W E B Griffin - Men at War 4 - The Fighting Agents

by The Fighting Agents(Lit)

  "Sorry, sir," Darmstadter said.

  "I was putting on the sheepskins."

  "We're passing through eight thousand," Canidy said.

  "I'll let you know when we pass through ten. Make sure the oxygen is working."

  Darmstadter opened the valve and felt the cold oxygen in his nostrils and throat.

  "Oxygen okay," he said.

  "Couple of things," Canidy said.

  "Make sure you've got a walk-around bottle and a spare. We're going way up, so stay on oxygen."

  "If you feel like it," Canidy went on, "and it might be a good idea, move around a little. Wave your arms, bend your legs. But don't work up a sweat. If you do that, the sweat will freeze and weld your skin to the oxygen mask.

  Then it will smart when you try to take it off."

  "Yes, Sir," Darmstadter said, chuckling.

  "And stop calling me "Sir,"" Canidy said.

  It grew colder very quickly as the B-25 maintained its climb.

  And by the time the B-25 leveled off, and the sound of the engines changed as they throttled back and leaned off for cruising, it was bitter cold in the fuselage, and the bulky, sheepskin, electrically heated flying suits and boots did not provide comfort, only protection from frostbite and freezing.

  Every fifteen minutes or so, Darmstadter got out of the leather-upholstered, civilian airline seat and, within the limits- of movement the flexible oxygen hose gave him, stamped his feet and flailed his arms around. Carefully, for he believed what Canidy had said about working up a sweat and freezing the mask to his face.

  They had been airborne an hour when Canidy came over the intercom and asked him to bring up some coffee. Darmstadter hooked up a portable oxygen bottle and found the wooden crate that held two narrow-mouthed stainless steel thermos bottles of coffee and one much larger, wide-mouthed thermos holding sandwiches in waxed paper. He took one of the thermos bottles and two china mess-hall cups forward.

  He poured coffee and handed a mug to Canidy, who indicated with a jerk of his thumb that it should go to Dolan. Dolan took it, moved his mask away for a moment, sipped the coffee, and then put the mask back on.

  "Shit," his voice came over the earphones.

  "Burned my fucking lip!"

  Darmstadter glanced at the altimeter, then looked at it again, more closely, to be sure he had read it right. It indicated 27,500 feet, which was three thousand five hundred feet higher than the "maximum service altitude" for a fully loaded B-25G, according to TM 1-B25G.

  Had Canidy rigged the engines so they would function at that altitude? he wondered. Or was the greater altitude possible because the weight of the guns and the parasitic drag of their turrets and mounts was gone?

  Then he thought that the only thing he knew for sure to explain what he was doing at 27,500 feet over the Atlantic Ocean was that they were headed for an island called Vis. He had a hundred questions in his mind about that, including.

  how come there was a landing field in an area shaded in red--indicating "enemy occupied"--on every map he had ever seen of the Adriatic area.

  And, of course, there was the big question: Why had they picked a C-47 pilot with a mediocre record like his to go along? It was almost impossible to accept the reason Canidy had offered, that they wanted to see if a pilot of his skill level could manage a takeoff and a landing on a strip that had a stream running through the middle of it.

  Canidy surprised him by getting out of the copilot's seat and motioning him into it, then pointing to the altimeter, then handing him the chart.

  That was the first time he'd seen the chart. They had politely but carefully kept him from seeing it before they'd left. Dolan had even kept him from attending the final weather briefing at Fersfield by going there before he came to Darmstadter's room to wake him up.

  The chart for the first leg of the flight showed a course leading out to sea in a general south-southwest direction so they would pass no closer than two hundred miles to the coast of France, Then it turned southeast, with Casablanca, Morocco, as their destination.

  There were cone-shaped areas drawn on the chart, the small end in France, the wide end over the Atlantic. Canidy explained that they indicated the normal patrol areas for German Messerschmitt ME109F fighters, based in France.

  There were larger cones, which Canidy identified as the patrol areas for Geran Heinkel bombers used as long-range reconnaissance aircraft. The larger cones covered much of the B-25's projected route.

  "The theory," Canidy said dryly, "is that the Heinkels fly at about ten thousand feet, which gives them their best look for convoys and the best fuel consumption.

  And we hope that if one of their pilots happens to look up here and see us, he will decide that prudence dictates he keep looking for ships."

  "But what if one of them sees us?"

  "We have two defenses," Canidy said.

  "We're a little faster. If that doesn't work, Brother Dolan will lead us in prayer."

  "We're faster because you removed the guns? That weight is gone?" Darmstadter asked.

  "The weight, sure, but primarily because of the parasitic drag," Canidy said.

  "By taking the two turrets out of the slipstream, we picked up twenty knots at twenty thousand feet. We got another five or six knots when we faired over the waist-gun position. We can go either faster or farther at the same fuel consumption rate."

  "Clever," Darmstadter said.

  "The engineers obviously knew their stuff."

  "Thank you," Canidy said, smiling.

