I’ll be a sonofabitch! We’re flying!
Thank you, God!
—
Navigation, if not fuel remaining, ceased to be a problem thirty seconds into the flight as he reached two hundred meters.
There was a yellowish glow on the horizon to his right.
That has to be coming from the Paris of South America. Or at least the outskirts thereof. Maybe Tigre on the right?
And if that’s Tigre, I’m not lost
and I’m not going to run out of gas. Tigre’s only twenty miles, give or take, from that island.
He moved the nose of the Storch so that it was pointing at the right of the glow on the horizon.
Five minutes later, he could see the floodlights on the wharves of Tigre.
“Bernardo,” he ordered, “look ahead to your right. That’s the wharves in Tigre. Did you leave some of the Patricios there?”
“No. But there’s Army trucks down there.”
“I noticed. Give Tío Juan the headset.”
—
“Hello, hello, can you hear me?” Perón’s voice demanded.
“Not if you’re talking, Tío Juan. Shut your mouth and look down and to the right. Those are the trucks of the Horse Rifles I told you would probably be waiting for you.”
Perón did not reply. Clete hadn’t expected him to.
He made a low pass over the wharf, then picked up the nose and went to an altitude of 250 meters. Ninety seconds later, he saw below him a steady line of headlights moving in both directions.
He turned to the left and flew south, parallel to what he thought had to be National Route 8.
“Give General Martín the headset,” Clete ordered.
Perón didn’t reply, but a moment later Martín’s voice came over the headset: “I have the earphones on.”
“On our left is Route 8,” he said. “Don’t tell him, but we’re going to have a look at Avenida 9 Julio and see how many shirtless ones his girlfriend and his pal Nulder were able to muster.”
—
Ten minutes later, now at two hundred meters, they were flying up what someone had once told Frade—and he had no reason not to believe—was the widest avenue in the world.
Avenida 9 Julio, named for Argentina’s Independence Day, was usually crowded, but not like now.
Lines of automobiles, trucks, and buses were running up and down the various lanes, but they were now sharing the avenue with hordes of people.
Clete came to the Obelisk near the Colón Opera House. He thought of it as a miniature version of the Washington Monument in Washington.
The area around it and the streets leading from Avenida 9 Julio to the Casa Rosada were jammed with people, as was the avenue from the Obelisk to the Labor Ministry Building.
“It looks like my Tío Juan’s girlfriend has really roused the rabble,” Clete said. “There must be a hundred thousand people down there.”
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Martín said, and then, as they approached the Ministry of Labor building, asked, “What do we do now?”