Fine went down the ladder and on unsteady legs walked to the terminal building, where he tried and failed to get through on the telephone to the U.S. consulate.
Wilson came up to him as he was putting the telephone down. "No guy from the consulate?" he asked. "No," Fine said. "So what do we do now?"
Wilson asked. "Kolwezi is nine hundred miles from here. None of us is in any shape to fly that thing around the pattern, much less nine hundred miles. "You're not suggesting we give up?" Wilson asked.
"Have you got a better idea?" Fine said.
"We have done all that could possibly be expected of us. We have flown without any real rest nine thousand miles in thirty-six hours."
"We've come this far," Wilson continued.
"I'd hate to quit now."
As if to make a joke of it, he spilled a handful of Benzedrine pills into his hand and mimed swallowing them all at once.
"They wouldn't do any good," Fine said.
"We need to lie down in a bed and sleep."
"And then?" Wilson asked. "Then we go," Fine decided.
When he saw Nembly, huddling under his blankets, he was not at all sure he had made the right decision.
Getting the lie-down-in-a-bed type of sleep he had told Wilson they needed proved to be impossible. By the time they had refueled the airplane, the customs officials were gone; the driver of the fuel truck-who had ridden to work on his bicycle-said that he was forbidden to take the truck from the airfield. He proved to be immune-never having seen any before-to the large amount of American currency with which Fine tried to bribe him. Fine and Wilson lay down on the floor of the fuselage making what beds they could from a few blankets.
Immediately, hordes of insects found them. They gave up, went into the cockpit, and started the engines.
SEVEN I Holwezi Hatanga Province, Belgian Congo 0630 Hours August MI, 1942
When Canidy climbed off the wing, walked under the plane, and looked up at the door, Grunier was standing in it, still carrying the shotgun and wearing a look of mingled fear and determination. "If you have anything to put aboard," Canidy said to him, "do it now. We're going."
He had decided the night before that there was no sense taking chances now that they were so close. Two things-in addition to his own and Whittaker's fatigue-bothered him. Since there were no cabin lights, the lashing down of the bags of ore could not be inspected. And he wanted to be very careful when he made the preflight inspection, which meant doing it when there was light stronger than a flashlight or the headlights of a truck. "I am ready," Grunier said, without emotion.
Whittaker came up from the tail. "Okay back there," he said.
"You about ready?" Canidy waved him up the ladder. The European touched his arm. "Bon voyage, bonne fortune," he said. "Thank you," Canidy said, and climbed up the ladder. Grunier backed into the cabin, as if afraid at the last moment Canidy would somehow keep him from going along.
Canidy pulled the ladder into the airplane and tried to put it in its rack. It was blocked by ore bags. That didn't matter; he laid it on top of some ore bags. Whittaker had had the Africans arrange these on the fuselage floor in stacks of three: two on the cabin floor, one on top of the two. Whittaker had then lashed the stacks down and had done a good job even by lantern light. By the time Canidy went into the cockpit Whittaker had started the engines. Canidy strapped himself in, released the brakes, turned the C-46 back onto the runway, and taxied slowly down to the other end.
It steered heavily, "It's heavy," Canidy said, hoping he sounded less concerned than he felt.
"You can feel it."
"A hundred twenty bags at a hundred pounds," Whittaker said. "Twelve thousand pounds. Six tons. That's heavy, but within our max gross takeoff weight."
"Even heavier if those bags weigh, say, a hundred twenty pounds," Canidy said. Whittaker's smile faded. "Jesus Christ, you're serious!
"I don't think anybody weighed them," Canidy said.
"But this won't be the first plane ever to take off a little over max gross weight."
"The runway's pretty long," Whittaker said.
"We'll be all right."
"I thought about weighing a couple of bags," Canidy said. "Then I wondered where we could get a scale this time of morning" "It'll be all right," Whittaker said. There was no point contacting the tower, and he didn't. He ran the engines up, checked the gauges, took off the brakes, and advanced the throttles. The rumble of the takeoff roll was heavier and more muted than it usually was, and acceleration was noticeably slower. "Goddamned thing doesn't want to go," he said. "I wonder," Whittaker said thoughtfully, "just how much weight we do have aboard." The C-46 finally came off the tail wheel. Canidy was watching the airspeed indicator move with maddening slowness to takeoff velocity when there was a sound like an enormous shotgun being fired.
