The Fighting Agents Part 43

"What's Vis?" Freddy Janos asked.

Fine and Dougla.s.s looked at each other before Fine answered, "An island in the Adriatic. Where we will pick you up when this operation is over."

"Pick us up? We're not going to stay?"

"No," Fine said. "It has been decided to bring you out right away."

"Can I ask why?"

"You can ask, but I can't tell you," Fine said.

"I must be out of my mind," Janos said. "But that sort of p.i.s.ses me off."

"Jesus, that's all we need, a hero," Dougla.s.s said.

Janos felt his face turn warm with anger. With an effort, he fought it down by telling himself that Dougla.s.s, by any criterion, was a hero, and thus had the right to mock the word.

"I guess that sounded pretty dumb," he said.

"Yes, it did," Dougla.s.s said, not backing off. "I just hope you can restrain your heroic impulses when you do get in there, and that you do just what you're told, and nothing more."

They locked eyes for a moment. Janos, for the first time, saw that Dougla.s.s could have very cold and calculating eyes. And he sensed suddenly that Dougla.s.s was judging him, and that if Dougla.s.s found him wanting-if Dougla.s.s concluded that there was a risk he would foolishly take once he was in Hungary-there was a good chance he would be left behind.

"Can a Gooney Bird land on this island?" Janos asked.

There was no response from Dougla.s.s. He continued to look at Janos with cold, calculating eyes.

"What the h.e.l.l," Dougla.s.s said finally. There was even the flicker of a smile. "When all the clever ideas fail, be desperate. Go by the book. Use a parachutist-dropping airplane to drop parachutists."

"Can we get our hands on a C-47?" Janos asked.

"Yes," Fine said, almost impatiently. He had seen a dozen of the twin-engine transports sitting on the field. There would probably be one they could have simply by asking for it. And if there was a problem, one would have to be "diverted from other missions." The OSS had the ultimate priority. "But does a C-47 have the range?"

"I don't think it does," Dougla.s.s said. "I'm not even sure it will make it to Hungary. There's no way one of them could make it to Pecs and then to Vis."

"Where's Darmstadter?" Fine asked. "He ought to know."

"He and Dolan are checking the weather," Dougla.s.s said.

"What's the priority?" Fine asked rhetorically.

"To get Janos's team on the ground in one piece," Dougla.s.s said.

"We could . . . ," Fine began. "I don't know what I'm talking about, and I won't until I know just what the Gooney Bird can do."

"Well," Dougla.s.s said, nodding toward a small door in one of the wide hangar doors where an MP, armed with a Thompson submachine gun, was checking the identification of Lt. Commander John Dolan, USNR, Lt. Henry Darmstadter, and Ernest J. Wilkins, "here comes the expert. "

"Well," Wilkins said, cheerfully confident, as he walked up to them. "G.o.d loves us, apparently. The immediate and twenty-four-hour weather over the drop zone is going to be perfect."

Dougla.s.s laughed nastily.

"Darmstadter," Fine asked. "What's the range of a Gooney Bird? Would a Gooney Bird make it one way to Pecs?"

"No," Darmstadter said immediately.

"What's wrong with the B-25?" Dolan asked.

"Canidy has cleverly modified the B-25 so that you can't drop parachutists from it," Dougla.s.s said, "or at least not a team of them, without scattering them all over Hungary. "

"Good G.o.d!" Wilkins said.

"And we can't put the 17 into Vis," Dolan said.

"Right," Fine said.

"Jesus, now what?" Dougla.s.s asked. "Canidy expects us at daybreak."

"So we use the B-17 for the drop," Dolan said. "And it comes back here. And we send the B-25 to Vis. No problem. "

"No," Wilkins said.

"What do you mean, 'no'?" Fine asked.

"Maintenance found landing-gear problems," he said. "They called me and told me it would take twenty-four hours, maybe a little more, to replace what was broken."

"Then you'll have to get us another 17," Fine said.

"There will be a lot of questions asked why someone wants to borrow a bomber," Wilkins said.

Darmstadter's mind had been racing. He thought he saw a solution. But he was reluctant to offer it. These people, These people, he told himself, he told himself, know what they're doing. I'm just a mediocre Gooney Bird pilot. know what they're doing. I'm just a mediocre Gooney Bird pilot.

