The Repairman- The Complete Box Set

by L. J. Martin

  So I get back to the business at hand. "Okay, how do I get this little beauty off the water?"

  "Shove it to the wall. Don't try to lift off the water until you've got at least ninety kilomerters of airspeed, then you're gonna pop her up breaking the suction of the water, then slightly drop the nose, level out, gain airspeed, then climb out."

  "Got it, cross your fingers and toes."

  It's easier than I might have believed, but I almost put her back in the water when I try to level her off. I don't mention that to my instructor as I get her under control and gaining altitude until we're soon over the treetops. Far behind I see the lights of the two T33's as they sweep back and forth over the river, back about where we originally landed. The tunnel of trees saved our ass. The current carried us most of a mile and our takeoff took us another half mile so I'm crossing my fingers and toes that we're far out of their ability to pick us out. Even then I'm staying just over the tree tops for a while.

  I get the strange sensation that I'd liked to have tied the little plane up to the shore, taken a fishing rod out or cut a pole, dug for some worms, and spent about a week on my butt on the bank hoping I didn't catch anything I'd have to clean. But no, I've chosen to be chased by a couple of young wild ass pilots with machine guns on the wings. Of course there is the matter of a two-point-five-million-dollar fee. There is that.

  I stay over the tree tops for at least five miles, then begin to slowly ascend to a safer altitude, then aloud, exclaim, "Fuck!"

  "What?" Madman asks.

  "We got a low fuel indicator light."

  "Just what we need," he says, and sighs deeply. "Any lights anywhere?"

  "I've got to get a little altitude."

  "We don't want to go down in this friggin' jungle," he says.

  "No shit, Sherlock," I say, but it doesn't need saying.

  When we get back to one thousand meters, I see the dim glow of lights a few miles away to my right, and wing over and head that way. The odds of them having an airstrip are pretty good, but even if they don't, we might be able to survive setting this little beauty down in their main street…if they have a main street.

  "Lights ahead," I say.

  He merely sighs again. Then mumbles, "I wish I could fucking see, but I'm dizzy as hell."

  "The bleeding seems to have slowed."

  "Yeah, that's the good news…the bad is I'm flying over the fucking jungle with somebody who's made about five landings on a wide swatch of airport, and there ain't no wide swatch of airport around."

  I don't bother to respond. Then I'm over the lights of what appears to be an estancia or maybe a mine or timber company headquarters. If there's an airstrip, I sure as hell don't see it, but they wouldn't have it lit unless they were expecting a plane. I see Madman fumbling for the radio mike, then get it to his lips. "Mayday, mayday. Anyone on the radio?"

  Silence as I circle.

  "Mayday," he says again, and to my surprise a voice comes back.

  "Si, señor. Problema?"

  "Yeah, we got a problem. We're out of fuel. Can you get some lights on your strip?"

  "You English?"

  "American."

  "You got helicopter?"

  "No, airplane."

  "We got no strip, only helicopter pad."

  "Fuck."

  "Señor, we is a Catholic facility."

  "Sorry. We're turning our lights on so you'll know where we're gonna crash."

  "We will watch, señor."

  He turns to me. "Any sign of any kind of clearing?"

  "I'm gonna parachute—"

  "You've got a fucking parachute. Only one I guess?"

  32

  Even under the circumstances, I have to laugh. "Madman, the airplane has a parachute. An emergency chute. I'm taking her up," and just as I get it out, the engine coughs, and I doubt if I'm taking her any higher than she already is. I check the altimeter. "We've got nine hundred meters…is that enough?"

  "How the fuck should I know? My F16 didn't have a chute, it had an ejection seat."

  "Guess, and tell me what to do."

  "It doesn't matter what I think, it is what it is. You got the chute release control?"

  "It's a lever overhead between the seats."

  "Make sure it's operable, then cut the throttle."

  I don't have to, as it plane runs completely out of fuel and suddenly there's a very ominous dead silence…and I hope the "dead" part is not foretelling.

  "Okay," he says, thinking I cut the engine. "Ease the stick back and just as she shudders about to stall, as slow as you're gonna get, pop the chute."

