“Sir,” Clete asked, “can you find someplace out there, within, say, a fifty-mile circle of the last known sighting of the Reine de la Mer—someplace that the sub could more or less easily find, deep enough for her to lie on the bottom?”
“Frade, you probably know more about submarines than I do.”
“I know nothing about submarines, Captain, except that I’m glad I don’t have to serve on one.”
“What are you thinking, Clete?” Graham asked.
“If the Captain can find such a place, and give its location to the skipper of the submarine—”
“That won’t be a problem. I’ve made rendezvous at sea with the Devil Fish before,” the Captain interrupted.
“Then the sub could move close to the Reine de la Mer,” Clete went on, “lie on the bottom, and surface, periscope depth only, at a specified time. If we can establish radio contact with the sub—”
“And we don’t know that we can,” Graham interrupted.
“If we can get a decent transmitter and a decent receiver from Captain Jernigan, and get it off the ship and to my father’s estancia, Ettinger will be able to talk to the submarine. All he’ll need is the frequency and the schedule.”
“My orders are to give you whatever you ask for,” Captain Jernigan said. “But—and this is probably none of my business—how are you going to operate a transmitter without being caught at it? The minute we entered Samborombón Bay, la Armada Argentina came aboard from a pilot boat and sealed our radios. I’m sure they monitor the frequencies you’ll have to use, and they’ll start looking for the transmitter. What do they call it, ‘triangulation’?”
“We’ll keep moving the transmitter,” Clete said. “Ettinger will know how to deal with that. OK, for the sake of argument. We find someplace the sub can hide on the bottom. Captain Jernigan gives the sub the precise location, plus the frequencies, the times, and the codes, when he makes the rendezvous at sea. The sub comes into Samborombón Bay, finds the place it can hide, hides, and then, at the scheduled time, surfaces to periscope depth and tells us she’s arrived.
“The next night, I go find the Reine de la Mer, radio its position to Ettinger, who relays that position to the sub. The sub goes after the Reine de la Mer either submerged or on the surface.”
“Again, I don’t know a hell of a lot about submarines,” Captain Jernigan protested, “but I don’t think it’s as easy as they make it in the movies for a submarine to hit a ship at night. I think they need more to aim at than running lights.”
“It has to be at night,” Graham said. “During the day the Argentine Coast Guard patrols the Bay, and the Air Service of the Argentine Army routinely overflies it.”
“Ships don’t enter the Bay at night?” Captain Jernigan asked.
“The channel-marking buoys are not illuminated,” Graham said. “I don’t know what they do in an emergency.”
“Put a Coast Guardsman on the buoys with a lantern?” Jernigan asked facetiously.
“So I’ll get them to light it up, turn their floodlights on,” Clete said.
“How?”
“I’ll buzz the Reine de la Mer,” Clete said. “That’ll make them turn their lights on to look for me.”
“Or off,” Graham said softly. “How about it, Captain? If you were anchored out there and heard an airplane engine, what about the lights?”
“Off,” Captain Jernigan said without hesitation. “If they can’t see you they can’t bomb you.”
“Sir, what if you were attacked by an airplane, strafed by a light airplane?” Clete asked. “Even strafed ineffectually,” he added.
“What do you mean, ‘ineffectually’?” Graham asked.
“Say with a .30-caliber Browning. That’s about all I could get into the Beechcraft.”
“One plane, even a fighter plane?” Jernigan said. “I’d try to fight. The natural instinct would be to fight.”
“And to turn on good floodlights, if you had them, right?”
“Yes,” Jernigan agreed.
“OK,” Clete said.
“It’s occurred to you, no doubt,” Graham said, “that if they put their floodlights on you, they will get the Bofors on you seconds later?”