The Fighting Agents (Men at War 4)

"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.

But that was several steps away. What had to be done now was to let the guerrillas know, and to keep the Japanese from learning, that Whittaker and his team were coming ashore--and where, and when.