operator and airport manager. He was plump and olive-skinned and he wore a loosely woven shirt with square tails outside his trousers. In broken English, he told them that when they hadn't shown up on schedule, he had assumed they weren't coming. Fine managed to explain that they would need a ladder to inspect the engines. A heavy wooden ladder was produced, which proved too short to reach the C-46's engine nacelles. The airport manager sent for a truck. With the ladder on the truck bed, it was high enough. Wilson climbed very carefully up, worked the Dzus fasteners, and opened the nacelle cover. "Looks all right to me," Wilson called after three minutes of close inspection.

  "Maybe that Spaniard knew what he was doing." And then the ladder rung he was standing on made a cracking noise and gave way. Wilson fell outward, arms flailing. His forehead struck one of the propeller blades a glancing blow, but enough to open the skin. Then he fell onto the roof of the truck. The steel roof made a dull thump, and then Wilson slid off the roof onto the hood and then the ground. He was unconscious when Fine reached him, and blood from the cut on his forehead covered his eyes and lower face. It was immediately evident that his left arm was broken.

  Fine went quickly up the ladder and snatched the first-aid kit from its mounting just for-ward of the door. When he saw Nembly on the toilet, he realized for the first time that the C-46 was without a competent pilot.

  He went back down the ladder and rolled Wilson onto his back. First he applied a pressure dressings pad of bandage attached to cloth-to Wilson's head to stop the bleeding. Then he found an ammonia ampoule, snapped the top, and put it under Wilson's nostrils. Wilson groaned, shook his head, tried to sit up, and then cried out in agony as the broken ends of the bones of his left arm ground against each other.

  "Oh shit!" Wilson said.

  "It hurts." Fine found a morphine syringe in the first-aid kit and injected Wilson in the buttock. There was a hospital, the airport manager told Fine, run by Catholic nuns. They put Wilson in the cab of the truck and took him there, a fifteen-minute drive over a very bumpy road. Twice Wilson asked to stop so that he could throw up. With infinite gentleness, but no local anesthetic, two very obliging nuns, wearing thin cotton robes and headpieces, cleaned and sutured the deep cut in Wilson's forehead, and then, making him scream despite the morphine, set his broken arm and wrapped it in a heavy plaster of parts cast. Wilson sat up, his face gray and covered with beads of sweat.

  "It's a hell of a place to be marooned," he said.

  "But it looks like this cockamamy operation is suspended again, at least until we can cure Nembly of his terminal shits."

  "There's a schedule," Fine said. "Is the schedule that important?"

  Wilson asked after a moment. "I think so," Fine said. "Well, I can sit there and work the flaps, I suppose," Wilson said. Four hours after they landed at Bissau, they took off
again. When he had it at cruising altitude and trimmed up, Fine went back in the cabin to check on Nembly.

  He was off the portable toilet, but not far from it, curled up under blankets.

  As he went back to the cabin, Fine consoled himself that even the worst case of diarrhea probably wouldn't last more than twelve hours. By the time they reached Luanda, Nembly would be well enough to take the controls. When he had strapped himself in the pilot's seat, Wilson asked him if there was any Benzedrine.

  "I'm getting pretty damned groggy," he said. "Why don't you get some sleep?" Fine said.

  "And take the Benzedrine when you wake up? I can handle it for a while."

  "I've just got to take a couple of winks," Wilson said, making it an apology. He fell asleep almost immediately. Fine found the Benzedrine.

  It was guaranteed to keep you awake, he had been told, the price being that you slept like you were dead when they wore off. He decided against taking any yet. He would wait until he really needed one.

  There was very little to do in the cockpit. The C-46 was on autopilot on a southeasterly course that took them over the South Atlantic. It was twenty-four hundred miles, say ten hours, from Bissau to Luanda.