W E B Griffin - Honor 2 - Blood and Honor

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W E B Griffin - Honor 2 - Blood and Honor Page 66

by Blood


  Clete moved to the right of the central maps to one of Buenos Aires and Entre R¡os Provinces. Here more than a dozen blue-and-white pins marked the location of military bases and cities. But there were far more black "unde-cided," Clete judged-pins than blue-and-white, and there were two dozen red pins, which probably marked units and locations that were opposed to the ouster of President Castillo's government.

  On these maps, too, were grease pencil marks outlining the routes of march the military units controlled by G.O.U. would take from Campo de Mayo and other military bases to the Casa Rosada.

  A major politely moved him away from the map and inserted two different pins, one blue and one yellow, both numbered "1" at the gate to Campo de Mayo. These obviously represented the First Cavalry and First Infantry Regi-ments, which were at this moment preparing to begin their march.

  Two minutes later, the major replaced the black pins marking the location of the barracks of the Second Infantry, the Buenos Aires garrison troops, and the cantonment of the Navy's School of Engineering. Clete knew where both military bases were. The Second Infantry's barracks were near the Army's polo fields across from the racetrack (and near Uncle Willy's house) and the Navy School was on Avenida del Libertador several miles closer to Campo de Mayo.

  The new flag pin on the Second Infantry was blue-and-white, and the new flag pin on the Navy Engineering School was red. The Navy was apparently staying with Castillo.

  What does that mean? Will they fight the First Infantry when they see them coming down Avenida del Libertador? With what? The Navy usually doesn't have many small arms, just enough rifles and pistols to arm Navy guards.

  In the next few minutes, with decreasing courtesy, he was moved out of the way to allow a procession of officers and noncoms to replace pins all over the map.

  Finally realizing with more than a little chagrin that he was really bother-ing people, he turned from the wall of maps and got out of the way.

  At one side of the room he saw a table tended by white-jacketed waiters, and walked to it. Coffee and pastry was being served. That, like the swords dan-gling from every officer's Sam Browne belt, seemed grossly incongruous to him, but apparently to no one else.

  He took a cup of coffee and a roll and found an armchair, sat down, and stretched out his legs. The coffee was very hot, and he set the cup down on the wide arm of the chair to let it cool.

  He was a well-nourished young man in excellent physical condition, and quite naturally excited to be taken out of bed in the middle of the night to wit-ness a coup d'‚tat.

  But on the other hand, during the last seventy-seven hours he had traveled from Buenos Aires to Santo Tome by train; crossed into Brazil by ferry, and then been driven across Brazil by a driver who apparently believed the two speeds of a car were On and Off; received four hours' intense, if rudimentary, instruction in the operation of a Lockheed C-56 Lodestar aircraft; flown that two-pilot aircraft without assistance, using dead-reckoning navigation, illegally across the Brazilian-Argentine border; landed it at night in a heavy rainstorm on a too-short, unpaved landing strip illuminated by gasoline burning in clay pots; flown the aircraft the next morning from Santo Tome onto another dirt strip at Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo and then from the estancia to Campo de Mayo.

  The next thing Clete knew, Enrico was gently shaking him.

  "Se¤or Cletus," the old soldier said, gently reproving him. "You are snor-ing."

  Clete looked at his Hamilton. It was quarter past five.

  Jesus Christ!

  What did you do in the revolution, Daddy?

  Why, son, I slept through it.

  He rose quickly out of the chair and walked back to the wall of maps.

  General Rawson was there, with Lauffer standing beside him.

  Looking over Rawson's shoulder, he could see that almost all of the flag pins on the map of Buenos Aires were now blue-and-white.

  Almost all. Not all.

  There were more than a dozen red flag pins, mostly congregated around the Casa Rosada, but also on the Edificio Libertador, and, surprising Clete, on the Naval School of Engineering. Near that red flag pin was the blue flag pin with the numeral 1, identifying the First Infantry Regiment.

  He looked for and found the yellow flag of the First Cavalry. It was on the intersection of Avenida Cordoba and Avenida Pueyrred¢n, less than a mile from the Casa Rosada. Beside it was the blue flag pin of the Second Infantry.

