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 forward 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 dressing—a 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 paris 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. He knew he could not expect to hit it using only dead reckoning. It was like flying from Pensacola to Boston and back with no reference to anything on the ground and with no assist from navigational aids.
They were also now out of oxygen, which meant that he could fly no higher than 12,000 feet, which in turn meant the fuel consumption was considerably higher than it would have been at 20,000.
He drank all but what he guessed were two cups of the now-cold coffee in the thermos. He had to leave some for Nembly, he knew, presuming he recovered, or for Wilson if he didn’t.
He dozed off, caught himself, shifted in the seat, and flexed his legs and arms. He thought that perhaps if he took the plane off the autopilot and flew it, that might keep him awake. He really didn’t want to start taking the Benzedrine just yet.
He woke up, he didn’t know how much later, looked at the altimeter, and felt bile in his throat. The altimeter indicated 7,000 feet.
He knew what had happened. He had dozed off, apparently with the airplane trimmed in a very slight nose-down position. Losing this much altitude was bad, but it would have been worse if the nose had been elevated as much as it had been depressed. If that had happened, they would have just as gently climbed 5,000 feet, which would have taken them to 17,000. From 13,000 up there would have been increasing oxygen starvation. He would have been unconscious at around 14,000, and at 17,000 they would have all been dead.
He reached for the trim wheel and set up a slight nose-up altitude. Then he popped three of the Benzedrine capsules into his mouth and washed them down with a swallow of cold coffee. Benzedrine was no longer an option for later use; he needed it now.
He took the C-46 to 10,000 feet, then went aft again to check on Nembly. If anything, he was worse. Whatever was wrong with him, Fine decided, it had nothing to do with Spanish peppers.
But when he got back to the cockpit, Wilson was awake.
“Is there any coffee left?” Wilson asked. “I can watch the gauges awhile.”
“I just took some Benzedrine,” Fine said as he poured a cupful of coffee for Wilson.
“You should have woken me up,” Wilson said.
What I should have done, Fine thought, suddenly furious, when Canidy waved the flag at me, was tell him to stick it up his ass. Then I wouldn’t be in this fucking mess.
The depth of his anger surprised him. After a moment, he decided it was a symptom of fatigue. And fear.
The next thing he knew, he was coming awake. His bladder ached to be relieved of all the coffee.
The damned Benzedrine doesn’t work, he thought angrily.
The forty-eight-hour clock on the instrument panel had stopped. He looked at his watch. He had been asleep for two hours. The clock had stopped long before that. They had forgotten to wind it.
What else, in our fatigue, have we forgotten to do?
He wound the clock and set it, and then went aft to relieve himself. Nembly was shivering beneath his blankets, and the square aluminum box they were using as a toilet smelled so foul when Fine lifted the lid he thought he was going to be sick.
5
LUANDA, PORTUGUESE ANGOLA
1000 HOURS
AUGUST 20, 1942
For some reason—perhaps, Whittaker thought, because the London station chief had given him a gun so he could shoot Canidy, or perhaps because Whittaker had shoved his own gun into the man’s face and taken the gun away—the flight engineer was growing more and more nervous and irritable as the flight progressed. And ten hours and fifteen minutes after they had taken off, he had come forward and angrily and without asking permission switched on the radio direction finder. Canidy had turned it off hours before; its hiss annoyed him, and they were not in range of any transmitter it could detect.
The way that sonofabitch did that, Whittaker thought angrily, was pretty damned cl
ose to giving me the finger. I’m pilot in command of this goddamned airplane; I decide what gets switched on and when.
After a moment’s thought, he decided against calling the engineer down.
The poor bastard’s probably nearly as scared as I am.
Whittaker looked over at Canidy, who was sound asleep with his head resting at an angle that was going to give him a stiff neck when he woke. Very tenderly, Whittaker leaned over and pushed Dick gently, so that his head hung down over his chest. He would not wake him, he decided, until they were twenty minutes or so out of Luanda.
They found Luanda when and where they had planned to, and Whittaker set it down with no trouble.
When they shut down the engines in front of the corrugated tin building that was the Luanda terminal, they saw waiting for them—in addition to the khaki-uniformed Portuguese customs officials—a civilian, obviously American, wearing a seersucker suit, a necktie, and a natty straw hat.
