White Cargo

by Stuart Woods

  “Bill, follow them at a discreet distance. If they split up, follow the big car.”

  “Mister, you been seeing too many movies,” Bill said, but he followed his instructions.

  After a few blocks, the big car turned left, while the other two continued. Bill obediently turned after it. It soon became obvious that they were headed toward the airport. The short road to the Aeroservice hangar turned off the main airport road and was darker.

  “Turn off your lights and stop here,” Cat said as they came to the turnoff.

  They could see the limousine as it continued toward the hangar. The big Gulfstream was sitting on the apron outside the hangar with its engines running. They could hear the noise over the two hundred yards of distance between them and the airplane. As they watched the two men in the front seat of the car jumped out and opened the rear doors, then two people got out of the car and boarded the airplane. Immediately, the door closed, and the jet started to move, its landing lights flashing over the taxi as the jet turned onto the main runway. A moment later the craft was airborne.

  “Drive to the hangar,” Cat said, his voice tense.

  When the cab pulled up, Cat got out and motioned for Meg to remain in the car. His heart thumping, he went to the office in the hangar and found the same young man who had showed them the jet that afternoon.

  “Hi,” he said, “I just want to get something out of my airplane.”

  “Of course, señor,” the young man said.

  “I see the Gulfstream is gone,” Cat said. “Was that it I saw taking off as I drove up?”

  “Yes, señor. She is off to Bogotá,” he replied. “She will be the last plane to take off tonight. Takeoffs are prohibited after midnight. Noise abatement.”

  Cat made a show of unlocking the Cessna and rummaging inside it for a moment, then he went back to the cab.

  “Bogotá,” he said to Meg. “We can’t take off until morning.”

  “Right,” she said. “Cat, do you remember when the group came out of the office building and then got into their cars?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I thought the man with the ponytail got into the stretch limo alone. But at the airport, two people got out of the back seat.”

  “I know,” Cat said. “One of them was a woman.”

  19

  THE MOUNTAINS SURROUNDING CALI FELL AWAY TO THE BROAD, green valley of the Rio Magdalena as the airplane droned its way northeastward toward Bogotá. Then the valley ended and the mountains rose again. Worriedly, Cat rechecked the elevations on his charts. The Anaconda Gulfstream had, undoubtedly, gone to the international airport of Bogotá, Eldorado, with its long runway and concentrations of police and security systems. He had two pistols and a shotgun aboard, and he didn’t want to be looked at too closely. Accordingly, he had filed for the smaller general aviation airport on the other side of the city. The elevation of the field was nearly nine thousand feet, and it was surrounded by mountains that rose even higher.

  “I’ve been into this little airport,” Meg said. “I don’t remember it being much of a problem.”

  “It probably isn’t for a turbocharged airplane,” Cat replied, “but a normally aspirated engine like ours loses manifold pressure as altitude increases and the air gets thinner. I just don’t want to have to try and gain altitude in a hurry under those conditions.”

  The weather was in their favor, though, and as the airport hove into view, the terrain around it was clearly visible. Cat set the airplane down on the short runway and taxied to a low cluster of buildings, which turned out to be the local flying school, Aeroandes. He arranged for fuel and tie-down and ordered a taxi.

  “What’s your plan here?” Meg asked.

  “Plan? Jesus, I haven’t had a plan since I got to this country. I guess we’d better start at the airport and see what we can learn there.”

  “We’ll do better without all this gear. Why don’t we drop it at a hotel. The Tequendama is good.”

  Driving into Bogotá in the taxi, Cat was, first, charmed by the flower sellers on either side of the highway, their stalls crammed with colorful blossoms, then appalled by the-amount-of security equipment on the local houses as they entered the city. The ground floor of every house was festooned with bars on every window and door. It didn’t seem a pleasant place to live.

