The Secret Warriors

by W. E. B Griffin

  “Yes, Sir,” Fine said

  “On the basis of your extensive civilian aeronautical experience, Captain Fine,” the colonel said dryly, “Headquarters, Army Air Corps, has seen fit to designate you as a military aviator. You are now a pilot, Captain Fine. Congratulations.”

  He tossed Fine a pair of aviator’s wings still pinned to a piece of cardboard.

  “If you can’t handle the Seventeen,” the colonel said, “and I really hope you can, there are other places where you can be put to good use.”

  The next day, Fine began what he was sure would be at least a two-week course in the B-17 aircraft. Major Thomasson turned out to be a bright-eyed twenty-three-year-old West Pointer who told Fine that he had graduated from the last prewar, yearlong pilot training course.

  Thomasson almost casually went through the B-17E dash-one with him for most of the day, then took him to the flight line for what Fine expected would be a hands-on explanation of the aircraft.

  “I’ve never seen one up close before,” Fine confessed.

  “It’s a pretty good bird, Captain,” Thomasson said. “It’s the E model. I picked this one up in Seattle last week.”

  Fine had been introduced to the crew. There was a navigator and a bombardier, both officers, and an engineer, a radioman, and tail and turret gunners. There was no copilot.

  “I don’t think you’ll have any trouble with it, Captain,” Thomasson said to him, then raised his voice. “You guys get aboard.”

  It took a moment for that to sink in. They were obviously about to take the B-17 aloft—without a copilot. The incredible truth seemed to be that on his first time up in a B-17E, he would fly as copilot.

  “I think I should tell you,” Fine said as he sat down in the copilot’s seat and looked around the cockpit, “that I have a total of zero hours’ twin-engine time.”

  “That’s exactly as many as I had when I first came down here,” Major Thomasson said. “They sent me to Seventeens right out of primary.”

  “Jesus!” Fine said.

  “The way you fly this thing,” Thomasson said, “is that the copilot reads the checklist out loud.” He handed Fine a sheet of cardboard three inches wide and six inches long. “And the pilot does what it says. Got it?”

  “We’ll find out,” Fine said. He read the first item on the list: “Master power buss on.”

  “Master power buss on,” Thomasson parroted.

  “Uncage gyros.”

  “Gyros uncaged.”

  Fine looked at the artificial horizon on the instrument panel before him. There were two sets of instruments—one for the pilot and one for the copilot. He reached out and uncaged his gyro. The ball inside began to move.

  “Verify crew in position, crew hatches closed,” Fine read. He didn’t understand that and looked at Thomasson.

  “You have to get on the intercom to do that,” Thomasson explained, and showed him how to switch it on.

  “Crew report,” Thomasson’s voice came over the intercom. One by one, the crew reported their presence.

  “Navigator, yo!”

  “Bombardier here, forward hatch closed and locked.”

  “Radio here, Sir.”

  “Tail here, Sir.”

  “Belly, yo!”

  “Engineer, rear door closed and locked.”

  “Fire extinguisher in place,” Fine read. “Ground crew clear.”

  Thomasson looked out his window and reported: “Clear!”

  “Number one engine, full rich,” Fine read.

  “One full rich.”

  “Prime number one engine.”

  “One primed.”

  “Start number one engine,” Fine read.

  “Starting number one,” Thomasson replied.

  There came the whine of the starter, and then the cough of the engine as it tried to start, and the aircraft began to tremble. The engine caught, smoothed out.

  Fine looked across the cockpit to the left wing. He could see the propeller turning.

  “Number one running smoothly,” Thomasson said.

  “Lean and idle number one,” Fine read. “Number three engine, full rich.”

  “Number one lean and idle,” Thomasson replied. “Number three full rich.”

  “Start number three,” Fine read.

  “Starting number three.”

  The propeller on the engine at Fine’s right began to turn slowly as the starter ground, and then the engine caught.

  “What you do,” Thomasson said dryly, “is taxi to the threshold with just two engines.”

  “I see,” Fine said.

  “Then, when you get there, Captain, before you take off, I suggest you start the other two.”