Canidy climbed down the ladder and approached him.
“I’m Canidy,” Canidy said. “I presume you’re from the consulate?”
The man gave him his hand. The handshake was perfunctory.
“My name is Spiers,” the man said, “Ronald I. Spiers, and I’m the United States Consul General for Angola.”
“Have you any word on what happened to the other plane?” Canidy asked.
Ronald I. Spiers ignored the question. “Excuse me, but you’ll understand the necessity of this,” he said. “Do you have any identification?”
“Who the hell else do you think would be flying that airplane?” Jim Whittaker asked.
He looks and talks like Baker, Canidy thought.
They must have a mold somewhere where they turn them out like Hershey bars, each one just like every other one. And how did you fuck up, Mr. United States Consul General, to get stuck in an asshole of the world like this?
“One never knows, does one?” Spiers said.
Canidy handed over his AGO card. Spiers examined it and passed it back.
“There has been no word on the other aircraft,” he said.
“Shit!” Canidy said.
“Goddamn it!” Whittaker said.
Spiers looked at them with distaste. Then he opened his briefcase and took from it an envelope stamped “Top Secret.” He opened it and took out a single sheet of paper and handed it to Canidy.
URGENT
DEPTSTATE WASHINGTON
VIA MACKAY
FOR USEMBASSY JOHANNESBURG SOUTH AFRICA
EYES ONLY AMBASSADOR
DIRECTION SECSTATE RELAY FOLLOWING US CONSUL GENERAL LUANDA BEST POSSIBLE MEANS INCLUDING COURIER STOP REPORT DELIVERY RADIO STOP QUOTE DIRECTION SECSTATE RELAY TO STANLEY S FINE ABOARD CHINA AIR TRANSPORT C-46 AIRCRAFT SCHEDULED REFUEL LUANDA 19 AUGUST STOP IF UNABLE ARRIVE CARGO LOADING POINT FOUR HOURS PRIOR DAYBREAK 21 AUGUST ABORT MISSION PROCEED CAPETOWN SOUTH AFRICA STOP CANNOT OVEREMPHASIZE IMPORTANCE OF CARGO PICKUP STOP SIGNATURE CHENOWITH STOP END MESSAGE
“Inasmuch as we must presume the other aircraft has been lost,” Spiers said, emotionless, “I thought I should make the contents of the cable known to you.”
Canidy handed the cable to Whittaker.
“You should have no problem,” Spiers said. “I have arranged for your aircraft to be refueled. That should take no more than an hour. You can arrive in Kolwezi in plenty of time to load your cargo and depart within that time frame.”
“We’ll take off about half past seven tonight,” Canidy said. “That should put us over the border at half past eight. By then it should be dark.”
“I’d really rather you continue on with this mission just as soon as you could,” Spiers said.
“You would?” Canidy asked dryly.
“I was led to believe that the aircraft would bear civilian markings,” Spiers said. “There is liable to be trouble with the Portuguese authorities over a military aircraft.”
“Well, you’ll just have to handle the Portuguese,” Canidy said.
“I’m afraid I must insist,” Spiers said.
“I have no intention of flying an aircraft with ‘US Navy’ painted in large letters on the wings over the Belgian Congo in the daylight,” Canidy said.
“I hadn’t considered that,” Spiers said. “It will make things difficult for me, but I suppose you’re right.”
“I’m glad you feel that way,” Canidy said. If Spiers detected the sarcasm, he gave no sign.
“Is there someplace we can get something to eat, and maybe some sleep?” Canidy asked.
“Do you think that’s wise?” Spiers asked.
“The eating or the sleeping?” Whittaker asked innocently.
Spiers could not ignore the sarcasm.
“There is a hotel in town,” he said. “I’ll take you there.”
The hotel rooms were dirty, and none of them could read the menu in the dining room. Whittaker solved the problem by flapping his arms and making sounds like a rooster. Soon they were served a large platter of scrambled eggs and a large loaf of freshly baked, very good bread.
