Secret Warriors (Men at War 2)

"And he's sick. Is there a doctor?" They seemed to be genuinely sorry to report there was no doctor. "There is supposed to be a gentleman from the U.S. consulate waiting for us," Fine said. They seemed to be just as genuinely sorry to have to tell him that the gentleman from the U.S. consulate had only recently departed, a matter of only hours before.

Fine went down the ladder and on unsteady legs walked to the terminal building, where he tried and failed to get through on the telephone to the U.S. consulate.

Wilson came up to him as he was putting the telephone down. "No guy from the consulate?" he asked. "No," Fine said. "So what do we do now?"

Wilson asked. "Kolwezi is nine hundred miles from here. None of us is in any shape to fly that thing around the pattern, much less nine hundred miles. "You're not suggesting we give up?" Wilson asked.

"Have you got a better idea?" Fine said.

"We have done all that could possibly be expected of us. We have flown without any real rest nine thousand miles in thirty-six hours."

"We've come this far," Wilson continued.

"I'd hate to quit now."

As if to make a joke of it, he spilled a handful of Benzedrine pills into his hand and mimed swallowing them all at once.

"They wouldn't do any good," Fine said.

"We need to lie down in a bed and sleep."

"And then?" Wilson asked. "Then we go," Fine decided.

When he saw Nembly, huddling under his blankets, he was not at all sure he had made the right decision.

Getting the lie-down-in-a-bed type of sleep he had told Wilson they needed proved to be impossible. By the time they had refueled the airplane, the customs officials were gone; the driver of the fuel truck-who had ridden to work on his bicycle-said that he was forbidden to take the truck from the airfield. He proved to be immune-never having seen any before-to the large amount of American currency with which Fine tried to bribe him. Fine and Wilson lay down on the floor of the fuselage making what beds they could from a few blankets.

Immediately, hordes of insects found them. They gave up, went into the cockpit, and started the engines.

SEVEN I Holwezi Hatanga Province, Belgian Congo 0630 Hours August MI, 1942

When Canidy climbed off the wing, walked under the plane, and looked up at the door, Grunier was standing in it, still carrying the shotgun and wearing a look of mingled fear and determination. "If you have anything to put aboard," Canidy said to him, "do it now. We're going."

He had decided the night before that there was no sense taking chances now that they were so close. Two things-in addition to his own and Whittaker's fatigue-bothered him. Since there were no cabin lights, the lashing down of the bags of ore could not be inspected. And he wanted to be very careful when he made the preflight inspection, which meant doing it when there was light stronger than a flashlight or the headlights of a truck. "I am ready," Grunier said, without emotion.

Whittaker came up from the tail. "Okay back there," he said.

"You about ready?" Canidy waved him up the ladder. The European touched his arm. "Bon voyage, bonne fortune," he said. "Thank you," Canidy said, and climbed up the ladder. Grunier backed into the cabin, as if afraid at the last moment Canidy would somehow keep him from going along.

Canidy pulled the ladder into the airplane and tried to put it in its rack. It was blocked by ore bags. That didn't matter; he laid it on top of some ore bags. Whittaker had had the Africans arrange these on the fuselage floor in stacks of three: two on the cabin floor, one on top of the two. Whittaker had then lashed the stacks down and had done a good job even by lantern light. By the time Canidy went into the cockpit Whittaker had started the engines. Canidy strapped himself in, released the brakes, turned the C-46 back onto the runway, and taxied slowly down to the other end.

It steered heavily, "It's heavy," Canidy said, hoping he sounded less concerned than he felt.

"You can feel it."

"A hundred twenty bags at a hundred pounds," Whittaker said. "Twelve thousand pounds. Six tons. That's heavy, but within our max gross takeoff weight."

"Even heavier if those bags weigh, say, a hundred twenty pounds," Canidy said. Whittaker's smile faded. "Jesus Christ, you're serious!

"I don't think anybody weighed them," Canidy said.

"But this won't be the first plane ever to take off a little over max gross weight."

"The runway's pretty long," Whittaker said.

"We'll be all right."

"I thought about weighing a couple of bags," Canidy said. "Then I wondered where we could get a scale this time of morning" "It'll be all right," Whittaker said. There was no point contacting the tower, and he didn't. He ran the engines up, checked the gauges, took off the brakes, and advanced the throttles. The rumble of the takeoff roll was heavier and more muted than it usually was, and acceleration was noticeably slower. "Goddamned thing doesn't want to go," he said. "I wonder," Whittaker said thoughtfully, "just how much weight we do have aboard." The C-46 finally came off the tail wheel. Canidy was watching the airspeed indicator move with maddening slowness to takeoff velocity when there was a sound like an enormous shotgun being fired.