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“Thank—” Darmstadter began.
“But,” Canidy continued, holding up his hands to stop him, “I’m afraid the compliment would probably go right to your head. And then you’d go do something dumb, like dump another plane, and I’d feel responsible for having let you feel overly confident.”
Darmstadter looked at Canidy and laughed appreciatively.
Then he gave him the finger.
[THREE]
OSS Dellys Station Dellys, Algeria 1655 30 March 1943
The drive over the hill into town took about twenty minutes. Darmstadter, having left the C-47 under the watch of the guard, steered the jeep though the narrow cobblestone streets of Dellys. When he came to the driveway of the compound, he brought the vehicle to a screeching stop in front of a massive wooden gate in the tall stone wall.
Without Darmstadter tapping on the horn or making any other effort to signal, the closed gate began slowly to swing open. Canidy wondered why, but when he looked around, and then up, he was not surprised to see a sentry in what had to be an emplacement hidden atop the compound wall.
Darmstadter stepped on the accelerator pedal, popped the clutch, and shot the jeep through the opening. The gate, moved manually by a young man in fatigues, was closed behind them.
Darmstadter looked at Canidy.
“Welcome to the Sandbox,” he said over the whine of the jeep.
“What was it before?” Canidy said. “Some government facility?”
“Close. A Catholic missionary boarding school for boys. Some French folks thought they could save some local orphans while spreading the divine message. Don’t know how successful they were….”
Canidy grunted.
“That explains the high walls,” he said. “Keeps out those prying eyes wondering what the infidels are up to.”
As they rolled through the compound, toward the main building, Canidy saw in the courtyard the lines of men he’d seen from the airplane. Close up, most looked to be Frenchmen in their twenties and thirties, with a few appearing to be American or Franco-American.
Maybe first-generation Americans? Canidy thought.
The instructors, somewhat older, looked decidedly American.
In the courtyard, confirming what Canidy had thought when they had flown overhead, the lines of men were practicing hand-to-hand combat.
Elsewhere throughout the compound, men were engaged in various activities. There was one group of ten agents, sweat-soaked and with bulging backpacks, that was running along the perimeter wall. Gathered in the shade at the base of a tree, six men, in three teams, were bent over open suitcases. Canidy recognized that they were working on Morse code skills, and that each two-man team had a SSTR-1 set—the “suitcase radio,” an ordinary-looking green suitcase with a receiver, transmitter, and power supply hidden inside.
The jeep turned a corner, and Canidy saw that across the drive from the main entrance to the building was a telephone pole some twenty-five feet
tall. It bristled with climbing spikes and was topped by a six-by-six-foot wooden platform. A parachute harness was tethered by parachute cord tied to two heavy-duty steel springs bolted to an overhead beam. The landing zone (LZ) was a pit of loose sand directly below.
Two men were at the top, standing on the platform, one helping the other adjust the parachute harness. The fit and muscular helper, by all appearances the instructor, made some hand motions, then yanked on the harness straps to test them. Then he gave the somewhat-overweight jumper—who had the soft features of perhaps a banker or other businessman more at home at a desk than a guerrilla training camp—an encouraging pat on the back.
The jeep pulled into a parking area alongside another jeep and Canidy and Darmstadter got out.
Canidy stopped at the front bumper, looked up at the platform, and watched the jumper.
The man in the harness hesitantly stepped to the edge of the platform.
He peered over it.
He looked back at the instructor, who motioned casually with his head, as if to say, Go on, you can do it.
The jumper peered back over the edge.
He closed his eyes…and stepped off.
