Honor Bound (Honor Bound 1)

“Apparently it’s common knowledge.”

“I asked you how you heard about it. Did Ettinger tell you?”

You don’t like it that Ettinger told me about the destroyer and didn’t tell you. And that I didn’t tell you either. But screw that. I’m not going to let you get on Ettinger’s back for that.

“No, I heard it from Enrico Mallín. Why can’t this destroyer sink the Reine de la Mer?”

“It’s not your business to question decisions like that, if I have to point that out to you. But the reasons seem self-evident. The Reine de la Mer is a Portuguese ship. Portugal is neutral. The United States does not torpedo neutral ships.”

“But it’s all right for the three of us to sink it? What’s the difference? Aside from the fact that a destroyer has the capability to take it out, and we don’t?” Clete asked, and then went on without waiting for a reply: “I’d like to plead my case up the chain of command.”

“It doesn’t work that way. You’re in the OSS now. You take your orders from me, and you don’t have the privilege of questioning them. What’s the matter with you, Frade?”

Clete felt frustration and anger sweep through him.

“I know what orders are, Mr. Nestor, and I’ll try to obey mine,” he said. “All I’m asking you to do is pass the word up the chain of command. Tell them that I told you that I’ll need more to take out the Reine de la Mer than good intentions and twenty pounds of explosives. A very fast powerboat, maybe. Certainly another two hundred pounds of high explosive. Or a TBF from Brazil. Something.”

“A what from Brazil?”

“A TBF,” Clete repeated. And then, when he realized that Nestor had no idea what a TBF was, he added, “A torpedo bomber.”

“A torpedo bomber?” Nestor asked sarcastically.

“I’m a fighter pilot, but I can fly TBFs. I could go to Brazil, pick up the plane, fly it to that dirt strip we used for the airdrop in Uruguay, where Pelosi would be waiting with enough avgas to get me to the Reine de la Mer…”

Nestor looked at him with incredulous contempt.

“…and put a torpedo in her.”

Nestor shook his head sadly, as if he had failed to make a point to a backward child.

“Frade, that would be just as much an act of war as the Alfred Thomas attacking the Reine de la Mer.”

“I could then fly over my father’s estancia, put the plane on a course that would carry it out over the Atlantic, and bail out,” Clete said.

“And that’s what you want me to suggest to my superiors?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“You simply refuse to understand the situation. Sinking the Reine de la Mer with a torpedo bomber was, I am quite sure, one of the options considered. It was obviously discarded. It’s out of the question. Quite impossible.”

“So is doing the Reine de la Mer any harm with twenty pounds of explosive. And I will not order my men to do something that has no chance of success, and that will get them killed,” Clete said. “I respectfully request that you pass that up the chain of command.”

“I don’t think there is any point in continuing this conversation, Lieutenant Frade,” Nestor said. “You leave me no choice but to report your insubordination—if that’s all it is—up, as you put it, ‘the chain of command.’”

“What do you mean, ‘if that’s all it is’?” Clete demanded, coldly angry.

“What would you call it when an officer refuses to obey an order because there is an element of personal risk involved?”

Clete pulled to the curb and slammed on the brakes.

“Get out,” he ordered. “Before I punch you into next week.”

Nestor looked at him in surprise, then opened the door and stepped out.

[SIX]

Avenida Alvear