by Blood
When he opened the cabin door, he saw Capitan Delgano walking up to the plane. He was hatless, his hair plastered to his head by the rain, and wearing a
poncho.
"I had just told Coronel Porterman that you probably couldn't fly through this," Delgano said, gesturing toward the sky.
"Well, I made it," Clete said.
"This is not a Beechcraft C-45," Delgano said.
"This is a Lockheed C-56," Clete said. "Something got screwed up."
"I see," Delgano said, visibly displeased.
"I have passengers aboard," Clete said.
"Passengers?" Delgano parroted.
"People I am going to fly to Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo," Clete said.
"You said nothing about passengers!"
"No. I didn't."
"You smuggled people into Argentina?" Delgano asked, but it was an ac-cusation, not a question. "An OSS team, no doubt?"
"I have five civilians with Brazilian passports aboard," Clete said.
"I consider that a breach of our agreement," Delgano said. "They will, of course, have to be interned."
"If you intern them," Clete said, "this airplane will not leave the ground again."
"Colonel Mart¡n told me you were dangerous, and that I should not trust you," Delgano said, and then, as if he had just made up his mind, added: "I will intern them."
"The presence of my passengers in no way changes our arrangement. I will teach you how to fly the aircraft..."
That's bullshit. That would really be a case of the blind leading the blind.
"... and make it available to the G.O.U. as I promised."
That's bullshit too. There's no way he could fly this airplane by himself. If the G.O.U. wants this airplane, I'll have to fly it.
"Nevertheless, your 'passengers' will have to be interned," Delgano said. "Or if not interned, sent back across the Rio Uruguay. That would be probably be best, for all concerned."
"I think you're overstepping your authority, Capitan. I don't think you have the authority to do anything that will keep this airplane from flying to Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo tomorrow."
Delgano considered that.
"What am I to tell Coronel Porterman?" he asked.
Clete decided Delgano was thinking out loud.
"I suggest you tell him that there has been an unexpected development," Clete said. "That it will be necessary to quarter five people overnight-for rea-sons that are none of his business."
"You are asking me to lie to a superior officer, Mayor Frade. That is dis-honorable."
"How would you categorize your behavior toward my father, Capitan? And what was it you said to me, at Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo, about 'people in our profession being sometimes required to do things that are personally re-pugnant'?"
Delgano met Clete's eyes. There was cold anger, even hate, in them.
Christ, we got this far, and now this self-righteous sonofabitch is going to screw everything up.
Delgano turned and walked away from the aircraft without saying any-thing.
So what do I do now?
I can't really refuse to fly this thing to Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo; I gave Mart¡n my word that I would. And if this goddamned coup d'‚tat fails, I don't want Mart¡n and Rawson and Ramirez and the rest of them stood up against a wall because I didn't provide them a means to get out of the country.
Delgano said, "send them back across the Rio Uruguay." If that happens, it wouldn't be the end of the world. If 1 can get the radar sent back with them, we wouldn't be any worse off than we were yesterday.
Clete saw Delgano, faintly, standing beside a man on a horse.
That's probably Coronel Porterman.
Delgano walked back to the Lockheed.
"Your 'passengers' will take the horses of the guard detail," Delgano said, "and be accommodated overnight in the transient officers' quarters."
"I'm not sure my passengers know how to ride," Clete thought aloud.
"Excuse me?" Delgano asked, somewhat incredulously.
"Just a moment, Capitan," Clete said, and turned to walk back up the aisle to talk to Ashton.
He immediately bumped into him; he had come down the aisle to see what
was going on.
"I've never been on a horse in my life," Ashton said in English.
"You heard all that?" Clete asked.
Ashton nodded.
"And I'm not comfortable with them guarding our stuff," Ashton said. "So what we'll do is that I will stay aboard-"
"No," Clete said. "I don't want Coronel Porterman to get the idea we don't trust him."
"I don't trust him," Ashton said.
"If they want to take the radar away from us, there's nothing we can do to stop them," Clete said. "We will accept his hospitality."
"You trust the guy you were talking to?"
"Yes, I do," Clete said, hoping there was more conviction in his voice than he felt.
