They were introduced to Clete as the commanding officer and the executive officer of the Fourth Pursuit Squadron, but no names were provided by Delgano. He referred to Clete as "Major," without a last name.
It was obvious that the Major and the Captain were participants inOutline Blue, and that they were not only nervous about having the Lockheed at their field but deeply curious to get a better look at it.
Delgano, sensing that, suggested to Clete that he show them around the airplane. While they were in the cockpit, the hangar door opened wide enough to permit a hose from a fuel truck to be snaked inside, and the tanks were topped off.
The curious pilots and ground crewmen outside the hangar were not permitted inside.
By the time Ashton's team arrived at Posadascrammed into the same 1939 Ford Clete used to find Ashton in the Automobile Club HotelClete was able to receive a somewhat rudimentary weather briefing and, with Delgano watching over his shoulder, to lay out the flight plan.
The truck with the radar arrived ten minutes after Ashton and his men. The crates were loaded aboard, and then the passengers.
The Major and the Captain shook hands rather solemnly with Clete and Delgano, and then the hangar doors were opened again. Ground crewmen pushed the Lockheed back out onto the tarmac. Two men with a bona fide aircraft fire extinguisher on wheels appeared. Three minutes after Clete started the engines, he lifted the Lockheed off the runway and set course for Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo.
[TWO]
Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo
Near Pila, Buenos Aires Province
1205 18 April 1943
Once he found the cluster of buildings around the Big House on Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo, Clete dropped close to the ground and went looking for the radio station. He wanted to see if he could find itif he could find it from the air, then somebody else also couldand to let Ettinger, the Chief, and Tony, if he was there, know he had returned.
He had a good idea where the station was in relation to the Big House, but still had a hard time finding it. When he did, pleasing him, he could see nothing that would identify it from the air as a radio station. The three reddish sandstone buildings visible in the clearing were essentially identical to other buildings in other stands of trees all over the estancia. Such buildings were used as housing and for any number of other purposes in connection with the operation of the ranch.
He was, in fact, not entirely sure he had found the right buildings until, on his third pass over the clearing, a gaucho he recognized as Schultz came out of one of them and gazed up with curiosity.
Clete dipped his wings and turned toward the landing strip at the Big House.
Clete was not very concerned about putting the Lockheed onto the estancia strip. When he'd flown the stagger-wing into it he had more than enough runway, and he had enough experience with the Lockheed to have a feel for its landing characteristics.
But, as he took deeply to heart the saying that a smugly confident pilot is the one who is about to badly bend his airplane, he set up his approach very carefully. He came in low and slow and greased the Lockheed onto the strip within twenty feet of the whitewashed line of rocks that marked the end of the runway. He had a good thousand feet of it left when he brought the Lockheed down to taxi speed.
"Nice landing," Delgano said.
"Thank you," Clete said. "This thing isn't as hard to fly as I thought at first."
Clete turned the Lockheed off the runway and taxied toward the hangar.
I wonder if we can get this great big sonofabitch in that little hangar?
Because Second Lieutenant Cletus H. Frade, USMCR, of VMF-221 had received a truly magnificent ass-chewing on Henderson Field on Guadalcanal for using too much of his Wildcat engine's power in similar circumstances, he now remembered to use the Lockheed's engines very carefully to turn the airplane around so that it pointed away from the hangar without flipping over one or more of the Piper Cubs parked near it.
That done, he started to shut it down. This time he checked the gauges for remaining fuel. He still had enough aboard, he quickly calculated, to make it back and forth to Montevideo, and probably enough to make it one-way to Porto Alegre.
He unfastened his harness and started to slide out of his seat.
Delgano stopped him by laying a hand on top on his.
"We must talk," Delgano said.
"Oh? About what?"
"If you succeeded in bringing the airplane across the border to Santo Tome, my orders were to take it directly from Santo Tome to Campo de Mayo."
"OK," Clete said. "And my having my passengers screwed that up?"
"That and the fact that it is not the C-45 light twin you told us it would be. I thought I would be able to fly the C-45 alone."
"Alone?" Clete asked, not quite understanding what Delgano was talking about.
"You were to become a guest of Colonel Porterman at Santo Tome for the next four or five days," Delgano said.
"You . . . forgot... to mention that."
"Coronel Mart?n spoke with General Rawson," Delgano said. "Coronel Mart?n believed that if you flew any airplane into Campo de Mayo, that would have put you in a delicate positionactually, I suppose, a more accurate term would be 'dangerous position.'"
"How so?"
"You would have played an active part in the revolution," Delgano said. "IfOutline Blue failed, and for some reason you could not leave the country, you would almost certainly be one of the dozen or so officers who faced the most severe consequences."
"You mean, they would shoot me?" Clete asked. "Just for loaning you an airplane?"
"For flying the airplane to Campo de Mayo, and because you are your father's son," Delgano said, waited long enough for that to sink in, and then went on. "Your execution by Castillo's people under such circumstances would be isa real possibility."
"Is?" Clete thought aloud.
"So, on General Rawson's authority, it was decided that I would 'borrow' your airplane at Santo Tome, and leave you there. Two things, of course, made that impossible. You arrived in an airplane that I could not fly by myself, and you had your 'passengers' and their cargo with you."
"If I had known about this," Clete said, "I would have thought twice about bringing Captain Ashton and his people with me."
"Well, what is the expression? That's water under the dam. The reality I had to deal with is that you arrived at Santo Tome with an airplane I could not fly by myself, and with your passengers and the cargo aboard."
"OK," Clete said, and waited for Delgano to go on.
"I made a decision at Santo Tome," Delgano said, "without consulting with el Coronel Porterman, but on my own authority. Based on the facts that I had somehow to get the airplane to Campo de Mayo, that I could not do so alone, and that I could not leave your passengers and their cargo with the Second Cavalry, I decided that everybody would leave Santo Tome and that en route I would ask you to divert to Campo de Mayo."
"Ask me?"
"Insist."
"How insist?" Clete asked, aware that he was getting angry.
Delgano shrugged, making it clear he was sure Clete knew what he was talking about.
"En route, I decided that brandishing a pistol would not only be melodramatic but probably impractical. Suboficial Mayor Rodriguez would certainly try to stop me, for one thing. In any event, I decided that attempting to take control of the airplane would be at best risky. It would also have been dishonorable on my part."