A terrible vibration followed. Instinctively, he applied right rudder and pulled a little harder on the wheel, and the vibration stopped.
But the rumble of the takeoff roll seemed undiminished.
"We've blown the left tire," Whittaker said, and then very calmly, and we're running out of runway." There seemed, perversely, to be all the time in the world to make a decision. "What should we do?" Canidy asked.
There was bile in his mouth again. "Cut the switches and Pull the wheels," Whittaker said.
"If you get this big sonofabitch in the air and then come down, it'll blow up for sure. And it's not going to fly." Canidy dropped his eyes to the control panel. The airspeed needle was very far from indicating even a marginal takeoff velocity. "Wheels up," he ordered calmly as he reached forward to cut the main switch. There was a split second when he thought he felt life in the controls, and there was a terrible temptation to take a chance, to ease back on the stick and see if he could get it in the air. He resisted it. Their only chance was to stay on the ground and pray that sparks generated by metal against the runway would not ignite the fuel that would almost certainly leak from ruptured tanks. Then there was a loud, very frightening scream of tortured metal as the wheels folded inward, and the prop tips and then the fuselage dropped down to encounter the runway. Canidy felt himself being thrown violently against his harness and for a moment heard an absolutely terrifying screech of metal being violently torn apart.
Then his head struck the bulkhead by his side window, and everything went red, and then black. Whittaker had the wind knocked out of him but did not lose consciousness as the plane skidded for what seemed like a very long time to the end of the runway and then off. With a final crash of crumpling metal, the C-46 came to a stop against a mound of what looked like mine tailings. Being out of wind, unable to breathe, frightened Whittaker. He was convinced that it was a symptom of grave injury, most probably paralysis. But then, in short, painful intakes, he was able to begin breathing. Then the terror of being paralyzed was replaced by the terror of being burned alive. He tore off his harness, leaned over Canidy, unfastened his harness, and picked him up and out of his seat by brute force. He dragged him to the crew door. It was wedged shut. He laid Canidy to one side and kicked it open with both feet. He then took Canidy's wrists and started to lower him over the edge of the cabin door. He would have to drop him, but there was no choice. Then he let him drop to the floor of the fuselage again. Once he dropped Canidy and then jumped out himself, there would be no way to get back into the cabin from the ground. He remembered seeing the ladder, and went looking for it. He found it, way up in front of the cabin, and stumbling over the bags, made his way back to the door with it. He threw it out the door, then took Canidy's wrists again. When he let go of him, Canidy just crumpled onto the ground.
Whittaker exited the aircraft backward, on his stomach, so that he was hanging from the door with his fingers when he let go. He landed harder than he thought he could. He picked Canidy up and got him over his shoulder, and ran for a hundred yards, expecting to hear the dull grump of igniting avgas any second. He found an undulation in the dirt, and dropped Canidy down in it. There was
no explosion. The plane just sat there. He thought of Grunier. Fuck him, I don't owe him a thing!
After a moment, he ran back to the airplane, looked around for the ladder, finally managed to get it in place, and climbed up and into the fuselage. He found Grunier crumpled against the forward bulkhead of the cabin, his face bloody, his neck broken, quite dead. He stayed in the fuselage long enough to confirm the incredible: The auxiliary tanks had not ruptured. They were warped, but the seams had held. He walked back to where he had left Canidy. Canidy was awake and sitting up, holding a handkerchief to a cut on his forehead. "I wondered where the hell you were," Canidy said. "Who did you think carried you here? The good fairy?" He knelt over Canidy and examined the cut. "You'll live," Whittaker said.
"Only the good die young." There was the sound of aircraft engines.
Whittaker stood up, then reached down and hauled Canidy to his feet so that he, too, could see the Curtiss C-46 with "China Air Transport" painted on the fuselage making its final approach to the Kolwezi runway.
