“My orders are to take you,” he said. “Where’s the cargo?”
The European took a small flashlight, pointed it, and blinked it on and off three times. Several hundred yards off in the darkness, there was the sound of engines starting, and then the sound of vehicles approaching. When headlights came on, Canidy saw two trucks, a 1938 or 1939 Chevrolet panel truck and a large, canvas-roofed French Renault.
Both had the legend “Union Mini re” painted on their doors.
The larger truck approached the C-46 and then made a turn so that the headlights shone on an area of spellings. The Chevrolet stopped so that its headlights lit the C-46 door.
An astonishing number of Africans, tall, muscular, good-looking men wearing white cotton shirts and what looked like American dungarees, poured out the back of the Renault truck.
There must be thirty of them, Canidy thought.
The last couple of men off the truck reached back inside and began to pass out shovels. Several others went to the Chevrolet and came out with bundles of cloth bags. “It isn’t bagged?” Canidy asked incredulously. “I could move it here without suspicion,” the European said. “But I could not bag it without attracting the attention of the wrong people.” THE SECRET WARRIORS N all “Jesus!” Canidy said. There was the sound of another truck engine, and Canidy looked with alarm in that direction.
“The fuel truck,” the European said.
“Nothing to worry about. “How long is this going to take?” Canidy said.
“As long as it takes thirty noires to fill one hundred twenty bags,” the European said, “and load them on the airplane.” The Africans, the noires, seemed to know exactly what they were doing. One man held open the mouth of one of the bags while two men shoveled the material into it. As Canidy watched, a bag was filled. The man who had been holding the mouth picked it up, shook it to settle it, held it for another couple of shovelfuls, shook it again, and then took several steps back.
As he tied the bag, another African with a bag moved into position so the shovelers could fill it. At the rate they’re going, Canidy thought, they’ll be finished long before we’re refueled. six I Luanda, Portuguese Angola 2030 Hours August 20, 1942 When the Luanda radio direction finder signal had finally grown strong enough to be trusted, Fine knew they were 150 miles or so almost dead south of where they were supposed to be. A little farther south and they would not have picked up the Luanda transmitter at all. But they flew the needle, and ten hours and fifty minutes after taking off from Bissau, they received permission from Luanda to land. The landing, Fine thought, was a real greaser, the best one he had ever made in the C-46.
That had to be just pure dumb luck-and he almost immediately had good cause to suspect that was all the good luck they were going to have.
Three Portuguese customs officials walked out from the small terminal to the C-46 and, as soon as Fine put the ladder out, climbed aboard.
They saluted, bowed, and shook hands-and then saw Nembly, asleep or unconscious, and Wilson with his bandaged head and his arm in a splint.
“You have befell a misfortune?” the senior of the customs officials asked. “He fell,” Fine said.
“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.