And then he thought, f.u.c.k it! f.u.c.k it!

"If there would be only the team, five men, on the Gooney Bird," he said, "it would be very light. It would take another ton and a half, maybe two, before it got close to Max Over Gross."

"If you're talking about fuel," Dolan said, not unkindly, "we just don't have time to rig auxiliary fuel tanks."

"I'm talking about fifty-five-gallon drums," Darmstadter plunged on, "and hand pumps to replenish the fuel in the main tanks as it's burned off."

"Hey!" Dolan said after a moment's thought.

"Would that work, John?" Fine asked.

"Eight fifty-five-gallon drums would weigh thirty-two hundred pounds," Dolan said. "A little over a ton and a half. And that would be another four hundred gallons. More than enough to get a Gooney Bird from here to Pecs, and then to Vis."

"And you can get a Gooney Bird into Vis?" Dougla.s.s said.

Dolan thought that over a moment before replying.

"Yeah," he said after a moment, "I think Brother Darmstadter and I could sit a Gooney Bird down on Vis in one piece." He caught Darmstadter's eye and went on. "We'll have to get the tail wheel down before we hit the stream, going in. If we were still up on the main gear, we'd go over on our nose. Getting out will be easier; we'll just keep the tail wheel on the ground till we're through the water."

Darmstadter nodded his understanding.

"Could Brother Darmstadter and me sit one down in one piece?" Dougla.s.s asked.

Dolan looked at him.

"You don't have hardly any Gooney Bird time, Colonel," Dolan said, after a moment.

"But I don't have dysentery, either," Dougla.s.s said. "Canidy told me about your 'dysentery,' John."

"Canidy has a big mouth," Dolan said. "And I'm all right."

"I don't think we can take a chance on that, John," Dougla.s.s said.

"I'm missing something here," Wilkins said.

"I'm afraid Commander Dolan will not be able to go," Dougla.s.s said. "Whatever plans we make will have to exclude him."

"First of all, that'd be Fine's decision," Dolan said. "And you haven't heard me out."

"Go ahead, Commander," Fine said, and immediately wondered why he had called Dolan by his rank.

"Darmstadter knows more about dropping . . . what is it they say? 'sticks' . . . sticks of paratroopers than anybody else. And he's also the only one of us with any experience to speak of flying a Gooney Bird on the deck. And the only way we're going to be able to find Pecs and not get ourselves shot down is to go in on the deck."

"Okay, that takes care of Darmstadter," Dougla.s.s said. "He flies the Gooney Bird. We're talking about who goes with him. We're talking about your 'dysentery,' Dolan."

"I was flying cross-country using a road map before anybody else here was out of diapers," Dolan said. "I'm the only one here who can, for sure, find this meadow Canidy has picked out for us."

"That presumes you don't have another . . . attack of dysentery," Dougla.s.s said.

"If, for example, you were to go in the Gooney Bird," Dolan went on, ignoring him, "that would leave me and Fine to fly the 25 to Vis. Captain Fine is not what you could call an experienced B-25 pilot. I hate to think what would happen if he had to try to land the B-25 on Vis."

"Dolan, do you think Colonel Dougla.s.s could land the 25 on Vis?"

"He stands a much better chance than you do," Dolan said. "And the kid doesn't need him in the C-47."

"And what if you're not 'available' in the C-47?" Fine challenged.

"That's the chance we have to take, that by me just sitting there in the right seat and letting the kid fly, my dysentery won't come back."

Dougla.s.s looked at Fine.

"I think we have to go with Dolan," Fine said. "His main advantage, I think, is that he's the one with the best chance . . . maybe even the only one with a chance . . . of finding the drop zone."

3.

PeCS, HUNGARY 0515 HOURS 21 FEBRUARY 1943.

Lt. Hank Darmstadter thought that the most difficult part of the flight so far had been taxiing to the end of the runway in Cairo. They had taken off at 2100, which would put them over the meadow outside Pecs at just after daylight. The airfield at Cairo was blacked out, and while Wilkins had been able to arrange for the runway lights to be turned on long enough for them to take off, they had had to be led to the runway from the hangar by a man holding a flash-light in the back of a jeep.

