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Major Richard M. Canidy, USAAF, awoke abruptly when he felt himself being bounced—bodily lifted a couple of inches, then dropped—and it took him a moment to get his bearings and figure out what the hell just happened.
Snug and warm in a lambskin flight suit, he quickly recalled that he had gone to sleep—a deep sleep, it turned out—while lying on the floor next to the bulkhead of the cockpit of the B-17.
He could have tried to sleep in one of the fabric sling seats that the aircraft had lining one side of the fuselage. But he knew that that would have been terribly uncomfortable, despite the fact that he could have strapped himself into the seat for security.
The alternative—lying on the floor, against the bulkhead—was somewhat riskier. If the plane, as it had just now done, dropped suddenly—the pressure in Canidy’s ears and sounds from the airstream told him they were rapidly descending—he would get bounced in the air.
The bouncing was a calculated risk, but it was a hell of a lot more comfortable than sleeping in the slings.
Canidy was in the last of a flight of four B-17s. Each was a mammoth marvel of aeronautical engineering. The B-17 had four twelve-hundred-horsepower Wright Cyclone engines. Its cruising speed of 182 miles per hour gave it a range of two thousand miles while carrying a bomb payload of three tons. (It could carry as much as three times that but with a reduced range.) And it was armed with thirteen .50 caliber machine guns mounted all around the aircraft.
The routing of the Flying Fortresses had taken them from England south over the Atlantic Ocean, down the western coast of Spain, then on an almost due east vector over Morocco and into Algeria.
Thankfully, the trip had been uneventful.
But Canidy knew that wasn’t always the case with the B-17.
Word had gotten around the USAAC that when General Eisenhower had flown pretty much the same routing a month ago to the Casablanca Conference to meet with President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill, and all of the other top generals, he had been in a Flying Fortress—and the aircraft had lost two of its engines.
On the growing chance that the B-17 would not make its destination and that they would have to ditch, Ike had wound up spending most of the trip wearing a parachute harness.
Canidy felt his big bird turn on final for the Maison Blanche Airport.
He got up, and went to one of the fabric seats and strapped himself in.
He sighed.
All signs suggested that they were going to get on the deck at Algiers just fine.
But that did not mean that he did not have much to worry about.
He was still sick to his stomach at the thought of Ann Chambers gone missing…and maybe gone forever.
I spent every possible second chasing down anyone who might know anything about her.
Small wonder I just now slept so hard….
As soon as Canidy had contacted Ed Stevens, Stevens had said he would immediately have people continue looking for Ann. He would message Canidy the minute he heard anything.
And when Canidy had spoken with Ann’s bureau chief at the London office of Chambers News Service, the editor—who also had not heard a word from her since the bombing—promised to honor Canidy’s request that he pass along any news to Lieutenant Colonel Stevens.
People disappear all the time in war…and then reappear.
Please, Lord, I never ask for anything, especially for me.
But I pray You let Ann reappear….
The scene outside of Base Operations, in the airport parking lot, bordered on comical. A crowd of some fifty or so natives swarmed in all directions. There appeared to be no logic as to where they went and why.
Canidy stood there for a moment with his suitcases and watched in amazement. He thought that it resembled what happened when you took your shoe and tapped the top of an ant mound—the ants suddenly appeared and swarmed every which way.
He felt a hand touch his right hand and then his suitcase being picked up.
“Hey!” he said, turning to see who it was.
There was a tall, thin, dark-skinned man in a well-worn, tan-colored suit and a collarless white shirt. He had a narrow, clean-shaven face with intense almond eyes.
“Taxi! Taxi!” he said in broken English with a faint French accent.
