Death and Honor

[FOUR]

38 Degrees 26 Minutes South Latitude 58 Degrees 59 Minutes West Longitude Off Necochea, Buenos Aires Province, Argentina 1625 23 July 1943

Herr Erich Schmidt had become visibly nervous when he could no longer look over his shoulder and see the landmass that was Argentina, but not nearly as nervous as Standartenführer Karl Cranz had looked when von Wachtstein had descended rapidly on their way to Necochea.

Von Wachtstein almost regretted telling him, “No, sir. There are no life preservers on the aircraft. When the standartenführer told me we were not going to fly over the River Plate, I removed them.”

And Cranz saw me take them out.

Which is more than likely—likely, hell!—OBVIOUSLY the reason he rewarded Schmidt with the privilege of going out to meet the U-405.

Right after takeoff, von Wachtstein had done the navigation in his head.

Course: Due east. Altitude: 1,000 meters should do it. Length of flight: Winds off the ocean at probably 20 kilometers, indicated airspeed of 150, so that’s 150 minus the 20-kph headwind, or 130. And 130 into 21 kilometers is—what?—hell, call it a fifth of an hour.

Twelve minutes into the flight by the elapsed-time clock mounted above the windscreen, he started to examine the surface of the ocean.

No whitecaps, just rolling seas.

Wait, there’s a whitecap . . . no, that’s not a whitecap.

The rushing wave he’d spotted grew larger and whiter, then turned into a pole racing across the sea.

A sub periscope.

Goddamn! There she is, Lindbergh!

You get the Luftwaffe Prize For Dumb Luck Dead-Reckoning Navigation.

"There she is, sir,” von Wachtstein said, banking the Storch to give Schmidt a better look.

The periscope was now visibly atop a submarine’s conning tower. Then a deck-mounted cannon broke through the waves. People appeared in the conning tower. One of them pointed at the Storch. Another ran aft of the conning tower to a sort of iron-pipe railed platform.

Von Wachtstein saw a flag appear as the U-405 came completely to the surface.

Not the swastika flag.

That’s the Kriegsmarine battle ensign—what Langsdorff arranged to fall on when he shot himself.

He picked up a little altitude, then made a steep descending turn and flew back to the submarine. He lowered flaps, flying as slowly as he could and as close to the waves as he dared.

I’ll be a sonofabitch . . . that’s an SS uniform on the guy giving that stupid fucking Nazi salute.

There were several Kriegsmarine officers on the aft platform and in the smaller area atop the conning tower. He could tell because they were wearing officer’s brimmed caps and sweaters. The SS asshole was wearing a white shirt and tie.

The officers waved—broad, wide-spread arms—but not one saluted.

When von Wachtstein was past the submarine, he dumped the flaps and shoved the throttle to full emergency power. The Storch quickly gained speed and altitude . . . Like a goosed stork, he thought with a grin, imagining Schmidt’s pucker factor reflex to the maneuver.

As soon as he could, he turned and dropped back to the surface of the sea.

Now the Kriegsmarine battle flag was gone, as were all the men but one— an officer, on the conning tower, who waved a final time, then disappeared into the boat as the U-405 began to submerge.

Thirty seconds later, the submarine was gone.

Von Wachtstein turned the nose of the Storch due west.

After crossing the coastline, he flew low and slow enough over the trucks so that he could signal with an upraised thumb that they’d made the rendezvous with U-405. Then he flew for several kilometers over the beach and finally flew several kilometers inland.

There were three dirt roads leading from a paved road to where the trucks sat on the rise overlooking the beach. Each road had been blocked by a truck and soldiers. These men were in uniform, not in the blue workman coveralls that all the others wore beside the beach.

When he returned to the landing strip, as he was landing, he saw two things he hadn’t seen on his flyovers. One was a large four-door sedan, which had to be the American Packard in which Sturmbannführer Erich Raschner and Fregattenkapitän Karl Boltitz had driven from Buenos Aires. The other was that there were now two machine guns and their crews—in uniform, not blue coveralls—in position so they could cover the beach.

He recognized the model of the machine guns.

I didn’t know the Argentines had Maschinengewehr 34s; I thought they were still using World War I Maxims.

And why are some of these mountain troops in uniform, and the rest in blue coveralls?

Okay. Civilians in coveralls with Maschinengewehr 34s would really make people, like the local authorities, curious.

This way Herr/Oberst Schmidt can get away with saying he’s running some sort of repel-the-invaders field exercise.

But, that being the case, why the coveralls on the others?

Then he saw where he was relative to the ground, made the necessary corrections to his flight path, and softly set down the Storch.