“She’s at anchor twenty miles or so offshore in the Bay of Samborombón.”
“How do you know that?”
“I saw her there. I was flying my father’s airplane.”
“You’re sure it’s the Reine de la Mer? How can you be sure?”
“Because I flew close enough to read her sternboard. And as a bonus, I got a good look at all the nice searchlights and machine-gun mounts on her superstructure.”
“You…flew close enough to read her sternboard?”
“I buzzed her, all right? That was the only way I could get close enough to read the sternboard.”
“I’m not sure that was wise.”
“Why?” Clete asked incredulously.
“We would have found her.”
“You didn’t, did you?”
“And now they know you’ve found her.”
“Mr. Nestor, I don’t think there’s any way to get close enough to her to blow her up. At least, I can’t think of one.”
“Point one, Frade, is that you’re not to blow her up, you are to disable her. And as quickly as
possible, certainly within the next week or ten days. If she replenishes one German submarine, that’s one too many. Point two is that you seem to have forgotten that it is not your function to question your orders, but to obey them.”
“Did you hear what I said? There is no way to get close to her where she lies. And even if we could, I don’t believe that the explosives we have would do much damage.”
“There’s enough explosives—you have more than twenty pounds. If judiciously placed, that’s more than enough to disable her. That’s what we’re after.”
“If we could get to her steering…or to her engines, and had an hour or so to do it, possibly. Pelosi is very good at what he does, but…”
“But what?”
“There’s no way to get close to that ship, much less get aboard her.”
“You have to try.”
“I’ll have a shot at anything that looks like it has a chance of succeeding, but I’m not going to commit suicide.”
“What did you say?”
“I said I’m not going to commit suicide. I respectfully suggest you send a message to Colonel Graham…”
“Colonel Graham is the Deputy Director of the OSS. I have no intention of bothering him with something like this. What he expects from me, and what I expect from you, is that we carry out the mission assigned by the OSS.”
“I respectfully request, Sir, that you send a message to Colonel Graham and tell him that I said there’s no way to take the Reine de la Mer out with the men and materiel I have.”
“It doesn’t work that way, Frade,” Nestor said. “We receive our orders and we carry them out to the best of our ability.”
What is this “we” crap? You’ll be in your office in the Bank of Boston.
“Why didn’t we, or the English, sink the Reine de la Mer off Lisbon, once she was identified? Or here, as she came into the Río de la Plata estuary? The Navy is operating in the South Atlantic. And there’s even a destroyer, the Alfred Thomas, making a port call here the day before Christmas.”
“Where did you hear about the Alfred Thomas?” Nestor interrupted.