“Stay put,” Canidy said. “I need to pull together our gear and get rid of the parachutes so no one sees them.” He looked up again. “Especially yours, which is going to be a bitch getting out of there.”
John Craig, his head spinning, watched Canidy start to climb the huge chestnut tree. Then he closed his eyes.
* * *
John Craig heard fast footfalls approaching and opened his eyes wide. He had no idea how long he’d been out. He started to move—and instantly felt the burning sensation in his right foot.
He reached for his .45 and began to raise it in the direction of the sound.
Then he heard the footsteps stop.
Then Canidy’s voice: “Put that damn thing down before you cause us even more trouble.”
John Craig let out a sigh as he lowered his weapon.
“Feeling any better?” Canidy said, catching his breath.
“Not really.”
“Shit.”
“Where’s the gear?” John Craig said.
“Stashed with the parachutes in two places. Took me twenty minutes, but I found some nice rock outcrops up the hill to put it in.”
“Why?”
“So if one stash is found—which is unlikely, but you never know—they will think they hit the jackpot. And we will have a backup hidden.”
“No, why stashed?”
“Because I sure as hell cannot carry the gear and you.”
“Oh yeah. Sorry.”
“Right now our Plan B options are less than lousy. One is for you to sit tight while I go find a motorcycle, a car—something that can haul your ass into town. But if someone saw us jump, and you stayed here, then you’d literally be a sitting duck when they came. So the other option is for you and me to have a three-legged race to town, and once we get you comfortable there, I’ll come back and grab the gear.”
“Three-legged race?”
“You hold on to me and we walk together.”
Canidy started peeling off his black coveralls. Underneath he wore more of Wentworth Danfield Dutton’s tailor-made clothing.
John Craig, under his coveralls, had on brown pants and vest and a tan collarless shirt bought from a Sicilian who had been smuggled to Algiers aboard one of Frank Nola’s fishing boats.
“Get out of your coveralls,” Canidy said, “and I’ll stash them with mine.”
I wonder if the vomit soaked through, he thought.
Make that I’ll stash it near mine. . . .
John Craig struggled to stand.
He said, “We’re on the outskirts of Palermo, right?”
At OSS Algiers, Canidy had mapped out the route they would take from the Landing Zone to the port, complete with landmarks.
“Yeah,” he said, “the LZ’s a little more than a mile west of the port. I saw the road as we landed. It’s not far.”