  "Remind me never to get in a fucking airplane again," I say, as the plane slows and I do as instructed, easing the stick back.

  "You probably won't have to worry about making that decision," he says, as the stall warning light flares on the control panel and the warning buzzer goes off like a cheap alarm clock.

  "Yeah, probably," I concur, loud enough to be heard over the angry buzzing.

  The plane starts to nose over and I pull the lever, having no idea what's going to happen, as we begin to accelerate toward the ground.

  I hear a swooshing noise, the flapping of fabric, then feel a violent jerk and we're suddenly fairly level again, but swinging as if on a pendulum.

  "Crocodiles," Madman says.

  "Crocodiles?" I ask.

  "Yeah, fucking crocs, or pythons, or man eating fucking jaguars, or some fucking thing has to be waiting for us, the way it's been going."

  "You're a glass half empty kind of guy, aren't you?"

  "I'm a fucking realist."

  "We're still descending at three hundred meters a minute." Fuck, I said she'd float like a butterfly, but she's falling a little like a rock.

  "Crap," Madman says, then adds, "I hope what's waiting is a soft landing. That's too fast."

  "I hope what's waiting for us is a bottle of Jack Daniels—"

  "The blood of Christ."

  "Pardon me?"

  "The sacrament is probably the only booze they have at some Catholic facility."

  "That'll do," I say, and then something crashes, banging my head hard on the windscreen, and suddenly we're upside down hanging by our seatbelts, bouncing back and forth like we're the pin ball in an arcade machine. Then we jerk so hard I about lose my molars and the seatbelt bites deep into my gut.

  We're canted at a forty five degree angle, nose down, with the seats still under us, but at least we've stopped.

  "We're alive," Madman says, with a little astonishment.

  There's a small bug-out bag behind the seats, and I dig into it and come up with a flashlight. I push the canopy up and shine it out to see we're obviously in a tree with the chute entangled in the branches above. Hallelujah. And we seem to be fixed in place. Then I shine it down, and to my dismay, the light diminishes before ground appears. I have no friggin' idea how high we are in this bloody tree. The trunk is only ten feet to my right, and appears to be about two feet in diameter. I know that many of these big jungle beauties, and there are millions of acres of them, are as big as four feet at the base, so we could be a hundred feet in the air…ten friggin' stories.

  "Don't step out for a smoke," I suggest.

  "Long first step?" he asks.

  "Longer than the beam of the flashlight."

  "I guess we wait for morning."

  "I have to get to a phone."

  "Try your cell."

  I laugh. "It isn't that big a facility."

  "Now who's a half empty glass kind of guy?"

  To my great surprise, I get a signal and in moments am talking with a bail bondsman buddy, Fast Freddy Franklin, who I've worked for in Florida a couple of times. He's happy to make some points with the DEA, for whom his brother-in-law, Irish Jack O'brien works, by informing them that the repairman and friends are delivering a couple of tons of grade A cocaine to them via a beautiful G5, and in a few hours they'll be making a soft touchdown and welcoming them aboard. I spent many an hour wit
h Freddy chasing down a couple of skips, and even broke bread with his brother-in-law a couple of times. A good guy, for a fed.

  Now if only Wetback and Skip don't decide to fly away to some profitable locale and become multi-millionaires comfortable on some island retreat. But I know Skip wouldn't do that.

  My second call is to Carmen. She must have been sitting on the phone as she answers before the first ring's complete. "Ola," she says, and sounds anxious.

  "Ola, señorita."

  "Are you okay? The news channel and the internet are buzzing about a raid on our Air Force headquarters—"

  "Attributed to whom?" I ask.

  "So far it's Sendero Luminosos, or Shining Path…no mention of a bunch of gringos."

  "Any mention of a couple of tons of cocaine?"

  "Cocaine…at the Air Force headquarters?"

  "Yes, a couple of tons."

  She's silent for a long moment, then her voice sounds with even more concern. "Please tell me you're not here to steal or smuggle cocaine?"