  Downtown Bogotá was mostly modern and high-rise, with a scattering of older and more colorful buildings. Green mountains, ringed with clouds, hovered over everything. The Tequendama Hotel was one of Bogotá’s older modern buildings and seemed to offer everything one could want. They spent half an hour getting settled into a suite, then Cat slipped into his shoulder holster again and checked that the automatic pistol was loaded. He felt he was getting close to something, and he wanted to be prepared. He checked the aluminum case into the hotel’s safe.

  Meg looked at the case curiously. “You a camera buff?” she asked. “I haven’t seen you take a photograph yet.”

  “Nah, just some personal valuables. All you hear about is how good the thieves and pickpockets are in this country.”

  “Yes, and it’s both true and a shame. It’s a lovely country with wonderful people that’s being eaten alive by drugs, poverty, and, nibbling at the edges, political terrorism.”

  They moved through the cavernous lobby toward the taxi entrance. “I wish I could feel more concern about Colombia,” Cat said, “but all I want to do is find Jinx and get out of here as quickly as possible.”

  A modern, four-lane highway took them quickly to Eldorado Airport.

  “I hate to keep harping on this,” Meg said, “but what’s your plan? What do you hope to learn at the airport?”

  “Well, the Gulfstream got in late last night, which indicates to me that our man with the ponytail intended to sleep in Bogotá. First, let’s find the airplane, then let’s see if we can find out where in the city the guy is staying. If we can find him, we might find Jinx. That just might have been her getting on the airplane with him last night.”

  “Okay, that seems reasonable.”

  “I just hope to hell he doesn’t have another fortress in Bogotá like the one in Cali. We wouldn’t have much of a chance of getting inside a place like that, what with all the guards and dogs.”

  “If last night was any example, he’s not going to be without a lot of heavy help wherever he is,” Meg said.

  “I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it,” Cat said, not at all certain how he would cross it.

  At Eldorado Airport, Meg pointed at a group of hangars. “That’s where the business aircraft get serviced.”

  A policeman looked briefly inside the cab, then waved them through the gate. Meg asked the taxi to wait. They entered a lounge area, obviously intended for passengers on private aircraft.

  “What’s our excuse for being here?” Meg whispered to Cat.

  “We’re looking for a business associate.”

  Meg pointed to a business office. “Let’s try there.”

  At the counter a young woman came to help them.

  “I’m looking for a friend who’s supposed to be landing in a business jet. They may even have landed last night.”

  “Do you have the registration number, señor?”

  Cat flipped open his notebook and gave it to her. “It’s a Gulfstream.”

  “No,” she replied, pointing to a wall chart of arriving aircraft. “We haven’t had a Gulfstream in here recently, and I’ve no way of knowing when to expect your friend’s plane. We don’t know who’s coming until they call us on the Unicom.”

  “Is there anyplace else on the field where the airplane might be serviced?” he asked.

  “Well, sometimes the larger planes are serviced by the airlines, Avianca or Eastern, at the main terminal. They have a full catering service there. Both the Avianca and Eastern hangars are on the other side of the main terminal, and you might have difficulty getting through the gate without a pass.”

  “How can we get a pass?” Cat asked.r />
  “The easiest thing would be to go into the main terminal. If there is a Gulfstream either at a service hangar or at a gate, you should be able to see it through the windows of the lounge. If your friend’s plane is there, you can apply at the airport manager’s office for a pass.”

  “Thank you very much.”

  They left the office and the taxi took them to the main terminal entrance. The airport was mobbed. Well-dressed businessmen stood, cheek by jowl, with peasants from the countryside, all squirming to get through security to their respective departure gates.

  “Is it always like this?” Cat asked as they picked their way slowly through the crowds.

  “Usually. The road system is not very extensive, and not as many Colombians own cars as Americans. They take Avianca, instead.”

  With some difficulty they made their way, foot by foot, to the windows overlooking the apron, where jets were embarking and disembarking passengers. They looked carefully up and down the row of Avianca and Eastern aircraft and those of half a dozen South American countries, then at the airplanes parked in and around the service hangars across the apron. None of the jets was a Gulfstream.

