OSS Dellys Station Dellys, Algeria 1130 30 May 1943 Major Richard Canidy, USAAF, sitting in the left seat of the UC-81 aircraft-the military designation for the small four-seat Stinson Reliant-applied more throttle to its single 240-horsepower Lycoming radial piston engine. As he put the high-wing tail-dragger into a steep bank, he caught in the corner of his eye that John Craig van der Ploeg, staring wide-eyed out from under his unruly wiry black hair, had a death grip on his seat.

Oh hell . . .

Canidy casually reached over and tapped him on the shoulder. When van der Ploeg jerked his head to him, Canidy formed a circle with his index finger and thumb, then raised his eyebrows, the gesture asking Are you going to be okay?

Van der Ploeg suddenly looked at his hands and realized he'd reflexively grabbed his seat. He immediately forced himself to let go. Then he nodded and made an okay sign in reply.

Canidy nodded back, but thought, You damn sure don't look okay.

But at least you're trying to force yourself to get over your phobias.

Otherwise, this is going to be one helluva long mission. . . .

Canidy turned his attention to outside the windscreen, to the dirt landing strip beneath them. The rough runway had been carved out on the backside of the ridge from where Dellys overlooked the Mediterranean Sea. At this altitude of 1,600 feet ASL-above sea level-they could still easily see the small city of low white buildings set into the hillside with a small semicircular harbor at the bottom. Canidy was reminded of Stan Fine describing it as a small-scale version of Algiers, which was some sixty-odd miles due west.

At the landing strip's eastern end, next to a Nissen hut, were two olive drab aircraft sitting side by side. The bigger of the two, a twin-engine tail-dragger, was a C-47. A jeep had been parked by the Gooney Bird's nose.

That should be our bird to Sicily. . . .

The second aircraft was another UC-81. Canidy watched as it began moving, taxiing maybe fifty feet, and then turning onto what on an improved runway would have been a well-marked threshold, complete with numbers "27" to indicate the compass heading of 270 degrees. Here, however, it was all just raw dirt. If not for the presence of the airplanes and the orange windsock above the hut, it would've been easy to mistake the strip as nothing more than a wide swath in a crude road that cut through the lush green hillside.

Canidy continued banking his Stinson, going around so that he would touch down almost exactly where the aircraft had taxied now.

As he leveled out and lined up with the strip, they hit a thermal. The wave of hot air rising off the ground tossed the aircraft, causing it to suddenly rise then drop. Although the harness straps kept them snug in their seats, John Craig van der Ploeg immediately grabbed his seat bottom-then almost as quickly realized he had done so, and released his grip, forcing his hands to his knees. He took a fast series of shallow breaths.

Good job, Canidy thought, keeping his focus forward as van der Ploeg's eyes darted his way to see if Canidy had caught him.

Canidy now saw the UC-81 on the ground suddenly kick up a cloudburst of tan dirt as the pilot gave the engine full takeoff power. The plane then started accelerating and almost immediately became airborne. With a climb rate of 1,300 feet per minute, it quickly gained altitude.

Canidy decreased his throttle and, with his airspeed dropping, began lowering his flaps. As the aircraft settled into a smooth, steady descent, and he tweaked the throttle, he now realized that John Craig van der Ploeg had been watching his every move with rapt fascination-and that he was staring with what looked like genuine interest at the altimeter and its needles creeping counterclockwise.

That brought back memories of his time as an instructor pilot at Pensacola Naval Air Station.

I should've let him fly this thing. It would have taken his damn mind off being enclosed.

Well, maybe next time.

No. Definitely next time.

Him knowing how to fly is a skill that could come in handy.

With the altimeter needles indicating they were passing through eight hundred feet ASL, Dellys disappeared behind the ridgeline. Canidy, with the aircraft now quickly approaching the threshold of the dirt strip, brought it in while keeping enough altitude to just pass over the almost dissipated dirt cloud. He then settled the aircraft down, the wheels of the fixed main gear gently touching ground and kicking up their own dirt cloud. The tailwheel then found the runway.

