Blood and Honor (Honor Bound 2)

Clete shrugged.

"Or, for that matter, Cavalry, either," he said.

"We'll have to talk about him, too," Graham said. "But right now, we have to radio Oracle and report what we know about the new government. Where the hell were you, Clete, when the revolution was going on? I think you'd better start with telling me about the arrangements you made to get that airplane into the country so easily."

"It wasn't easy," Clete said. "It was supposed to be a C-45, not a Lockheed Lodestar."

"I heard about that." Graham chuckled. "What I was talking about, though, is how did you arrange for the Argentine Army to allow you to land it at Santo Tome? Your friend Cavalry have anything to do with that?"

"OK. Yeah."

"And where did you go with it when you left here?"

"The deal I made was that in exchange for getting the airplane into Ar-gentina, I would make it available to the Grupo de Oficiales Unidos to take them out of the country in case Outline Blue went bad. So I took the airplane from here to Campo de Mayo."

"Obviously, they didn't need it. Which is fortunate. The Ambassador would have had a hard time explaining to President Castillo why an American OSS agent flew a planeload of traitors out of the country. Presumably you thought about that?"

"No, they didn't need the airplane, and no, I didn't think about what would happen if they had to. I had to have the airplane to deal with the Oceano Pacifico; and getting Ashton and his radar into the country seemed important."

"You don't think you should have asked for guidance, for authorization, be-fore making a decision like that?" Commander Delojo asked.

"Who was I supposed to ask?" Clete flared. "You?"

"Take it easy, Clete," Graham said warningly, and then went on, "What did they do, just keep you waiting out there, away from a telephone, until they were sure they wouldn't need the plane? And where is it now, by the way?"

"Not exactly," Clete said.

"Not exactly what?"

"I'm not sure that you want to know," Clete said.

"Oh, but I do!"

"They had a little problem communicating with the columns that were moving from Campo de Mayo to the Casa Rosada. So I helped them with it."

"Don't be evasive."

"I flew a Piper Cub for them."

"You participated in the coup d'‚tat?" Delojo asked incredulously. "Took an active role in it?"

Graham ignored him.

"Where did you fly the Piper Cub?" he asked.

"I flew General Rawson around," Clete said. "One of the columns was stalled at the School of Naval Engineering. So we landed there, and he told them to bypass it. And then we flew to the other column, which had stopped be-cause the first column was stalled, and dropped a message to them telling them to start moving. And then we flew over the Casa Rosada and watched both columns converge on it."

"General Rawson was with you?" Graham asked.

"Yes, he was," Clete said, and then added, "They offered me a commission. I turned it down."

"You would have lost your citizenship. You would have... ," Delojo fumed.

"I thought about that," Clete said. "Which is why I didn't take the commis-sion."

"Where's the airplane now?" Graham asked.

There was a knock at the door. C