"What's this about Dave not being able to take code?"
"That's one of the two problems we have, Mr. Frade: Dave here, and Mr. Pelosi, which is why I come here."
"Tell me about Dave first," Clete said.
"I'm not very good at Morse code," Ettinger confessed. "I can send maybe ten or twelve words a minute, and I'm even worse at taking it."
"Christ, you are supposed to be a radio expert!" Clete said.
He remembered his own experience with Morse Code training. It was a required course in ground school, and he had a hell of a time acquiring the absolute minimum proficiency: sending and receiving twelve words a minute, with a ninety-percent accuracy.
"He knows radios," Chief Schultz came to Ettinger's defense. "With the fixes we worked out, he could probably set up the transmitter without a damn bit of trouble. But working the Thomas and the Devil Fish? With his hand? Forget it."
"Explain that to me," Clete said.
"You'll be using one of the Contingency Codes," Chief Schultz said. "There's maybe a dozen of them in the Captain's safe. Just for some screwy operation like this one. They're all numbers. Numbers, for somebody like Dave, is the hardest to transmit and receive. And you get a couple of numbers wrong, maybe just one number wrong, you're all fucked up. The codes are numerical nonrandom sequential, you know what I mean? There's phase shift built in ..."
Clete held up his hand.
"I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about, Chief."
Chief Schultz did not seem at all surprised.
"Take my word for it, Mr. Frade," he said. "What you need with codes like this is an operator with a pretty good hand, thirty-five, forty words a minute, with a zero error rate."
"Like you, for example, Chief?"
"That's what I was thinking, Mr. Frade," Schultz said. "I wouldn't be the first sailor in the history of the Navy to get hooked up with some local lollypop and miss his ship ..." He stopped. "I didn't mean nothing by that, Mr. Frade. I could tell right off that the one you had in here was a nice girl."
"No offense taken, Chief," Clete said.
"And, Dave told me something about the walkie-talkies he's been working on," Chief Schultz went on quickly, obviously relieved that he had gotten himself off the lollypop hook. "I think we can probably rig them, work on them a little more, so that we can have our own air-to-ground link."
"What?" Clete interrupted.
"You use the aircraft radios, Mr. Frade," Chief Schultz explained patiently. "There's sure to be someone monitoring those frequencies. And you'll be using voice ..."
"I didn't think of that," Clete said.
"And as far as communicating with the submarine, Clete," Ettinger interjected, "the longer we're on the air, the more time the Argentines will have to triangulate the transmitter. We'll be on three or four times as long if I try to key code than if the Chief does it."
"How does that work?" Clete asked.
"Two, preferably three receivers with directional antennae," Ettinger explained. "They know their precise location on a map. They get a bearing on the transmitter from their receivers. They draw straight lines. Where the lines intercept, there's the transmitter. Very simple. We need the Chief."
"What happens to a sailor, Chief, who gets hooked up with a local lollypop and misses his ship?"
"In the States, or someplace like Cavite in the Philippines, Guantanamo, someplace where there's a Navy shore installation, they toss them in the brig with lost time."
"What's lost time?"
"They count from the time you miss the ship until you get back aboard as lost time. You don't get paid for it, they add it to the end of your enlistment, and the next time you get paid, they deduct the cost of your rations. Depending on the skipper, you get captain's mast or a court-martial."
"You really wouldn't be jumping ship," Clete said. "That would be for public consumption, that's all."
"I figured that."
When this is over, you could be placed in the custody of the Naval Attach?, maybe, until we could get you back to your ship," Clete said. "Let me think about this, Chief. I'll have to ask my boss, too."
"We don't have much time, Mr. Frade."
"I know. Now tell me about this OrdnancemanChief Daniels, you said?"
"Well, he don't know shit about what's going on here. All he knows is that I brung Mr. Pelosi on board. And I told him that this guy that's wearing butcher clothes with blood all over them is an Army officer, and that he needs to know about taking a five-inch illuminating-round shell apart, and to keep his mouth shut."
"I didn't know how much I was authorized to tell him about why I needed the flares and parachutes," Tony Pelosi explained.
"So you told him nothing?" Clete asked.
Tony nodded.
"So what happened?"
"Chief Daniels," Chief Schultz answered for him, "said Mr. Pelosi is going to blow hisself up if he tries taking one of them rounds apart."
"Tony?"
"I know explosives. No problem."
"With respect, Mr. Pelosi," Chief Schultz said, "you don't know diddly-shit about Naval Ordnance."
Clete looked at Schultz. The old Chief was obviously right.
Chief, do you think Chief Daniels could be talked into missing the ship too?"
"I don't know, Mr. Frade. Maybe, if he knew what this screwy operation is supposed to be all about."
"You think you or Mr. Pelosi should have told him?"
"No. He's not cleared. Shit, the Skipper had ants in his pants when he told me about it, and I already knew, 'cause I decoded the Direction of the President order. That's a pretty heavy security classification."
"When are you going to see Chief Daniels?"
"At the Chief's Reception."
"You have my authority, Chief, to inform Chief Daniels of the nature of this mission, and then to ask him if that changes his mind, under the circumstances, about the risk of Lieutenant Pelosi working on the five-inch rounds. If he still thinks Mr. Pelosi can't handle it, approach him about missing the ship. Tell him not to worry about any real charges being placed against him." "You have that kind of authority, Mr. Frade?" Do I?
"Tell the Captain that we will require as many five-inch illuminating rounds as Mr. Pelosi thinks we'll need, plus some spares for testing," Clete said, hoping his voice reflected more confidence than he felt. "When Enrico comes back, we'll decide how to get them, and you, and maybe Chief Daniels from here to Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo."
"Aye, aye, Sir," Chief Schultz said.
[TWO]
Bureau of Internal Security
Ministry of Defense
Edificio Libertador
Avenida Paseo Colon
Buenos Aires
0905 28 December 1942
"The American battleship Thomas sailed at three-thirtyp.m. yesterday, mi Coronel," el Comandante Carlos Habanzo reported, reading from a manila folder. "It dropped the Armada Argentine pilot"
"A question of precise terminology, Habanzo," el Teniente Coronel Bernardo Martin interrupted.