Greased it! Canidy thought, and grinned inwardly.

The Stinson lightly bounced along the uneven dirt strip as Canidy taxied to where the other UC-81 had just been beside the Gooney Bird. Canidy now saw that a guard was sitting in the driver seat of the jeep. He wore a U.S. Army uniform with no insignia. A Colt .45 in a holster hung from his web belt, and a .30 caliber carbine rested across his lap.

He must have gone inside the hut to avoid getting sandblasted by the propwash.

Canidy gave the guard a thumbs-up as he applied the brakes and chopped the power. The propeller slowed as the engine chugged dead. The guard got out of the jeep, grabbed two sets of wheel chocks from the back, then moved toward the aircraft.

In the quiet cockpit, Canidy threw the master switch, then glanced at his Hamilton chronometer wristwatch.

Exactly twenty minutes to cover the sixty miles from Algiers.

Not bad for a little bird . . . could take this to Sicily if we absolutely had no other choice.

But what a long damn ride that'd be.

And we'd have to find a place to hide it, and a way to refuel it. . . .

John Craig van der Ploeg turned to him, forced a smile, and made a thumbs-up gesture.

And I'm not sure he'd make it, Canidy thought as he pulled off his headset.

Despite the sweat on his forehead giving him away, he's trying like hell to put a good face on his fear.

Then he thought: Damn I miss this! These seat-of-the-pants puddle jumpers are fun-but nothing like flying fighters. . . .

Canidy gestured with his thumb to the back of the aircraft and said, "Let's leave the gear there until we find out where it-and we-go."

John Craig van der Ploeg glanced back at the hefty black duffel bags and two parachute packs, then gave him another thumbs-up. He nodded, his mop of thick black hair bouncing as he did so.

Canidy, watching the guard start tying down the aircraft, unfastened his harness.

He thought, Well, we are way ahead of where we were just two hours ago.

But still just barely getting fucking started . . .

"Bad news," Captain Stanley S. Fine had announced to Canidy and John Craig two hours earlier at his desk at OSS Algiers Station.

Fine had set up his office in what before the war had been the villa's reading room. It was on the second of the Sea View Villa's four floors. In its center, four enormous dark leather chairs, each with its own reading lamp, were arranged around a low square stone table. The walls were lined with bookshelves, complete with a small ladder on rollers to reach the higher shelves. Covering one wall of books were various charts that detailed the OSS Mediterranean Theatre of Operations.

There had been no desk, and Fine had had one fashioned out of a solid door-complete with hinges and knob still attached-placed across a pair of makeshift sawhorses. His office chair had come from the kitchen, which was just down the hall, past the two dining areas. The room also had a view of the harbor beyond the French doors that opened onto a small balcony.

OSS Algiers HQ had a permanent staff of about twenty. Most wore, as did Fine, the U.S. Army tropical worsted uniform, with or without insignia depending on their current duties. Another group of twenty was transient, working mostly with the training of agents, and wore anything except military-issued items as they came and went on irregular schedules.

They all shared the folding wooden-framed cots that filled three of the four bedrooms on the villa's top floor. The fourth bedroom-a windowless interior space-had been turned into the communications room. Its wooden door was steel-reinforced, with a wooden beam and brackets on the inside added as security. Tables held wireless two-way radios and Teletypes and typewriters. There was a nearly constant dull din of the operators sending and receiving the W/T traffic-the tapping out of Morse code and the clacking of their typing the decrypted messages. An armed guard was posted in the hall.

Next level down, the third-floor bedrooms had been made into basic offices for more of the permanent staffers. They held mismatched chairs with makeshift desks and rows of battered filing cabinets.

And the very bottom floor-a huge space, complete with a formal ballroom that prior to the war had been used for entertaining-was a warehouse. The storage area held stacks of crates and heavy wooden shelving. There were the usual office supplies-typewriters, boxes of paper and ribbons, et cetera-and the not so usual office supplies.

