The parachutist, a big guy, landed badly. He screamed.
Canidy ran to him "I broke my fucking ankle again!
"Janos said furiously.
"Jesus Christ!"
"Was hat ihr gesacht?" Alois asked in rough German.
"I said I broke my fucking ankle," Janos said in Hungarian.
Alois smiled sympathetically, then stooped over and scooped Janos up in his arms like a baby. He looked at Canidy and nodded at the forest and then looked stone-faced at Canidy.
When there was no immediate response, he spoke to Janos, who translated:
"He wants to carry me into the woods, okay?"
Canidy nodded his head.
"Ja!"
The other parachutists were on the ground now, and they ran over to Canidy. They were all armed, he saw, with.30-caliber carbines with folding stocks.
"Who are you?" one of them demanded.
"That's Major Canidy," another said, recognizing him.
"Pick up your chutes and put them on the fire," Canidy said.
"And then--" He interrupted himself. The sound of the Twin Wasps was back.
The equipment drop. Why the hell hadn't the jumpmaster kicked that crap out the door after he dropped the jumpers?
The Gooney Bird appeared again over the cut-down area, its flaps and gear down again. He was now even lower than he had been before, when he'd buzzed the meadow.
If you stall it, friend, you're going to land here in this meadow The Gooney Bird didn't stall. But the pilot chopped the engines, and the Gooney Bird touched down. He bounced once, then stayed down, and Canidy saw smoke from the gear as the pilot braked it.
Dolan, you sonofabitch! If I had wanted you to land here, I would have said so. You're too fucking old to be a hotshot pilot!
Canidy ran down the meadow and to the rear door of the Gooney Bird, and looked in.
And It. Commander John Dolan, USNR, lying on the cabin floor, looked back at him out of sightless eyes.
[TWO]
It was raining, and there had been fog, and there had been serious doubt that the Washington courier would be able to get in that day at all. Late the previous day, the ATE C-54 had managed to make it into Prestwick, Scotland, ahead of the front, but too late to try for London.
There had been a break in the weather, and an arctic blast of dry air moving down over Scotland had cleared the skies enough at 0950 for the C-54 to take off. But by then London had been socked in. The question had then been whether the break would close in again at Prestwick before the fog cleared at It was decided in the end to take off and head for London in the hope that it would clear.
At Croydon, it had been necessary to "light the burners." The theory was-and damn the cost--that if enough gasoline were burned in devices set up alongside a runway, the heat generated would cause the air mass and the fog it contained to rise, clearing the runway. In practice, as now, what the burners did for pilots was serve as sort of a super beacon If you could see the glow of the burners, you knew that the runway was somewhere down there, and with a little bit of luck, when you went down low enough, you could find the runway.
The C-54, flown by a commissioned TWA pilot who had lots of experience finding San Francisco in the fog, came in low and slow toward the glow on his horizon over London and found the Croydon runway on his second pass.
As he taxied toward the terminal, it was raining so hard that he had trouble seeing out the windshield. The ground crew who came out to meet them were wearing yellow rubber coats, hats, and trousers, and looked, the pilot thought, like so many misplaced sailboat sailors.
The first passenger to come down the ladder was a chief petty officer of the U.S. Navy. He had a Valv-Pak in each hand and smaller pieces of luggage under his arms.
As he came down the stairs, an Austin Princess limousine drove up close to him. The chief opened the front door and tossed the luggage inside, then backed out and held the rear door open.
"Get in, Ellis!" Colonel William Donovan said as he came down the stairs from the C-54.
"In here, Ellis," It. Colonel Edmund T. Stevens said, motioning with his hand.
"You're getting soaked."
Ellis got in the backseat, and a moment later Donovan got in beside him and closed the door.
Donovan gave Stevens his hand.
"Well, Ed," he said, "how are you?"
"Just fine, thank you, Bill," Stevens said.
"David said he hopes you will understand that he would have met you if he could."
Donovan's reply surprised Stevens. Donovan was usually not only polite but manifested the lawyer's ability to say the unpleasant in the nicest possible way.
Donovan said, "I didn't want to see him anyway. Not just now."
And then Donovan leaned forward and cranked down the divider separating the backseat from the chauffeur's compartment.
"Young lady, would you drive up to the terminal and get out, please? I'm sorry, but you're about to be put out in the rain."
"Yes, Sir," the driver, a WRAC sergeant, said.
"You call the office and have them send a car for you," Stevens said.
"There's a bus, Sir," the WRAC sergeant replied.
"I can take that."
"Do what Colonel Stevens said," Donovan said.
"The bus doesn't go near Berkeley Square."
