Honor Bound

by W. E. B Griffin

  “Peter, Paul, out,” Clete said, set the microphone down, and turned to Tony.

  “Be so good, Lieutenant Pelosi, as to cut the wire. Then we’ll go home.”

  “Yes, Sir,” Tony said.

  [EIGHT]

  Samborombón Bay

  0325 2 January 1943

  “Put the wire out, Tony,” Clete ordered. “There’s just enough light for us to find the sonofabitch.”

  “Ain’t we lucky?” Tony said, and got up from the co-pilot’s seat and went into the cabin.

  Two minutes later he was back. He nodded at Clete, who picked up the microphone.

  “Peter, Paul. How do you read?”

  “Paul, Peter, five-by-five.”

  “Peter clear.”

  “Paul standing by.”

  “That was Ettinger,” Tony observed. “I wonder where the Chief is.”

  “I know where he is, he went for a cerveza.”

  Tony laughed out loud, and Clete joined him. The laughter was contagious and hysterical.

  A manifestation, Clete thought, of extreme stress.

  He consulted his Hamilton and his chart, and then five minutes later consulted them again.

  “That’s where the sonofabitch was,” Clete said. “Where did you go, you sonofabitch?”

  “There it is,” Tony said, pointing downward.

  Clete looked. He could make out the shape of ship. There were no running lights or other visible activity. But it was the Reine de la Mer.

  “I wonder why they didn’t move,” Clete said, and the answer came, but he kept it to himself.

  They didn’t move because they’re not at all afraid of a single-engine civilian aircraft about to drop incendiaries on them. Or at them.

  They’re getting ready for a little target practice.

  There’s probably some sonofabitch down there with binoculars looking for us. “Ach du lieber, I hope he hasn’t changed his mind and doesn’t come. I was so looking forward to a little sport!”

  He picked up the microphone.

  “Peter, Paul.”

  “Go,” Ettinger’s voice came back immediately.

  “Position unchanged.”

  “Hold one.”

  The holding took three minutes, before Ettinger’s voice came over the radio.

  “Paul, Peter, they want fifteen minutes.”

  “Understand fifteen, repeat, fifteen minutes.”

  “Right.”

  “Paul clear and standing by.”

  Clete pushed the button on the Hamilton that started the stopwatch function.

  “We have fifteen minutes,” he said.

  “I heard.”

  “You know what I was thinking, Clete?”

  “I’m afraid to ask.”

  “I was thinking that maybe this would be a good place—Argentina, I mean—to live.”

  “Right now, Mr. Pelosi, I am of the belief that practically anywhere would be a good place to live. Considering the alternatives, of course.”

  “No. I mean it. I was thinking that they probably don’t have a good demolitions company down here.”

  “You want to blow up Buenos Aires, Mr. Pelosi? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “There’s a lot of old buildings here that have to come down. They probably take them down the way they put them up, one brick at a time.”

  “And you could improve on that system?”

  “I’m pretty good at what I do, as a matter of fact,” Tony said.

  “Yes, Tony, you are.”

  “What the hell, it don’t cost to dream, does it?”

  “Not a dime.”

  “I’m really stuck on Maria-Teresa, Clete. It’s not her fault she had to do what she did with that bastard Mallín.”

  “You are speaking of my future father-in-law, Mr. Pelosi.”

  “No shit? You’re really going to marry that girl?”

  “That thought has been running through my mind.”

  “What the hell, why not? If you love her, that’s all that really matters, right?”

  “My sentiments exactly, Mr. Pelosi.”

  “You be my best man, and I’ll be yours, deal?” Tony said cheerfully, and put out his hand.

  Clete shook it.

  “Deal.”

  After a moment, Tony said, “So we’re pissing in the wind. So what?”

  They did not exchange another word for another twelve minutes, when Clete said, “I think you better go get set up, Tony.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  The first antiaircraft weapon on the Reine de la Mer to come into action was a heavy machine gun mounted above her bridge. It was firing one-in-five tracers. These arched through the sky and then seemed to die a hundred yards or so below the Beechcraft.

