W. IV: Honor Bound 05 - The Honor of Spies

He mispronounced the title, and without thinking about it, Stein corrected him and then asked, "How would they know we have the Froggers here?"

Rodriguez shrugged.

"We will defend them," Rodriguez said seriously.

"That's what those guys are for?" Stein asked, nodding down the stairs toward the peones now milling around on the landing strip.

"There are twelve, all old Husares," Rodriguez said.

"Sergeant Major, with the twelve we have here, that's two dozen. Against how many soldiers on two trucks?"

"Probably forty, forty-two," Rodriguez said. "What I have been thinking is that they are coming in such strength thinking we have only the dozen men, and they can make us give them the Froggers without a fight. If they see we are so many, they may decide that there will be a fight, and they know that if there is a fight against us, there would be many casualties. How would they explain the deaths of ten or fifteen Mountain Troops so far from their base?"

"Sergeant Major, I think it would be best if there were no confrontation," Stein said carefully.

"You mean just turn the Froggers over to them?"

"No. I mean get the Froggers out of here, back to someplace on Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo."

"Don Cletus said they were to be kept here in Casa Chica," Rodriguez said.

"That was before he knew about this," Stein argued.

After a pause, the old soldier said, "True."

Stein had to suppress a smile, both at the old soldier and at the Christian scripture that had for some inexplicable reason popped into his Jewish head: Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

Ninety seconds ago , he reminded himself, I was asking myself whether I had the balls to shoot both of those goddamn Nazis rather than see them freed, and decided that I did.

"You have some place to take them?" Stein pursued.

"I will tell the driver where to take you," Rodriguez said. "And then later meet you there."

"You're not going to take them?"

"I am going to stay here and see what these bastards are up to," Rodriguez said.

"And so will I," Stein said, somewhat astonished to hear himself say it.

Rodriguez was visibly unhappy to hear this.

"Do you have a saying in the U.S. Army that there can only be one commander?"

"Sergeant Major, I recognize that your experience in matters like these is much greater than mine." Which is practically nonexistent. "I am at your orders."

"We will send six of the men, plus the driver, with the Froggers," Rodriguez ordered as he assumed command. "You tell The Other Dorotea to prepare the Nazis to be moved. Tell her I said I want them tied and blindfolded."

Stein managed to keep himself from saying, Yes, sir.

"Got it," he said.

"And while you're doing that, I will have the Ford car and your vehicles moved over there," he said, pointing to a line of hills that began a quarter of a mile the other side of the road. "There's a dirt road. I want nothing in the house when they get here."

Why? What's that all about?

"Good idea."

"And I will set up my command post there," Rodriguez said, pointing. "Just below the military crest of the hill."

What the hell is "the military crest of the hill"?

Stein nodded.

"And you have the little German camera Don Cletus brought from Brazil?"

"The Leica," Stein said. "It's in the house."

"We will need photos of everything that happens here to show Don Cletus when he returns. You would be useful doing that."

"Okay."

"I'll send two men with you down there," Rodriguez said, pointing to a roof-less, windowless old building on the edge of the road about a hundred meters from the gate. "I think you will be able to see both the house and the approaches, as well as the road, from the upper story." He paused and chuckled. "If there still is a second story. If not, you'll have to do as best you can from the ground floor."

"Understood."

While I am trying to take their pictures from the ground floor of a decrepit old building in the middle of Argentina, I am going to be shot to death by the SS.

Jesus Christ!

Thirty minutes later, on the second floor of the old building, Staff Sergeant Stein sat patiently while one of the two old Husares with him carefully painted his face, his hands, and whatever shiny parts of the Leica Ic camera with a mixture of dust from the building and axle grease. They took extra care with the camera so as not to render it useless.

When they had finished that, they draped Stein in a sort of shroud made from burlap potato bags, which covered his head and his body to his ankles. Then, very carefully, they stuck a great deal of dead leafy vegetable matter into the burlap shroud.

While he had been undergoing the transformation, the other old Husar took apart an Argentine copy of a U.S. Army EE-8 field telephone, disconnected the bells that would ring when another EE-8 was cranked, and then carefully put the phone back together.

Then he communicated with four other old Husares, plus Suboficial Mayor Enrico Rodriguez, who had apparently stationed themselves in places Stein could not see, although he tried very hard.

And finally, they painted each other's faces with the axle grease and dust compound, put on potato sack shrouds, and adorned these with dead leafy vegetation. One of them had a Mauser army rifle with a telescopic sight, and the other a Thompson submachine gun like Stein's. They wrapped them with burlap, looked around, and then wrapped Stein's Thompson in burlap.

Twenty minutes after that, the man who had camouflaged Stein had a conversation over the telephone, which surprised Stein since he had not heard it ring, although he was no more than four feet from it. Then he remembered watching the man disconnect the bell.

"Ten minutes, give or take," the old Husar said conversationally.

The first vehicle to appear, five or six minutes later, was not the army truck Stein expected from the west but a glistening, if olive-drab, Mercedes-Benz convertible sedan. And it came down the road from the east.

It slowed almost to a stop at the intersection of the road to Casa Chica. Stein saw that Colonel Juan D. Peron was in the front passenger seat, but did not think to record this photographically for posterity until after the Mercedes had suddenly sped down the road and it was too late to do so.

Both of the old Husares looked askance at Stein.

Ten minutes after that the Mercedes came back down the road, now leading an olive-drab 1940 Chevrolet sedan and two two-ton 1940 Ford trucks, also painted olive drab, and with canvas-covered stake bodies.

Stein was ready with the Leica when Colonel Peron got out of his car and exchanged salutes with two officers in field uniforms who got out of the Chevrolet. While to Stein the sound of the shutter clicking and then the film advancing sounded like the dropping of an anvil into a fifty-five-gallon metal drum, followed by a lengthy burst of machine-gun fire, none of the people on the road apparently heard it.

Troops began getting off the trucks. One of them--probably a sergeant, Stein decided--started shouting orders. Some of the troops began to trot toward the gate, where one of them cut the chain with an enormous bolt-cutter. The gate was pushed open, and the troops spread out facing the Casa Chica hill on both sides of the road.

The sergeant looked at the old house, shouted an order, and two soldiers armed with submachine guns trotted toward it.

Stein's heart began thumping. The old Husares rolled onto their backs and trained their weapons at the head of the staircase. More accurately, where stairs had once led to the second floor. When Stein and the others had come to the building, they had found that the stairs were just about rotted away. They had climbed onto the second floor from the outside, using one another as human ladders.