The Secret Warriors

They had a bit of trouble, as it turned out, gaining entrance to the field itself. The red-hatted soldiers of His Majesty’s Military Police, who guarded it, had been ordered to be on the lookout for a stolen American Ford staff car meeting the description of the one they were driving.

The MP officer of the guard, however, backed down before the icy indignation of Captain the Duchess Stanfield, WRAC, who was driving the car. Her Grace was incensed that anyone could imagine for a moment that she could possibly be found in the company of a car thief. And they were passed on to the field.

The C-46 was out of the hangar, and a snub-nosed English fuel truck was parked beside it. Its hose led to the auxiliary fuel tanks inside the fuselage. Canidy was standing in the aircraft door watching the proceedings. When he saw the Ford drive up, he came down the ladder.

“What’s going on?” Whittaker asked.

“I hate to say this, but the duchess doesn’t have the need to know,” Canidy said.

“The War Office and the OSS agreed that any actions taken with regard to Admiral de Verbey would be a joint decision,” the duchess said.

“So file an official complaint,” Canidy said, and took Whittaker by the arm and led him inside the hangar.

“The captain,” he said to the guards loud enough for the duchess to hear him, “is not authorized to enter the hangar.”

Inside, Whittaker saw Colonel Stevens standing expectantly beside a telephone. Next to him, a cigarette dangling from his lips, was the London chief of station.

“Are they down?” Whittaker asked. That could be the only explanation for their summons in the middle of the night to Croydon. Something had happened to Fine’s airplane, and the backup was needed.

“They’re overdue at Bissau,” Canidy said. “They will run out of fuel in about fifteen minutes.”

“So the backup flight is on?”

“Well, that’s being decided,” Canidy said dryly, nodding toward Colonel Stevens and the chief of station, “at the highest levels. Things are just fucked up, Jimmy.”

“Well, then, tell me what’s going on,” Whittaker said reasonably.

“I’ll start from the beginning,” Canidy said. “At seventeen hundred hours yesterday, purely as a precautionary measure, Colonel Stevens called over here and asked to speak to Commander Whatsisname. He wanted to put him on a six—as opposed to a twelve—hour alert. The flight engineer told him that Commander Whatsisname was with Captain Somebody at the moment. So Stevens, being a nice guy, said that’s all right, when he comes back, tell him he’s now on a six-hour alert, and ask him to call me for details. That’s fuckup number one.”

“How?” Whittaker asked.

“Bear with me,” Canidy said. “Then he went over to meet me at the Dorchester, where he told me that Scotland Yard is on the case of the stolen Ford, and that they expect to have the criminal behind bars in the immediate future.”

“Are you serious?”

“Dead serious,” Canidy said.

“Christ, and Elizabeth’s going to drive it back to Whitby House.”

“I’m fascinated to hear you refer to her as Elizabeth,” Canidy said. “But I thought you wanted to hear about this.”

“Go on.”

“We had a drink, and then he took me upstairs to a just-swept room, where I was, as they say, brought into the big picture. That was fuckup number two.”

“I don’t understand that.”

“I am now possessed, the London station chief feels, of such hot secrets that my capture cannot be risked, and therefore I can’t go on the backup flight.”

“So I’m to go,” Whittaker said.

“I’m not finished,” Canidy said. “After I was admitted to all the secret crap, and Stevens went back to the OSS, the duty officer told him that Commander Whatsisname—”

“Logan,” Whittaker impatiently furnished the name of the NATC aircraft pilot.

“—Logan had yet to report in. So Stevens called back out here, and the flight engineer said he had heard from him. They were in Liverpool, and Liverpool is socked in. The captain Commander Logan had gone to see was in Liverpool. That was the first time Stevens had heard that.”

“What time is Logan due here?”

“The train will get them here sometime around noon, I understand,” Canidy said. “The weather has been updated—would you like a report? I’ve been running over to the weather office every fifteen minutes or so since about one this morning, when the chief of station arrived out here. Liverpool is thick ground fog, visibility about two and a half feet, and expected to worsen. Oh yeah, and I seem to have left out that at midnight Colonel Stevens woke me up and told me it might be a good idea if I came out here.”

“What about another crew?” Whittaker said. “There ought to be a lot of people who can fly C-46s around here.”

“Not as many as everybody thought,” Canidy said. “And none we can find with a Top Secret security clearance, which the station chief has thrown into the equation. The Air Force is working on that. If they find somebody, then we have the problem of getting them here.”