  After the tracer charge burns out, Clete thought, the projectile—plus, of course, the projectiles that don’t contain a tracer element, four times as many of those—continue on their trajectory.

  Clete waited as long as he could after two other machine guns opened fire, and after first one and then the other of the Bofors 40-mm cannon began to fire, before calling, “GO!”

  He held the Beechcraft as steady as he could for fifteen seconds, then turned to look over his shoulder at Tony.

  Tony was reloading the chute with the second dozen flares.

  I can’t believe we haven’t been hit!

  There was a faint but perceptible yellow brightness, reflected off the underside of the upper wing, and then a much brighter glow as the magnesium of the flares ignited.

  He dropped his eyes in ritual habit to the control panel. There were red lights all over it, OIL PRESSURE FAILURE being the most significant of them.

  The engine coughed and died.

  The wind whistling through the guy wires of the wings was eerie.

  “Tony!” Clete called. “Dump the flares, we have engine failure.”

  “What?”

  “Dump the goddamned flares, and put your goddamned life jacket on!”

  He made a shallow turn to the left, away from the Reine de la Mer and its cannon and machine guns.

  The engine nacelle suddenly glowed and then there were flames licking out its rear.

  Tony came and stood behind him, trying to tie the cords of the ancient, cork-filled life jacket.

  “Jesus!”

  “I’m going to have to put it in the water,” Clete said. “If those flames reach the fuel tanks, we’re fucked.”

  He pushed the nose over and watched the airspeed indicator climb to the red mark and then beyond.

  He was hoping that the rush of air would extinguish the blazing engine. It didn’t. The fuel lines were apparently ruptured and feeding the fire.

  “There was a submarine down there,” Tony said.

  “There was supposed to be,” Clete said.

  “I mean one of theirs, alongside that fucker.”

  “Go back and brace your back against my seat,” Clete ordered.

  Clete brought the Beechcraft out of its dive. If the wings came off, there would be no chance for them at all. As opposed to one chance in, say, two million.

  The flame from the engine now licked at the windshield, blackening it, distorting it, finally burning through in front of the co-pilot’s seat.

  “Shit!”

  The altimeter showed three hundred feet.

  He pushed the nose down, watched the water approach, and praying that he had judged the distance with some accuracy, pulled the nose up and waited for it to stall.

  Just as he noticed that the flames from the engine were playing less fiercely than before against the windshield, the Beechcraft stopped flying. It fell to the left, and a second later the left wingtip struck the water and the plane cartwheeled.

  It stopped upside down, then started to sink by the nose.

  He tore himself free of the lap belt, aware that he had cut himself somewhere, fell from the seat, and made his way back to Tony. Tony was groggy, but awake enough to be trying to make his way to the open door.
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  Clete followed him, deciding that wherever the Lusitania life belt he’d stored behind the co-pilot’s seat was now, he had no chance of finding it. He went through the door as the fuselage turned upward, then settled into the water.

  His first thought was that he was alive, that they were alive. But this was quickly replaced by the thought that without a life belt, there was no way he could swim for much more than thirty minutes; and thirty minutes wasn’t going to get him anywhere near the shore.

  He didn’t think they could both be supported by Tony’s life belt. And then he realized that, too, was a moot question. Even if they could stay afloat, they would be swept out to sea.

  It would have been better, neater, easier, if the fucking thing had blown up in the air.

  He saw Tony bobbing around in his life vest at the same moment Tony saw him. They started to swim—Tony to paddle awkwardly—toward one another.

  There was a far-off explosion, followed by a dull flash of yellow light, and then a second explosion, and a second flash of light, and then a third.

  “We got the sonofabitch!” Tony said.

  “The Navy got the sonofabitch.”

  “Yeah, where the fuck was the Navy before…”

  There was a final explosion, a spectacular series of explosions, accompanied by brilliant fire rising high in the sky.

