Honor Bound (Honor Bound 1)

Christ, he looks as if he’s going to cry again!

He was touched by his father’s emotion, and felt tightness in his throat. And his own eyes grew moist. Jesus.

As if the display of emotion embarrassed him, Frade looked around for Delgano.

“He probably had to relieve himself,” he announced, and then indignantly, “He should have waited for you.”

“No problem, Dad. All you have to do is stand there while I start the engine, and give it a shot if it catches fire.”

It was immediately evident that el Coronel Jorge Guillermo Frade had no idea where he was to stand, or for that matter, how to operate the extinguisher.

Clete conducted a quick course in fire-extinguisher operation during aircraft engine start, then climbed back into the Beechcraft, strapped himself in, and slid the pilot’s window open.

“Clear!”

“Clear!” his father responded, with obviously no idea what he was saying.

Clete turned on the MAIN switch, then pushed ENGINE PRIME, and finally ENGINE START.

The engine coughed to life on the first try, and he saw his father smile triumphantly at Claudia, who had come to the airstrip from the house to watch him. Clete looked at her and gave her a thumbs-up. She crossed herself but smiled, making it a joke.

As the needles came off the peg, he removed the brakes, checked the wind sock, and began to taxi to the gravel strip, then down it. By the time he had turned it around, everything was in the green.

“Engage brain before beginning takeoff roll,” he said aloud, and shoved the throttle forward.

At just about the moment the airspeed indicator began operating, indicating forty, he felt life come into the wheel. The tail wheel lifted off. He held it on the ground, deciding it would take off at sixty or seventy. At sixty, it lifted into the air of its own accord. He eased back on the wheel and saw the ground drop away.

Claudia was waving cheerfully at him.

He put it into a shallow climb to the north, in the direction of Estancia Santa Catharina and Samborombón Bay. When he reached 4,000 feet, he played with it a little—more than he felt he could do with Delgano sitting beside him—to see how it flew. It wasn’t a Wildcat, but it was a damned nice little airplane.

He found Claudia’s estancia and landing strip without trouble. Giving in to the impulse, he made a low-level pass over it, rocking the wings as he did so. So far as he could tell, this dazzling display of airmanship went wholly unnoticed.

He looked at the elapsed time function on his Hamilton, and saw that it had taken him fifteen minutes to reach the estancia.

If I’m gone more than an hour, they will start shitting bricks. So I have to be back in forty-five minutes. Half of forty-five is twenty-two thirty. I can fly over the Bay for twenty-two thirty. If I can’t find the Reine de la Mer in twenty-two thirty, I’ll have to quit.

Eighteen minutes later, ten minutes after crossing the coastline, all alone on a vast expanse of bay, he spotted a ship dead in the water. He put the Beechcraft in a shallow descent from 5,000 feet, taking it right down to the waves. He retarded the throttle—watch it, Clete, you don’t want to stall it into the drink—and approached her from the stern. Her sternboard had a legend, which at first he couldn’t see.

He flew closer.

Don’t run into the sonofabitch!

A flag was on her stern pole. The wind was such that it was flapping, fully extended. Surprising him, he recognized it as Portuguese from one of the briefings Adams had given them in New Orleans.

And then the letters on her sternboard came into focus: REINE DE LA MER—LISBOA.

There you are, you sonofabitch!

He banked sharply to pass her on her port side, and waved cheerfully as he flew past.

Twenty crewmen waved cheerfully back, most of them standing beside canvas-draped objects that he strongly suspected were searchlights and machine-gun mounts.

He put the Beechcraft into a shallow turning climb until he was on a heading for Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo.

No wonder those other guys got themselves killed. There is no way to approach a ship like that, at anchor twenty miles off shore, without being detected. Certainly not in the daytime. And even at night if you rowed out there, so they wouldn’t hear the sound of your engines, if that captain knows shit from shinola, he’s going to use his searchlights every couple of minutes to see what else is floating around out there.

So how do we fix explosives to her hull?