E1438T I The House on 0 Street, NW Washington, D.C. 1340 Hours August 213,1942
Colonel William J. Donovan and Captain Peter Doug lass were having a private business lunch to which Miss Cynthia Chenowith, to her very carefully concealed displeasure, had not been invited. She suspected, correctly, that the luncheon had very little to do with the national security generally, but a very great deal to do with one particular activity of the OSS. Fine and the CAT transport were missing and presumably lost. As the result of a series of fuck ups-Cynthia was fully aware that the F in the acronym SNAFU did not represent "fouled"-it had been necessary to send the backup Naval Air Transport Command C-46 on the African mission. And with Canidy and Whittaker flying it, rather than the qualified Navy crew on the backup flight.
And they had not been heard from, either. Cynthia thought that it was one thing to order faceless agents on a mission. it was something else entirely for Donovan and Doug lass when they knew-and were fond of-the participants. That was the real reason Colonel Donovan and Captain Doug lass wished to be alone, have a "private" working luncheon. But it's my mission too! I've been involved in it from the beginning.
God's sake, I'm the damned case officer! And it was worse than that, worse than being banished to sit over a cup of cold tea in the kitchen while the colonel and the captain waited in splendid masculine isolation in the dining room. She had been considering over the past thirty-six hours the very real possibility that Canidy, that sonofabitch, and Jimmy Whittaker would not be coming back, As time passed, she was no longer able to convince herself that her concern was primarily because poor Mrs. Whittaker would be devastated if poor Jimmy were lost. The truth was that she was going to be devastated herself, and not even because Jimmy was a dear old friend.
She realized now that what Ann Chambers had done at Summer Place with Dick Canidy was what she should have done with Jimmy. It would have been very unprofessional, of course, and unladylike, but she should have given him that-and not only because he was going in harm's way, but for her own selfish purposes. When an unsmiling Chief Ellis came into the kitchen of the house on Q Street, she knew that he had word, and that it was not good news. "They said they didn't want to be disturbed unless it was important," Cynthia said. Her voice, she noted with bitter pride, had not broken. "This is addressed to you," Ellis said, and handed her the sheet of light green paper on which decrypt ed Top Secret messages were typed. "Thank you, Chief," she said, and unfolded it and read it.
U R G E N T T 0 P FROM STEVENS LONDON 1600 GREENWICH 22 AUGUST 1942 FOR OFFICE OF DIRECTOR WASHINGTON EYES ONLY CHENOWITH FOLLOWING FROM BLUEBELL PRETORIA LIFEBOAT CRASHED ON TAKEOFF LEAD CITY STOP REMAINS NAPOLEON BURNED WITH WRECK STOP SANDBAGS AND HARDY BOYS EVACUATED KEY WEST BY CHOP SUEY WHOSE ARRIVAL DELAYED BY INTERNMENT BIRI)LAND STOP SANDBAGS TRANSFERRED TOMATO WHICH SAILED BROADWAY 0515 GREENWICH 22 AUG STOP CHOP SUEY DEPARTED KEY WEST WITH ALL HANDS 09:10 GREENWICH 22 AUG STOP JULIET VERY NOSY STOP ADVISE STOP STEVENS It was a coded message within an encrypted message, but Cynthia did not need her little black code book to read it. Lifeboat was the relief C-46 aircraft borrowed from the U.S. Navy. Lead city was Kolwezi. Napoleon was the French mining engineer, Grunier. Sandbags was the uranitite ore. The Hardy Boys was Donovan's droll contribution to the list of code names for Canidy and Whittaker. Chop suey was the C-46 with China Air Transport markings.
Bird land was the emergency landing field in the Spanish Canary Islands.
Key west was Capetown, South Africa. Tomato was the destroyer ("tin can") U.S.S. Dwain Kenyon, DD-301, a brand new, very fast vessel that had been waiting in Capetown to transfer the uranitite to Broadway, which was the Brooklyn Navy Yard. And Juliet was, of course, Miss Ann Chambers, who was in London, and was determined to find Canidy.
Colonel Stevens was fully aware of the trouble she could cause if she was aroused. The standard solution-"psychiatric evaluation"-could not be applied to the daughter of the owner of the Chambers Publishing Company.
