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Page 54.

Chapter 14. Katanga: Tim Nordhall Signs On with OSS

Walther was distraught at the arrival of the blood-soaked car, with his cousin’s corpse in it.

Together, Tim and Walther pulled the corpse from the car and laid it on the tarmac. Walther cried and sobbed over Willi’s stretched out form, while Tim looked anxiously about for signs of pursuit. “Hurry,” Tim muttered. At the same time, he patted the German understandingly on the shoulder, feeling the other’s strength and sweat, and the rage there at the way this war seemed to reach down like a fist from the clouds and destroy individual lives with heartless randomness.

They pushed the car out of the way, into the shadows beside a wall, where it would not be found soon enough. Walther took a few minutes to torch it. He crawled underneath and severed the fuel line with his Luftwaffe-issue bayonet. The air filled with a gasoline smell as gallons emptied out in a puddle. Walther jumped back.

Tim, hearing the throaty roar of a motor, said: “Hurry up, man!”

Walther fiddled with matches. “Get Willi on the plane.” He struck a match and tossed it. Within a minute, the little truck was ablaze.

The engine sound drew near. Tim heard shouts.

Walther jumped up into the plane, pulled the door shut, and cranked up the motor. Tim sat in the passenger seat, feeling helpless. He had left the gun in the truck. Now he pulled Walther’s Luger from under the seats.

“What are you doing?” Walther cried as the engine reluctantly fired and then sputtered out. “You can’t shoot at them. It would be suicide.”

“Just in case,” Tim said as he held the gun in his lap. “I’ll go down shooting if I have to go down at all.”

Walther shrugged, a battle-hardened man. Then the engine rattled into life, just as machine gun bullets flew overhead. There was a hedge between the plane and the French armored personnel carrier.

“Go!” Time yelled as Walther swung the plane around and raced down the runway, past the restaurant, while the APC lurched onto the far end of the runway and opened full throttle in pursuit. Bullets flew past, audible as the cockpit windows were still open. “All right you persistent son of a bitch,” Tim yelled. He took careful aim and shot the man in the turret. No more machine gun bullets, at least for a few minutes.

“Oh Jesus, now we’re in for it,” Walther yelled. “It will be a long time before I can land here again.” A bullet tore through the sheet metal of the portside wing, leaving a dangling strut. “Here we go!”

Strangling on its over-tasked engine, the plane heaved up and made for the darkness amid southern constellations. The French below stopped firing. Tim stowed the gun away. “I’m very sorry about your cousin,” Tim said. “Thanks for saving my life.”

“Our lives,” Walther corrected. “Go back there and wrap him in a tarp.” The Junkers-52 droned south-southeast at one-mile altitude, doing 135 knots. Capable of carrying 17 passengers or about three tons of cargo, old Auntie Ju was still a workhorse of the Luftwaffe, of the same generation as her look-alike, the Ford Tri-Motor.

Walther gently pounded the steering yoke with both hands, fighting back tears. Willi’s body lay wrapped in a paint-stained canvas on the steel floor, where Tim had respectfully placed it before returning to the co-pilot’s seat.

Walther washed his face with canteen water and uncorked a beer. “He will begin to smell tomorrow in the heat,” shouted over the engine din. “We’ll have to lay him to rest, but I can’t land to bury him. We’ll throw him overboard in the desert tonight and pray for his soul.”

About two hours later, having located a wide river, Walther piloted the Ju-52 swooping in low over a broad stretch of sand dunes. Tim thought of lions as he sent Willi’s body sailing out into the night, like a package, with one corner of the canvas flapping. Then Walther throttled up and slowly brought the plane to cruising altitude heading southeast toward the Congo. “I can’t believe he is gone,” he said in a wailing voice. He wiped his tears with a towel and splashed more canteen water over his face. He drank some more holy beer.

Tim found a cot on an aft bulkhead. It was made, with dusty white sheets and an old green blanket. The sheets and the blanket both had eagle and swastika markings on them. Tim didn’t care. He finished a bit of cool, fresh tasting Bambari beer. The stuff was brewed by a Germanic sounding house, with Ubangi River water, in French Equatorial Africa just north of the Belgian Congo. Then he lay down. Everything rattled, and the plane sounded like the interior of a giant chain saw, but the aircraft was solid as a tree. Soon, Tim was fast asleep.