"Posadas," Delgano said immediately. "It's 130 kilometers from here; two hours, maybe a little less, by truck."
"Long-enough runways? Capable of handling the Lockheed?"
Delgano nodded.
"OK. Posadas it is. Let's get some breakfast."
If the fuel gauges were to be trustedand Clete had learned from painful experience that this was something wise birdmen did not dothere was just barely enough fuel remaining aboard to get them to Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo.
That was not good news; he would have been happier if the tanks had contained just enough AvGas to get them to Posadas. The Lockheed would have been that much lighter.
He briefly considered pumping gas out of the tanks. That was obviously not practical. It would have been time-consuming in itself. And, since there were no empty barrels at the landing field to pump it into, they would have had to wait until empty barrels could be brought from the barracks out to the strip.
A second truck sent from the barracks to take aboard the radar had made it out to the Lockheed without trouble. By driving across the grass of the pampas, Clete noted somewhat smugly, and staying off the muddy road.
He was almost through giving Capitan Delgano enough of a cockpit checkout to enable him to work the landing gear and flaps controls on orders, and to operate the radio direction finding system, when Captain Maxwell Ashton III came up to the cockpit.
"The radar's on the truck," he announced. "But just between you and me, mi Mayor, I'm more than a little nervous to see my radar going off by itself."
"There will be no awkward questions asked at checkpoints of five happy Brazilian civilians in a civilian car," Clete said. "There would be if you guys were on an Army truck."
"OK," Ashton said. "Good luck!"
"If I can't get this thing out of here, you're on your own," Clete said. "I'm sorry about that."
"Yeah, well, let's see what happens," Ashton said.
He touched Clete's shoulder, then turned and left the cockpit.
Clete looked around the cockpit a moment, then got up and walked through the cabin to make sure the door was closed properly. When he returned to the cockpit, had strapped himself in, and looked out the window, he saw that the thorough Capitan Delgano had arranged for a fire extinguisher to be present against the possibility of fire when the engines were started.
It was not, however, the latest thing in aviation-safety technology. It looked as if it belonged in a museum. It was a wagon-mounted water tank, with a pump manned by four cavalry troopers. Presumably, if there was a fire, and the four of them pumped with sufficient enthusiasm, a stream of water could be directed at it.
But since water does not extinguish oil or gasoline fires with any efficiency, all it was likely to do was float burning oil and/or AvGas out of the engine nacelle over the wing and onto the ground.
Clete threw the master buss switch and yelled "Clear!" out the window.
The four cavalry troopers, startled, took up their positions at the pump handles.
Clete set the throttles, checked the fuel switch, and reached for theleft engine START Switch.
The left engine started, smoothed down, and he started the right engine.
He looked at Delgano, who smiled, and crossed himself.
Clete took off the brakes and nudged the left throttle forward. The Lockheed shuddered, and then the left wheel came out of the depression it had made during the night. Clete advanced the right throttle, and the right wheel came out.
He straightened the Lockheed out, then taxied back between the clay pots marking the runway, and then down it as far as he could to where he decided the downward slope of the "runway" was going to be too much to handle.
He turned the plane around, and saw that the wheels had left ruts six inches deep.
"Here we go," he announced matter-of-factly, and moved the throttles totakeoff power.
The Lockheed shuddered, and for a moment seemed to refuse to move. Then it began to move.
It picked up speed very slowly, and then suddenly more quickly. Life came into the controls. He pushed the wheel forward a hair to get the tail wheel off the ground, then held it level until he felt it get light on the wheels. He edged the control back, and a moment later the rumbling of the gear stopped.
"Gear up!" he ordered.
Thirty seconds later, as he banked to the left, setting up a course for Posadas, he glanced at Delgano.
"This is a fine airplane!" Delgano said.
"I don't know about you, Capitan," Clete said, "but I always have more trouble landing one of these things than I do getting one off."
"I have faith in you, mi Mayor," Delgano said. "For the very best of reasons."
"Which are?"
"Because you are in here with me."
Chapter Twenty-One
[ONE]
Posadas Airfield
Posadas, Missiones Province, Argentina
0930 18 April 1943
It was a twenty-five-minute flight from Santo Tome to Posadas, which turned out to be a recently and extensively expanded airfield shared by Aerol?neas Argentina and the Air Service of the Argentine Army.
Clete managed to put the Lockheed down on the field's new, wide concrete runways without difficulty. A pickup truck flying a checkered flag met them at the taxiway turnoff and led them to a new hangar, where a dozen soldiers of the Air Service, Argentine Army, were waiting to push the Lockheed into a hangar.
The aircraft normally parked in the hangara half-dozen Seversky P-35 fighter planeswere parked outside. Clete stared at them with fascination. In high school, he made a tissue-covered balsa wood model of the fighter. He was so fond of it that he was never able to find the courage to wind up its rubber band and see if it would fly.
When Clete was in high school, the Seversky was about the hottest thing in the sky. Dreaming of one day flying it, Clete could still remember its capabilities: It had a Pratt and Whitney 950-horsepower engine, which gave it a 280-m.p.h. top speed; and it was armed with two .30-caliber machine guns firing through the propeller and could carry three 100-pound bombs, one under each wing and the third under the fuselage.
The F4F-4 Wildcat Clete flew on Guadalcanal had six .50-caliber machine guns, and was powered by a 1,200-horsepower Pratt and Whitney engine, which gave it a 320-knot top speed. The F4U Corsair, which was already in the Pacific to replace the Wildcat, had a 2,000-horsepower Pratt and Whitney engine, a top speed of 425 knots, and in addition to its six .50-caliber machine guns could carry a ton of bombs.
Clete had never seen a P-35 before. It was obsolete long before Clete went to Pensacola for basic flight training. There was something very unreal about seeing them parked here, obviously ready for action.
If the Brazilians decided to bomb Argentina with the B-24s I saw parked at Porto Alegre, and the Argentines sent up these P-35s to attack them, it would bea slaughter. The multiple .50s in the B-24s' turrets would be able to knock the P-35s out of the sky long before the P-35s got into firing range of their .30-caliber guns.
Why am I surprised? They're still practicing how to swing sabers from the backs of horses in Santo Tome.
The Lockheed was equally fascinating to the Argentine pilots standing by their Severskys. To judge from the looks on their faces, they had never seen a Lockheed Lodestar before.
As soon as the Lockheed was inside the hangar, the doors were closed. Clete and Delgano walked through the cabin, opened the door, and found a major and a captain waiting for them.