"Precioso," Claudia said, laughing, "if it is your intention to marry him off to one of the girls, as I suspect it is, you are going about it in exactly the wrong way. Young people never like the young people their parents consider suitable for them."
"I have no idea what you're talking about," el Coronel Jorge Guillermo Frade said.
"El Teniente Frade is a fine pilot, mi Coronel," el Capitan Gonzalo Delgano, Air Service, Argentine Army, Retired, reported. The two of them had just taken the stagger-wing Beechcraft on a thirty-minute orientation flight, with half a dozen touch-and-go landings. "As fine a pilot as I know."
Don't let it go to your head, Cletus, my boy. Unless you had dumped that airplane, it was the only thing he could say about the boss's son's piloting skills.
He also doesn't like it a bit that I'm flying what he thought of as his personal airplane. But there's nothing he can do about that, either, except smile.
"Then we can go?" el Coronel asked. "I will send for Se?ora Carzino-Cormano.''
"Not yet," Clete said. "I'd like to solo it first." His father looked disappointed and a little annoyed, but finally said, "Whatever you think is best, Cletus."
"I won't be long," Clete said, and walked back to the airplane. The pilot in him now took over. He had no doubt that he could fly the airplane, but that presumed nothing would go wrong. A lot of things could go wrong: The checkout had been really inadequate, and there was no civilian equivalent of a Navy BuAir Dash One, "Pilot's Instruction Manual," to study for the CAUTION notices, which warned pilots what they should not do.
But I have to fly it. And not just to take Se?ora Carzino-Cormano safely home.
While he was looking the plane over earlier, he noticed a low-level chart in a compartment on the door, an Argentine Army Air Service map of the area. He examined this with great interest. In addition to pointing out the few available navigation aids, a dozen or so civilian airstripsone was at the Estancia Santa Catharina, Se?ora Carzino-Cormano's ranchand a military air base ninety kilometers to the south, the chart showed the entire mouth of the Rio de la Plata, including all of Samboromb6n Bay and a couple of miles of the coastline of Uruguay.
Within a day or two,he thought with sudden excitement presuming she's not already here theReine de la Mer will be anchored out there, waiting to replenish German submarines. I'm supposed to find her and blow her up. I didn't come here with the idea of finding her myself, but I can't pass up the opportunity to see if I can.
He strapped himself in and looked out the window for el Capital Delgano. When they first fired up the stagger-wing, Clete stood by the fire extinguisher for Delgano. And he expected Delgano to do the same for him; but Delgano was nowhere in sight. Clete pushed himself out of the leather-upholstered pilot's seat, went back through the cabin, and opened the door.
"Something is wrong?" his father asked.
"I need the fire extinguisher, Dad," Clete said. "I'm about to start it up. What happened to el Capitan Delgano?"
"That is the first time you have ever called me that," his father said.
Christ, he looks as if he's going to cry again!
He was touched by his father's emotion, and felt tightness in his throat. And his own eyes grew moist. Jesus.
As if the display of emotion embarrassed him, Frade looked around for Delgano.
"He probably had to relieve himself," he announced, and then indignantly, "He should have waited for you."
"No problem, Dad. All you have to do is stand there while I start the engine, and give it a shot if it catches fire."
It was immediately evident that el Coronel Jorge Guillermo Frade had no idea where he was to stand, or for that matter, how to operate the extinguisher.
Clete conducted a quick course in fire-extinguisher operation during aircraft engine start, then climbed back into the Beechcraft, strapped himself in, and slid the pilot's window open. "Clear!" "Clear!" his father responded, with obviously no idea what he
was saying.
Clete turned on themain switch, then pushedengine prime, and finallyengine start.
The engine coughed to life on the first try, and he saw his father smile triumphantly at Claudia, who had come to the airstrip from the house to watch him. Clete looked at her and gave her a thumbs-up. She crossed herself but smiled, making it a joke.
As the needles came off the peg, he removed the brakes, checked the wind sock, and began to taxi to the gravel strip, then down it. By the time he had turned it around, everything was in the green.
"Engage brain before beginning takeoff roll," he said aloud, and shoved the throttle forward.
At just about the moment the airspeed indicator began operating, indicating forty, he felt life come into the wheel. The tail wheel lifted off. He held it on the ground, deciding it would take off at sixty or seventy. At sixty, it lifted into the air of its own accord. He eased back on the wheel and saw the ground drop
away.
Claudia was waving cheerfully at him.
He put it into a shallow climb to the north, in the direction of Estancia Santa Catharina and Samboromb?n Bay. When he reached 4,000 feet, he played with it a littlemore than he felt he could do with Delgano sitting beside himto see how it flew. It wasn't a Wildcat, but it was a damned nice little airplane.
He found Claudia's estancia and landing strip without trouble. Giving in to the impulse, he made a low-level pass over it, rocking the wings as he did so. So far as he could tell, this dazzling display of airmanship went wholly unnoticed.
He looked at the elapsed time function on his Hamilton, and saw that it had taken him fifteen minutes to reach the estancia.
If I'm gone more than an hour, they will start shitting bricks. So I have to be back in forty-five minutes. Half of forty-five is twenty-two thirty. I can fly over the Bay for twenty-two thirty. If I can't find theReine de la Mer in twenty-two thirty, I'll have to
quit.
Eighteen minutes later, ten minutes after crossing the coastline, all alone on a vast expanse of bay, he spotted a ship dead in the water. He put the Beechcraft in a shallow descent from 5,000 feet, taking it right down to the waves. He retarded the throttle watch it, Clete, you don't want to stall it into the drink and approached her from the stem. Her sternboard had a legend, which at first he couldn't see.
He flew closer.
Don't run into the sonofabitch!
A flag was on her stern pole. The wind was such that it was flapping, fully extended. Surprising him, he recognized it as Portuguese from one of the briefings Adams had given them in New Orleans.
And then the letters on her sternboard came into focus: Reine DE LA MERLISBOA.
There you are, you sonofabitch!
He banked sharply to pass her on her port side, and waved cheerfully as he flew past.
Twenty crewmen waved cheerfully back, most of them standing beside canvas-draped objects that he strongly suspected were searchlights and machine-gun mounts.
He put the Beechcraft into a shallow turning climb until he was, on a heading for Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo.
No wonder those other guys got themselves killed. There is no way to approach a ship like that, at anchor twenty miles offshore, without being detected. Certainly not in the daytime. And even at night if you rowed out there, so they wouldn't hear the sound of your engines, if that captain knows shit from shinola, he's going to use his searchlights every couple of minutes to see what else is floating around out there.