by Blood
"Nothing wrong with the airplane," Clete said. "The problem is with the pi-lot."
"What does that make you? The only modest Marine pilot in the Naval Ser-vice?"
They sat down at the table. The long-legged waitress appeared. Clete or-dered hot chocolate.
"And I, my dear, will have another of this very excellent beer," Ashton said.
He waited until she had walked out of hearing, then said, "Let's have it, mi Mayor."
"I don't know how this happened, but the airplane they sent down here is a C-56, not a C-45."
"What's the problem?"
"The C-45 is a small twin. I know how to fly one. The C-56 is a Lockheed Lodestar...."
"And you don't know how to fly a Lodestar?"
"I just spent three hours in this one with a guy who used to fly them for Transcontinental and Western Airlines. He taught me how to start it, how to taxi it, how to get it in the air. No real problem there. Landing it, however, it some-thing else. This is a great big airplane, Ashton. Almost all of my time is in small airplanes."
"Which means?"
"That I had one hell of a time getting the Lockheed onto the ground. I missed three approaches."
"I don't know what that means," Ashton confessed.
"Three times I came in either too fast, or too high, or both-and it was day-light; I could see the runway. I could not get it onto the wide, long runways here and had to go around."
"Why?" Ashton asked.
"I just told you. I don't have any experience in airplanes like that; I'm a fighter pilot."
"So what are you telling me?"
"The strip in Santo Tome is dirt and short. For one thing, I'm not sure if it will handle the weight of the Lockheed. Equally important, since I had trouble here, I'll probably have more trouble at Santo Tome. Where I'll be landing at night, with jury-rigged runway lights."
" 'Jury-rigged runway lights'?"
"When they hear me flying over the strip, a couple of guys on horses are going to ride down the sides of the runway and light the landing lights, which are clay pots filled with sand and gasoline."
Ashton stroked his mustache with his index finger, then met Clete's eyes.
"I don't know what the word is, maybe 'practice.' If you had more practice, could you learn to land the airplane the way you're supposed to?"
"That's not possible."
"What's not possible? Getting any better at landing it?"
"Getting more practice."
"Why not?"
"Colonel Wallace has set up a meeting at 0900 tomorrow with the appro-priate Brazilian Customs officials to handle the paperwork for an international flight. There cannot be a record of this flight; therefore, I have to get out of here tonight."
"You can't fix that? Get Graham to fix it?"
"It would take at least twenty-four-more likely forty-eight-hours to ex-plain the problem to Colonel Graham and have him tell Wallace to butt out. I've got to get the airplane out of here tonight."
"So what happens?"
"There's a couple of possibilities. The basic problem is that there is maybe a fifty-fifty chance that I'll wreck the airplane trying to land it...."
"If that's the odds, why are you going to try it?"
"I have to try. I can't just chicken out. I told some people I'd get them an airplane."
"If you crash it, it won't do anybody any good."
"I will have tried. And I may get lucky."
"You are a dangerous man, mi Mayor."
"And we now know that the submarine-supply vessel will be in Samboromb¢n Bay in five or six days."
"And if you wreck the airplane with the radar on it, where will that leave us?"
"No worse off than we are now, unless you can come up with some way to get your team and the radar into Argentina and to Samboromb¢n Bay by your-self."
Ashton considered that a moment, then shrugged.
"One option," Clete went on, "would be to drop the radar-and maybe you and your team-by parachute onto the Santo Tome airstrip. Then I would try to land it."
"Would getting rid of that much weight make landing it any easier?"
"I've been thinking about that. The simple answer is yes. The less weight, the better. But you've got five people. That's a thousand pounds, tops. You told me you've got five crates..."
"Four," Ashton corrected him.
Clete nodded.
"... weighing about two hundred pounds each. Call that another thou-sand pounds. Weight of team and radar, two thousand pounds total. This is a seventeen-passenger aircraft, plus a crew of three-"
Clete interrupted himself: "That's something else. I will not have a copilot. That will make landing it even harder."
"OK," Ashton said. "What was that about a seventeen-passenger aircraft?"
"Seventeen passengers, plus a crew of three. You usually figure weight and balance using two hundred pounds per man. Twenty times two hundred is four thousand pounds. In other words, with everything aboard, we'll have about half a normal load. Less, if you take into consideration that we'll have zero pounds of cargo. I don't really think that dropping you and the crates-in other words, getting rid of two thousand pounds-is going to make a hell of a difference in an airplane with a takeoff weight of about eighteen thousand pounds."
"Parachutes sometimes don't work," Ashton said. "And we're dealing with delicate radio equipment. Aside from my massive cowardice, one of the prob-lems I had with parachuting the radar in was subjecting it to the shock of land-ing. I need all four of my crates."
"What I said was you and your guys can jump, and I will land with the radar on board."