The mosquito netting over the beds had holes through which a variety of winged insects flew with ease. Although he remembered being bitten only once or twice, when Canidy splashed water on his face and looked in the mirror, he saw at least a dozen round, angry insect bites.
He found that Whittaker had suffered equally when he met him in the lobby. But when he went to wake the night engineer, the room was empty. Spiers had already joined Whittaker by the time Canidy returned to the lobby.
“Where do you think he is?” he asked.
“He’s around town somewhere,” Canidy said. “He’s going to wait until we take off and then reappear, all apologies for having missed the night.”
“Why would he do that?”
“He probably came to the slow realization while we flew that this flight was hazardous duty,” Whittaker said.
“What am I supposed to do with him?” Spiers asked. “That could pose a very embarrassing situation.”
“When he does show up,” Canidy said angrily, “you can brighten his day by telling him that when he does get back, I will press charges.”
Even as he said it, he knew it was an empty threat. To charge a man with avoiding hazardous duty, you would have to specify what hazardous duty. Officially, this flight—whether or not they made it—didn’t exist.
They didn’t absolutely have to have a flight engineer. It was a really chickenshit—chickenshit, hell, cowardly—thing for the engineer to do, of course, but he knew that they could do without him. He wondered if that had entered into the man’s thinking.
Spiers drove them back to the airport, where, obviously relieved to be rid of them, he gave them another perfunctory handshake and watched them climb into the aircraft and start the engines.
Before they taxied to the end of the runway, they saw his car driving off.
Once they left Luanda, navigation was surprisingly simple. Twenty minutes out of Luanda—still in a slow climb passing 9,000 feet—Canidy saw a light to their right and pointed it out to Whittaker.
“Probably Salazar,” Whittaker said, but then corrected himself. “It has to be Salazar. According to the chart, there’s absolutely nothing down there but jungle and that town.”
Canidy leveled off at 10,000 feet, flew far enough to the left of Salazar so that no one would hear the airplane, and pointed the nose toward Malange, 110 miles farther along. Five minutes later, faint but unmistakable against the absolute blackness, they could see another glow of lights.
He flew the lights to Cacolo, then to Nova Chaves, again far enough to one side so that no one could hear the engines. Ten minutes after passing Nova Chaves, they spotted a yellow glow that had to be Kasaji, in the Belgian Congo, for there was nothing else resembling civilization for three hundred miles.
They were now over the border—which made them now absolutely illegal. They had entered the airspace of a neutral, German-occupied country without permission. The least of
fense they could be accused of now would be violating airspace. Later, after they loaded the ore, they would be smuggling.
Unless, of course—and this didn’t seem unlikely—the Germans to whom the Belgians would have to turn them over decided the best way to deal with the situation—cut down on the paperwork—was to shoot them on the spot.
The London chief of station wants Whittaker to shoot me. He won’t do that, and I damned sure won’t shoot myself.
Why would the Germans, before they shot me, suspect I knew anything more than my orders? And probably damned little about why I was flying this airplane except that I was ordered to.
Then the glow that had to be Kolwezi appeared dead ahead, a soft yellow spot that seemed even from a distance larger than the other towns. As they got closer, the lights came into focus and took on a strange pattern—like a lop-sided bull’s-eye—lines of lights forming concentric circles.
“What the hell is that?” Whittaker asked.
“The copper mines,” Canidy said, “the largest man-made hole in the world.”
“Kolwezi,” Whittaker said to the microphone, “this is Belgian African Airways Two-zero-six, five miles west. Request you light the runway.”
The lights came on a moment later, not at all bright, but two parallel lines of them, with three Vs, forming an arrow at one end. Canidy had never seen lights like that before.
He cut back on the power and lowered the nose.
Though there was no communication from the tower, when he had touched down and begun to slow, he saw the headlights of a car racing down what had to be an unlighted taxiway parallel to the runway.
He taxied all the way to the far end of the runway, and concluded that getting out of here with a full load was not going to be as difficult as he had feared. The runway was wide and very, very long. It was paved with some sort of crushed stone that was almost certainly mine tailings.
Canidy shut down the engines as Whittaker went aft to open the door. When they climbed down the ladder, a man cradling a shotgun in his arm like a hunter was standing there next to another European.
The Secret Warriors Page 35
