I never had any trouble flying a C-45 by myself, but I suspect that is some-thing I should not confide in this guy.
"Yes, Sir."
"Well, let's go have our lunch. They do a very nice luncheon steak."
"Thank you, Sir."
There were a half-dozen Marines having their lunch in the Officers' Club, four of them wearing wings. None of them looked familiar. In other circumstances, this would not have bothered Clete; he would have walked over to them and said hello, and played Who Do You Know?
Going over to them now was obviously out of the question. What would happen ran through his mind:
"Hey. Clete Frade's my name. Used to fly Wildcats with VMF-221 on Guadalcanal."
"Really? What are you doing here? And how come you 're in civvies? "
"Well, I'm in the OSS, and Fm here to pick up a C-56 Fm going to smug-gle into Argentina so we can find a neutral ship that's supplying German subs, and/or, depending on how the coup d'‚tat goes, maybe to fly some Argentine generals out of the country. You don't want to wear a uniform when you're do-ing stuff like that. People would ask questions."
"What are the Marines doing here, Colonel?" Clete asked.
"They're probably either Naval Air Transport Command pilots, IPs for the Catalinas we've given the Brazilian Navy, or they're ferry pilots who've brought aircraft down from the States."
"Colonel, I want you to do something for me," Clete said.
"What is it?"
"I want to have a word, in private, with the Marine Captain. You're going to have to identify me as a Marine major; I don't have an ID card."
Colonel Wallace looked at him, uncomfortably, for a long moment and then stood up and walked to the table where the Marines were sitting. He spoke to the Marine Captain, who rose to his feet and followed Wallace far enough from the table so they couldn't be overheard, and spoke to him again.
The Captain looked at Clete with suspicion, but after a moment walked to the table.
"You wanted to speak to me?"
"My name is Frade, Captain. I used to fly Wildcats with VMF-221 on Guadalcanal."
"That Air Corps Colonel said you were a Marine major," the Captain said, his tone of voice making it clear he thought that highly improbable.
The Captain, Clete thought, was in his thirties.
"That's right."
"Who was the MAG"-Marine Air Group-"Commander when you were on the 'Canal? Colonel Stevenson?"
"No," Clete said, almost as a reflex action. "Dawkins, Lieutenant Colonel Clyde W., was skipper of MAG-21. I never heard of a Colonel Stevenson."
"Neither did I, Major. Excuse me. I was just checking you out. You don't expect to find a VMF-221 Wildcat pilot in riding clothes in a Navy Club in Brazil. I knew 'The Dawk'; I used to fly R4Ds into Henderson from Espiritu Santo. How can I help you, Sir?"
"What's a C-56?"
"It's the Lockheed Lodestar," the Captain said.
"Oh, shit," Clete said.
He was familiar with the Lockheed Lodestar. It was a seventeen-passenger transport aircraft with a sixty-nine-foot wingspan powered by two 1,200-horse-power Wright Cyclone engines. It had a top speed of 250 m.p.h., a range of 1,600 miles, and a takeoff weight of 17,500 pounds.
"Excuse me, Sir?"
"I was hoping it was another number for the C-45," Clete confessed.