“Hey, I’m going. First: There’s no way you can drop the flares by yourself. And second: I’m going. And anyway, even if you could drop the first dozen by yourself, you’d have no way to reload the chute for a second run.”
“I’ll be very surprised if there will be a second run,” Clete said. “They expect us down there.”
He looked at Tony, who obviously believed him. There was fear in his eyes.
“They even know about the flares,” Clete added. “They think we’re going to try to set the sonofabitch on fire.”
“How do you know that?”
“I have a reliable source of information. He also tells me there are two Bofors dual forty-millimeter cannon on board.”
“I say again, repeat, first: There’s no way you can drop the flares from up here,” Tony said. “And second: I’m going.”
“I say again, repeat, that when we get back we’re going to see if there is a way I can do this myself.”
“If they have Bofors forty-millimeters down there shooting at us, you won’t have time to even think about dropping the flares yourself. Don’t try to be a fucking hero.”
Clete looked at Tony for a moment, then said, “Put the wire out the tail, and we’ll see if the walkie-talkies work.”
“Flyey-talkies?” Tony respond
ed. “About the only thing left of the walkie-talkies after Ettinger and the Chief finished fucking with them is the nameplate.”
“Let the wire out, Lieutenant Pelosi,” Clete said.
“Yes, Sir, Mr. Frade, Lieutenant, Sir,” Tony said.
Tony went into the now-stripped cabin of the Beechcraft and dropped to his knees near the open doorway. He put on a pair of heavy leather work gloves, then picked up a tiny parachute—a drogue chute—and carefully held the tiny chute out into the slipstream.
It was immediately snatched from his hand; and the wire it was attached to moved so quickly over the gloves that they smoked. When all the wire, which had been carefully coiled in a wooden box, was deployed outside the Beech, he carefully looked out of the door. He could see the wire, but not the drogue chute.
He smiled with satisfaction. This idea of his had worked too. When the wire was fully extended, the force exerted by moving through the air at 120 miles per hour was enough to tear off the drogue chute. Otherwise, what Chief Schultz referred to as “the straight-wire antenna” would have gyrated wildly, and would not have been a “straight wire.”
He had also solved the problem of dealing with the wire before landing, during which it would have posed problems. After Chief Schultz and the Argentine ex-Sergeant Major spent hours trying to come up with a crank to pull it back inside, he suggested they “just cut the sonofabitch; we have plenty of wire.”
The suggestion earned him the highest possible praise from Chief Schultz: “Coming from a second lieutenant, that ain’t too dumb an idea, Mr. Pelosi.”
Tony went back through the cabin to the cockpit.
“You couldn’t put the straight wire out by yourself, either, Clete,” he said.
“Where there’s a will, there’s a way, Lieutenant Pelosi,” Clete replied, and picked up a microphone.
“Peter, this is Paul. How do you read? Over.”
“Paul, Peter,” Chief Schultz’s voice came back immediately. “Five-by-five.”
“Peter, Paul, out,” Clete said, set the microphone down, and turned to Tony.
“Be so good, Lieutenant Pelosi, as to cut the wire. Then we’ll go home.”
“Yes, Sir,” Tony said.
[EIGHT]
Samborombón Bay
0325 2 January 1943