  Cat stood, looking, willing the airplane to be there. If it wasn’t, he was at a dead end; he had nowhere else to go.

  “Look,” Meg said, pointing down the apron.

  Cat looked and saw, being towed down the ramp toward them by a small tractor, the Anaconda Gulfstream.

  “It looks as though it’s being towed to a gate,” Meg said. “Maybe it’s picking up the owner and his party.”

  As they watched, the airplane was towed into an empty gate, about a hundred yards down the terminal from where they were standing. A hatch opened at the rear of the airplane, and a catering truck began passing provisions through it.

  “I’ve got to figure a way to get onto that airplane,” Cat said. “If it’s just arrived at the gate, chances are the passengers aren’t on it yet, and I want to be there when they come aboard.”

  “What will you do then?” Meg asked.

  Cat patted his shoulder. “I’m armed. If Jinx is with them, I’ll take her off the plane, one way or another. If she’s not, I’ll just have to talk my way off.”

  “We can try the airport manager’s office for a pass, like the lady suggested,” Meg said.

  “No, that will take too long.”

  “Look who’s here,” Meg said, pointing out the window. A stretch limousine had driven up to the aircraft. A chauffeur was unloading the trunk, but the doors to the car remained closed.

  But Cat’s attention seemed to be elsewhere. “Cat, look out here a . . .” Meg stopped when she saw the look on Cat’s face.

  He had turned away from the windows and was staring into the crowd.

  “What is it, Cat?” she asked.

  Cat watched silently as the young man picked his way through the mob. “There, the young guy in the light blue, three-piece suit, no necktie.”

  “Dark hair?”

  “No, ahead of that one. He’s blond, has a moustache.”

  “Got him. What about him?”

  Cat had started to move through the crowd. The moustache had made him wonder for a moment, but suddenly he had no doubt.

  “Hang on, Cat!” Meg said, struggling to keep up with him through the mass of bodies. “Who is he?”

  “It’s Denny!” Cat called over his shoulder. “Our volunteer crewman on Catbird! The one who shot me!”

  Cat pressed harder through the crowd. There were twenty people between him and Denny, but he kept the back of the blond head in sight. “Excuse me . . . pardon me,” he was saying to ruffled people as he pushed past them. Now there were a dozen people between them. Meg had fallen hopelessly behind, trapped by a fat peasant woman with two large baskets. The crowd was thickening as it approached the bottleneck of a security checkpoint. Cat forgot courtesy and began fighting his way through the throng, closing inch by inch on the pale blue suit and blond hair. There, just ahead of him, was the one man in the world who certainly knew what had happened to Jinx, and Cat was not going to let go of his throat until he knew, maybe not even then. Denny passed the checkpoint and now, on the other side of the bottleneck, began to move faster.

  “Get out of my way!” Cat was yelling, yanking himself past startled and angry travellers. He, too, would be at the checkpoint in a moment and free to move. He forcibly drove his shoulder into a large man and pushed ahead of him past the security men. As he did the world seemed to explode. A loud bell began to ring, a red strobe light started flashing, and a tan-uniformed figure lunged at him and got hold of an arm.

  “Let go!” Cat was shouting at the man, trying to free himself. Ahead of him, he saw Denny glance unconcernedly over his shoulder at the disturbance, then continue walking on toward a gate. Another policeman came at him from the other side now, shouting in Spanish.

  “I’ve got to get to that man,” Cat was trying to explain to the policeman, but the man on the left was tugging at Cat’s clothing and shouting, too. Finally, Cat gave up any hope of convincing the policemen and began to fight with the desperation of a drowning man. Thirty yards ahead of him, he could see Denny turning into a boarding gate.

  Cat, with an enormous effort, got swinging room and brought an elbow into the midsection of the officer on his left. Half free, and fighting as hard as he could, he was about to break free of the cop on his left.

