"Are we on the air, Chief?" Clete asked.
"Five by five," Chief Schultz replied.
"David,
write down everything you know or suspect about this ransoming operation. Right now. Before I ride back to the estancia, I want to send this out."
Ettinger nodded his acceptance of the orders.
"Everything, David," Clete emphasized. "I want to tell Colonel Graham everything you know. And ask him if you should look deeper. For all we know, as far down on the totem pole as we are, they already know about this. They may just tell us to butt out."
"I've considered the possibility that Leibermann is aware of it. He's a very clever fellow."
Clete nodded in agreement.
"In the meantime, you don't go back to Buenos Aires until I tell you to."
"I can't ask very many questions here," Ettinger replied.
"We may get orders telling you not to ask any more questions, period."
"Clete, if you're right that the order to kill me was issued only this morn-ing, I don't think they'd have time to set anything up. And I have a couple of people I'd like to talk to."
Christ, he simply does not know how to take an order!
"And there may be two guys outside your apartment this minute, waiting for you to show up. I don't want you killed. I need you. You stay here until I tell you otherwise, you understand?"
Ettinger threw up his hands in a gesture of surrender.
Clete turned to Chief Schultz. "Chief, in Washington they were really con-cerned about losing the station. I must have had six lectures on triangulation."
"No problem here, Mr. Frade," Chief Schultz said. "You know how that works?"
Clete nodded, and started to say "Yes, a little," but Chief Schultz went on without giving him the chance.
"First of all, they have to catch us on the air," he explained. "By two, prefer-ably three, directional antennae mounted on trucks. One receiver won't cut the mustard. If they do happen to catch us, they won't be close. To really pinpoint a transmitter, you have to get close."
"And they can't get close here?"
"You know how big this place is? I got a map of it. And Mr. Pelosi stole an almanac from the embassy for me. This place takes in more than eighty thou-sand hectares. A hectare is about two point seven acres. That makes it more than two hundred thousand acres. That's three hundred twenty-five square miles. You know how big Manhattan Island is? Twenty square miles. This place is one-quarter the size of Rhode Island."
"We've got counties in Texas that big," Clete heard himself arguing. "Hell, I think the King Ranch takes in more than two hundred thousand acres."
Chief Schultz looked at him for a moment with the tolerant look a veteran chief petty officer gives young officers who cannot seem to grasp a simple ex-planation.
"Without coming on the property, Mr. Frade-and they can't do that with-out us hearing about it-they can't get close enough to us to get a good triangulation fix," he said. "In addition to which, I made the transmitter mobile."
"What?"
"I mounted one of the transmitters and a receiver on one of the Model A's, and a generator on another one. So what I can do is go three, four miles from here, rig a straight-wire antenna, fire it up, send the traffic, and then haul ass. Even if they got a triangulation fix on that site-which, like I say, is damned un-likely-by the time they got there there'd be nothing there but trees and cows."
"What about the antenna I saw in the trees?"
"That's a receiver antenna, Mr. Frade," Chief Schultz said tolerantly. "What we hear people calling us over."
Clete looked at Ettinger, who was an electrical engineer. Ettinger nodded. Chief Schultz was telling the truth.
"Well, perhaps not all chief petty officers are as retarded as Marine officers are led to believe," Clete said. "Could I have a look at this mobile transmitter of yours?"