Delgano tugged at Clete's sleeve as they walked down a gravel path to the officers' mess. Clete slowed and let the others get ahead of them.
"There's a small problem," Delgano announced. "The truck with the fuel got stuck on the way to the airstrip. They're transferring the fuel barrels to a wagon."
The first thing Clete thought was that if the ground was so rain-soaked that the truck had gotten stuck, the airstrip itself would also be too soft for takeoff.
&nb
sp; But then some Guadalcanal-learned expertise popped into his mind. That wasn't necessarily so. You got mud where there was nothing but dirt, and where the dirt had been chewed up by tires. Before they got all the pierced-steel plank-ing laid at Fighter One on Guadalcanal, he had often taken off from the dirt run-way, after heavy rains that had made the roads to Fighter One just about impassable.
Where there was grass, often there was not mud. The airstrip here had not been used, except to graze cattle. The strip itself might be all right.
One criterion to judge by would be how far the Lockheed's wheels had sunk into the ground overnight. It was to be expected that they would sink in somethere was 18,000 pounds resting on maybe two square feet of tire sur-face-but sometimes that didn't prohibit taxiing and takeoff.
A Wildcat could often be rocked out of tire ruts using the engine alone, or helped by people pushing. But you could feel a Wildcat and operate the throttle accordingly. The Lockheed was too heavy to feel, and probably would be diffi-cult to push.
He had a quick mental image of a team of horses pulling the Lockheed out of tire ruts with a rope tied to the gear.
And then he had another thought. The Lockheed no longer weighed 18,000 pounds. It weighed 18,000 pounds less the weight of the fuel consumed be-tween Porto Alegre and Santo Tome, and while he hadn't done what a good pi-lot should have done-checked to see how much fuel remained-he figured he had burned at least a thousand pounds of AvGas, and possibly more. Maybe even two thousand pounds.
If they topped off the tanks here, that would mean adding that weight back, which very well might spell the difference between sinking into the ground and being able to taxi and take off.
He could also considerably lighten the aircraft by off-loading the ton of radar equipment and not taking anyone with them. That would get the aircraft into the air and to Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo, where it was needed, at the price of worrying how to get Ashton, his team, and the radar to the shore of Samboromb¢n Bay.
"Don't start fueling it until I have a look at it," Clete said.
"We are pressed for time," Delgano said.
"Getting that airplane, fully loaded, off of here may be difficult. Hold off on topping off the tanks," Clete ordered firmly, as another problem entered his mind.
Delgano nodded, agreeing with the takeoff problem.
"And we're probably going to need more runway than I thought we'd need for the C-45," Clete went on. "Which means we have to walk some more to make sure there's nothing out there we'll run into."
"We have to get that airplane to Buenos Aires Province as soon as possi-ble," Delgano said.
"If I can't get it off the ground here, it'll never get to Buenos Aires Province," Clete said. "The lighter it is, the better a chance I have."
Delgano nodded again.
They were now at the door to the officers' mess.
"I'll be in in a minute," Clete called to Ashton, then turned to Delgano: "I'd try to get it off with the fuel aboard, but I know I don't have enough to make Es-tancia San Pedro y San Pablo. What I'm thinking is going from here to a regu-lar airfield, and taking on fuel there."
"That would call attention to us," Delgano argued.
"The safest thing to do would be to unload my cargo here, leave my pas-sengers here, and you and I take off alone, with the fuel now on board, and re-fuel somewhere between here and Buenos Aires."
Delgano nodded. "What's your cargo?"
"I don't think you want to know," Clete said.
"Explosives?"
"I don't think you want to know," Clete repeated.
"I think I should know," Delgano said.
"Are you familiar with radar?" Clete asked.