Safes contained hundreds of thousands of dollars in gold and silver coins. Rows of wooden racks held a small armory-weaponry of American, British, and German manufacture-as well as stores of ammunition. Other crates contained Composition C-2 plastic explosive and fuses. Clothing racks were lined with a variety of enemy uniforms collected from prisoners of war taken in the North African campaigns. And, stacked in one corner, were cases of Haig & Haig Gold Label scotch.

"What bad news?" Dick Canidy said, looking down at his feet as Stan Fine hung up the telephone that was a secure line to General Eisenhower's AFHQ office at the Hotel Saint George.

Canidy plucked a crisp paper bill that was stuck to his chukka boot. He briefly examined its front and back, then let it flutter back to his feet.

The floor was nearly ankle deep in paper currency. The notes had not been printed by the United States Bureau of Engraving but, instead, by counterfeiters whom OSS Washington had arranged to be released from federal prison into OSS custody. The idea of convicted felons not only free to continue counterfeiting but being encouraged to do so had thrilled absolutely no one at the Treasury Department and had caused FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to formally protest to the President. But once again Wild Bill Donovan prevailed.

Now more than the equivalent of a million U.S. dollars' worth of bogus 100 Deutsche reichsmark notes covered Fine's office floor. Another million in a mix of French francs and Italian lire filled the floor of the commo room. It was obvious that fresh-off-the-press notes would not pass muster in the field and Fine had decided that the way to more or less gently "age" them was to walk on them.

"That was Owen on the horn," Fine said.

He saw Canidy make a face at the mention of General Eisenhower's pompous aide, Lieutenant Colonel J. Warren Owen. A chair warmer whose sole job seemed to be keeping Eisenhower's schedule-and keeping Ike to that schedule, which could be a formidable task-Owen had a very high opinion of himself. It wasn't necessarily deserved, many believed, especially when he arrogantly would, as a way to quickly establish his bona fides, reference anything that allowed him to boast of being a graduate of Hah-vard.

Fine remembered Canidy declaring: "When I was at MIT, I had a helluva lot of bright buddies in Cambridge. How that dimwit Owen got into Harvard, let alone got through it, I'll never know."

Making matters worse, for whatever reason-"It's because he's not bright enough to understand unconventional warfare and the risks required," Canidy further declared-Owen liked nothing more than to say no to damn near anything that the OSS requested.

Fine went on: "Owen said that Ike-he actually said it in that condescending tone he uses, 'Per our Supreme Commander's direct order'-the Casabianca was the last submarine they're letting us use 'until further notice.' I won't bore you with all his other reprimands."

Canidy was not only familiar with the Free French Forces submarine Casabianca, he considered himself friends with her thirty-five-year-old captain. Commander Jean L'Herminier had extricated Canidy from Sicily on March 25 and then eleven days later put Canidy back in-this second time with Frank Nola and Jim "Tubes" Fuller-before pulling Canidy out alone.

"The last?" Canidy repeated. "Damn it!"

Fine nodded. "And he added that that had been allowed only because the sub is headed back to Corsica. Ike was genuinely impressed with the intel that Pearl Harbor has provided, and now that the station has gone off the air again-it's having troubles with its SSRT transmitting-he said he feels obligated to let us check on it. We're sending in a replacement radio and other supplies. More importantly, we want to make physical contact to ensure the station isn't blown."

L'Herminier-whose submarine was carrying her complement of four officers and fifty men, plus a half-dozen OSS agents-would again use the method he had developed for covert landings. After carefully surveying the coast by periscope, looking for any enemy activity and pinpointing an appropriate landing spot for the teams to go ashore by rubber boat, the sub would slip back out to sea, flood its ballast, and sit on the bottom of the Mediterranean awaiting night.