  "Carmen, I hate dope, I hate what it does to our country and to yours, and others."

  "And you were not here for the airplane, remember what you told me?"

  "I do, and I lied, for your own good. We were very surprised to find it loaded with dope, which is on its way to our Drug Enforcement Agency."

  She's quiet for another long moment. "Many were killed at the airport."

  "I hope many Pyragüés, and I hope they were as bad as you said they were."

  "No one has admitted to Pyragüés being there."

  "We shot at no one with an Air Force uniform."

  "Aw, so Colonel Vargas, who is now dead, a hero so it was said as he rushed to protect his men, was not wearing a uniform?"

  "Okay, you got me, but we knew it was him, and he was rushing to protect his dope, not his men."

  "Anyone else mentioned in the news?"

  "The American pilot was killed."

  It's all I can do not to say 'not a bad night's work', but I don't.

  "It's over now, Carmen. And I haven't forgotten I owe you money."

  "I have an American bank account. I'll send you the wire information."

  "Please, but also please call me when you get to the states."

  "I'll think about it. Adios."

  It seems we may not have to wait for daylight as only seconds after I hang up, a powerful torch is sweeping through the canopy near us and finally settles on the fuselage.

  We are found. Now we can only hope we're found by friendlies.

  The canopy is still loose and I hear someone shout, "Ahoy, the plane!"

  And yell back. "Ahoy yourself. We're in one piece."

  "Young Jesus climbs like a howler and is on his way with a rope. I'm Father Ailen O'Brian, at your service, me lad. Where in the world did you find a bloody aeroplane with it's own parachute?"

  "We'll wait right here, father," I shout back, figuring he can wait to get his questions answered over a tall cold one. I'm encouraged. He may not have a bottle of Jack Daniels, but I'll bet a dime to a doughnut he's got a bottle of Bushmill's or Jameson stashed somewhere.

  33

  As fate would have it, we dropped into the jungle only a quarter mile from Solange del Argentina Norte, a Catholic orphanage not two miles from a copper mining community with over a thousand employees, which is why we had phone service.

  Thanks to a very athletic young man who climbed the hundred feet to bring us a quarter inch line, and to the Priest who waited below with the half-inch line which we pulled up with the first. I was able to do a makeshift loop around the tree with a couple of loops of the lighter line and tie a cask hitch around Madman. We gave a whistle and he was slowly lowered to the jungle floor. The rope returned, and I followed close behind.

  Father Ailen is a rosy cheeked gentleman in work clothes and, begorrah, I wasn't wrong—he had a highly valued bottle of Jameson locked away as if it were the Stone of Accord itself, aand he willingly shared it. He also seemed highly skilled in the medical arts, and shared a spool of catgut and did a journeyman's job of stitching Madman's head wound. To Madman's great distress, the father did not allow him to sleep until late the next day, dutifully keeping him awake as he feared the extent of his probable concussion. His wound was easily explained away due to the plane crash, until the morning news of a raid on the Paraguayan Air Force base and the theft of both a G5 and a small Icon. Unfortunately, the father asked what kind of plane it was, and who can lie to a priest?

  The good news, he had no love lost for Paraguayans in general and even less for the Pyragüés…which he soon learned were the bad guys in the soap opera I played out for him.

  It took two days for the father to declare Madman well enough to travel.

  As it happened, the weekly supply helicopter from Salta, a northern Argentine city, was propitiously due two days following us dropping in on the good father, his two nun helpmates, and his two hundred charges, mostly Guarani native children. For a slight fee the chopper pilot would let us ride along on its return flight. Then we'd fly commercial—Salta to Buenos Aries, then Miami.

  As soon as it was timely, I called Skip to check on their progress, and to my surprise a female voice answered his cellphone.

  "Who's calling?" she asked.

  "Mike Reardon. Is Skip available?"

  Then she worries me. "What relationship do you have to Mr. Allen?"

  "We're associates. May I ask who you might be?"

  "Agent Alice Zorn, Drug Enforcement Agency."

  "So, the airplane and the drugs got there safely?"