  Fine looked at him in disbelief.

  “Go ahead,” Thomasson said, smiling. “There always has to be a first time.”

  Fine had picked up the microphone.

  “Chanute, Air Corps Four-oh-one in front of the terminal for taxi and takeoff.”

  “Well, at least you know that much,” Thomasson’s metallic voice came over the intercom. “I’ve had guys in the right seat who got on the horn and called ‘Yoo-hoo, Tower! Anybody there?’”

  The tower came back: “Air Corps Four-oh-one, taxi left on taxiway six to the threshold of the active. The active is three-two. You are number one to take off. There is no traffic in the immediate area. The altimeter is two-niner-niner-niner, the time one-five past the hour, and the winds are five, gusting to fifteen, from the north.”

  “Where the hell are the brakes on this thing?” Fine asked.

  The pilot showed him how to release the brakes.

  Fine put his hand on the throttles and ever so gently nudged them forward. The pitch of the engines changed, and the B-17E had started to move.

  A week later, he was certified as B-17 qualified, and a week after that as pilot in command. Two weeks after that, he scrawled his signature to a document of the 319th Bomber Squadron: “The undersigned herewith assumes command, Stanley S. Fine, Captain, Air Corps, Commanding.”

  He then set about to make the 319th Bomber Squadron the best squadron in the group, in the wing, in the Army Air Corps. He was as happy as he could ever remember.

  I should have known it couldn’t last, he thought, looking balefully at Dick Canidy.

  “Cue the rolling drums and the trumpets,” he said. “Our hero is about to volunteer.”

  “Then let me be the first to welcome you, Captain,” Canidy said, “to Donovan’s Dilettantes.”

  “I thought so,” Fine said. “What would happen if I changed my mind again?”

  “Then there would be questions about your mental stability,” Canidy said. “Psychiatric evaluation would be ordered. It would take a long time. For the duration, at least.”

  “Can they do that?” Fine the lawyer asked, surprised.

  “They can, and they do, Captain Fine,” Canidy said.

  3

  ANACOSTIA NAVAL AIR STATION

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  JUNE 29, 1942

  When Canidy and Fine landed at Anacostia, Chief Ellis was there with the Buick to meet them.

  “Give Captain Fine a hand with his gear, please, Chief,” Canidy said. “I’ve got to see about getting this thing fueled, and I want to check the weather.”

  When they had Fine’s Val-Paks and his footlocker in the Buick, Chief Ellis led Captain Fine into base ops, where they found Canidy in the weather room getting a three-day forecast from a Navy meteorologist.

  As the weatherman was concluding, Captain Chester Wezevitz—the Navy officer whom Canidy had told that the COI’s job was suppressing VD—came into the room.

  “VD must be a hell of a problem in the fleet,” he said. “I had a look at your airplane, Major. Carpets, upholstered leather seats, and everything.”

  “You noticed, I’m sure,” Canidy said, “that the seats fold down into couches. We think of it, Captain, as our airborne prophylactics-testing laboratory.”

  “Shit,” Wezevitz sa
id, grinning.

  “It is considered so important to the overall war effort,” Canidy said, “that I have been given a copilot to share the strain of my burden. May I present Captain Fine?”

  As Fine, baffled, was shaking hands with Wezevitz, Lieutenant Commander Edwin H. Bitter, with the golden rope of an admiral’s aide hanging down his arm, walked into the weather room.

  He and Canidy looked at each other for a moment without speaking.

  “Well,” Canidy broke the silence, “look at the dog robber.”

  Bitter offered his hand.

  “It’s good to see you again, Dick,” he said a little stiffly. “In the Air Corps, are you?”

  “That’s right,” Canidy said. “Captain Fine, Commander Bitter. Do you remember him? He was at that dinner in Washington.”

  “Of course,” Fine said. “He went off to the Flying Tigers with you.”

  The eyebrows of the Navy captain rose in surprise. “You’re now in the Air Corps, eh?” Bitter asked.

  “The Air Corps,” Canidy said.

  The awkwardness and tension between Bitter and Canidy was evident to Ellis, Fine, and Wezevitz.

