“As you suspected all along, Herr Reichsprotektor, von Wachtstein was our traitor. As soon as he learned where the special cargo was to be brought ashore, he attempted to tell our enemies again. I would have preferred that he could have been brought for trial before a People’s Court—traitors don’t deserve an Officer’s Court of Honor—but with the safety of the special cargo at risk, I decided it was necessary to eliminate him then and there. And did so. Heil Hitler!”
Von Wachtstein began his preflight walk-around inspection of the Storch.
You’re paranoid, Hansel! Absolutely out of your fucking mind!
Maybe not.
Or I am paranoid—which really wouldn’t surprise me—but that doesn’t mean that Herr Standartenführer Cranz isn’t prepared to kill me to make himself look good with Himmler . . . and incidentally get rid of someone who really might be a traitor.
Which of course I am.
As he worked the rudder back and forth with his hand, he glanced at Cranz, who was watching him with some interest.
Well, one thing is for sure. He’s not going to shoot me while we’re in the Storch. He doesn’t know how to fly, and the Herr Standartenführer is very good at protecting his ass.
If I live through this, I will have to remember to get my PPK out of the damn drawer and start carrying it with me.
Why didn’t I think of that before? I know these people are murderers.
Clete goes around armed to the teeth, as if he’s on the way to that gunfight in the Wild West. What was it called—“The Easy Corral”?
No. The O.K. Corral. That’s it. The O.K. Corral.
What the hell is a corral?
Just when the elapsed-time clock mounted at the top of the Storch’s windscreen showed that they had departed El Palomar two hours and fifty-five minutes earlier, Major von Wachtstein felt something push at his shoulder. He turned and saw that Standartenführer Cranz was holding a celluloid-covered map out to him.
He took it and saw that it was another Argentine Army Topographic Service map, this one of a smaller scale. It was centered on Necochea and showed little else. Arrows indicated that some place called General Alvarado was to the north, near the Atlantic Ocean, and a place called Energia was to the south, what looked like a kilometer or two inland from the ocean.
The reason it doesn’t show much more than a couple of dirt roads is that there probably isn’t anything else down there.
What the hell. You don’t want anybody around when you’re trying to smuggle things ashore.
A long oblong had been drawn with a grease pencil on the celluloid covering the map. It was labeled Landeplatz 1,200 M. It was located, von Wachtstein estimated, about three hundred meters from the ocean, at right angles to it.
He looked over his shoulder at Cranz, and gestured to him that he should put on his headset.
Cranz nodded, and thirty seconds later, “Hello, hello, hello. Can you hear me?” came over von Wachtstein’s earphones.
“I hear you clearly, Herr Standartenführer.”
“Can you locate the airfield?”
“I will have to fly much lower, Herr Standartenführer.”
“Then do so,” Cranz ordered impatiently.
Reasoning that an SS-standartenführer was certainly a courageous man— at least in his own mind—von Wachtstein dropped the nose of the Storch almost straight down, and allowed the airspeed indicator to get very, very close to the red line before pulling out at about three hundred feet.