  General Rawson sensed somebody behind him and looked over his shoul-der.

  "You must have a clear conscience, Se¤or Frade," Rawson said, letting him know that he had seen him sleeping-or possibly heard him snoring. "Either that, or you have a commendable faith in Outline Blue."

  He's in a good mood. The revolution must be on track.

  "The latter, mi General," Clete said. "Judging from the map, it looks like it's going well."

  "Not here," Rawson said, pointing at the School of Naval Warfare. "There is resistance here. Machine guns. There have been some casualties. The First Infantry is stalled."

  Clete blurted, "Can't they bypass it? Come back later and clean it out?"

  "They could, they should, and I have ordered them to do precisely that," Rawson said. "I had to order the First Cavalry and the Second Infantry to stop their advance."

  He pointed to those flags.

  "I don't understand."

  "I am not in communication with the commanding officer of the First In-fantry," Rawson explained. "They had a radio truck with them, but it has stopped functioning, and the telephone lines all along Libertador are not work-ing. They were probably disconnected by the Navy; there is a switching station inside the compound."

  What about sending a messenger?

  Rawson read his mind.

  "I've sent three messengers, and they have either been unable to get through, or the legitimacy of the order is being questioned."

  "What about dropping them a message?" Clete thought out loud.

  "Excuse me?"

  "You have three Piper Cubs on the airfield. One of them could be there in ten minutes. Just drop your orders to the commanding officer."

  "Drop?" Rawson asked, confused.

  "You put the message in a pouch, with something heavy, like a wrench or a brick. You tie a long piece of cloth to the pouch, so that they can see it coming down, and throw it out the window."

  "Is that possible?"

  "It's routine in the Marine Corps," Clete said.

  "How do you keep the message from falling into the... wrong hands?"

  He almost said "hands of the enemy." But these sailors aren't enemies, they're people who just haven't gotten the word. Which probably explains why the infantry commander hasn't blown them away. They're trying to spill as lit-tle blood as possible.

  "You fly low enough, and slow enough, over the people you want to get the pouch so you can't miss."

  "That's very interesting."

  Clete warmed to the subject.

  "As far as that goes, there's a couple of soccer fields right next to the Navy School. You could land a Cub there and deliver the message in person."

  "Is that possible?"

  "Yes, it is."

  "You would be willing to do that?"

  Oh, shit!

  Actually, I was thinking that Capit n Delgano would be just the man for the job. For one thing, he's got a lot more time in Piper Cubs than I do; and for an-other, I don't think I want to explain to some loyalist Argentine sailor what I'm doing flying an Army airplane for the revolutionaries.

  "Yes, Sir," he heard himself saying. "If you'd like me to."

  "Excuse me for a moment," Rawson said. "I would like a word with Gen-eral Ramirez."

  He was back in two minutes with Ramirez, who obviously thought the idea had great merit.

  "What I was thinking. Mayor Frade," he said, "was that we have two prob-lems which might be solved if you believe you can drop a message to the First Infantry by small aircraft."

  Are you ever going to
learn to keep your mouth shut?

  "Yes, Sir?"

  "Outline Blue called for the two columns to converge simultaneously on the Casa Rosada. The First Infantry would move down Avenida del Libertador, while First Cavalry and the Second Infantry would move down Avenida Cor-doba. As I'm sure you'll understand, that will have a certain psychological ef-fect. As a matter of fact, the simultaneous arrival of the two columns was your father's idea."

  "Yes, Sir."

  "The First Cavalry and the Second Infantry have been halted, as General Rawson told you, at Pueyrred¢n and Cordoba. Now, if we can send word to the First Infantry to bypass the resistance at the Naval School, we can start the First Cavalry and the Second Infantry moving again. But since they are so much closer to the Casa Rosada than the First Infantry, we again have the problem of arranging for them to move in concert. At the moment, we have communication with the First Cavalry and the Second Infantry, but we cannot count on the tele-phones continuing to be operational. You see the problem?"

  "Yes, Sir."