  The light died quickly, and then all that they could see was burning fuel floating on the surface.

  Then there was a series of splashes.

  Christ, that blew pieces of the ship all the way over here!

  And then there was silence.

  “Put your life belt on,” Tony said.

  “I don’t have it.”

  “I’ve got it.”

  With a good deal of effort—it was unbelievably difficult to manage in the water—Clete finally got the life belt on.

  And now we get swept out to sea by the waters of the beautiful Río de la Plata.

  “There’s a light,” Tony said.

  Clete looked around. A searchlight was sweeping the sea. He could hear the sound of a marine engine.

  “Over here!” he shouted.

  “It may be from that fucking ship!” Tony said.

  “And it may not be. I’ll take my chances.”

  The spotlight found them, blinding them.

  Two minutes later a boat hook caught Clete by the collar of his life jacket. He felt himself being dragged to the boat.

  “Señor Cletus,” Enrico’s voice said. “If you would turn around, it would be easier to lift you in the boat.”

  Clete turned and found himself facing a polished mahogany hull. A moment later, he was jerked into the boat, falling flat on his face. He raised his head and saw another familiar face, this one at the controls.

  “Where’d you get the boat, Chief?”

  “Same place we got everything else,” Schultz said. “From your father. Enrico and I didn’t want to say anything, but we figured you was going to go in the water, and we figured we’d be here to fish you out. You all right, Mr. Frade?”

  “I’m fine. Where’s Mr. Pelosi?”

  “Aft,” Schultz said, and Clete looked. Tony, dazed but smiling, was sitting in the rear cockpit of what looked to be a Chris-Craft speedboat.

  “Did you see that sonofabitch blow?” Chief Schultz asked as he spun the wheel and pushed the throttle forward. “It blew pieces of that sonofabitch to Africa.”

  [NINE]

  Café Paris

  Recoleta

  Buenos Aires

  1425 5 January 1943

  Dorotea Mallín, wearing a pink cotton dress, removed her hand from that of First Lieutenant Cletus H. Frade, USMCR, and smiled over his shoulder.

  “Hello, Señor Graham,” she said.

  “Miss Mallín,” Graham said. “How nice to see you. Clete, you’re a hard man to find.”

  “Not by accident,” Clete said.

  “Miss Mallín, I have a few things to say to Clete before I leave.”

  “I was afraid of that,” Clete interrupted.

  “Do you suppose I could have a few minutes alone with Clete?” Graham concluded.

  “Princess, would you take a walk around the park, please?”

  “Of course,” she said, smiling and not liking it a bit.

  “Beautiful girl,” Graham said, watching Dorotea walk away.

  “What’s on your mind?”

  “Well, there are some choices you have to make.”

  “Such as?”

  “What you do next.”

  “I’m being given a choice?”

  “On the one hand, the Marine Corps is perfectly willing to have you back—you’re a major, by the way, congratulations.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Well, you were promoted captain the day after we met in San Francisco. I didn’t tell you because it would have started you thinking about getting your own squadron.”

  “Thanks a lot, Colonel. Are you saying I can go back to the Corps and get a squadron?”

  “No, I’m not. You’re not listening. You can go back to the Corps, but they won’t give you a squadron because majors don’t command squadrons. You know that.”

  “What’s this major business?”

  “You were promoted major as of the day the President heard of the mysterious maritime incident in the Bay of Samborombón. For exceptionally meritorious leadership of an unspecified nature.”

  “I almost believe you.”

  “Your second option is to remain here.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Ostensibly as Assistant Naval Attaché.”

  “And non-ostensibly?”

  “Working for us. The Naval Attaché will be advised that his only role in your regard will be to assign you no duties and to ask you no questions.”

  “You want me here because of my father,” Clete said bluntly.

  “Obviously. Your father thinks he lost his chance to become President. I don’t think so. But whatever his role will be down here, it will be important to us. If nothing else, you’ll have his ear.”

  “How are you going to tell whose side I’m on?”

  “You proved your loyalty beyond any reasonable doubt a couple of days ago.”

