“And, Dave told me something about the walkie-talkies he’s been working on,” Chief Schultz went on quickly, obviously relieved that he had gotten himself off the lollypop hook. “I think we can probably rig them, work on them a little more, so that we can have our own air-to-ground link.”
“What?” Clete interrupted.
“You use the aircraft radios, Mr. Frade,” Chief Schultz explained patiently. “There’s sure to be someone monitoring those frequencies. And you’ll be using voice…”
“I didn’t think of that,” Clete said.
“And as far as communicating with the submarine, Clete,” Ettinger interjected, “the longer we’re on the air, the more time the Argentines will have to triangulate the transmitter. We’ll be on three or four times as long if I try to key code than if the Chief does it.”
“How does that work?” Clete asked.
“Two, preferably three receivers with directional antennae,” Ettinger explained. “They know their precise location on a map. They get a bearing on the transmitter from their receivers. They draw straight lines. Where the lines intercept, there’s the transmitter. Very simple. We need the Chief.”
“What happens to a sailor, Chief, who gets hooked up with a local lollypop and misses his ship?”
“In the States, or someplace like Cavite in the Philippines, Guantánamo, someplace where there’s a Navy shore installation, they toss them in the brig with lost time.”
“What’s lost time?”
“They count from the time you miss the ship until you get back aboard as lost time. You don’t get paid for it, they add it to the end of your enlistment, and the next time you get paid, they deduct the cost of your rations. Depending on the skipper, you get captain’s mast or a court-martial.”
“You really wouldn’t be jumping ship,” Clete said. “That would be for public consumption, that’s all.”
“I figured that.”
“When this is over, you could be placed in the custody of the Naval Attaché, maybe, until we could get you back to your ship,” Clete said. “Let me think about this, Chief. I’ll have to ask my boss, too.”
“We don’t have much time, Mr. Frade.”
“I know. Now tell me about this Ordnanceman—Chief Daniels, you said?”
“Well, he don’t know shit about what’s going on here. All he knows is that I brung Mr. Pelosi on board. And I told him that this guy that’s wearing butcher clothes with blood all over them is an Army officer, and that he needs to know about taking a five-inch illuminating-round shell apart, and to keep his mouth shut.”
“I didn’t know how much I was authorized to tell him about why I needed the flares and parachutes,” Tony Pelosi explained.
“So you told him nothing?” Clete asked.
Tony nodded.
“So what happened?”
“Chief Daniels,” Chief Schultz answered for him, “said Mr. Pelosi is going to blow hisself up if he tries taking one of them rounds apart.”
“Tony?”
“I know explosives. No problem.”
“With respect, Mr. Pelosi,” Chief Schultz said, “you don’t know diddly-shit about Naval Ordnance.”
Clete looked at Schultz. The old Chief was obviously right.
“Chief, do you think Chief Daniels could be talked into missing the ship too?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Frade. Maybe, if he knew what this screwy operation is supposed to be all about.”
“You think you or Mr. Pelosi should have told him?”
“No. He’s not cleared. Shit, the Skipper had ants in his pants when he told me about it, and I already knew, ’cause I decoded the Direction of the President order. That’s a pretty heavy security classification.”