[THREE]
Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo
Near Pila, Buenos Aires Province
1315 29 December 1942
Second Lieutenant Anthony J. Pelosi, CE, AUS, was alone when he drove a Ford Model T pickup truck up to the ranch house.
First Lieutenant Cletus H. Frade, USMCR, Colonel A. J. Graham, USMCR, Suboficial Mayor Enrico Rodriguez, Argentine Cavalry, Retired, and Staff Sergeant David G. Ettinger, USAR, were sitting on the verandah.
"That truck is older than he is," Colonel Graham observed. "Where's Chief Daniels?" Clete asked when Tony walked onto the verandah.
"Taking five-inch rounds apart."
"Still? How many flare assemblies will we need?" Clete asked.
"Twenty-four," Tony replied, his tone of voice suggesting he was puzzled by the question. That number was agreed to after much discussion and a few practical experiments, and Clete knew that.
"How many do we have? Now?"
"We had eighteen, maybe nineteen this morning, that we can trust."
"How long does it take to take five or six more apart?"
"That depends on who's doing it. Chief Daniels is taking his time. He doesn't like the look of the explosive charge," Tony said. "The goddamned shells were loaded in 1935, can you believe that?"
"The powder's old?" Graham asked.
"Yeah, and it's sort of like TNT, which is trinitrotoluene. It gets unstable if it settlesthe nitro sort of leaks out of the fuller's earthand then you've got nitroglycerin, which is unstable as hell."
"Out of the what?" Clete asked.
"Think of dirt mixed with sand," Tony explained. "This is special stuff. I don't know what the Navy calls theirs; but in commercial TNT, it's fuller's earth. It's uniformly porous, so it absorbs the nitroglycerin evenly. You understand?"
Clete nodded.
"OK. That makes it stable. And when it burns, it burns uniformly. So when it's improperly storedin too much heat, for example; or for too long, like these shells, loaded seven years agothe nitro seeps out, and you have nitroglycerin again."
"And you didn't think you could help Chief Daniels?" Colonel Graham asked.
Tony didn't like the question.
"Yes, Sir, I could have helped him. But he said there was no point in both of us getting blown up; and he ran me off."
"You're an officer," Graham said, not pleasantly. "Daniels is a chief."
"Just a minute, Colonel!" Clete protested angrily. "You're talking to somebody who was willing to make his own magnetic mine and stick it on the goddamned Reine de la Mer.''
Graham looked coldly at Clete, then said, "No offense, Pelosi."
Pelosi, perhaps encouraged by Clete's defense, had a reply of his own.
"The way it works when you're fucking around with high explosives, Colonel, when you have a fuck-up like this one, is make the guy responsible fix it. The Navy fucked these shells up, let a sailor fix them. If he blows himself up, don't worry. If I have to, I can go into those ancient shells and get out what I need, and I know I won't blow myself up."
"Se?or Cletus," the housekeeper announced behind him. "If it is convenient, luncheon is served."
"Saved by the bell, Colonel," Clete said.
"You look as if you belong there, Clete," Colonel Graham said a minute or so after they took their seats at the dining room table.
"Excuse me?"
"At the head of the table, in the Royal Chair, approving the wine."
What is he trying to do, charm me?
"Do I?"
"Have you ever considered that it will be yours one daythe Royal Chair, the whole estancia?"
"No, as a matter of fact, I haven't."
"The law is quite clear. Unless your father marries, when he dies, it's yourslock, stock, and barrel."
"Is that so?"
"You're the only child. They consider you an Argentine national. That's it."
"How will that Argentine national business affect me if they find out I helped sink the Reine de la Mer? '
"Interesting question," Graham said matter-of-factly. "I don't know." He looked at Clete and smiled. "Don't get caught."
The housekeeper brought in a telephone, set it on the table beside Clete, and then plugged it into the wall. She then took the handset from the cradle, handed it to Clete, and announced, "El Coronel, Se?or Cletus."
"Cletus? This is your father."
"Hola, Papa," Clete said, smiling.
"Papa?" el Coronel repeated incredulously, then went on: "The reason I called, Cletus, is about tonight."
Tonight? What the hell is he talking about?
"I wanted to make sure you asked Se?or Graham to join us, in case you have not already done so."
Jesus, I asked him to have the Princess and her family to dinner. And that's tonight.
"I just about forgot about tonight, to tell you the truth."
There was ample justification for forgetting a dinner. A hell of a lot was going on at the estancia. There was far more involved in setting things up secretlythan Clete expected when he started. Setting up a high-powered radio transmitter and receiving station, Clete learned, was not simply a matter of erecting a couple of towers and stringing a piece of wire between them.
To begin with, there was no topographical map of the estancia and its surrounding areas, something that Chief Schultz considered a necessity for locating the transmitter site.
In the absence of a good map, finding a transmitter site entailed several hour-long flights in the Beechcraft, mostly at fifty feet off the ground, so that Schultz could find suitable high ground. They found several possibilities, but these had to be narrowed down, taking into account that the site had to be easily accessible to transport. That was because the material to erect the towers, a gasoline generator to power the radios, the radios themselves, and a small building to house everything had to be transported there. And then there had to be an emergency exit route to move the radios quickly away, in case of an invasion by Argentines who had triangulated the antenna location.
They'd have ample warning of such an invasion. There already was an in-place system of what the Marine Corps would call perimeter patrols. Every possible access route to the interior of Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo was watched around the clock by gauchos working (and sleeping) on the pampas, or else by the proprietors of small cantinas (small general stores which also serve food) and pulperias (male-only bars). These businesses operated at the pleasure of el Coronel Frade; they were happy to keep him advised of strangers.
The warning system had to do with Clete's father's involvement with the Grupo de Oficiales Unidos, which in turn had something to do with what his father said about deposing the current President of Argentina. His father and his G.O.U. associates obviously didn't want people snooping around Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo. Hence the in-place perimeter security operation.
There was no way to avoid, however, having the takeoffs and landings of the Beechcraft witnessed by a very curious el Capitan Gonzalo Delgano, Argentine Army Air Service, Retired, and other members of what Clete came to think of as the San Pedro y San Pablo Air Force. In addition to the Beechcraft, there were five Piper Cubs based at the estancia. Three belonged to el Coronel, and two to Se?ora Carzino-Cormano. These were for use on her estancia, but they were based for convenience at Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo.
Delgano and the other pilots lived on the estancia in what amounted to a small village not far from the ranch house. The village housed the estancia's professional staff: the estancia manager; a doctor; a veterinarian; the schoolmaster; a resident engineer, and so on.