  “The admiral’s flight is all laid on, Commander,” Wezevitz said. “I presume that’s why you’re here?”

  “Yes, Sir,” Bitter said. “The admiral asked me to check on it.”

  “All laid on,” Wezevitz repeated awkwardly.

  “Are you stationed here?” Bitter asked.

  “No. But I come in here from time to time,” Canidy said. “I’m assigned to the Office of the Coordinator of Information.”

  Canidy saw no comprehension on Bitter’s face.

  “How’s the knee?” Canidy asked, to change the subject.

  “I have a cane,” Bitter said. “I left it in the staff car. It keeps me from flying. I’m assigned to BUAIR.”

  “You’re a lieutenant commander, so congratulations are in order,” Canidy said, adding mischievously, “How do you like being a dog robber?”

  Bitter was not amused.

  “Obviously, I can’t fly,” he said. “I can’t even get limited duty at sea.”

  “And that bothers you?” Canidy said. “Be grateful, Edwin.”

  Bitter didn’t like that either, but he didn’t respond to it. Instead, he asked, “Have you got a minute?”

  Canidy nodded. Bitter took his arm and led him out of the weather room into the corridor.

  “Do you remember Sarah Child?” he asked.

  “Sure,” Canidy said. “Your pen pal. The little girl with the sexy eyes and the marvelous boobs.”

  “We’re married,” Bitter said levelly.

  “Ooops!” Canidy said.

  “And we have a child,” Bitter went on. “A little boy. His name is Joseph after Sarah’s father, and he was born last March. We were secretly married before we went over there.”

  Canidy’s eyebrows went up, and then he understood.

  “I remember,” he said. “I was your best man. How could you have forgotten?”

  “She’s really a fine woman, Dick,” Bitter said.

  “I know she is,” Canidy said.

  “Thank you, Dick,” Bitter said.

  Canidy was embarrassed. He was being thanked, he understood, for his unspoken promise not to tell anyone, should the occasion arise, that Lieutenant Commander and Mrs. Bitter had not been married when Bitter went off to the Flying Tigers.

  Quickly, Canidy said, “So tell me all about your little nest. You got a picture of the kid?”

  Bitter took several from his wallet and handed them over.

  “Unfortunately, he looks just like his old man,” Canidy said. “I’m happy for you, Eddie.”

  “Come see us, Dick,” Bitter said.

  “That would be difficult, Eddie,” Canidy said.

  “We’re in the Willard Hotel,” Bitter said in a rush. “We absolutely couldn’t find a place to live, so Sarah’s father turned his apartment in the Willard over to us.”

  “You get along all right with Sarah’s father, huh?”

  “Our mothers are the ones who give us trouble,” Bitter said.

  “Oh?”

  “Sarah’s is—well, crazy. She’s in and out of mental hospitals. And mine—disapproves.”

  “She’s probably sore you didn’t tell her you were secretly married,” Canidy said. “She’ll get over it.”

  “I really would like to talk to you, Dick,” Bitter said.

  He means about my cowardice in China. He wants an explanation. That’s touching. But I can’t tell him about that. That would violate the Donovan’s Dilettantes code of honor.

  “Tell me, Eddie, did your kid inherit your undersized wang?”

  Bitter shook his head in resignation, but then, surprising himself, he said, “He can lie on his back and piss on the ceiling.”

  “Here’s to a kid who can piss on the ceiling,” Canidy said, lifting his hand high, then, “Eddie, I have to go.”

  They shook hands again, and Canidy went to the weather-room door to motion to Fine and Ellis to come with him.

  When they were gone, Wezevitz asked, “Old pal of yours?”

  “We were at Pensacola as IPs before the war,” Bitter said.

  “And now he’s in the Air Corps?”

  “He left the service in 1941,” Bitter said.

  “Now he’s an Air Corps major flying a VIP transport for the VD comic-book people,” Wezevitz said. “Seems like a hell of waste of a naval aviator.”

  Bitter, not quite sure he had heard correctly, asked, “Sir?”