The flashlight-in-the-jeep had been very hard to follow. It was almost impossible to see directly ahead out over the nose of a C-47 with its tail wheel on the ground. C-47 pilots learned to taxi by looking out the side and by swinging the nose from side to side to provide a look ahead through the side windows.

It was difficult following the jeep, but they'd made it to the end of the runway all right, sometimes flicking the landing lights on to make sure of their position. Darmstadter had been a little surprised and flattered that Dolan had not taken over the controls and done the taxiing, but Dolan had left that to Darmstadter.

And from the moment they had lined up with the centerline of the runway, things had gone without a hitch.

Dolan had waited until he'd run the final mag check for the engines, and then he'd called the tower for the lights, and they had come on immediately.

Despite what had turned out because of the air temperature to be four hundred pounds over Max Over Gross, the takeoff had been no problem at all. The only way Darmstadter could tell how heavy they were was a reluctance to pick up alt.i.tude. But they had never come close to a stall, and the climb was steady, if slow.

The first leg, the longest, was on a west-northwest course across the desert to the Mediterranean, and then across the Mediterranean far enough south of Crete to avoid a chance encounter with German aircraft based on the island. And then they turned north across the Ionian Sea.

There was almost a half moon, providing what Dolan described as the most they could ask for, enough light for them to make out landma.s.ses and sh.o.r.elines, but not enough to make it easy for anyone to spot them.

The Strait of Otranto, which separates the heel of the Italian boot from Albania and the Adriatic from the Ionian Sea, came into view just when they expected it to, and they could see both sh.o.r.elines for a while.

Dolan had planned that that leg of the flight would take six hours and twenty-five minutes. It actually took six hours and two, meaning that they were making better time than antic.i.p.ated, even with the engines thinned back as much as possible for fuel economy.

Once they had crossed the Strait, Darmstadter had raised the nose slightly, starting a slow climb to 9,000 feet, and Dolan had begun to peer intently out the window looking for the narrow strip of land that ran between the Adriatic and Lake Scutari on the Yugoslav-Albanian border.

Dolan had told him, jokingly, but meaning it, that the secret of "road map" navigation was to look for something on the ground that was large enough to be easily seen and that couldn't be confused with anything else.

Lake Scutari fit the bill. It was twenty-five miles long and was separated from the Adriatic by a strip of land as narrow as seven miles. It could be easily found, and it could not be mistaken for anything else.

"Steer straight north from the end of the lake," Dolan said when they had found Lake Scutari, and then he got out of his seat. "I think it's time to get rid of another drum."

Lt. Janos had been shown how to pump fuel from the fifty-five-gallon drums into the main tanks. One of the drums had been "semipermanently" installed, with a line running from its bottom to the main aircraft tank. Fuel from it had been pumped into the main tank, and then that fuel was replenished from other fifty-five-gallon barrels.

The empty tanks didn't weigh much, but they could not be completely drained, and Dolan was worried that the avgas slos.h.i.+ng around in them would create fumes that would be dangerous. He had gone back into the cabin several times to make sure that as soon as each drum had been emptied, Janos had thrown it out.

The ground seemed to glow white about that time, and after a moment Darmstadter figured out what it was-the moonlight reflecting back from snow on the ground. That meant they were approaching the mountains in Montenegro, the highest of which was about 7,500 feet. There would be at least 1,500 feet between them and the highest peak, but it was important that they know when they pa.s.sed over it, so they could safely descend.

Darmstadter had been worried that Dolan would want the controls after they started down and were flying on the deck. There was no question that Dolan was a better and more experienced pilot. But there was also no doubt that he had had a heart attack and might have another.

But Dolan lived up to what he had promised Dougla.s.s: that he would "work the road map in the right seat and let the kid fly."

The only specific instructions Dolan gave him were course changes, and several times the "suggestion" that it would be "okay to go down another couple hundred feet."

According to the Corps of Engineers' map (which the Corps had apparently borrowed from Le Guide Michelin Le Guide Michelin), this part of Hungary was spa.r.s.ely populated. There were here and there a few lights to be seen, but there was no way of telling whether they were a few lights in violation of a village blackout, or lights in single farmhouses.

At 0500, as the sky to the east was starting to glow dull red, Dolan unstrapped himself again and got off the copilot's seat.