Griffin W.E.B. - Honor Bound 01 - Honor Bound

"Five by five. Over."

"Hunter, leave your lights on."

"Mallard, roger your lights on," Tony said, and then repeated the order to Clete.

"Roger, I have you in sight. Is the road clear? How do you estimate the wind?"

"He wants to know if the road is clear and about the wind," Tony relayed.

Clete stuck his index finger in his mouth and then extended his arm over his head. Then he took the walkie-talkie from Tony and pressed thepress-to-talk switch.

I think that crazy sonofabitch is about to try to put it down! Why else would he ask about the road being clear?

"Mallard, winds from the north negligible, I say again, negligible. The road is paved with gravel and clear. I say again, paved with gravel and clear."

"OK, Hunter, here we go."

Without realizing they had done so, both Tony and Clete had gotten to their feet, and they were now standing on the seat of the Ford, their waists about at the level of the top of the wind-shield. They could hear the sound of the aircraft engine, but all they could see of it was the orange glow of the engine exhaust, and there was no way to judge from that where the aircraft was. And then the exhaust glow disappeared.

Suddenly, blinding them, a landing light came on, and the sound of the engine changed as the pilot retarded the throttle. The landing light lined up with the road, and dropped lower and lower. It was impossible to see the airplane against the brilliance of its landing light, but Clete heard a chirp of wheels and then a rumble as it touched down. The landing light died into an orange glow, but it took their eyes some time to readjust.

And then there was an orange Piper Cub taxiing up to the grille of the Ford.

"I will be a sonofabitch!" Tony said as he jumped over the side of the Ford. Clete went over the other door and followed Tony to the airplane as the pilot, in a summer-weight flying suit, got out.

"God bless the Army Air Corps," Clete said to the pilot as he put out his hand.

"Actually, I'm an Engineer officer," the pilot said. "I'm an Army Liaison Pilot, teaching the Brazilians to direct artillery fire."

"Corps of Engineers?" Tony said delightedly. "Me too."

"I thought you guys were in the OSS," the pilot said.

“Never believe what anybody over the grade of captain tells you," Clete said, "as we say in the Marine Corps."

"Marine Aviator? You sounded like a pilot, on the horn."

"Fighter pilot, way out of his element," Clete said. "I thought you were supposed to air-drop this stuff."

"The Air Corps wanted to. They were going to make a big deal of this, come in with a C-47, drop some pathfinder in first, then drop this stuff with a great big fucking cargo parachute, you know how they are. I figured, shit, this stuff doesn't weigh fifty pounds altogether, I can put it in the backseat. So I came over— lost, of course—here yesterday, and took a look, and here I am. What is that stuff, anyway? It looks like boards."

"It's supposed to," Tony said. "It's Composition C4. They molded it to look like wood boards."

"Then that explains what your guy meant when he said 'be damned careful with these.' Detonators, right?"

Tony took the small package the pilot extended to him and opened it.

"Right," he said. "I hope you didn't have this near the explosives."

"I had it on my lap."

"Jesus!" Tony said.

"Let's get me unloaded and out of here," the pilot said. "I'd love to stay and chat, but I really don't want to know what you guys are going to do with that stuff, and I don't want to spend the war in a Uruguayan jail."

Three minutes later, he was gone.

When Clete got behind the wheel of the Ford and pressed the starter, the battery was dead. Tony, sweating and swearing, had to push the car to get it started. But in another three minutes, they too were gone.

Chapter Twelve

[ONE]

Aboard the General Belgrano

Rio de la Plata

0945 13 December 1942

Shortly after they sailed from Lisbon, Captain Manuelo Schirmer, master of the General Belgrano, began to extend to Hauptmann Freiherr von Wachtstein of the Luftwaffe certain privileges. First, that of his table. At the start of the voyage, Peter was assigned to an eight-place table in the dining room. When he arrived for lunch, six other people were there, a middle-aged Argentinean couple and a somewhat younger German couple and their two children. When he politely asked about their home, they replied they were from Heidelberg, then made it quite clear they were not interested in conversation.

When he went in for dinner, the steward intercepted him and led him to the captain's table. This was placed lengthwise across the back of the room and was set with ten places, all on one side.

"Mi Capitan," the steward said, addressing a stocky, blond-haired man in his forties, who was wearing a uniform blouse with four gold stripes on each sleeve over a navy-blue turtleneck sweater. "El Capitan von Wachtstein."

"I am Kapitan Schirmer, Herr Hauptmann," Schirmer said in German, examining him carefully and unabashedly, "I thought you might be more comfortable taking your meals here."

"That's very kind of you, mi Capitan," Peter replied in Spanish. "Thank you."

"Ah, you speak Spanish. Good."

Schirmer then introduced him to the other officers at the table. Not all the ship's officers came to the first dinner, but eventually Peter understood that these included Schirmer, his first, second, and third mates; the chief engineer, his first, second, and third assistant engineers; and the ship's doctor. There were no other passengers at the table; obviously he was being given a special privilege.

The next morning, at breakfast, Schirmer invited him to visit the bridge. And when Peter went up later that morning, waiting for permission to enter, Schirmer loudly and formally announced, "Hauptmann von Wachtstein has the privilege of the bridge."

Peter knew virtually nothing about the customs and protocol of the sea. But he was a soldier, and understood that an order had been issued, and that he was being granted the privilege of permanent access to the bridge—this was not a good-for-only-one-visit invitation. Schirmer showed him around the bridge and the chart room, introduced him to his second mate (who had not been at dinner the night before), and then announced that Peter would be more comfortable in the supercargo cabin on the bridge deck, not presently in use, and that if he had no objection, he would have the steward move his things from his cabin on the passenger deck.

"Mi Capitan," Peter replied, "I don't know what 'supercargo' is. It sounds like either gold bullion, or diamonds, or something stowed outside on the deck under a tarpaulin, rather than downstairs in the hold." Schirmer laughed.

"Below decks,Herr Hauptmann, not downstairs," he said, and then went on to explain that there was a cabin reserved for the senior hierarchy of L.M.A.E.—a company executive, for example, or an L.M.A.E. master or chief engineer traveling as a passenger.

"In that case, mi Capitan, I accept," Peter replied. "Thank you very much."

Peter had a strong temptation to suspect that he was being given all of these privileges because he was such a naturally charming fellow, but he resisted it. More likely, Schirmer, whose name was obviously German in origin, was extending a sort of Germanic privilege. Or else Capitan Schirmer was possibly treating Hauptmann von Wachtstein like a fellow officer.

By the third day out of Lisbon, they were on a partial first-name basis: Schirmer started to call him "Peter." Peter, however, decided that good manners and protocol required that he continue to call Schirmer "Capitan," and did so.

On the fifth day out, very late at night, as they were playing chess in Capitan Schirmer's cabin, Schirmer told him the real reason he granted Peter the privilege of the captain's table and the supercargo cabin. Of the one hundred and five passengers aboard the General Belgrano, thirty-nine, including the couple from Heidelberg and their children, were Jewish.