  "Once we start the First Infantry moving, do you think it would be possible to observe it from the air as it moves down Avenida del Libertador?"

  "Yes, Sir, of course."

  "And then, when they are the same distance from the Casa Rosada as the First Cavalry and the Second Infantry, to drop a message to them to resume their march?"

  "There is only one problem I see with that, mi General," Clete said. "Or two. The first is that I'm not qualified to make an assessment like that. I would have no idea when the two columns were, time-wise, an equal distance from the Casa Rosada."

  "Oh. I didn't make myself clear. General Rawson would be in the airplane. His presence at the Naval School is essential to the whole idea. So he would be with you; and he would make the decision when to order the First Cavalry and the Second Infantry to resume their march."

  "The second problem, Sir, is that while I can fly the Lockheed by myself, should that be necessary, Capitan Delgano cannot."

  "I think by now we can safely say that the success of Outline Blue is a given," Ramirez said, "and we will not need your aircraft. What we must do now is finish the operation with as little loss of life as possible. What I'm say-ing is that the honor of the officers defending the Casa Rosada will be satisfied when clearly irresistible force-the simultaneous appearance of the two con-verging columns-makes further resistance obviously futile and surrender hon-orable. Lives will be saved!"

  "Yes, Sir. I take your point."

  "God go with you!" Ramirez said emotionally, and grasped both his shoul-ders. "Your father would be proud of you, my boy!"

  Here lies Major Cletus H. Frade, USMCR, who survived Guadalcanal and slept through most of the Argentine Revolution of 1943, but-for reasons that have never been made clear-died while trying to land a Piper Cub on a soc-cer field. General Arturo Rawson, who had just been appointed President of the Governing Council of the new military government, was also killed in the crash.

  [THREE]

  The Office of the Military Attach‚

  The Embassy of the German Reich

  Avenida Cordoba

  Buenos Aires, Argentina

  0525 19 April 1943

  Standartenf�hrer Josef Goltz, Oberst Karl Heinz Gr�ner thought, looks to be in complete possession of his faculties; Der grosse Wienerwurst looks as if he's about to wet his pants.

  Goltz was shaved and in uniform. First Secretary Anton Gradny-Sawz was unshaved, his hair was mussed, he was not wearing a necktie, and his face was flushed.

  "We almost couldn't get through," Gradny-Sawz announced. "There are troops all along Avenida Cordoba. We were stopped-"

  "The First Cavalry and the Second Infantry Regiments," Gr�ner said, di-recting this information to Goltz. "Obviously headed for the Casa Rosada. I have no idea why they have stopped. If there were resistance, gunfire, I would have heard it."

  "Will their coup d'‚tat succeed?" Goltz asked.

  "I would think so. These units may be ahead of schedule, and are waiting for others to show up. I haven't been receiving much information-the loyalists have shut down many of the telephone trunks. But what I have suggests that al-most all of the troops in the Buenos Aires area have placed themselves under Ramirez and Rawson. I have no idea what's going on in the rest of the country. It's impossible to call in or out of Buenos Aires. I was surprised that I was able to get through to you. I can't reach the Ambassador." Goltz grunted.

  "General Rawson has been appointed-or has appointed himself..." Gr�ner stopped to read from a clipboard where he had written it down: " 'Pres-ident of the Governing Council of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Argentina.'"

  "That's not good news," Gradny-Sawz said. "Why do you say that?" Goltz asked.

  "Oberst Per¢n told me that Rawson is one of those who believe we were re-sponsible for the death of Oberst Frade. They were close friends."

  "Oberst Per¢n was the late Oberst Frade's closest friend," Goltz said. "He understands why the death of Frade was necessary. Believe me, Anton, Rawson will come to understand that, too." There was a knock at the door. "Come!" Gr�ner said.

  Major Freiherr Hans-Peter von Wachtstein entered Gr�ner's office. He, too, was in uniform.

  "Heil Hitler!" he said, giving the stiff-armed salute.

  "I tried to call you," Gr�ner said. "The lines were out."