Then, at dark, with the sub barely on the surface to keep a low profile from enemy patrols, the small boat would be launched. Casabianca crewmen, armed with Sten 9mm submachine guns, would row the OSS men-carrying W/T radios and weapons and cash-to shore. The team then inserted, the crewmen would return to the sub and the sub would return to the sea bottom until the scheduled times to ascend to periscope depth and receive the signal either to retrieve the team or to leave them.

"But goddamn it!" Canidy blurted. "That is exactly the same thing we're trying to do with Mercury Station!"

"Except," Fine said reasonably, "Mercury is (a) on Sicily and (b) no one at AFHQ is aware that the station even exists. Owen took more than a little delight just now in carefully reminding me quote Remember that our Supreme Commander is quite anxious about the security of Husky and thus has ordered there be absolutely no OSS activity there prior to D-day unquote."

Canidy looked ready to explode.

"The sonofabitch doesn't know that I've been in and out of Sicily twice!" he said. "Can you imagine trying to sell this to Ike now? 'General Eisenhower, sir, I realize that no one in AFHQ ever believed that the Krauts had chemical and biological weapons on Sicily. But I went in and found them, then blew them up, and then left behind a clandestine radio team that, despite us now believing it is controlled by the SS, is reporting that up to a half-million enemy combatants are arriving to defend against Husky. Oh, and we also have reason to believe that the Krauts have brought in more Tabun and/or yellow fever. So, sir, can you please allow us a sub to insert one small team?'"

Fine stared silently at Canidy.

"Yeah. And that's exactly what Ike would do, too, Stan. Just stare at me. And then probably have me put in shackles until after Husky-hell, maybe for good measure until six months after the end of the war-for the 'good order and discipline' of the service."

He paused, then sighed. "Jesus!"

Kicking up a trail of counterfeit reichsmarks, Canidy walked across the room to the French doors. He swung them open and for a long, quiet moment looked out at the ocean.

"When did the Casabianca sail?" Canidy then said.

"Three days ago," Fine said.

"From here to Corsica," Canidy said, looking out in its direction, "that's right at five hundred nautical miles, making it a four-day run at best to get there. Then another day or two on station, while they deal with Pearl Harbor, then four days to get back here."

He turned, looked at Fine, and said, "That's best-case scenario-"

"Agreed."

"-and I can't wait that long, even if I thought I could convince Jean to turn around and insert us again in Sicily."

"Then what?" Fine said.

"We are in radio contact with the Casabianca, no?" Canidy said.

Fine looked at John Craig van der Ploeg.

"Daily, right?"

John Craig nodded.

"The commo room," he said, "has a schedule of four times each day for the Casabianca to surface en route to periscope depth and receive our messages. Beyond that, she can transmit to us anytime that she needs to."

"Great," Canidy then said. "Then that's what we'll do!"

"What is what you'll do?" Fine said.

"What we'll do is parachute in and get Jean to pick us up."

Both Fine and Canidy knew L'Herminier had the mind-set of a special operator willing and able to make his own independent decisions. Six months earlier, when the SS went to capture the French fleet at the port of Toulon, the admiralty of Vichy France demanded its ships be scuttled. As dozens were burned and sunk at their moorings, L'Herminier ignored orders and, with the Casabianca under cannon fire, dived and made way for Algiers.

"I can convince him to do that," Canidy said. "Ike will never know."

Canidy looked between Fine and John Craig.

They said nothing.

"Good. I take it that we're agreed," Canidy then said.

"Hold on, Dick," Fine then said. "Do you really think it's wise for you to go in-especially with all you know?"

"I'll answer that question with a question: Did Wild Bill think it was wise to go into North Africa right before Operation Torch?"

"But, damn it, Dick, Donovan wasn't there."

"You're sure about that?"

Fine thought about it for a moment and said, "Then no one knew he was there!"

Canidy made a smug smile. "Exactly."

Fine pursued: "If the SS finds you-"

"And begins peeling the skin from my pecker?" Canidy interrupted. "I'll do what Donovan always says if he's captured-bite a Q-pill."

Fine looked at John Craig, who appeared to be contemplating the disturbing idea of suicide by cyanide pill.