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Frade had quickly decided that simply installing the landing lights and having SAA give them to the airfield would be cheaper in the long run—and get them installed much quicker—than would entering into lengthy negotiations, with the inevitable greasing of the appropriate palms of the local authorities to have them do it.

The wind sock was full and parallel to the runway, indicating that the wind was blowing along the runway. But the pole was perfectly erect, so no crosswind.

Delgano moved the throttles forward and picked up the nose. He would gain a little altitude, then make a 180-degree turn for a straight-in approach.

“Try very hard not to bend it, Gonzo,” Frade said.

Delgano took a hand from the yoke long enough to give Frade the finger.

The passenger compartment was crowded, just about full. The first three rows of seats were occupied by six peones, all of them former members of the Húsares de Pueyrredón, five of whom were having their first experience with aerial flight. In the aisle between their seats were bags holding rifles, pistols, and submachine guns that had been stored in the basement of el Coronel’s garage since the time he had been planning to stage a coup d’état against the then-president of Argentina.

Sergeant Sigfried Stein—who had come to Argentina as Team Turtle’s explosives expert and been converted to a reasonably well-qualified radio technician and, more recently, to “Major” Stein to deal with the Froggers—had been brought along not only to continue dealing with the Froggers but also to set up a Collins Model 7.2 transceiver and the SIGABA encryption device. Not at the airport, though; a Collins for that purpose would be flown in when the tower was finished.

The transceiver and encryption equipment on the Lodestar would be installed in Casa Montagna for use by Captain Madison R. Sawyer III. Sawyer, who was no longer needed to blow up German replenishment ships in the River Plate, now was to be in command of what Frade privately thought of as “the insane asylum.” Using the very latest cryptographic technology, Sawyer would be able to communicate with Frade in Buenos Aires and with Second Lieutenant Len Fischer at the Army S

ecurity Agency facility at Vint Hill Farms Station, Virginia, and through Vint Hill with Colonel Graham in Washington, D.C.

In the row behind the peones sat Enrico Rodríguez. Doña Dorotea’s in-flight luggage filled the seat across the aisle from him.

In the next row, Sawyer was sitting across the aisle from Stein.

Behind him sat Oberstleutnant Frogger, across from his father.

Behind them, Father Welner and Doña Dorotea sat where they could keep a close eye on Frau Frogger, who lay on a mattress in the aisle. An hour before, Welner had woken her long enough to give her a drink laced with sedative.

So far, Cletus Frade thought as the Lodestar slowed on its landing roll, everything has gone off without a hitch—

Gonzo had been waiting for him at Jorge Frade. When Frade had explained what he wanted to do—more accurately, more importantly, what he was asking Delgano to do—Delgano had considered it for no more than two seconds, then said, “Let me get my bag. I told my wife I’d probably be gone for a couple of days.”

When they landed on the Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo strip, just about everything had been loaded aboard the Lodestar but Frau Frogger, and she appeared minutes later, on a mattress on top of a makeshift stretcher. They were airborne in the Lodestar thirty minutes after Frade landed the Piper.

It had been a little rougher at 5,000 feet than it would have been at a greater altitude, but when flying dead reckoning, it is useful to be able to see things on the ground. The weather had been clear and they had had no trouble finding their way to Mendoza, where Gonzo had set the Lodestar down very smoothly.

They were five minutes ahead of their ETA guesstimate.

—and therefore the other shoe is certainly about to drop.

They were not expected. It was a given that the telephone lines to Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo were being listened to by the Bureau of Internal Security, so telephoning ahead to the airport, or to Estancia Don Guillermo and especially to the Convent of the Little Sisters of Santa María del Pilar, had not been an option if they didn’t want el Coronel Martín to know they were going to Mendoza long before they got there.

The result of that would have been representatives of the local BIS office waiting for them to see who got off the airplane and where they went. And the local BIS would have descriptions of the Froggers.

The airplane itself was going to cause a stir, because as far as either Delgano or Frade knew, this was going to be the first time that a Lodestar—and a brilliantly red one, at that—had landed at El Plumerillo airfield.

Their only option seemed to be brazening it out, and that’s what they did.

When the on-duty official of El Plumerillo came out to greet the airplane before the engines had died, Enrico and Delgano got off the airplane and professed surprise and anger that there was no one there to meet them, and implied the official greeting them was probably the miscreant responsible. Don Cletus Frade was going to be very angry that his guests were going to be inconvenienced.

The official quickly took them to a telephone, where Enrico called Casa Montagna and ordered that whatever cars were there, plus a closed truck, be sent immediately to the airport for Don and Doña Frade and their guests.

A 1938 Ford two-and-a-half-ton stake body, a 1939 Ford Fordor, a 1936 La Salle five-passenger sedan, and a strange-looking 1941 Lincoln Continental—a four-door sedan—arrived forty-five minutes later. Clete had never seen a Lincoln Continental four-door sedan; he didn’t even know they made one.

With Father Welner directing, the peones gently installed Frau Frogger in the backseat of the La Salle with her son and husband on either side of her. Her condition was explained as airsickness, and Father Welner assured the airfield official there was nothing to worry about. Enrico got in the front seat and the La Salle started off for the estancia.

Sergeant Stein supervised the loading of the Collins transceiver and SIGABA into the truck, then the bagged weapons, which he identified as Don Cletus Frade’s golf clubs. He then got into the 1939 Fordor, into which also squeezed as many of the peones—four—as would fit. The other two rode in the back of the truck with the luggage.

And finally, Doña Dorotea and Don Cletus descended regally from the Lodestar and allowed themselves to be installed in the backseat of the Lincoln Continental sedan beside Father Welner.

“Take us to the convent of the Little Sisters of Santa María del Pilar, please,” the priest ordered the driver of the car, who was the resident manager of Estancia Don Guillermo.