  "I saw troops moving-as well as a squadron of the Corps of Mounted Po-lice," Peter said. "I thought the revolution had probably started. I tried to call you, Herr Oberst, at your home, and when I could not get through, decided I had better come here."

  "Right," Gr�ner said. "The correct decision."

  "First Cavalry and the Second Infantry Regiments are stopped along Avenida Cordoba at Avenida Pueyrred¢n...."

  "We had trouble getting past them, von Wachtstein," Gradny-Sawz said. "There was a major who had apparently never heard of diplomatic privilege."

  "Well, we're here," Goltz said. "And now that we are?"

  "The reason I called you, Herr Standartenf�hrer," Gr�ner said, "was not be-cause of the revolution; all we can do about that is wait to see what happens. There has been a message from Berlin. The cryptographer officer is still ill, and the communications officer called me. About four-thirty I was in the process of decrypting the message when one of my sources telephoned from Campo de Mayo to tell me the troops had left there at half past two."

  "It took him two hours to send that word to you?" Gradny-Sawz said in-credulously. "That doesn't seem to be a very good source."

  "I was pleased that he managed to get through at all," Gr�ner said. "At that point I telephoned your house, Herr Standartenf�hrer."

  "I think we must proceed on the assumption that President Castillo will be removed from office-if he has not been removed already," Goltz said, "and that henceforth we will be dealing with-what was it you said, Gr�ner? 'The Governing Council of the Provisional Government'-as, it seems appropriate to say, you accurately predicted. What did Berlin have on its mind?"

  Gr�ner went to his safe, worked the combination, opened the safe, and handed Goltz a business-size sealed envelope. On this he had written, "For the Exclusive Attention of Standartenf�hrer Goltz." Goltz tore the envelope open and read the message.

  MOST SECRET

  URGENT

  FROM FOREIGN MINISTRY

  TO EMBASSY OF THE GERMAN REICH BUENOS AIRES

  FOR EXCLUSIVE ATTENTION (1) AMBASSADOR

  (2) STANDARTENFšHRER JOSEF GOLTZ

  BERLIN 18 APRIL 1943 7:05 PM

  1. SUMMARY OF INFORMATION RECEIVED FROM DOENITZ AND CANARIS FOLLOWS:

  A. ON 13 APRIL 1943 US CHIEF OF NAVAL OPERATIONS SIGNALED ALL US NAVY VESSELS

  OPERATING IN SOUTH ATLANTIC OCEAN TO LOCATE AND POSITIVELY IDENTIFY SPANISH REGISTERED MOTOR VESSEL COMERCIANTE DEL 0CEAN0 PACHTC0.

  B. AT 6:27 AM LOCAL TIME 18 APRIL 1943 AT POSITION 27 DEGREES 25 MINUTES SOUTH LATITUDE 43 DEGREES 05 MINUTES WEST LONGITUDE COMERCIANTE DEL
0CEAN0 PACDTCO WAS CLOSELY APPROACHED AT VERY HIGH SPEED AND IN AN ENTIMIDATINGLY RECKLESS MANNER BY US NAVY DESTROYER ALFRED THOMAS. IMMEDIATELY AFTERWARD ALFRED THOMAS RADIOED NON-ENCRYPTED MESSAGE TO US CHIEF OF NAVAL OPERATIONS GIVING POSITION AND ESTIMATED TIME OF ARRIVAL (9 PM 20 APRIL 1943) OP COMERCIANTE DEL OCEANO PACIFICO AT MOUTH OP RIVER PLATE.

  C. US AMBASSADOR MADRID HAS BEEN SUMMONED TO SPANISH FOREIGN MINISTRY TO RECEIVE OFFICIAL PROTEST IN STRONGEST POSSIBLE LANGUAGE THIS INTIMIDATION AND HARASSMENT OF A CLEARLY IDENTIFIED SPANISH VESSEL ON THE HIGH SEAS IN BLATANT VIOLATION OF THE RULES OF NAVAL WARFARE AND THE RIGHT OP FREE PASSAGE OP NON-BELLIGERENT POWERS AS OUTLINED IN THE GENEVA CONVENTION.

 

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