  "You did it? You're an engineer?" Darmstadter blurted, remembering as he spoke that it was a question and questions were against the rule. But Canidy didn't jump on him.

  "You will doubtless be awed to hear that you are dealing with R. Canidy, BS, Aeronautical Engineering, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, '39."

  Darmstadter bit off just in time the question that popped to his lips:

  "How'd you get involved in something like this?"

  He was beginning to understand that there were questions he could ask, but that asking personal questions was taboo.

  The answer, anyway, seemed self-evident. Whatever the OSS really did-some of the stories he'd heard about the OSS simply couldn't be true--it obviously had a high priority for personnel and equipment. The big brass had apparently decided that an MIT-trained aeronautical engineer could do more good working and flying for the OSS than he could, say, as a maintenance officer in a troop carrier or heavy bombardment wing.

  Canidy connected a portable oxygen bottle to his face mask, then went into the cabin. Ten minutes later, he returned.

  "I'll sit there awhile, John," he said to Dolan, motioning him out of the pilot's seat.

  "Take a nap."

  When Dolan had hooked up a portable oxygen mask and gone back the fuselage, Canidy's voice came metallically over the intercom.

  "Dolan's a hell of a fine pilot," he said.

  "He was a gold-stripe chief avi;

  pilot before the war."

  Darmstadter had heard that both the Navy and the Marines had enliste lots in peacetime, and the legend was that they were better pilots than i of the officers because all they did was fly.

  "And then he got a commission?" Darmstadter asked.

  "No," Canidy said.

  "First, they took him off flight status. Bad heart. The got out of the Navy and went to China with the American Volunteer Groi a maintenance officer. Then he got a commission."

  "But he's flying!"

  "How Commander Dolan passed a flight physical, Darmstadter, is of those questions you're not supposed to ask," Canidy said.

  "When you we preflight, and they were giving you those fascinating lectures on military tics, did they touch on 'conservation of assets'?"

  Darmstadter thought about it, then shook his head.

  "I don't remember," he said.

  "What you're supposed to do, if you're a general or an admiral and abo enter battle, is decide what 'asset' you absolutely have
to have if things tough. Then you squirrel that asset away so it's ready when you need it. I sent my asset back for a nap. If anybody can sit this thing down safely mountain strip with a stream running across the runway, Dolan can. Yol low?"

  "Yes, sir," Darmstadter said. He was more than a little uncomforti Canidy was obviously a highly skilled B-25 pilot and comfortable doing tthings that with it that most people would not try (his solo flight of the B-25 thrt the soup the day Darmstadter had first met him was proof of that). An' had just admitted that he didn't think he could make the landing on the is of Vis

  "There is an additional problem," Canidy said.

  "Commander Dolan d he is still twenty-two years old and that the doctors are dead wrong about condition of his heart. He will take affront unless handled properly. Kid glare required." t "I understand, Sir," Darmstadter said.

  "And I told you before, stop calling me "Sir,"" Canidy said. ' Six hours and fifteen minutes after taking off from Fersfield, the V landed at Casablanca. Darmstadter made the landing. He had to tell hill there was no reason to be nervous. Landing on the wide, concrete runwi a commercial airport on a bright, sunny afternoon should be a snap, com to landing on the rough, narrow gravel runways at Fersfield. But he was ill

  that it was sort of a test. Major Canidy was in effect giving him a check ride to Qy well Dolan had done as an instructor pilot.

  Darinstadter was enormously pleased and relieved that the landing was a greaser.

  A Follow The jeep, painted in checkerboard black and white and flying an enormous checkerboard flag, met them at the end of the runway and led them away from the terminal to a remote corner of the field. There was an old hangar there with the legend "Air France" barely legible through a layer of rust.

  As they approached, the doors opened and a ground crewman gave Darmstadter hand signals, directing him to taxi to the doorway and then shut it down. The moment the engines died, a dozen Air Corps ground crewmen manhandled the B-25 inside the hangar and closed the doors.

  [TWO]

  The Mark Hopkins Hotel

  It had been decided in Washington that Whittaker, Hammersmith, and Garvey would spend the night at Mare Island. Cynthia, to avoid the curiosity and comment that a civilian woman in the Mare Island Female Officers' Quarters would cause, would stay in a San Francisco hotel.

  "I know someone who can get you into the Mark Hopkins," Jimmy Whittaker had said, innocently, when the issue of where she would stay in San Francisco came up in Captain Douglass's office.

  "What the hell, you might as well go first class."

  "Go ahead and do it, Jim," Captain Douglass had answered for her.

  "Hotel rooms are in damned short supply in San Francisco."

  When they arrived in San Francisco, by commercial air, they went first to the hotel. Cynthia's reserved "room" turned out to be the Theodore Roosevelt Suite, four elegantly furnished rooms on an upper floor.

  "It was all they had available," Jimmy said innocently.

  Cynthia knew that simply wasn't true. What had happened was that Jimmy had told the hotel something like "I'd like something very nice for a ry good friend of mine," and the hotel had come up with the Theodore Roosevelt Suite. The hotel had been very obliging to Jim Whittaker because Jimmy was a very rich man, and the hotel knew it.

