“You have my personal assurance that there is no longer any sort of mechanical irregularity.” Fine decided not to press the point. If the leak had not been repaired, that would be evident when they started the engine. To insist on checking would have been an insult to Spanish pride, and they were in no position to insult anything Spanish. There was a little smoke when Wilson cranked the engine, but that was residual lost oil, and it disappeared before they had taxied back down the runway and turned around to take off. Wilson was flying. He didn’t say so, but it was clear that he thought the runway much too short. He ran the engines to full takeoff power before releasing the brakes, and they were within a hundred yards of the end of the runway before he could get it in the air.
There was nothing to worry about now, Fine thought, as they passed through 8,000 on their way to their cruising altitude of 9,000 feet, but two 44 small” problems. First, there was the very real possibility that the charming Colonel di Fortini had contacted his German friends in Morocco.
300 a W.E.H. ariffin Second, they were now going to arrive at Bissau before daybreak. Arrangements had been made for them to land there at night, and the runway lights would be on to accommodate them. Now they were long behind schedule. Bissau would naturally have assumed that they had gone down in the drink, and there would be no one available to turn on the landing-field lights.
Thankfully, there were no Germans, but there was another problem. As they reached 10,000 feet, Nembly began to complain of cramps. By the time they had climbed to 20,000 feet, his cramps had turned to diarrhea.
With a portable oxygen mask clamped to his face, he had gone into the cabin to deal as best he could with the situation on the makeshift toilet.
FOUR I Aero port de Bissau Portuguese auinea 0225 Hours August 20, 194a There was a radio direction transmitter at Bissau, a weak one. And when the CAT aircraft reached the area, they spotted a rotating beacon.
But aside from a few faint lights-which could have been streetlights or anything-the beacon was the only aviation light, There were no runway lights. And there was no answer when Fine tried to reach the tower on the air-to-ground radio, There was an hour-thirty fuel aboard.
Sunrise was at 0455, twenty-five minutes after they would run out of fuel, There was no alternative airport.
They were flying two-minute circles around the flashing beacon, when all of a sudden approach lights and runway lights flickered, blinked, and then stayed on, and a voice came over the air.
“Aircraft in vicinity Bissau aerodrome, this is Bissau tower.” The runway was rough, narrow, short, and-when they finally slowed down enough in the landing roll-they saw that it was paved with some sort of shell.
When they went into the cabin, Nembly was sitting on the makeshift toilet, hunched under a blanket. He was obviously quite ill.
THE SECRET WARRIORS NM 301
“Fucking Spaniards and their fucking peppers,” Nembly said. One man was both tower operator and airport manager. He was plump and olive-skinned and he wore a loosely woven shirt with square tails outside his trousers. In broken English, he told them that when they hadn’t shown up on schedule, he had assumed they weren’t coming. Fine managed to explain that they would need a ladder to inspect the engines. A heavy wooden ladder was produced, which proved too short to reach the C-46’s engine nacelles. The airport manager sent for a truck. With the ladder on the truck bed, it was high enough. Wilson climbed very carefully up, worked the Dzus fasteners, and opened the nacelle cover. “Looks all right to me,” Wilson called after three minutes of close inspection.
“Maybe that Spaniard knew what he was doing.” And then the ladder rung he was standing on made a cracking noise and gave way. Wilson fell outward, arms flailing. His forehead struck one of the propeller blades a glancing blow, but enough to open the skin. Then he fell onto the roof of the truck. The steel roof made a dull thump, and then Wilson slid off the roof onto the hood and then the ground. He was unconscious when Fine reached him, and blood from the cut on his forehead covered his eyes and lower face. It was immediately evident that his left arm was broken.