Blood and Honor (Honor Bound 2)

lete thought that it was very likely Dorotea, wondering what was holding him up.

It was a maid.

"Se¤or Frade," she announced. "Se¤orita Carzino-Cormano is here and asks to see you."

"Enrico, see what that's all about, will you?" Clete said, and then replied to Graham. "I wasn't turned loose until after dark. I didn't want to try to land the Lockheed here at night. So I asked them to take me into town, picked up the car. and came out here."

"Stopping only long enough, correct, to pick up your fianc‚e?" Comman-der Delojo asked sarcastically.

"Why didn't you stay in Buenos Aires?" Graham asked quickly, in time to shut off Clete's reply to Delojo. "So that you could deal with the plane in the morning?"

Clete hesitated, obviously considering the wisdom of saying something rude to Delojo, and then replied, his voice showing that his temper was sim-mering close to the surface:

"The reason I came out here was to see if anybody here knew any more about what happened to Dave Ettinger than I did. And I thought Ashton might need me for something. And I even thought about messaging you, back in the States, to tell you that Outline Blue worked. I'll fly over there in one of the Cubs in the morning and pick up the plane."

Enrico put his head in the door-surprising Clete, for he had been gone only a moment.

"Se¤or Clete?" he said, and motioned for him to leave the room.

Clete walked through the door and closed it after him.

"If you don't mind my saying so, Colonel, I don't like his attitude," Com-mander Delojo said.

"I don't mind you saying so, Commander-frankly, I'm not thrilled with it myself-but when he comes back in here, you're directed not to open your mouth until I tell you to," Graham said.

"If your purpose in sending Frade down here, Alejandro," Leibermann said, "was to see if he could get close to the new government, that has certainly suc-ceeded."

Graham nodded.

"If he hadn't flown us here on that plane," Ashton said, "my team and I and the radar would still be in Porto Alegre."

"Sir," Tony Pelosi said, "I want to make it clear that when I told Major Frade I wanted to rig Goltz's telephone, he told me right away to forget it."'

"Apparently the Cletus H. Frade Fan Club is holding its annual conven-tion?" Graham said, but there was a smile on his lips. He then added. "God, wait till I tell Donovan that he was flying Rawson around during the revolu-tion."

Clete and Enrico came back in the room three minutes later.

"What was that all about?" Graham asked.

"I have the position where the Oceano Pacifico will drop anchor in Samboromb¢n Bay. If she's not already there."

"Where did you get that?" Graham asked.

"And the location of the place where Goltz will land what is probably all that money we've heard about from the Oceano Pacifico."

"What's your source?" Graham asked.

"The landing will take place tomorrow morning. A boat will leave Magdalena at first light, go out to the Oceano Pacifico, take on the cargo, and then head to shore. So it will land however long after daybreak it takes the boat to go out to the Oceano Pacifico and back. Figure forty minutes each way, eighty minutes, an hour and twenty minutes, make it an hour and a half, make it any time between an hour and a quarter to two hours after sunrise."

"I need to know your source, Clete, " Graham said.

"This is from the horse's mouth, Colonel, but that's all I can tell you and still look myself in the mirror when I shave."

Graham looked as if was about to reply, then changed his mind.

"How long will it take you to fly that airplane here... or over this position in Samboromb¢n Bay in the morning?"

"About an hour from here to Campo de Mayo, figure twenty, thirty minutes on the ground there, and then thirty minutes to fly the Lockheed back here."