“You and I could fly it,” Whittaker said. “You said the engineer is here.”

“You weren’t listening,” Canidy said. “I can’t go. I know too much.”

“So what happens now?”

Canidy nodded again toward the station chief and Colonel Stevens, who were hovering around the telephone.

“We wait for the phone to ring,” Canidy said.

“Jesus Christ,” Whittaker said.

The phone never rang. But ten minutes later, after Canidy had looked at his wristwatch yet again, a motorcycle messenger arrived outside the hangar.

“I don’t like that,” Canidy said.

“How do you know what it is?” Whittaker asked.

“If it were good news,” Canidy said, “they would have called and said something mysterious that would have let him know. Shit, they’re down. They’ve probably been down for hours.”

The chief of station took the message, read it, and handed it to Colonel Stevens. They exchanged no more than six words, and then Stevens waved Canidy and Whittaker over to them. As they approached, the station chief took the message back from Stevens.

“We can’t wait any longer,” Stevens said. “We have just been authorized to take any risk considered necessary.”

“Such as sending two fighter pilots to Africa in a C-46?” Canidy said.

“The risk, Major Canidy,” the station chief said coldly, “is that you would find yourself being interrogated by the Germans. It has been decided that the mission is worth running that risk.”

“So we go?” Canidy asked.

“Yes, Dick, as soon as you can get in the air,” Stevens said.

“I want to see you alone a moment, Whittaker,” the station chief said.

“I’ll go wake up the engineer and tell him to wind the rubber bands,” Canidy said. “Colonel, where’s the flight plan?”

“The engineer has it,” Stevens said.

“NATS Four-oh-two, hold your position. I have a C-54 trying to land at this time.”

“Roger, Croydon,” Canidy said. “Four-oh-two holding on the threshold.”

Whittaker got out of his seat. “Don’t go anywhere without me,” he said.

Canidy wondered where the hell he was going, then realized that Whittaker needed to take a leak.

Whittaker came back as an Air Transport Command C-54 roared past and touched down.

“I hope the rubber bands don’t break and we have to come back,” Canidy said. “I’d hate to try to land here in this shit.”

He looked at Whittaker as he spoke.

Whittaker was extending a small snub-nosed Smith & Wesson revolver toward him.

“Put this where you won’t shoot yourself,” he said.

“Where’d you get that?”

“The station chief gave me one, and he gave the engineer one. I just took that one away from the engineer.”

“Why?”

“Because when the station chief gave me mine, he said I was to use it on you in case it looked as if you were going to fall into enemy hands, and I figured he probably told the engineer the same thing.”

Canidy looked at him incredulously.

Whittaker nodded.

“Jesus Christ,” Canidy said.

“Yeah,” Whittaker said.

“NATS Four-oh-two, you are cleared for takeoff. Maintain a heading of two-seven-zero magnetic until you reach seven thousand feet.”

Canidy looked over his shoulder at the engineer.

“Stand by to give me takeoff power,” he said into his microphone. Then he released the brakes, tapped the throttles enough to get him onto the runway, and lined up with the white line down the center.

“Give me full takeoff power,” he said to the microphone, then switched to transmit. “Understand two-seven-zero, seven thousand. Navy ATC Four-oh-two rolling.”

The C-46 began to gather speed very quickly, and he felt the controls come to life. Just as he lifted off, he saw the C-54 that had just landed taxiing toward the terminal area.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “welcome to the European Theater of Operations. We are delighted to have so many distinguished members of the press with us. We have buses waiting for you, which will take you to the press center, where we will serve breakfast. By the time breakfast is over, we’ll have your luggage sorted out and in your rooms. I must remind you that from this moment you are subject to both censorship and military authority. Now, if there are no questions that won’t wait, gentlemen, I suggest you begin to debark the aircraft.”

The last distinguished gentleman of the press off the aircraft wore a pink skirt beneath her brand-new green tunic with the shiny WAR CORRESPONDENT brass pins. There was an official hat that went with the ensemble, but Ann Chambers thought it made her look ridiculous, and she had already “lost” it.

She carried a canvas suitcase, a typewriter, and a Leica camera that had cost her an arm and a leg in Washington just before she left.

Well, here I am, Ann Chambers thought. Now the question is, where’s Dick Canidy?