  Then something hard and heavy came down on his neck where it joined the shoulder, knocking him to one knee. He struggled to regain his feet under the weight of what now seemed like half a dozen policemen, and the club struck him again. His limbs seemed to melt, and he pitched forward toward the floor. His head struck a black shoe, then came to rest with his cheek against the cool marble floor. As he faded into unconsciousness, he felt, as if from a great distance, a boot making repeated contact with his back, accompanied, in Spanish, by what seemed a great deal of swearing.

  20

  AT FIRST THERE WAS JUST THE PAIN. THEN THE COLD CREPT IN, and the cold became more pain. Then, before he was fully conscious, the shivering started, which increased the pain, which finally jolted him awake. He opened his eyes, then quickly closed them again. The light was too harsh. With some difficulty, he got to one elbow, opening his eyes for brief moments, allowing his pupils to close down to where he could bear the light.

  He was lying on a rough concrete floor, entirely naked, in a small space enclosed by two walls of concrete and two of chain-link fencing. There was no furniture of any kind. He sat up and started rubbing his upper arms rapidly, trying to dispel the chill. The door must be behind him, he reckoned, but when he tried to turn and look at it, he got a thunderbolt of pain in his neck and left shoulder.

  Down the hall a door opened and footsteps rang on the concrete, accompanied by a low conversation in Spanish. The door behind him rattled open, but he still could not turn to see who was entering. A baldheaded man in a blue suit appeared in his vision and spoke some words to someone behind Cat. A blanket was thrown over his shoulders, and hands pressed him to lie down on the floor. The man in the blue suit produced a small flashlight and shone it into Cat’s eyes, one at a time. He felt Cat’s limbs and turned his head gently. Cat coughed out a yell.

  “What is your name?” the man said in heavily accented English.

  “My name is Ca . . . ah, Robert Ellis,” Cat managed to croak.

  The man spoke rapidly to the people behind Cat, and someone responded in what seemed to him slower and more awkward Spanish. He found himself being expertly lifted, laid on a stretcher, and covered with another blanket. He was wheeled rapidly down a hallway, through another door, and through a larger room. Another door opened, they were briefly outside, then the stretcher was put into an ambulance and an attendant climbed in beside it. Shortly, the ambulance began to move.

  Cat closed his eyes and tried to relax, hugging the blanket to him. Eventually, the chills stopped and, in spite of his overall soreness, he fell into a light doze. He wa
s aware of fast driving, of traffic, and of the silence of the man who sat next to him. He wondered if the man spoke English, but he didn’t feel like conversation, himself, so he said nothing. He reckoned that wherever he was going was better than the place he had just left.

  He woke as the ambulance stopped, then started again. Through a crack in a curtain he saw the top of a heavy iron fence as the ambulance drove through. The doors to the rear of the vehicle opened, and two men, one of them in a suit, rolled the stretcher out and through a door. They were in another hallway for a moment, then in an elevator, going down.

  Another man shone another flashlight into his eyes and probed his body. Cat answered with loud grunts when the probing became painful, as it rather frequently did. Then the stretcher was wheeled into what Cat recognized as an X-ray room, and he was lifted onto a cold table where pictures were made. He felt relieved to know that he was in a hospital instead of a jail. The doctor and nurse, both Latino, sat him up and got him into a hospital gown, then he was placed back on the stretcher and wheeled down a hallway to a room and lifted onto a bed. The nurse tucked him in, but nobody said a word, and as soon as he had been made comfortable, he was left alone.

  Cat lifted his head and tried to look around the room, but the effort defeated him. The room was small, but though sparsely furnished, it seemed to be in a real hospital and not in the medical ward of a prison. He closed his eyes and tried to rest without thinking. He was not ready to confront his situation, to try and figure out what to do next. He was aware of a murmured conversation outside the door.

  A few moments later someone entered the room. Cat was too weary to raise his head, but there was a clanking noise, and the bed lifted him into more of a sitting position. A man in a gray, pin-striped suit stood at the end of the bed, looking at him with an expression of distaste, even disgust. He had closely cropped crew-cut hair, thick eyebrows, a square jaw, and a nose that had once been broken and had healed badly.