"OK," Ashton said. "Your call, Major."
Thirty minutes later, a wagon drawn by a matched pair of white-booted roans took aboard four passengers and headed through the rain toward the barracks of the Second Regiment of Cavalry.
Saddled horses had been brought from the stables along with the wagon, for Clete, Enrico, and First Lieutenant Madison R. Sawyer III, Infantry, Army of the United States, the only member of Ashton's team who said he could ride.
As they started to ride away from the Lockheed, Lieutenant Sawyer told Clete that he had "played a little polo at Ramapo Valley" while at Yale, and asked if there would possibly be a chance that he could play while he was in Ar-gentina.
"We'll see, Lieutenant," Clete said.
He looked over his shoulder.
Four troopers of the Second Cavalry, short-barreled Mauser carbines hang-ing muzzle downward from their shoulders, had set up a moving perimeter guard around the tied-down Lockheed.
To one side, maybe a dozen others were squatting around a bonfire under a quickly erected tent fly. A dozen horses stood stoically in the rain, their reins tied to a rope suspended between two tree limbs jammed into the ground.
If it wasn't for the Lockheed, Clete thought, this could be the plains of West Texas in 1890.
[THREE]
USS Alfred Thomas DD-107
26ø 35" South Latitude 42ø 45" West Longitude
0615 17 April 1943
Lieutenant Commander Paul Jernigan, a neat, thin Annapolis graduate who was six months shy of being twenty-nine years old, pushed himself out of his pedestal-mounted, leather-upholstered bridge chair-the captain's chair-and walked to the navigation room.
His ruddy-faced, Irish, twenty-three-year-old navigator, Lieutenant (j.g.) Thomas Clancy, USN, and Ensign Richard C. Lacey, USNR, a short, somewhat pudgy twenty-two-year-old, who was the communications officer of the Thomas, were bent over the chart.
"She appears to be picking up speed, Skipper," Clancy said. "Lacey esti-mates she's now making twenty-two knots."
"She" was a vessel they hoped was a Spanish-registered merchantman called the Comerciante del Oceano Pacifico. They had been looking for her for almost four days. There had been an OPERATIONAL IMMEDIATE, the high-est-priority communication, from the Navy Department.
TOP SECRET
OPERATIONAL IMMEDIATE
FROM CHIEF OF NAVAL OPERATIONS WASH DC 0440 GREENWICH 13 APR 43
TO USS ALFRED THOMAS DD107
REFERENCE MSG 43-100-656 DATED 1 APR 43 SUBJECT LOCATION AND IDENTIFICATION OF CERTAIN VESSELS BELIEVED TO BE OPERATING IN SOUTH ATLANTIC OCEAN.
PRIORITY OF SEARCH SHOULD BE DIRECTED TO LOCATION AND POSITIVE REPEAT POSITIVE IDENTIFICATION OF SPANISH REGISTERED COMERCIANTE DEL OCEANO PACIFICO. SUBJECT VESSEL DESCRIBED IN DETAIL IN REFERENCE ABOVE AND IS LISTED WITH PHOTOGRAPH ON PAGE 123 IN 1938 JANES MER-CHANT SHIPS OF THE WORLD.
SUBJECT VESSEL BELIEVED BOUND FOR RIVER PLATE ES-TUARY AND WAS LAST REPORTED 1300 GREENWICH 8 APR 43 AT 8 DEGREES 33 MINUTES NORTH LATITUDE 26 DEGREES 55 MINUTES WEST LO
NGITUDE.
ON DETERMINING LOCATION CHIEF OF NAVAL OPERA-TIONS WILL BE ADVISED PRIORITY OPERATIONAL IMMEDIATE TOGETHER WITH YOUR ESTIMATED TIME OF ARRIVAL MOUTH OF RIVER PLATE.
ALFRED THOMAS WILL NOT REPEAT NOT BOARD SUBJECT VESSEL OR CONDUCT ANY ACTIVITY IN HER REGARD WHICH MIGHT POSSIBLY BE CONSTRUED AS VIOLATION OF RULES OF SEA WARFARE IN RE PASSAGE OF NON-COMBATANT VESSELS BE-TWEEN NEUTRAL PORTS.