The WRAC pulled the nose of the Princess close to a door of the terminal, pulled on the parking brake, jumped out, and ran into the building. Ellis climbed over Donovan and got in the front seat behind the wheel.
"She forgot her purse," Ellis announced.
"No problem," Donovan said.
"We'll probably be at Berkeley Square before she gets there. Get us off the field and drive in wide circles."
"Yes, Sir," Ellis said, and backed the Princess away from the terminal building.
"Colonel, you put the window down."
"It's all right, I want you to hear this anyway," Donovan said.
But then he didn't say anything else until they had left the field and were driving through Thorton Heath toward the Thames on Highway A2 3 5.
"Get off the highway, Ellis," he ordered.
Ellis made the next right turn.
"The ostensible purpose of my visit," Donovan said, "is to smooth things over between you and SOE.
"Representations have been made at the highest levels' to the effect that you are not only being uncooperative but are interfering with their smooth operation. All of which proves that you are doing what I told you to do."
"Anything specific, Colonel?
"Stevens asked.
"No, just general allegations about your being uncooperative, which I interpret to mean you have both locked them out of our cupboard and have turned a deaf ear to the pronouncements of the professionals," Donovan said.
"But you'll have to arrange for me to see them, as soon as you can."
"This afternoon?"
"Fine," Donovan said.
"And let's do it on our turf. Either at Berkeley Square or at Whithey House. I don't want to give them the impression that I have been summoned for a dressing-down on their carpet."
"What about the apartment in the Dorchester?"
"Fine," Donovan said.
"And let's do it over drinks and hors d'oeuvres. As fancy as we can manage" "I'll get Helene Dancy to set it up," Stevens said.
"Better yet, Charity. She's at Berkeley Square."
Donovan grunted approval.
"Ellis," Stevens said, "there's a radio up there."
"I can hear it, Sir."
"We're Birddog," Stevens said.
"Call Foxhunt, Captain Dancy's monitoring it, and tell her to have Charity set up a fancy do for half past five at the Dorchester, details to follow."
"Aye, aye, Sir," Ellis said, and reached for the microphone.
"Napoleon said," Donovan said, "that an army marches on its stomach. This one marches on hors d'oeuvres."
Stevens chuckled.
"My real purpose
, of course," Donovan said, still conversationally, but very seriously, "is to be near what's happening in Hungary. So you better start by telling me what is happening, Ed."
"You got the message where Canidy asked for a team?"
Donovan nodded.
"It went in at 0500 this morning, or thereabouts," Stevens said.
"We've had no word how that went."
"This morning? God, that was fast! How did you arrange that?"
"We flew the team--specifically Stan Fine and young Douglass flew--the team to Cairo in one of the new B-17s we got for Operation Aphrodite."
"And then used Canidy's B-25 to drop the team? That's why you involved young Douglass, to fly the B-25?"
"That was the idea, but something went wrong. The last radio from Wilkins said that the team was being dropped by a C-47, flown by Dolan and a C-47 pilot we borrowed from the Air Corps, and that the B-25 with Douglass and Fine in it was going to Vis."
"Where'd you get the C-47?" Donovan asked. And then went on without waiting for a reply, "I didn't know a C-47 had that kind of range."
"It doesn't," Stevens said.
"I called Joe Kennedy and asked him about that, and he said that it's possible to refill the main tanks of a C-47 from barrels of fuel carried in the cabin. He also said that it's dangerous as hell, but apparently that's what they have done. Wilkins borrowed the C-47 at Cairo."
Donovan grunted.
"It's time we thought of the worst possible scenario," he said.
"That should be plural. The first thing that can go badly wrong--and I am frankly surprised this hasn't already happened--is that they will find out who Fulmar and the Professor really are...."
"Colonel," Stevens began.
"Let me finish, please, Ed," Donovan said.
"The best we could hope for in that situation would be that the Germans would decide we wanted Dyer for what he knows about jet- and rocket-engine metallurgy. That they would not suspect that what we're really after is getting nuclear-useful people out of Germany."
"Yes, Sir," Stevens said.
"The second thing that could go wrong would be for Canidy to be captured.
Quite aside from what else he knows, I think we have to consider that the Germans know full well who he is--that he's the number three here--and would decide that we are either very interested in Professor Dyer, or, I'm afraid, that there is more to all this activity than is immediately apparent."
Stevens didn't reply.
"I think I have to say this, Ed," Donovan said.
"On reflection, I think I made an error in judgment. I think what I should have ordered--to cut our losses to the minimum--was to give the Germans Fulmar and the professor."
Stevens didn't reply.
"Or alternatively, to arrange for them to be eliminated. On reflection, that's what should have been done. There are two ways to do that. The first would be to message Canidy to do it. I don't know if that would work. If he went in there without orders, in direct defiance of orders, I don't think we can expect him to obey any other order he doesn't like."
