Page 179

Just when the elapsed-time clock mounted at the top of the Storch’s windscreen showed that they had departed El Palomar two hours and fifty-five minutes earlier, Major von Wachtstein felt something push at his shoulder. He turned and saw that Standartenführer Cranz was holding a celluloid-covered map out to him.

He took it and saw that it was another Argentine Army Topographic Service map, this one of a smaller scale. It was centered on Necochea and showed little else. Arrows indicated that some place called General Alvarado was to the north, near the Atlantic Ocean, and a place called Energia was to the south, what looked like a kilometer or two inland from the ocean.

The reason it doesn’t show much more than a couple of dirt roads is that there probably isn’t anything else down there.

What the hell. You don’t want anybody around when you’re trying to smuggle things ashore.

A long oblong had been drawn with a grease pencil on the celluloid covering the map. It was labeled Landeplatz 1,200 M. It was located, von Wachtstein estimated, about three hundred meters from the ocean, at right angles to it.

He looked over his shoulder at Cranz, and gestured to him that he should put on his headset.

Cranz nodded, and thirty seconds later, “Hello, hello, hello. Can you hear me?” came over von Wachtstein’s earphones.

“I hear you clearly, Herr Standartenführer.”

“Can you locate the airfield?”

“I will have to fly much lower, Herr Standartenführer.”

“Then do so,” Cranz ordered impatiently.

Reasoning that an SS-standartenführer was certainly a courageous man— at least in his own mind—von Wachtstein dropped the nose of the Storch almost straight down, and allowed the airspeed indicator to get very, very close to the red line before pulling out at about three hundred feet.

The wind whistled interestingly—it sounded like a woman screaming in pain—as it whipped around the gear and fuselage of the Storch at close-to-tearing-the-wings-off speed.

Five minutes later, after dropping even lower—so low that he had to go around, rather than over, various clumps of trees on the pampas—he thought he saw what had to be the so-called airfield. In the middle of nowhere, there were four Ford ton-and-a-half trucks parked in a line about three hundred meters from the South Atlantic.

Two men stepped in front of the line of trucks and began to wave their arms.

“I believe that’s it, Herr Standartenführer,” von Wachtstein said, pointing. “To our left.”

“Are you going to have enough runway to land?”

I can land this thing, if I have to, in about two hundred meters at forty kph.

“I believe I can manage, Herr Standartenführer. I presume that someone has walked the landing area to make sure there are no obstructions.”

There was a perceptible hesitation before Cranz, without much conviction in his voice, said, “I?

?m sure that’s been done, von Wachtstein.”

Von Wachtstein flew the length of the makeshift runway, could see nothing on it, and noted nothing that suggested strong crosswinds.

“It would have been helpful, Herr Standartenführer, if someone had thought to erect a windsock,” he said, then stood the Storch on its wingtip, leveled out, and landed.

[THREE]

Near Necochea Buenos Aires Province, Argentina 1415 23 July 1943

When von Wachtstein taxied the Storch up to the trucks, he saw that the straight-arm Nazi salute was being rendered by perhaps a dozen men, all but one of whom were wearing the dark blue coveralls of Argentine workmen. The lone man not in coveralls wore a suit.

You are not only paranoid, Hansel, but certifiably insane.

A couple of hours ago, you were scared shitless that Cranz was going to execute you out of hand. Now you’re having a hard time keeping a straight face at the gray pallor of your passenger.

He shut down the engine.

“Well, we’re down, Herr Standartenführer.”