"I've got a problem with that," Ashton said. "I have no intention of jump-ing out of an airplane unless the sonofabitch is on fire. If I don't jump, and tell the other guys to jump, they're going to wonder why-except, of course, the gorilla. He would love to jump out of your airplane. Screaming, 'Geronimo!'" Clete chuckled. "the problem with that," Ashton went on, "is that he'd probably break his leg, and we'd have to carry him wherever the hell we're going."
"Well, I can leave you all here," Clete said. "And you figure out some way to get you and the radar across the river-without using a rubber boat. That doesn't seem like such a bad idea, really."
"Was your attention entirely focused on Consuelo's magnificent ass, or did you hear me when I said gambling was among my many vices?"
"Meaning you want to take a chance with me?"
"Look at it this way, mi Mayor," Ashton said. "Unless we get all the crates-in other words, the radar in a functioning condition-and everybody on my team where we are supposed to go, there's no point in the whole operation. Three crates won't work, and I can't afford to do without any member of my team. Let's give Colonel Graham the benefit of the doubt and accept that get-ting that radar in operation is important; that maybe down the line, if we carry this off, we'll save more lives than the six people who'll be on the airplane...." "Seven," Clete thought out loud. "I'll have Enrico with me."
"So I don't see where we have any choice but to roll the dice and see what happens. You agree?"
"It's not my decision," Clete said.
"Meaning what?" Ashton asked.
"On Guadalcanal, when I saw the rifle platoon leaders, I was glad I was an aviator. I didn't have to tell people to do something that was likely to get them killed."
"You want to know what I've been thinking?" Ashton asked.
Clete nodded.
"First I thought, 'This goddamned Marine hero is dumping this decision on me. Why doesn't the sonofabitch just have the balls to say, "Captain, get your men on my airplane"?'"
"Because this sonofabitch is not good at telling people to do something that's liable to get them killed," Clete said.
"But you're going, right? Whether or not we go with you?"
"I don't have any choice," Clete said.
"Neither do I, mi Mayor," Ashton said. "I don't want to get on that airplane, and I don't like having to order my team to get on it. And you are a three-star s
onofabitch for spelling out everything that can go wrong."
Clete met his eyes and shrugged.
"But if you get us on the ground at Santo Tome in one piece, mi Mayor, I may forgive you."
"For what this is worth, Ashton, when my ass is exposed I am a very care-ful airplane driver."
"You better be, mi Mayor," Ashton said. "When do we go?"
"That's another problem," Clete said.
"Oh, shit! What?"
"I didn't know whether you would be going with me or not," Clete said. "So I told Colonel Wallace I wanted to shoot some more touch-and-goes tonight-at night, in other words. The plane's being serviced, and is supposed to be ready at twenty-one hundred."
"So?"
"Colonel Wallace wants to do this by the book. Clear everything with the Brazilians. And he's not stupid. If he sees me loading you and your team aboard the Lockheed tonight, he'll suspect that I have no intention of meeting the Brazilians Customs people tomorrow morning."
"So what would he do?"
"Possibly he would give me a formal order not to leave the local area...."
"Fuck him. Let him write Graham a letter after you've gone. Subject: Dis-obedience of Direct Order by Frade, Major Cletus, USMCR."
"More likely he would either 'volunteer' to go with me, or send some other pilot with me, to make sure I came back."
"Fuck him again. Take him with us. Let him walk back here."
"That just wouldn't work," Clete said, smiling. "He can stop me from load-ing the team on the Lockheed. There's two problems. Getting the airplane with-out Wallace or one of his pilots in it, and getting you and your people on it without Wallace finding out."
"You're not suggesting, are you, mi Mayor, that two intrepid OSS agents, in the noble tradition of Errol Flynn and Alan Ladd, such as you and me, can-not outwit one chickenshit Air Corps colonel?"
"I would really feel more comfortable, Major Frade," Colonel J. B. Wallace, U.S. Army Air Corps, said, "if I went along with you and Colonel Rodriguez."
"What did he say?" Suboficial Mayor Enrico Rodriguez, Cavalry, Argen-tine Army, Retired, asked in Spanish.
"The Colonel wishes us a safe flight," Clete replied in Spanish, then switched to English: "Colonel Rodriguez feels that it would be best if he were given the opportunity to ride in the right seat while we shoot some land-ings."
"But he doesn't have any C-56 time," Wallace argued.
"The Colonel has several thousand hours' multiengine time, Colonel,"
Clete said. "Mostly in Ford Tri-Motors, to be sure, but he really has more expe-rience than I do."
"What did you say, Se¤or Clete?" Suboficial Mayor Rodriguez asked.
"I told the Colonel you thanked him for all his courtesies to us," Clete said in Spanish.
Suboficial Mayor Rodriguez saluted.
"Muchas gracias, mi Coronel," he said.
Colonel Wallace knew that much Spanish.