"Canidy is not a fool," Stevens said loyally.
"Sometimes I wonder about that," Donovan said.
"The second way to ensure that the Germans don't get to question Fulmar and the professor is to bomb St. Gertrud's prison."
"Canidy's thought of that. He asked for Composition C2."
"I meant by aircraft," Donovan said "A raid on Budapest. Failing to reach the target, a squadron of B-17s would bomb an alternative target. A target of opportunity. Pecs. That happens all the time."
"That's a little far-fetched, isn't it?" Stevens said.
"It's laid on for tomorrow," Donovan said.
"Presuming the weather permits.
If not tomorrow, the day after. I have been assured--there is only minimal antiaircraft around Pecs, they can go in low--that there is a seventy-five-percent chance that the prison can be taken out completely. Totally destroyed."
"My God!"
"You know what's involved with this," Donovan said.
"I don't see I have any alternative. Do you?"
"No, Sir," Stevens said after a moment.
"With that scenario," Donovan said, "there is the possibility that the team, and Canidy, can get out."
"If he does," Donovan said, "by the time I've finished with him, he may wish he was still in Hungary."
"Sir," Stevens said.
"From his perspective, I'm sure he thought he was doing the right thing."
After a moment, Donovan said, "I'm surprised to hear you say that, Ed. I thought by now you would have figured out that 'the right thing' has absolutely no meaning for the OSS. We do what has to be done, and'right'has absolutely nothing to do with that."
He raised his voice.
"You can take us to Berkeley Square now, please, Ellis."
When they got there, Captain Helene Dancy was waiting for them with a just-decrypted message:
OPERATIONAL IMMEDIATB
FROM STATION VIII FOR OSS LONDON
C47 THREE HOURS OVERDUE HERE STOP TOTAL FUEL EXPENDITURE
OCCURRED MOT LATER THAM 0800 LONDOH TIME STOP MUST PRESUME
AIRCRAFT LOST STOP INASMUCH AS SUCCESSFUL DROP SIGNAL
ONRBCEIVED MUST PRESUME FAILURE STOP UNABLE ESTABLISH
CONTACT YACHTSMAN OR PHARMACIST STOP ADVISE STOP
PHARMACIST II
Donovan read it, then handed it to Stevens.
The C-47 with Dolan and Darmstadter was lost. And the worst possible scenario: before they had been able to drop the OSS team.
"I think you'd better radio him to come home," Donovan said.
"And message Wilkins to arrange for a ferry crew for the B-17.1 don't want to lose that, too."
[THREE]
127 Degrees 20 Minutes West Longitude
The Drum was on the surface. In these waters, off the eastern shore of Mindanao, the risk of a submarine on the surface being spotted by Japanese aircraft and patrol boats was almost unacceptable. But surfacing had been necessary. There was no way to attempt to contact the American guerrilla radio station from a submerged boat.
In these circumstances, when the life of his boat was literally at stake, It.
Commander Edwin R. Lennox ordinarily would have exercised command from the bridge on the conning tower, where he could make the decisions (including the ultimate decision: to dive and run or stay and fight). But It. Bill Rutherford, the Drum's exec, was on the bridge and had the conn, and Lennox was below, leaning against the bulkhead. He, Captain Whittaker, and It. Hammersmith were watching as Radioman Second Joe Garvey tried to establish contact with U.S. forces in the Philippines.
Once he had learned that Joe Garvey was not really a motion-picture photographer, Lennox had wondered how good a radioman Garvey could be--he looked to be about seventeen years old--and how the boyish sailor was going to fare when they put him ashore on Mindanao.
The first question had been answered when they had been under way only a few days. The Drum's chief radioman, into whose care Garvey had been entrusted, a salty old submariner not given to complimenting his peers, had volunteered the information that "Garvey really knows his stuff." From the chief radioman, that was tantamount to comparing Garvey to Marconi.
Lennox had noticed the two of them together frequently after that, with the innards of a radio spread out in front of them, and he had overheard several of their conversations, of which he had understood very little.
But he understood the problem Garvey and his chief radioman were trying to solve. The first part of it was that the American guerrillas were operating a homemade radio, and establishing contact with it using the radios available on the Drum might prove difficult.
And then once--if--they made it safely ashore, the next problem was the radio Garvey was carrying. They intended to replace the guerrillas' homemade radio with equipment capable of reliable communications to Australia, Hawaii, and the States. What they had was a new, apparently not fully tested "tran
sceiver," a device weighing only sixty pounds, including an electrical generation system that was pedaled like a stationary bicycle.
W E B Griffin - Men at War 4 - The Fighting Agents Page 42