ON LOCATION OF SUBJECT VESSEL, ALFRED THOMAS WILL MAINTAIN CONTACT WITH SUBJECT VESSEL UNTIL FUR-THER ORDERS AND WILL FURNISH POSITION EVERY FOUR (4) HOURS UNLESS THERE IS A CHANGE OF HER COURSE SUGGEST- ING A CHANGE OF DESTINATION.
BY DIRECTION OF THE CHIEF OF NAVAL OPERATIONS
QUIMMER VICE ADMIRAL
The chart over which Clancy and Lacey were bent traced the course of seven merchantmen they-and probably every other U.S. Navy vessel operat-ing in the South Atlantic-had been directed to "monitor."
Skippers of other U.S. Navy men-of-war were almost certainly wondering what the hell was going on, and one did not radio the Chief of Naval Operations to ask for the reason behind an order.
But Captain Jernigan was sure he knew exactly what was going on-al-though he had not been officially told. He thought the Alfred Thomas had been selected from among the other ships on station, not so much because of its lo-cation, but rather because the Chief of Naval Operations knew that he would correctly guess what was going on.
The Alfred Thomas had been involved in the sinking of the Reine de la Mer in Samboromb¢n Bay. A torpedo from the U.S. submarine Devilfish had actu-ally sunk the ship, but Devilfish could not have gotten into position to fire her torpedo without the assistance of the Alfred Thomas.
When they received the first message to "monitor" the seven merchantmen, Jernigan immediately decided that Naval Intelligence-or maybe the OSS- had determined that the Germans were sending a replacement, which they could be expected to do, but were unable to determine which of the seven it was.
And obviously, at least to Captain Jernigan of the Alfred Thomas, ONI and/or the OSS now thought the Comerciante del Oceano Pacifico was proba-bly the ship they were looking for. Probably was the operative word. If they were more certain, they would have ordered the Alfred Thomas to board the Oceano Pacifico or, possibly, even to sink her.
When the second message came, Clancy, at Jernigan's orders, set up a sweeping course that would possibly allow them to intercept her-presuming the Oceano Pacifico maintained her last known course.
Lookouts were ordered aloft around the clock, and of course there was the radar, which was supposed to have a range of fifty miles, and which Captain Jernigan trusted as profoundly as he trusted gentlemen in two-tone shoes and gold bracelets who operated businesses called "Honest Albert's Hardly Used Automobiles."
After days of fruitless search, Jernigan had just about decided that the search course Clancy set was the wrong one-his fault, not Clancy's; he gave the order to follow it-when, to his genuine surprise, two hours after nightfall the day before, the radar operator reported a "target" thirty miles away, on a heading that would ultimately lead to the River Plate estuary.
Jernigan ordered Clancy to set up an interception course that would place them eight miles off the unknown vessel, on a parallel course.
That was just close enough for the lookout to report bright lights on the horizon. Bright lights suggested a neutral vessel-they sailed with floodlights lighting huge national flags painted on their hulls-but there was no way to fur-ther identify her without moving closer, and Jernigan was unwilling to do that at night. The Alfred Thomas took up a parallel course ten miles to starboard.
Jernigan then went to bed, in the belief that he should be well-rested when it came time to make decisions in the morning. After at least thirty minutes in his bunk, he realized that falling asleep in these circumstances fell in the cate-gory of wishful thinking. He showered and returned to the bridge.
It was now daylight. The vessel, whoever it was, was not visible to the lookouts, but still presented a good target to the radar.
Jernigan realized that it was of course likely that if it was the Oceano Pacifico, she would also be equipped with radio direction and ranging apparatus, and know that there was a ship just a few miles away.
It was also likely that if it was the Oceano Pacifico, she was armed. Putting a submarine-replenishment vessel into position in Samboromb¢n Bay was of critical importance to German submarine operations in the South Atlantic.
With the naval cannon that could be placed aboard a merchantman, the Al-fred Thomas of course would have the advantage. Unless, of course, the captain of the other vessel decided to take a long shot and opened up without warning with everything he had.