  “And the Argentines know how. They’ll know I’m a spy, or whatever.”

  “As a general rule of thumb, all military attachés are spies. Some of them are better at it than others. Think it through, Clete. It makes a good deal of sense.”

  “What about Pelosi and Ettinger?”

  “Ettinger came to me. He wants to stay here. He thinks he can get interesting information from the Jews coming from Europe. I don’t know about Pelosi.”

  “Pelosi wants to stay.”

  “No problem, we assign him as an assistant to the Army Attaché.”

  “Chief Schultz?”

  “I thought you might want him. Sure.”

  “There’s probably a hook in here somewhere, even if I can’t see it. I don’t trust you as far as I can throw you.”

  “Good first rule for an intelligence officer. Trust nobody. Can I take it you’ll stay?”

  Clete looked out the window. The No-Longer-Virgin Princess had taken a very quick walk around the park and was now standing outside the café, smiling somewhat nervously.

  “Only a fool would leave, Colonel. And I’m not a fool.”

  He raised his hand to the No-Longer-Virgin Princess.

  Smiling happily, she walked quickly toward him.

  *Headquarters, USMC, is located at Eighth and “I” Streets in Washington, D.C.

  *Philip’s University, in Marburg an der Lahn, in Hesse. It was to Marburg that the Russian and East European royalty sent their children to be educated, and at Marburg that Roentgen discovered the X ray.

  *In January 1942, Brazil broke diplomatic relations with Germany, Italy, and Japan. Within weeks, German submarines began attacking Brazilian shipping. The United States immediately started to equip the one
-year-old Brazilian Air Force with North American B-25 Mitchell bombers, Consolidated Catalinas, Lockheed Hudsons, and PV-1 Venturas for antisubmarine warfare. In August 1942, following a major submarine effort against Brazilian shipping (seventeen ships were lost), Brazil declared war on Germany and Italy.

  *The Basilica of Our Lady of Pilar (completed 1732), on Recoleta Square, is considered to be the most beautiful church in Buenos Aires. It is adjacent to the Recoleta Cemetery, which dates to 1822 and contains the remains of the most prominent Argentine families, interred in magnificent marble tombs (many of these tombs have as many as five subterranean levels, each holding three levels of caskets on open shelves, access to which is by stairways leading down from the ground floor).

  *The Husares de Pueyrredón trace their heritage to the Pampas horsemen, turned cavalrymen, who rode with General J. M. Pueyrredón, one of the three officers (the others being Manuel Belgrano and José de San Martin) who led the war (1810–1816) for independence from Spain. In 1942, and today, the regimental dress uniform features a bearskin hat and a many-buttoned tunic bedecked with ornate imagery clearly patterned after the Royal and Imperial Hungarian Hussars of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

  *The most conservative of Buenos Aires’ daily newspapers.

  *Literally, Navy Center. An officer’s club serving both services on Calle Florida.

  *The German pocket battleship Graf Spee, under the command of Captain Hans Langsdorff, was engaged in destroying British shipping in the South Atlantic when located and damaged by three British cruisers. She sought refuge in the neutral port of Montevideo, Uruguay. Two British cruisers followed her, and patrolled outside the harbor. A British aircraft carrier and a British battleship were en route to Montevideo when, on 17 December 1940, under British diplomatic pressure, the Uruguayan government insisted on compliance with International Law and that she leave Uruguayan waters after seventy-two hours or be interned. Langsdorff then took her to sea, but rather than risk her capture by the British, blew her up just outside Montevideo. A flotilla of tugs and other small craft hastily organized by the German colony in Buenos Aires carried Captain Langsdorff and his thousand-plus-man crew to Buenos Aires. There, after learning his crew would be interned and that he could do nothing else for them, and to prove that it was fear of British capture of his warship, and not fear of death at the hands of the enemy, that made him scuttle his command, Langsdorff arranged himself so his body would fall on the Graf Spee’s battle ensign and shot himself in the temple.