“You got five of them?”
Martín nodded.
Which means this is the real thing.
“Major Habanzo and Captain Garcia,” Martín said, pointing in the general direction of his men in the foyer, “managed to get there before . . . the other people did.”
They call them assassins, Bernardo.
Not “plotters” or “other people.”
Then he said it out loud: “The term is ‘assassins,’ General.”
Martín nodded.
“Well, what are you going to do now?” Clete asked.
“We have to get el Coronel Perón off Isla Martín García,” Martín said. “And to a place of safety. We need your help to do that.”
“Phase B of the outline is already under way,” Father Welner said.
“What’s Phase B?” Clete asked.
“A company of the Horse Rifles—”
“The what?” Clete asked incredulously.
“Officially,” Martín said, “the Eighth Cavalry. It’s known as General Necochea’s Own Horse Rifles.”
“—is en route by boat from La Plata to the island,” the priest finished.
Clete said what he was thinking.
“That’s a long trip. Are they bringing their horses?”
The sarcasm went over Martín’s head.
“They knew my men were keeping an eye on the logical places to mount an operation like that,” Martín said. “So they left from La Plata, which I was not watching.”
“They intend to try to convince the men of the First Infantry Regiment, who are guarding el Coronel, that they are far outnumbered and resistance would be futile,” the priest said. “If they don’t give up—and the Patricios have a proud tradition and may resist however untenable their position . . .”
Heroism, and the glory that comes with it, sounds easy to people who’ve never been shot at.
“And the first shots of the civil war will have been fired,” Bernardo said. “We have to prevent that.”
He’s probably right.
Hell, he is right.
“How do you plan to do that?”
“You fly us to the island,” Martín said. “We pick up el Coronel and fly him to Jorge Frade, where a platoon of the Patricios will be waiting for us. We then take el Coronel Perón to the Central Military Hospital, where he will be safe until this mess can be sorted out.”
Frade exhaled audibly.
“Bernardo, I hate . . . I really hate . . . to rain on your parade. But there are so many holes in that plan that I hardly know where to begin.”
“Begin,” Martín said.