Secret Honor (Honor Bound 3)

Their eyes met.

“I’m sorry, Hansel,” Galland said. “You know what it is. They call it conservation of ammunition. I don’t have that much left.”

“I understand, Sir.”

“There will be a Heinkel here in about an hour to fly you to Berlin. From the Führer’s personal fleet, I’m told. I had your stuff packed. That will give you time for a quickie with Trudi.”

“With the General’s permission, and aware of the damage I might be causing to the reputation of Luftwaffe fighter pilots, I think I would rather have a drink with you and Friedrich.”

“OK, Hansel,” Galland said. “We can do that here. I’ll send my driver for your stuff and some Champagne.”

“Thank you, Sir.”

“I’m really sorry about this, Hansel,” Galland said.

XIX

[ONE]

San Carlos de Bariloche

Río Negro Province, Argentina

1320 29 May 1943

Don Cletus Frade turned the Lodestar on final, which put him over the incredibly clear and blue waters of Lake Nahuel Huapí, with the village of Bariloche to his right and the Andes Mountains in the background. “Flaps, twenty percent,” he ordered.

Lieutenant Colonel Richard J. Almond, U.S. Army Air Corps, reached for the flap control, moved it, and when the indicator showed twenty percent, called back: “Flaps at twenty.”

Almond was in the right seat of the Lodestar, in civilian clothing except for his Air Corps A-2 leather flight jacket. Frade was wearing his Marine-issued leather flight jacket, which differed from the Air Corps model in several details, including its fur collar. Almond’s jacket had a leather collar. Frade’s jacket insignia still included a leather patch with—now faded—gold wings and the legend, “Frade, C. 1/LT USMCR” stamped on it.

“Gear down,” Frade ordered.

Colonel Almond reached for the wheel-shaped control and pushed it forward. When the green bulb indicating the gear was down appeared on the instrument panel, Almond reported: “Gear down and locked.”

Cletus Frade reached for the throttle quadrant with his right hand.

“One twenty-five,” Colonel Almond reported the airspeed, then turned and looked up at First Lieutenant Anthony C. Pelosi, Corps of Engineers, Army of the United States, who was standing between them, supporting himself with one hand on the back of the pilot’s chair and the other on the back of the copilot’s seat.

“You want to go strap yourself in, Lieutenant?” Almond said, expressing what was actually an order in the form of a suggestion.

“Go fuck yourself,” Lieutenant Pelosi responded and didn’t move.

It took a moment for Colonel Almond to really comprehend what had just been said to him. But as they were about to land on a gravel strip in remote Argentina with a pilot at the controls who had no more than thirty hours’ total time in this type of aircraft, this was not the time to do anything about even such an outrageously obscene refusal of an order from a superior.

“One ten,” Almond called to Frade, then, “One hundred.”

At ninety miles per hour indicated, Frade gently retarded the throttles and eased back a hair on the Lodestar’s wheel, whereupon the airplane stopped flying and the wheels made a gentle contact with the ground. “Dump the flaps,” he ordered as the Lodestar rolled down the gravel strip.

Colonel Almond adjusted t

he flaps. “Zero flaps,” he reported. It was a gentle chastisement. The proper command Frade should have given his copilot was “Zero Flaps” not “Dump the flaps.”

Frade slowed the aircraft to taxi speed long before they had reached the end of the gravel runway.

“Nice landing, Clete,” Almond said, giving credit where credit was due.

Frade nodded. He stopped the Lodestar, turned it around on the runway, taxied back to the end of the runway, and then turned the airplane around again.