Page 276

“What the fuck am I doing here?” he again wondered aloud.

The Lodestar began accelerating.

Dear God, he prayed silently, please get me safely back to the Squirt.

[SIX]

Estancia Condor

National Route 3

Santa Cruz Province, Argentina

1105 23 October 1945

Von Dattenberg had been right. About fifty kilometers south of Trelew, patches of white appeared on the ground, and by the time they were one hundred kilometers south of the airfield snow covered the ground. Even the highway—Route 3—was covered and hard to make out.

When a collection of buildings that could be nothing else but Estancia Condor appeared on the horizon, the fuel gauges indicated a little more than half was still available. As Cronley began his descent, he decided that was enough fuel for him to make a couple of low-level passes over the runway.

All I have to do now is find the damn runway.

On his first pass over the estancia, Jimmy saw the Storch and a Piper Cub parked one behind the other just outside the complex of buildings and, maybe twenty-five hundred feet away, a bulldozer and a pickup truck parked one behind the other facing the airplanes. There was also a crude windsock showing that steady winds were blowing westward over the “runway,” which ran north-south between the aircraft and bulldozer.

That’s not going to get any better, he decided, no matter how many times I fly over it.

He made a descending turn, slow and wide, and lined up with the bulldozer.

He lowered his flaps.

“Put the gear down, please, Herr Ko-pilot,” Cronley ordered. “And call out our speed.”

Von Dattenberg dropped the gear.

“One-ten,” he called. “One hundred . . . Ninety . . . Eighty-five . . .”

The Lodestar had now dropped so low that for a terrifying two seconds Cronley thought he wasn’t going to get over the bulldozer and the pickup. But a second after that he touched down.

He chopped the throttles, then fought hard against—and won over—his Pavlovian reflex to apply the brakes. Any application of the brakes was likely to cause the tires to skid or the gear to break through the ice.

Or both.

The Lodestar slowed almost to a stop as he approached the Storch and the Cub.

He applied just enough throttle to keep moving.

Willi Grüner was now in front of him, giving him hand signals where to go.

The rumble of the landing gear changed.

Grüner made a frantic Stop! gesture with his left hand held palm outward. His right hand simultaneously made a cutting motion across his throat with the right, gesturing Cut the engines!

Cronley slammed on the brakes and pulled the throttle levers to idle.

The Lodestar stopped.

Grüner, smiling, gave him a thumbs-up.

Cronley shut down the engines and suddenly realized that he was sweating. He slid open the side cockpit window and felt an immediate blast of icy air.