He walked quickly to the door, then turned back toward Frade.
“Don’t come after me,” he said. “And for Christ’s sake, don’t try to reason with me.”
When Delgano had been gone for twenty minutes, Frade relit the cigar he had been holding unlit for most of that time and walked to the door. He spotted Delgano on the threshold of the runway, walking slowly back and forth across the markings. Delgano could have been talking to himself.
Finally, Delgano threw his hands up in what could have been a gesture of frustration—or one of decision—and started walking purposefully back toward the terminal building.
He walked up to Frade, who had stepped out of the building.
They locked eyes for a long moment.
“May God damn you, Cletus. And may God forgive me.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means,” Delgano said, his voice strained with emotion, “that if you promise to try to remember the Lodestar is not a fighter, I’ll let you fly to Canoas.”
Clete nodded. “Muchas gracias, mi amigo.”
Then he saw tears in Delgano’s eyes and felt them well up in his own. He grabbed Delgano and hugged him tightly.
[TWO]
Canoas Air Base Pôrto Alegre, Brazil 2135 11 August 1943
Canoas ground control told them to turn off the runway onto Taxiway 6 and hold; a Follow-Me would meet them.
The checkerboard-painted truck appeared two minutes later and led them to a remote corner of the field, across the runway complex from Base Operations. A Constellation was parked there, and before they could bring the Lodestar to a stop next to it, a MP jeep—a red light on its fender flashing brightly in the night—came racing up, followed by a staff car on the bumper of which was the starred plate of a general officer.
United States Army Air Forces Brigadier General J. B. Wallace, his aide-de-camp, and two MPs, one of them a captain, were standing on the tarmac when Frade opened the passenger door and got out.
Frade resisted the Pavlovian impulse to salute.
“Welcome back to Canoas, Señor Frade,” Wallace said.
“I didn’t expect to be met by the base commander, sir,” Frade said.
“Well, I would think the circumstances rather dictated that I should, wouldn’t you?”
“Very kind of you, sir.”
Delgano came out of the Lodestar somewhat awkwardly, carrying a canvas overnight bag in each hand.
Wallace eyed him warily, glanced at the Connie, then said, “The . . . others . . . arrived a few hours ago. May I ask who this gentleman is?”
“El Señor Delgano is South American Airways’ chief pilot.”
“And will he be going with us to meet . . . the others?”
“Oh, yes,” Frade said.
General Wallace made a rather grand gesture toward the staff car.
Wallace’s aide indicated that Frade and Delgano should get in the backseat. As the general got in the front passenger seat, the aide extended his hand for the overnight bags, then put them in the trunk and got in the car behind the wheel.
“Blow the horn at them,” General Wallace ordered, then reached over and did it himself. “Let’s get the show on the road!”
The siren on the MP jeep began to howl, and both vehicles took off.