  “What the Coordinator of Information does, Commander,” Wezevitz said, “is publish those ‘Use a Pro Kit’ comic books they issue to the white hats. Why they need an airplane to do it is beyond me.”

  Bitter looked at him curiously but didn’t say anything. He thought it was highly unlikely that the Navy would assign a C-45 to airlift VD comic books. It was even more unlikely that the Air Corps would commission as a field-grade officer someone with Canidy’s record. At the same time, he remembered a cryptic remark from Doug Douglass once when Canidy’s name had come up, that people should not jump to conclusions before they had all the facts. Doug wouldn’t say anything else, but he obviously knew something else.

  When I get back to the office, Ed Bitter decided, I will get to the bottom of this. While there’s a hell of a lot wrong with being an admiral’s dog robber, it has certain benefits. When you call somebody up and identify yourself as the aide to a vice admiral, you get answers a lieutenant commander wouldn’t be given.

  Two hours later, when he walked into the office, the admiral’s WAVE said the admiral wanted to see him immediately.

  “Close the door, Commander,” Vice Admiral Enoch Hawley said.

  When Bitter had done that, he went on: “I’ve just had a strange telephone call about you, Commander. You will consider the following an order: From this moment on, you will make no attempt to contact Major Richard Canidy, U.S. Army Air Corps. Nor will you discuss him with anyone, nor make inquiries regarding him or the Office of the Coordinator of Information. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, Sir,” Bitter said.

  “Whatever this is about, Ed,” the admiral said, “it doesn’t seem to bother you. You’re smiling.”

  “In a way, Sir, it’s very good news.”

  4

  THE HOUSE ON Q STREET, NW

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  JUNE 29, 1942

  “Is this the ‘requisitioned mansion’ Drew Pearson wrote about?” Stanley Fine asked as Ellis drove through the gate of the house on Q Street.

  “The one he wrote about is in Virginia,” Ellis said.

  “This is Jim Whittaker’s house, isn’t it?” Fine asked as they got out of the car. “What did you say happened to him?”

  Canidy shrugged and threw up his hand, but Fine had seen the look in his eyes.

  “Something else you know and can’t tell?” Fine said.

  “People get pissed around here if you ask questi
ons, Stanley,” Canidy said. “After a while you’ll get used to it.”

  Cynthia Chenowith came into the library as Canidy was helping himself to a drink.

  “It’s nice to see you again, Captain Fine.”

  “And it’s nice to see you, Miss Chenowith,” Fine said.

  “Miss Chenowith is our housekeeper,” Canidy said. “You need extra towels, that sort of thing, you just let her know.”

  She glowered at him but didn’t respond.

  “You’ll be staying here for a couple of days, Captain Fine,” she said. “We’ve put you on the third floor, first door on the right at the head of the stairs.”

  “Thank you,” Fine said. “May I ask a question? I don’t know who else to ask.”

  “That would depend on the question, Stan,” Canidy said.

  “What is it?” Cynthia asked.

  “What do I tell my wife?”

  “I would suggest,” Cynthia said, “that you drop her a note telling her that you are on temporary duty in Washington, and that as soon as you have an address you’ll be in touch again.”

  “I generally telephone her every few days,” Fine said. “She’ll expect a call from me today or tomorrow.”

  “I don’t think that calling her right now would be a very good idea,” Cynthia said. “But if you’d like to write her a note, I’ll see that it’s posted right away.”

  Fine didn’t like that answer. He looked at Canidy, who shrugged, as if to suggest that it wasn’t worth fighting with Cynthia Chenowith about.

  “Ask Donovan about calling when you see him,” he said.

  “All right,” Fine said, and looked at Cynthia before adding, “I’ll do that.”

  Fine was in the library, sitting at a Louis XIV escritoire writing his wife when Colonel Donovan walked in, wearing a mussed seersucker jacket. It was already hot and muggy in Washington. Canidy, who had been sitting in an armchair, started to rise. Donovan waved at him, telling him to stay where he was.

  “Good to see you, Fine,” Donovan said, mopping his forehead with a handkerchief and then offering his hand. “Welcome aboard.”

  “Thank you,” Fine said.