"You're welcome, I'm sure," he said, returning the salute.
"Get in the airplane, Enrico. Walk up in front and sit down in the right seat," Clete said in Spanish, and then switched to English: "I don't think we'll need more than a couple of hours, Colonel. Is there someplace I can reach you if I get some warning lights on the panel and need a mechanic?"
"I'll either be at the Club or in my quarters," Colonel Wallace said as he watched, in obvious discomfort, Enrico climbing into the Lockheed. "Two hours, you say?"
"No more than three, certainly, Sir," Clete said.
He climbed into the Lockheed and closed the door. With the door closed, it was absolutely dark inside the fuselage. He painfully banged his knees twice and his shoulder once as he made his way through the cabin to the cockpit.
There was a little more light in the cockpit-enough for him to see Enrico's bafflement with his seat and shoulder harness-but not enough to be able to read the switch labels anywhere.
With the aid of his Zippo, it took him thirty seconds to find cockpit inte-rior lights. When he threw the switch, nothing happened. It took another fif-teen seconds to find the main buss switch. When he threw that, the panel lit up and the cockpit lights came on.
He put the earphones on his head. There was no hiss. Neither was there a hiss when he flipped the radio/intercom switch to radio. He left the seat, went to the engineer's station and turned on the radio, selected the tower frequency, and returned to his seat.
He leaned over and showed Enrico how the seat and shoulder harness went together, then put the earphones on. He could hear the tower.
He looked out the window and saw Colonel Wallace, standing uncomfort-ably by the ground crewman and his fire extinguisher. Clete smiled at both of them, and, raising his voice, shouted, "Clear!"
The left engine started immediately and quickly smoothed down. The right engine didn't seem to want to start at all, and didn't, until Clete noticed the main fuel switch and moved it from left to both, whereupon the right engine backfired, shot orange and blue flame a good six feet out the nacelle, and caught.
He picked up the microphone.
"Porto Alegre tower, Lockheed Zebra Fiver Eight Four Three." "Go ahead, Eight Four Three."
"Eight Four Three in front of Hangar Seven, permission to taxi to the active runway."
"Eight Four Three, cleared to the threshold of Runway One Four."
"Roger, understand One Four."
He gingerly advanced the throttles, then retarded them, took off the brakes, and gingerly advanced the throttles again. The Lockheed began to move.
Clete waved cheerfully at Colonel Wallace, who smiled unhappily back.
Clete switched to intercom and ordered, "Enrico, go back and get ready to open the door."
Then he reached over, showed Enrico where to put his earphones, and re-peated the order. Enrico started to unbuckle himself.
Ground visibility from the cockpit of the Lockheed was unbelievably bad. He had to swing the airplane from side to side to see where he was going.
He stopped at the threshold of Runway One Four.
The tower saw him.
"Zebra Eight Four Three, you are cleared for local area operation only. The winds are negligible. Ceiling and visibility unlimited. The altimeter is two niner niner, the time is five past the hour. You are cleared as number one for takeoff on Runway One Four."
"Tower, Eight Four Three. I'm going to run a mag check."
He put the brakes on, unstrapped himself, left the seat, and went quickly down the cabin aisle, colliding en route with one of the goddamn crates, and made it to the door. Its operation was beyond the mechanical comprehension of Suboficial Mayor Rodriguez.
As soon as he had the door open, Maxwell Ashton's team came running out of the darkness and jumped aboard, Captain Ashton last.
Clete went as quickly as he could back to the cockpit, strapped himself in, and put the earphones on.
"Zebra Eight Four Three, tower."
"Tower, Four Three. Mags check OK."
"Zebra Eight Four Three, do not take off. I say again, do not take off. Re-turn to Base Operations."
It wasn't hard to figure out what happened. Colonel Wallace went up into the control tower and watched Clete taxi, possibly through binoculars. And in the bright lights of the runway threshold, he saw Ashton and his team come run-ning out of the dark and climb aboard.
"Tower, Zebra Eight Four Three rolling," Clete said, advancing the throttles as he lined up with the runway.
"Zebra Eight Four Three, abort takeoff, 1 say again, abort takeoff, and re-turn to Base Operations."
"Tower, Four Three is rolling. Say again your last transmission. You are garbled."
"Zebra Eight Four Three, abort takeoff, I say again, abort takeoff."
The airspeed indicator jumped from zero to forty knots and began climb-ing. Clete felt life come into the controls.
"Zebra Eight Four Three, by order of Colonel Wallace, you will abort take-off and return to Base Operations."
He eased the wheel forward and felt the tail come
off the ground. The air-speed indicator climbed to ninety, then one hundred.
He eased back on the wheel. The rumbling stopped. The nose turned to the left, and he made the necessary corrections.
He reached to the quadrant and raised the gear.
"Zebra Eight Four Three, you are directed to land immediately."