Hazardous Duty (Presidential Agent 8)

“Candelaria was the first guy to fly over—I guess, really through—the Andes,” the co-pilot, Major H. Richard Miller, Junior, USA, Retired, announced. “Very large set of gonads.”

“Who was? And he did what?” Colonel Jacob D. Torine, USAF, Retired, asked.

“Lieutenant Luis Candelaria,” Miller clarified. “On April thirteenth, 1918, he took off from Zapala, Argentina, in an eighty-horse Sounier Morano Parasol, and two hours thirty later put it down the other side of the mountains in Cunco, Chile. He was Argentina’s first military aviator.”

“Thank you for sharing that with me, Dick. I always like to begin my day with little nuggets of aviation history.”

“You’re welcome.”

“And you are going to tell me, right, why you chose to enrich my life with that particular nugget at this moment in time and space?”

“Because that’s where we are,” Miller said. “Aeropuerto Internacional Teniente Luis Candelaria.” He pointed to a sign on the terminal building that said so. “The first time I came in here I saw that and figured I’d landed at the wrong airport—the Garmin screen said it was lining me up to land at Bariloche International—so I looked it up.”

“Experienced Air Force pilots such as myself never fully trust computerized navigation systems. I thought I’d taught you that.”

Miller didn’t reply, and instead pointed out the window. “There’s Pevsner’s chopper, Liam Duffy, and the local authorities, but I don’t see either a brass band or our leader.”

A glistening black Bell 429XP helicopter sat on the grass just off the tarmac. Beside it were two official trucks and eight men in an assortment of uniforms.

“I was afraid of that,” Torine said. “McNab told me that when he told Charley we were coming down here to talk about what the President wants him to do, Charley said unless Clendennen wanted to help him commit hari-kiri, he wasn’t interested in doing anything for him. When McNab said we were coming anyway, Charley said we would be wasting our time. And then he said, ‘Nice to talk to you, sir,’ and hung up.”

“So,” Miller interrupted, “when Charley got word we were an hour out, he came here in that 429, loaded Sweaty and Max into that adorable little three-million-dollar Cessna Mustang Sweaty gave him for his birthday, and the two of them took off…”

Torine took up the thought: “. . . and right about now he is making his approach to Santiago, Chile, or Punta del Este, Uruguay, or some other exotic South American dorf—”

“Where they will register in a nice hotel as Señor and Señora José Gonzales of Ecuador,” Miller finished the scenario.

“I see that our great minds are still marching down the same path,” Torine said. “So what do we do when we learn Charley is not available to be convinced he should trust the Commander in Chief and answer his call to extended hazardous active duty? And incidentally, what’s that ‘hazardous duty’ all about?”

“Hazardous duty pays an extra two hundred

a month, and the President thinks that will entice Charley to accept the offer.”

“I forgot that. He must know how desperately Charley needs another two hundred a month. So, what do we do when we can’t find Charley?”

“We will get on our CaseyBerrys and have Junior tell his daddy and have Vic D’Alessandro tell General McNab. They are accustomed to being screamed at by them.”

“Colonel Naylor doesn’t like it when you call him ‘Junior,’” Torine said.

“I know. Payback. When we were at the Point, he encouraged my roommate to call me that. He knew I didn’t like it.”

“And what did he call you at West Point?”

“‘Sir.’ Junior was a year behind Charley and me.”

Torine pushed himself out of the pilot’s chair.

“Let’s go get the bad news,” he said.

Comandante Liam Duffy of the Argentine Gendarmería Nacional was waiting at the foot of the stair door. He warmly embraced both Torine and Miller.

“So tell me,” Miller said, “what’s my favorite Argentine-Irish cop doing out here in the boonies so far from the crime and fleshpots of Buenos Aires?”

“You mean in addition to greasing your way through Immigration and Customs?” Duffy replied in English that made him sound as if he had been born and raised in South Boston.

“Yeah.”

“I hoped you would ask,” Duffy said. “I am making sworn on the Holy Bible statements to His Eminence Archbishop Valentin and his chief of staff, Archimandrite Boris, of the ROCOR—which I’m sure you know is the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad—vis-à-vis Sweaty’s late husband—”