Cynthia finished reading the message and looked up at Chief Ellis. He was fuzzy. Cynthia realized her eyes were wet. "If I didn't know better," Chief Ellis said, "I'd think you were really worried about them." She didn't trust herself to speak. If she opened her mouth, she realized, and could find her voice, she would say "Fuck you!" or something else she shouldn't. She went to the dining room, slid open the door, and handed the decrypt ed message to Colonel Donovan. He read it and wordlessly handed it to Captain Doug lass. Everybody was smiling.
Doug lass finally broke the silence.
"I think under the circumstances, Ellis, it would be all right if you sent Colonel Stevens a cable telling him he's authorized to inform Miss Chambers that Major Canidy will shortly be in London, and there will probably be an opportunity for her to meet with him."
"We can do better than that, Pete , the Director of the Office of Strategic Services said.
"Chief Ellis, send a separate Urgent to Colonel Stevens over my signature. The message is "Have Juliet meet Romeo at the airport.
NINE Croydon Airfield London, England 2345 Hours August as, 1942
Dick Canidy-who had been sleeping on the fuselage floor most of the way from Portugal-was first down the ladder when the China Air Transport C-46 was led to a remote corner of the airfield and parked. He walked directly to the London chief of station, who was standing with Lieutenant Colonel Ed Stevens. "We have one really sick-it may be food poisoning-man aboard, and another one with a cut head and a broken arm," he announced. "What about an ambulance?" Stevens pointed wordlessly to a black Anglia ambulance. Canidy gestured at it impatiently. Two men, one carrying what looked like a medical bag, came trotting up. "In the plane," Canidy ordered. When he looked where he was pointing, he saw Whittaker climbing down the ladder.
"I'll need a detailed report on everything, Canidy," the chief of station said.
"But I think that can wait until you get some rest. How about first thing in the morning?" Jesus, what the hell is this concern for my comfort and rest all about? "We are not, Major Canidy," Colonel Stevens said, "all of your welcome-home greeting party." He pointed to where the ambulance was parked, and then raised his hand in a "come up" signal. A woman wearing what he first thought was a WAC officer's uniform came run rung up. Who the hell is the WAC?
And then he saw the uniform had a "War Correspondent" insignia on it, and finally realized that Ann Chambers was inside the uniform. "Jesus Christ, what are you doing here?" he blurted. "You know what I'm doing here," she said, and threw herself into his arms. "Oh, baby, am I glad to see you," Canidy said. "Ain't love grand?" Captain Whittaker asked, and then another female in uniform walked up.
Whittaker shifted into his very good British accent. "I'll be dashed if it isn't Her Grace," he said.
"Fancy meeting you here, Your Grace. Might one inquire what you're doing here at this unspeakable hour?"
"I knew you would need transportation, Captain Whittaker, and I wanted to make sure you didn't take the wrong tram, so
to speak."
"Am I going to be needed here, Dick?" Whittaker asked. The chief of station answered for him.
"I think between Canidy and Captain Fine we can get all we need," he said.
"If we need you, we'll send for you."
"In that case, I think I'll let Her Grace take me out to Whitby House."
"Get a good night's rest. We may need you," the station chief said.
"Yes, Sir." He followed the duchess to the stolen Ford and got in the front seat beside her. "Like bloody hell you will, Jimmy," Her Grace said. "Like bloody bell I will what?"
"Get a good night's rest," Her Grace said.
"Not on this tram."
END NOTE The refining of sufficient quantities of uranium ore to manufacture nuclear weapons, should this theoretical possibility actually prove feasible, began in early September 1942 at a secret facility at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, using a stock of uranium ore secretly imported from the Belgian Congo at the direct order of the President of the United States. On December 2, 1942, in a laboratory under the seats of the University of Chicago's stadium, the first chain nuclear reactor, composed of graphite and uranium, operated as predicted, resulting in the sustained, controlled production of atomic energy. An atomic bomb was now possible. It would be irresistible against any enemy. The problem now became to produce a functioning weapon before the Germans could build one...
W E B Griffin - Men at War 2 - Secret Warriors Page 36