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A ferryboat was following the S-boat into port.
If I hurry, I can have this sent and be back here in time to watch the ferry unload!
He quickly walked out of his office and marched the message up to the radio room on the top floor.
[FOUR]
Latitude 37 Degrees 81 Seconds North
Longitude 10 Degrees 96 Seconds East
Over the Mediterranean Sea, West of Sicily
2010 30 May 1943
A loud noise suddenly shook Dick Canidy out of a deep sleep, and he slowly realized that it had been his own snoring that had awakened him. He quickly scanned around him and in the glow of the instrument panel lights saw that he was strapped in the copilot seat and that Hank Darmstadter still had the left seat.
Canidy turned back the left sleeve of his black coverall to check his Hamilton wristwatch. According to the chronometer, they had right at two hours behind them.
So, another hour plus or minus . . .
He sniffed, then cleared his throat.
He thought he could still smell vomitus but figured that had to be a product of his imagination.
Wonder how John Craig is doing back there.
With any luck, he’s slept the entire time.
Canidy then thought he saw that Darmstadter had glanced his way. That was confirmed when he heard Hank’s voice in his headset.
“You might want to give it a little longer, Dick.”
“Give what?” he said, yawning.
“That beauty sleep of yours didn’t take.”
Canidy balled his fist and raised his index finger in Darmstadter’s direction.
Canidy then said: “Anything exciting happen while I was out?”
“Nothing since you came back and filled the flight deck with that delightful barf odor.”
“I thought that was my imagination. Sorry.”
“How do you think he’s doing back there?”
“I was just wondering that myself. With any luck, he’s been passed out the whole time.”
Darmstadter then pointed out the windscreen at about three o’clock.
“Pantelleria is about sixty miles that way,” he said. “I’m sure we’ve been picked up on the Freya RDF, but maybe the Krauts won’t bother with just one blip way out here. If we don’t get any action from Pantelleria, it’ll likely come at Sicily.”
When Canidy had studied the photo-reconnaissance images of Sicily—taken from thirty thousand feet by USAAF P-38 Lightnings with the belly painted sky blue—he’d also viewed the images of Pantelleria.
While the photos had shown no massing of troops or matériel on Sicily—which could have meant that there were none . . . or none yet . . . or that they were being very well concealed—the photos did show that Pantelleria, a solid forty-two-square-mile rock in the middle of the Strait of Sicily, was heavily fortified.
Ringing the island were at least fifty easily recognized concrete gun emplacements, some seventy-plus Italian and German fighters and bombers at Marghana Airfield, and U-boats and S-boats almost daily calling at the two ports. The recon images also pinpointed the distinctive tall antennae of the Freya radio direction finder stations.
