Canidy wasn’t sorry to see the Algerian leave. Khatim had avoided any conversation on the drive out, answering Canidy’s casual queries with nods and grunts. But Canidy was sorry to see the car go. He realized that just now was likely the last time he would see it. He looked at the Hamilton Chronograph on his wrist, did the quick math, came up with six hours, and figured this was the first time he had given up a “borrowed” vehicle—car, jeep, aircraft—in so short a time.
Khatim had dropped him at the very far side of the airport grounds, barely in view of the main base operations of the airport, which itself was little more than an old one-story masonry structure pockmarked by bullets during OPERATION TORCH. On the roof of the building was the rickety control tower. The macadam of the runway and taxiway was a patchwork, the holes blown there temporarily packed with dirt and crushed stone. All of the airport appeared to be in various levels of repair by AFHQ and the local civilians they had hired to handle the manual labor.
The facility, if that was an applicable description, that served the OSS aircraft was set up behind a boneyard of WWI aircraft—a couple of cannibalized French Spad XIIIs, a rotting German Fokker D.VII resting upside down on what was left of its bent top wing—and assorted worn-out, rusted airfield equipment.
It was really nothing more than a dusty, sunbaked spot beside a dirt strip that led to the taxiway. It had an old Nissen hut. The two Douglas C-47s were on either side of that, the main wheels of the low-wing tail-dragger transports chocked with what looked like parts scavenged from the Fokker.
Canidy walked toward the small hut. Designed by the British during the First World War, it was made of corrugated steel bent to form an inverted U. Wooden walls capped the ends, each with a single-man door, two windows, a louvered vent above the door, and three pipe vents in the roof. The cramped quarters accommodated four men.
As Canidy approached the hut, and the empty fifty-five-gallon drum by its front door, he found in the air the familiar strong smell of aircraft hydraulic fluid. He smiled; the smell triggered more than a few thoughts.
It was said that with the exception of the two-place, single-engine Piper Cub, the Gooney Bird was the Army Air Force’s most forgiving aircraft. He agreed with that.
On one level—as that of an aeronautical engineer—he appreciated its fine design. It wasn’t sexy, like a Lockheed P-38 fighter, but it was elegant in its utilitarian simplicity. On another, far more important level—as that of a secret agent stranded in enemy-occupied territory—he genuinely loved the Gooney Bird because it had saved his ass.
Darmstadter had put one down in an impossibly small spot in Hungary (one that Canidy had enlarged by clearing out its trees with Composition C-2 plastic explosive), then, against all odds, barely got the airplane the hell out of there.
The C-47 was the AAF’s version of the Douglas DC-3 airliner. They were coming out of the Douglas plant by the thousands, and were being used as personnel transports and cargo aircraft—mostly carrying paratroopers or towing gliders in support of airborne operations. The C-47’s two, twelve-hundred-horsepower Twin Wasp radial piston engines took it to an impressive twenty-three thousand feet.
Canidy also knew the fuel-efficient Twin Wasps—so named for the engine’s two rows of fourteen cylinders—gave the Gooney Bird a range of more than two thousand miles. That meant without modification—the adding of auxiliary fuel cells, say, which Canidy had done before—it could easily make the trip from Algiers to Sicily and back.
Though, he thought, the Luftwaffe there on the island might have other ideas.
Canidy looked at the closest Gooney Bird, the one on the left side of the hut, and saw that there was some motion in the cockpit. The aircraft on the right side of the hut had two men standing on wooden ladders by the starboard wing. They held wrenches and rags and were bent over the opened nacelle of the engine. A third man, stocky, with hands on his hips and his back to Canidy, stood between the fifty-five-gallon drum and wing, looking up at the engine and supervising.
As Canidy passed the drum, he raised his left hand, then swung it down hard, smacking the lid of the drum. The deep wham! sound that his open palm made when it hit the thin metal of the empty drum was stunning.
The supervisor came about a foot off of the ground.
The two mechanics jerked their heads up, one banging his head on the nacelle, the other trying to recover on his wobbly ladder.
“Sonofabitch!” the mechanic who hit his head exclaimed.
“Who in hell—” the supervisor began to roar as he turned toward the noise.
The mechanics watched as a big man in civilian clothing—he looked American but his clothes weren’t—grinned broadly as he walked up with his arms open wide to their boss. In one smooth motion, the man placed his hands on both sides of the boss’s head—and kissed him wetly and noisily on the forehead.
“It’s me in hell, that’s who!” he said cheerfully, his accent clearly midwestern American. “Miss me?”
Then he
looked up at the mechanic who was rubbing his head.
“And a sonofabitch, if you like,” he added. “Sorry about your head. That wasn’t the response I’d hoped for.” He hooked his thumb at the supervisor. “The lieutenant’s here was.”
Canidy looked at him and laughed loudly.
“You came about four feet off the ground, Hank!”
The mechanics on the ladder smiled in appreciation.
“Jeez, Dick, you sure know how to make an entrance,” First Lieutenant Henry Darmstadter, USAAF, said fondly, wiping the wet kiss from his forehead with his shirtsleeve, then holding out his hand.
Darmstadter was twenty-two years old and had a friendly, round face.
“How are you?” Canidy said, shaking the hand.
“Great. What in hell are you doing here?” Darmstadter said, his tone pleasant.