  Jimmy's father and his two uncles had inherited the Whittaker Construci n Company from their father. There was more to it than the construction mpany, though God knew that was enough. The Whittaker fortune was based in railroads. They had built them before the Civil War, and grown ver rich during the war building and operating railroads for the Union Army.

  After the Civil War, there had been more railroads. And harbors, and heav construction. Whenever they could, which was most often, they took part o their pay in stock of whatever they were building. The company had large r estate holdings in New York City and elsewhere. It was even possible, Cynthg thought, looking around the Theodore Roosevelt Suite, that Jimmy had an it terest in the hotel.

  Jimmy's father had been killed in World War I. And his third of Whittakfi Construction had gone to his only son. Both Jimmy's uncle Jack and his uncj Chesty had died childless. Jack Whittaker's third would pass to Jimmy on tfa death of his widow. Jimmy had already inherited the house on Q Street, Norn west, from Chesty, as well as some other property.

  Chesty Whittaker, Jimmy's uncle and Cynthia's lover, had told her all abon the financial position of James M. B. Whittaker. Not subtly. Chesty had thougd she should marry Jimmy.

  "You've got to think of the future, my darling," Chesty had said.

  "We can!

  go on."

  "Why can't we?"

  "Well, for one thing, I'm a little long in the tooth. You'll still be a young woman when I am long gone."

  "Goddamn you!" she had screamed.

  "This is obscene. You're not going t die, and I'm not going to marry Jimmy. Jimmy's a kid."

  "There is only three years' difference--" "Four," she had snapped.

  "Four years," he'd said. They had looked at each other for a moment, be foil he went on, "Presumably, you meant it when you said you didn't want my wi( to ever find out about us."

  "The way I put it was "I'd rather die than have her find out,"" Cynthia h said.

  "Yes, of course I meant it."

  "The reality of our situation is that you are as poor as a church mouse, Chesty had said.

  "And what do you think she would think if I made provisiOi for you in my will? In addition to her many other virtues, she is intelligent an perceptive."

  "Then don't 'make provision' for me," Cynthia had said.

  "I love you," he'd said.

  "I could not not do that."

  "And the convenient way to do it is to marry me off to Jimmy? Damn yol Chesty."

  "Jimmy stopped off here on his way to Randolph Field," Chesty Whittake had said.

  "He said that it was his intention, when he graduated, to ask you t marry him, and what did I think of that?"

  "What did you say?" she'd asked.

  "I told him I thought it was a splendid idea," Chesty'd said.

  "Actually, what I said making my little joke, was 'name the first son after me."" "Oh, damn you!" she'd said, and she'd started to cry, and he'd held her.

  Three months after that happened, Chesty Haywood Whittaker had dropped dead. And he had not made provision for her in his will, and she was as poor as a church mouse.

  Cynthia decided not to make an issue of the Theodore Roosevelt Suite. It would be pointless to protest, for one thing, and for another, it wasn't as if there was a suggestion he would share it with her. He had just made a generous gesture. In the family tradition, she thought. In many ways, Jimmy reminded her of Chesty.

  The Navy sent a Plymouth staff car to carry them from the Mark Hopkins to Mare Island. Waiting for them in a hangar there, guarded by a platoon of Marines under a gunnery sergeant, was a five-foot-high stack of wooden crates that would at 0500 the next morning be loaded aboard the Naval Air Transport Service Douglas C-54 that would carry them to Pearl Harbor in the Hawaiian Islands.

  Jimmy, very seriously, ordered Radioman Second Class Joe Garvey to take charge of the guard detail. Cynthia had to restrain a smile at the slight sailor's obvious feeling of importance at being given the responsibility.

  Garvey's status was still undecided. Since he had correctly deduced that Whittaker and Hammersmith were going into the Philippines, he could not be simply returned to duty. But on the other hand, it had not been decided that he would go with Whittaker and Hammersmith. For the meantime, taking him with them to San Francisco and Hawaii would serve two purposes. An extra hand was going to be helpful, and he already knew what was going on. And if he was with them, he was considered to be secure. He could, at any point, be put on ice if it was ultimately decided not to take him to Mindanao.

  They then went to the Mare Island Officers' Club for dinner. Whittaker ordered a steak dinner with all the trimmings to go, and sent their Navy driver t
o the hangar to deliver it to Garvey.

  There was an orchestra in the club. After dinner, after first, with great mock courtesy, asking Whittaker's permission, Greg asked Cynthia to dance.

  Whittaker graciously gave his permission, then rose and gave a little bow as cg led her off to the dance floor.

  Then it was Jimmy's turn to dance with her. Thirty seconds after he had put his arms around her, she had felt his erection stabbing at her stomach. He didn't grab her and press her close or try to move his hands so they would come against her breasts, but he had an erection, and it was obvious that he was not only not embarrassed by it, but seemed pleased that she had no choice but to be aware of it.