  "They did. And are you returning to the states? We need a statement from you."

  "I'll bet. Yes, I'm coming commercial. Hopefully, if we can get a seat, I'll arrive late tomorrow night or day after tomorrow…as quick as I can."

  "Why don't you give me a call when you know your flight and we'll arrange to have you picked up at the airport."

  "And welcome me home with a set of iron bracelets? Where's Irish Jack?"

  "Who?"

  "DEA Agent Jack O'Brian."

  "He's in the field."

  "I'll hold while you give him a call, or give me his number if you prefer."

  "You hold on, I'll see if I can raise him."

  In moments she's back on the line and gives me Jack's number. He offers to pick us up and assures me I'll be welcome with open arms, not iron cuffs. He also informs me that Skip, Wetback and Hank are being held "until things get cleared up." Skip is shackled to a hospital bed with what's reported to be a slight wound, but he's always loved the happy juice way too much and as long as they're keeping him shot up, he's happy.

  I am being well schooled in the art of soccer while I'm in residence, as the older children of Solange, which I learned meant angel of the sun, engage in the sport almost every waking hour when not doing their chores.

  These folks are doing good work, and I put them on my list of benefactors from the proceeds of my trip to South America, should I in fact collect the fee due.

  In less than seventy two hours from making the call to Irish Jack, we deplane to find him at the end of the jetway. Standing next to him is a stately redhead, whose lithe appearance is only marred by the lump of a pistol and holster on her waist, her manly haircut, and a snarl a pit bull would envy. Although we are not cuffed, she trails behind, a hand balanced on the butt of her pistol, as Irish Jack leads us to the luggage carousel and then out to a double-parked big black Ford Expedition. In another half hour Madman and I are in separate interrogation rooms at the Miami DEA office.

  My instructions to Madman are simple: we were fired on by Paraguayan bandits and dope smugglers while repossessing a G5, which we were contracted to recover.

  Irish Jack's boss is a black dude who must have played tackle for the Chargers. Al Washington has a smile that lights the room, and seems a little bemused at the fact that we've delivered him a couple of tons of high quality snort. He plays good cop, and Miss Zorn continues the snarl and plays ba
d, doing an excellent job.

  They grill me for three hours until I can hardly hold my eyes open and keep yawning. Then two State Department types, Frick and Frack, show up and sit in for another hour, but as they've had no official complaint from the Paraguayan government, only a call from our embassy, they're merely observers. Finally, to my great surprise, they cut me loose after confiscating my passport so I won't leave the country…as if that would keep me from doing so if I wanted to.

  They do tell me not to leave Miami, and I smile and nod. After we spring Skip from the hospital much to the chagrin of the nurses, the five of us are on a flight to LAX one hour after walking out of the DEA office, after telling them we're heading for a good old American hamburger joint.

  It's four PM when we touch down at LAX, and I'm thrilled to note that no armed individuals are awaiting us at the end of that jetway.

  What is awaiting is a call from my young friend Athena Wedgewood, Tenee to her friends. My phone says she called at three twenty, only an hour before we walked out of the terminal into the California sunshine, so I return her call.

  "You called back," she answers.

  "Hi, kid. Of course I called back."

  "Can you go to work for me now?"

  "Not quite. I have to conclude my business with your father first."

  "I'm going to kill him."

  That makes me catch a breath. "Hold on now, kiddo. That's crazy talk."

  "Are you somewhere I can send you a very private picture?"

  "Of course."

  "Call me back when you get it."

  "You bet. Hey, kiddo, don't do anything stupid."

  "Call me back."

  "Will do."

  While we're loading the limo to Avis with duffle bags, my iPhone vibrates with an incoming email, and as I climb in the cab I open the attachment…and my jaw clamps hard enough that I might fracture my molars.

  A fairly good shot of what appears to be Athena Wedgeworth, leaning over her father, who's prone on a bed, her preforming fellatio, or more commonly, a blow job.

  "Mother fucker," I say aloud, and both Skip and Madman, who are closest to me in the limo, turn and eye me.