Lauffer handed Enrico an armband. When it became apparent that Enrico was going to have trouble pinning it on without taking his jacket off-and that meant also unstrapping his leather harness and belt-Clete took it from him and pinned it on for him.
"I have a car outside," Lauffer said.
"Your pistol, Se¤or Cletus?" Enrico said.
"Well, we can't forget that, can we?" Clete said, and bent over and took the pistol from where he had stored it under the bed.
In a Marine Pavlovian reflex, he ejected the magazine, pulled the action back, saw that the chamber was empty, let the slide go forward, lowered the hammer, and replaced the magazine. Then he looked at the pistol.
What the hell am I supposed to do with this? Not only don't I want to shoot anybody with it, but I don't have a holster.
He remembered that Enrico often carried his pistol in the small of his back. He could not work the pistol under his waistband until he had loosened his belt.
There is a very good chance that this thing will slip down my ass, into my pants leg, and clatter noisily onto the ground. What I should do is just leave it here.
But I don't really want to do that.
Lauffer was waving him through the door.
A 1940 Chevrolet, painted in the Argentine shade of olive drab, was parked by the curb outside the building. The driver held open the door and saluted as Clete, Lauffer, and Enrico squeezed into the backseat. That was not easy, and both Enrico and Lauffer had trouble arranging their sabers.
The two soldiers with Thompsons squeezed into the front seat beside the driver.
It must be even more crowded up there with those tommy guns.
Fifty-round drum magazines, too.
I wonder if either of those kids knows how to shoot a Thompson?
Here lies Major Cletus H. Frade, USMCR, who survived Guadalcanal but died in a South American revolution when he was shot by mistake by a nervous seventeen-year-old who didn't know that unless you let go of the trigger, the Thompson will keep shooting.
The driver turned on the headlights and started off.
"Turn off the lights!" Lauffer ordered sharply.
"Why?" Clete asked as the lights faded.
"We want to mobilize with as much secrecy as possible," Lauffer said seri-ously, and as if the question surprised him.
Don't you think that Castillo has somebody out here with orders to report immediately when anything out of the ordinary happens?
The Chevrolet crawled to the end of the block and turned right onto a row of two-story barracks.
All the lights in the barracks were on, and soldiers were sleepily forming ranks in the street.
Clete, with effort, said nothing about lights in the barracks.
Five minutes later, they reached the airfield.
The guard detail there was under the command of a nervous infantry ma-jor who ordered everybody out of the car. He examined the interior with the aid of a flashlight, and did not seem at all happy with the document signed by the President of the Governing Council of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Argentina and his Minister of War vis-a-vis a Se¤or Cletus H. Frade.
Finally, however, he passed them through the barricade-fifty-five-gallon drums set in the middle of the street-into the airfield property.
The lights inside both hangers were on, and so were the floodlights mounted on the hangers to illuminate the parking ramp. Clete saw a half-dozen small airplanes, including two Piper Cubs and a Fieseler Storch-that's proba-bly the one Mart¡n came to the estancia in. The others he thought were English, but he wasn't sure.
There were also what looked like two platoons of infantrymen, in field gear, armed with Mauser rifles, standing at ease in ranks, with their officers, in riding breeches and high-crowned brimmed caps, standing in front of them, hands on their swords, smoking cigarettes and trying to look calm and noncha-lant.
Not one of these guys, including Lauffer, has ever heard a shot fired in anger.