“Bonsoir, Monsieur Grunier,” Canidy said.
“We were beginning to give you up,” Grunier said.
He did not seem surprised to see Canidy, although the last time they had seen each other was in a small boat off Safi, Morocco. Grunier had been bound and gagged because his pathetic pleading to remain in Morocco had been more than Canidy could stand.
Awkwardly, because of his shotgun, Grunier climbed into the C-46 and looked around. Then he climbed down again. While he was in the airplane, the runway lights went off.
Grunier looked at Whittaker and matter-of-factly said, “I will kill you if you attempt to leave without me.”
“What the hell is he talking about?” Whittaker asked.
“The last time he was offered government transportation, they left me behind. I guess he doesn’t want that to happen to him,” Canidy explained, and then turned to Grunier. “My orders are to take you,” he said. “Where’s the cargo?”
The European took a small flashlight, pointed it, and blinked it on and off three times.
Several hundred yards off in the darkness, there was the sound of engines starting, and then the sound of vehicles approaching. When headlights came on, Canidy saw two trucks, a 1938 or 1939 Chevrolet panel truck and a large, canvas-roofed French Renault. Both had the legend “Union Minière” painted on their doors.
The larger truck approached the C-46 and then made a turn so that the headlights shone on an area of spillings. The Chevrolet stopped so that its headlights lit the C-46 door.
An astonishing number of Africans, tall, muscular, good-looking men wearing white cotton shirts and what looked like American dungarees, poured out the back of the Renault truck.
There must be thirty of them, Canidy thought.
The last couple of men off the truck reached back inside and began to pass out shovels. Several others went to the Chevrolet and came out with bundles of cloth bags.
“It isn’t bagged?” Canidy asked incredulously.
“I could move it here without suspicion,” the European said. “But I could not bag it without attracting the attention of the wrong people.”
“Jesus!” Canidy said.
There was the sound of another truck engine, and Canidy looked with alarm in that direction.
“The fuel truck,” the European said. “Nothing to worry about.”
“How long is this going to take?” Canidy said.
“As long as it takes thirty noires to fill one hundred twenty bags,” the European said, “and load them on the airplane.”
The Africans, the noires, seemed to know exactly what they were doing. One man held open the mouth of one of the bags while two men shoveled the material into it. As Canidy watched, a bag was filled. The man who had been holding the mouth picked it up, shook it to settle it, held it for another couple of shovelfuls, shook it again, and then took several steps back. As he tied the bag, another African with a bag moved into position so the shovelers could fill it.
At the rate they’re going, Canidy thought, they’ll be finished long before we’re refueled.
6
LUANDA, PORTUGUESE ANGOLA
2030 HOURS
AUGUST 20, 1942
When the Luanda radio direction finder signal had finally grown strong enough to be trusted, Fine knew they were 150 miles or so almost dead south of where they were supposed to be. A little farther south and they would not have picked up the Luanda transmitter at all. But they flew the needle, and ten hours and fifty minutes after taking off from Bissau, they received permission from Luanda to land.
The landing, Fine thought, was a real greaser, the best one he had ever made in the C-46. That had to be just pure dumb luck—and he almost immediately had good cause to suspect that was all the good luck they were going to have.
Three Portuguese customs officials walked out from the small terminal to the C-46 and, as soon as Fine put the ladder out, climbed aboard.
They saluted, bowed, and shook hands—and then saw Nembly, asleep or unconscious, and Wilson with his bandaged head and his arm in a splint.
“You have befell a misfortune?” the senior of the customs officials asked.
“He fell,” Fine said. “And he’s sick. Is there a doctor?”
They seemed to be genuinely sorry to report there was no doctor.
“There is supposed to be a gentleman from the U.S. consulate waiting for us,” Fine said.
They seemed to be just as genuinely sorry to have to tell him that the gentleman from the U.S. consulate had only recently departed, a matter of only hours before.
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.
7
KOLWEZI
KATANGA PROVINCE, BELGIAN CONGO
0630 HOURS
AUGUST 21, 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. Whitta
ker 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.
8
THE HOUSE ON Q STREET, NW
WASHINGTON, D.C.
1340 HOURS
AUGUST 23, 1942
Colonel William J. Donovan and Captain Peter Douglass 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 fuckups—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 Douglass when they knew—and were fond of—the participants.
That was the real reason Colonel Donovan and Captain Douglass 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 th
e 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 decrypted Top Secret messages were typed.
“Thank you, Chief,” she said, and unfolded it and read it.
URGENT TOP SECRET
FROM STEVENS LONDON
1600 GREENWICH 22 AUGUST 1942
FOR OFFICE OF DIRECTOR WASHINGTON
EYES ONLY CHENOWITH
FOLLOWING FROM BLUEBELL PRETORIA
LIFEBOAT CRASHED ON TAKEOFF LEADCITY STOP REMAINS NAPOLEON BURNED WITH WRECK STOP SANDBAGS AND HARDY BOYS EVACUATED KEYWEST BY CHOPSUEY WHOSE ARRIVAL DELAYED BY INTERNMENT BIRDLAND STOP SANDBAGS TRANSFERRED TOMATO WHICH SAILED BROADWAY 0515 GREENWICH 22 AUG STOP CHOPSUEY DEPARTED KEYWEST WITH ALL HANDS 0910 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 codebook to read it. Lifeboat was the relief C-46 aircraft borrowed from the U.S. Navy. Leadcity 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. Chopsuey was the C- 46 with China Air Transport markings. Birdland was the emergency landing field in the Spanish Canary Islands. Keywest 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.
The Secret Warriors Page 36