Jernigan glanced at his watch.
The crew had been fed.
"Set a course which will bring us within visual range, Mr. Clancy," he or-dered. "How long would you estimate that would take?"
"Presuming they can't run any faster than the twenty-two knots she's now making, Sir, I would estimate fifteen minutes."
"In ten minutes, order Battle Stations," Captain Jernigan ordered. "I'm go-ing to go have my breakfast."
"Aye, aye, Sir."
He did not, in fact, have any breakfast. He instead moved his bowels, and returned to the bridge.
Exactly ten minutes had elapsed. As he stepped onto the bridge, and Mr. Lacey bellowed "Captain is on the bridge" much more loudly than was neces-sary, Mr. Clancy pressed the microphone switch and bellowed, "Battle Stations, Battle Stations, this is no drill."
Three minutes later, the lookout aloft reported a vessel dead ahead on the horizon. Thirty seconds after that, Jernigan saw the stack of a merchantman.
"All ahead full," he ordered softly. "Make turns for flank speed."
"All ahead full, make turns for flank speed, aye," the talker repeated.
"Charge all weapons," Jernigan ordered.
"Charge all weapons, aye."
"Mr. Clancy, we will pass to starboard."
"Pass to starboard, aye, aye, Sir."
"I want to read her stern board," Jernigan said. "Run right up her ass until I can see it."
""Right up her ass, aye, aye, Sir."
OPERATIONAL IMMEDIATE
FROM ALFRED THOMAS DD107 0150 GREENWICH 17 APR 43
TO CHIEF OF NAVAL OPERATIONS WASHDC
ALL RECEIVING USN VESSELS AND SHORE STATIONS TO RELAY
MOTOR VESSEL COMERCIANTE DEL OCEANO PACIFICO LOCATED AND POSITIVELY REPEAT POSITIVELY IDENTIFIED AT 0145 GREENWICH 17 APR 43 POSITION 27 DEGREES 25 MINUTES SOUTH LATITUDE 43 DEGREES 05 MINUTES WEST LONGITUDE.
SUBJECT VESSEL MAKING 22 REPEAT 22 KNOTS ON COURSE 195 REPEAT 195 TRUE. BASED ON FOREGOING, ESTIMATED ARRIVAL MOUTH RIVER PLATE 2150 19 APR 43.
ON APPROACH OF THIS VESSEL SUBJECT VESSEL UNCOVERED FOUR NAVAL CANNON BELIEVED TO BE 5-INCH OR EQUIVALENT, FOUR MULTIPLE BARREL AUTOMATIC CANNON BELIEVED TO BE 20 OR 30 MM B0F0RS, PLUS SIX MACHINE GUNS OF UNDETERMINED CALIBER.
NO REPEAT NO FIRE OF ANY KIND WAS EXCHANGED AND NO REPEAT NO CONTACT OF ANY KIND WAS ATTEMPTED OR MADE BY EITHER VESSEL.
USS ALFRED THOMAS PROCEEDING IN COMPLIANCE WITH ORDERS.
JERNIGAN, LTCOM USN, COMMANDING.
[FOUR]
Second Cavalry Regiment Reservation
Santo Tome
Corrientes Province, Argentina
070D 17 April 1943
The rain had continued through the night. It was still raining when Capitan Del-gano came into the transient officers' quarters to take everybody to breakfast.
Delgano tugged at Clete's sleeve as they walked down a gravel path to the officers' mess. Clete slowed and let the others get ahead of them.
"There's a small problem," Delgano announced. "The truck with the fuel got stuck on the way to the airstrip. They're transferring the fuel barrels to a wagon."
The first thing Clete thought was that if the ground was so rain-soaked that the truck had gotten stuck, the airstrip itself would also be too soft for takeoff.
&nb
sp; But then some Guadalcanal-learned expertise popped into his mind. That wasn't necessarily so. You got mud where there was nothing but dirt, and where the dirt had been chewed up by tires. Before they got all the pierced-steel plank-ing laid at Fighter One on Guadalcanal, he had often taken off from the dirt run-way, after heavy rains that had made the roads to Fighter One just about impassable.