W. IV - Honor Bound 05 - The Honor of Spies

A command decision was made.

"Fuck it. Dooley's one hell of a pilot. Give him a quick transition into P- 38s and send him to command the 94th. All they're doing back there is running escort for transports flying in from the States. He's a quick learner. He's proven that. And he can teach the others how to fly combat when they're not escorting transports. They'll pay attention to a guy with two DFCs even if he looks like a high school cheerleader."

Aerial resupply of the North African Theatre of Operations was performed by Douglas C-54 four-engine transports. Carrying high-priority cargo ranging from fresh human blood through spare parts to critically needed personnel, they flew from East Coast airfields to Gander, Newfoundland, and after refueling, from Gander to airfields in England.

Fighter aircraft from fields in Scotland flew out over the ocean to escort them safely past German fighters flying out of France. To keep a German fighter formation from happening upon a fleet of transports, the transports flew separately.

The same protection system was put in place as the transports flew from England to North Africa. They were escorted out over the Atlantic by fighters, then flew alone far enough out to sea to avoid German interception as they flew south, until they were met by North Africa-based American fighters over the Atlantic a hundred miles at sea, then escorted to North African air bases, most often Sidi Slimane.

"Aircraft squawking on One One Seven, this is Mother Hen. How do you read?" Captain Dooley inquired. They were approximately 130 miles out over the Atlantic.

"Mother Hen, Five Oh Nine reads you loud and clear."

"Grandma, read you five by five. I should be able to see you. Are you on the deck?"

"Actually, Mother Hen, I'm at twenty thousand. From up here, I can see what looks like a bunch of little airplanes at what's probably ten thousand. Is that you?"

Dooley looked up, searching the sky. He saw the sun glinting off the unpainted skin of an aircraft that looked vaguely familiar, and for a moment he had a sick feeling in his stomach.

Jesus Christ, is that a Condor?

The Germans were running their long-range transport, the Condor , from fields in Spain to South America. The 94th had been ordered to "engage and destroy" any such aircraft they encountered.

Archie Dooley did not want to shoot down an unarmed transport.

Orders are orders.

Fuck it!

"Mother Hen to all Chicks. Follow me. Do not--repeat, do not--engage until I give the order."

He pushed his throttles forward and began his climb.

Getting to twenty thousand feet didn't take much time, but catching up with the sonofabitch took a hell of a long time.

He has to be making three hundred miles an hour! I didn't think the Condor was anywhere near this fast.

Jesus, that's not a Condor!

What the fuck is it?

Dooley finally pulled close enough to see that the airplane, whatever the hell it was, was American. There was a star-and-bar recognition sign on the fuselage, and when he picked up a few more feet of altitude, he saw that U.S. ARMY was painted on the wing.

He looked back at the tail to see if there was a tail number.

Tail, hell. It's got three of them!

"Five Oh Nine, this is Mother Hen."

"Oh, hello there, Mother Hen. I wondered how long it was going to take you to get up here."

Dooley pulled closer and parallel to the cockpit of the huge-- And beautiful! Jesus, that's good-looking!-- airplane.

The pilot waved cheerfully at him.

Dooley saw that he was not wearing an oxygen mask.

Don't tell me it's pressurized! It has to be. He's at twenty thousand with no mask!

Jesus, I know what it is. It's a Constellation! I've seen pictures.

What the hell is it doing here?

Dooley saw that his airspeed indicator needle was flickering at 320.

"Five Oh Nine, Mother Hen. We are going to form a protective shield above and ahead and behind you and lead you in."

"Thank you very much."

I will be goddamned if I will ask him if that's really a Constellation.

Dooley went almost to the deck with the Constellation, watched it touch smoothly down, then shoved his throttles forward and picked up the nose so that he--and the rest of the flight--could go around and get in the landing stack.

When Dooley's P-38 was at the end of its landing roll, he was surprised to see that instead of at Base Ops, where he expected it to be, the Constellation was at a remote corner of the field, where maybe fifty people were hurriedly erecting camouflage netting over it.

"Mother Hen to all Chicks. Refuel, check your planes, but don't get far from them. I was told to expect another mission when we got back."

He switched radio frequencies from Air-to-Air Three to Air-to- Ground Two.

"Sidi Tower, Mother Hen is going to taxi to the Constellation."

"Negative, Mother Hen. You are denied--"

Dooley turned his radios off and taxied to the Constellation.

By the time he got there, the camouflage netting was in place and the staff car of the base commander was parked at the foot of a long ladder that reached up to the fuselage of the Constellation.

The base commander glowered at Dooley.

Fuck it! What's he going to do, send me to North Africa?

He started to shut down the Lightning.

He had to wait until someone brought a ladder so that he could climb down from the P-38 cockpit.

By the time he got close to the Constellation, two civilians were climbing down the ladder.

That guy looks just like Howard Hughes.

The guy who looked just like Howard Hughes said, "Why do I think you're Mother Hen?" Then, without waiting for a reply, he said to the other civilian, "This is the guy who shepherded us in here, Colonel."

"I was very happy to see you out there, Captain," the other civilian said, offering Dooley his hand. "Thank you. And are you going to take care of us on the way to Lisbon?"

The base commander put in: "I thought I'd wait, Colonel Graham, until you got here before I told the captain where he was going next."

"But he is prepared to leave shortly?" Colonel Graham asked.

"Just as soon as his aircraft is refueled," the base commander said, then looked at Dooley. "Right, Captain?"

"Yes, sir."

The base commander looked back at Graham and added, "And he picks up the flight plan at Base Ops, of course, and confers with the C-47 crew."

"Good," Colonel Graham said. "We have a very narrow window of time."

"Any questions, Captain Dooley?" the base commander asked.

"Actually, I have two, sir. Three, if I can ask this gentleman if he's the pilot I saw when we made rendezvous."

The tall civilian nodded.

"How long did it take you to come from England in that beautiful airplane?"

"Actually, we came by way of Belem, Brazil. It took us a little over eleven hours from Belem. That's two questions."

"Did anyone ever tell you you look like Howard Hughes?"

"I hear that all the time," Howard Hughes said.

VII

[ONE]

Hotel Britania

Rua Rodrigues Sampaio 17

Lisbon, Portugal

1745 4 September 1943

The deputy director of the Office of Strategic Services for Europe cracked open the door of his suite, saw the deputy director of the Office of Strategic Services for the Western Hemisphere standing in the corridor, pulled the door fully open, and gestured for him to enter.

"Nice flight, Alex?" Allen Dulles asked as the two shook hands.

"Coming in here from Morocco on that old-fashioned Douglas DC-3 was a little crowded and bumpy. But the rest of the trip, on the Constellation, was quite comfortable," Colonel A. F. Graham said.