—
The runway lights came on. There was no time to argue with General Martín.
Clete moved the stick hard over, stood the Storch on its left wingtip, straightened out, dropped the nose, and put the flaps down.
With a little bit of luck, I can get this onto the ground before those bastards figure out what’s going on.
—
Enrico was standing by the open door of the Lodestar when Clete taxied the Storch up to it.
Clete jumped out, ran to Rodríguez, and grabbed his arm.
“Get el Coronel into the airplane and close the door.”
“Sí, Don Cletus.”
Clete got into the Lodestar, made his way to the cockpit, and threw the MASTER BUSS switch. The instrument panel lit up.
Clete was vaguely aware that the Storch was moving past him, onto the taxiway.
He looked back and saw Enrico boarding with Tío Juan.
The port engine hesitated, belched flame, shook, and started to run very roughly. Clete moved the throttle forward and the Lodestar began to move. By the time he reached the runway, he had the starboard engine running.
Clete got the Lodestar to the end of the runway and turned around. He saw that not one of the engine gauges was in the green. He didn’t know what would happen when he moved the throttles to TAKEOFF POWER, but there were a number of possibilities, most of them unpleasant.
He put his hand on the throttles and shoved them to TAKEOFF POWER.
The Lodestar began to roll.
When he passed the taxiway, he had a moment’s glance at General Martín, who was standing by the Storch with his arms raised in the universal sign of surrender.
And he saw something else he hadn’t seen in a very long time: the muzzle flashes of machine guns, at least three of them, maybe more.
And then he was past the taxiway.
“So long, Bernardo,” he said softly. “It’s been nice to know you. Vaya con Dios.”
He inched the yoke forward and sensed the tail-dragger wheel leaving the runway.
He felt life come into the controls, eased the yoke back, and a moment later the rumble of the landing gear stopped.
He reached for the landing gear retract lever, pulled it, and when he got a green light, pulled a little farther back on the yoke and made a shallow climbing turn away from the airfield.
The last thing he saw as he took off—and he was flying low enough and slow enough to see it clearly—was a silver Lockheed Constellation parked out of the way near the end of the runway. There was an American flag painted on each of the three vertical stabilizers, and the legend HOWELL PETROLEUM CORPORATION painted across the fuselage.
The old man’s right. If I had any sense at all, I would be in the States.
Tending to the family business instead of being here, getting shot at.
—
Enrico came into the cockpit five minutes later, just as Clete thought he might have solved a problem he hadn’t thought of at all until he’d begun his climb to cruising altitude: How do I navigate to Mendoza without charts?
Every SAA pilot of course had his own set of charts, consisting of maps of wherever he might be expected to fly, the radio frequencies of the control towers at airports to which he might fly, plus the frequencies of the rare Radio Direction Finding transmitters he might encounter en route to wherever he was going, as well as all sorts of other interesting and necessary information.
Clete’s charts were in his office at Aeropuerto Coronel Jorge Frade, where he had expected to pick them up before flying to Berlin at nine.