White Cargo

by Stuart Woods

  “Get out of here, Dad! Get Jinx out!” Dell shouted again.

  Cat stood frozen for a moment, his pistol pointed at the two struggling men, then he made his decision once again. He turned and ran toward the airplane.

  When he got there Jinx was in the back seat, and Meg was in the right seat. He flung himself into the airplane, grabbed the key from the clipboard in the map pocket and, trembling, got it into the ignition switch. The same engine as his Cessna, the pilot had said. Cat shoved in the mixture, propeller, and carburetor controls and pulled on the primer. One, two, three, four strokes of the plunger. He flipped on the master switch, then looked back toward the jeep, where he had left Dell and Prince. They were both standing now, fighting over the gun.

  Cat turned the ignition key. The propeller turned a few times, then the engine caught and roared to life. Cat throttled back and looked again toward the jeep. Dell had started running toward the airplane, zigzagging, and Prince was on the ground, scrambling toward the gun.

  He’s going to make it, Cat thought. “Run, Dell!” he shouted. He opened his door and waved at him. “Come on, Dell, come on!” Jinx was yelling from the back seat, too.

  Dell was only twenty yards from the airplane when he went down. Prince had regained his feet and fired. Cat couldn’t tell where Dell had been hit, but he was getting to his feet again. Cat struggled with his seat belt; he had to help Dell. But then, Prince squatted, took careful aim, and fired again. Cat saw a pink cloud explode from the back of Dell’s head.

  “Nooooo!” Jinx screamed. Cat froze, looking at his dead son’s crumpled body. Then he jerked, as Prince put another bullet through the side window of the airplane. Prince kept pulling the trigger, but nothing was happening. He was out of ammunition.

  Cat shoved in the throttle and started to taxi wildly to the other end of the clearing, the airplane bumping over the rough ground. He had to get as long a ground roll as he could manage.

  Dell is dead, Cat said to himself. Dell is dead, but Jinx is alive. I have Jinx.

  At the edge of the clearing, he slammed on the left brake, and the airplane spun around. He stopped and looked at the controls. Twenty degrees of flaps, he said to himself, taking hold of the handle and pulling. No time for a run-up. Mixture rich, brakes on, full power. The little airplane shuddered as the revolutions climbed. Cat looked up and saw Prince climbing into the jeep.

  The engine roared to full pitch, and Cat released the brakes. The airplane shot forward.

  Prince had gotten the jeep started and roiling.

  Cat pushed on the yoke, and the tail came off the ground.

  Prince whipped the jeep around and pointed it directly at the airplane. They were rushing toward each other now.

  Cat tried to watch the airspeed and Prince at the same time. The canvas sack of money was still on the jeep’s hood, on top of the folded windshield.

  He’ll pull out of the way, Cat said to himself. He won’t drive the thing into us. Thirty knots was showing on the airspeed indicator. It wasn’t enough to fly; he needed forty.

  Suddenly, inexplicably, Prince looked straight up. He was no longer watching the Maule. He would drive straight into the airplane. At almost the same moment, the ground a few yards to the right of the jeep exploded. The jeep and the airplane were only yards apart.

  Cat yanked instinctively back on the yoke. The little aircraft came off the ground. There were two quick, dull jerks, something struck the airplane’s windshield—Prince’s head, Cat realized—and the windshield suddenly turned red. Hundred-dollar bills were plastered over nearly the whole area. The whole airplane began to vibrate wildly.

  Cat glanced at the airspeed indicator. Only thirty-five knots. He pushed forward on the yoke to level the airplane, looking out the side window to orient himself. He had no idea how far the trees were ahead of him. The airspeed indicator hit forty knots. Cat yanked back the yoke and simultaneously pulled the handle back for full flaps. The airplane turned its nose to the sky, and Cat felt as if he were in some sort of lunar rocket.

  But before they could gain much altitude, there was a hard jolt, and the airplane’s nose came down again. Cat looked out the side window and was stunned at what he saw. The landing gear had hit a tree, pulling the nose down, and they were now, literally, skimming the treetops. Cat pulled the nose up, but immediately the airplane was jolted again.

  “Cat!” Meg yelled. “We’re being fired on by a helicopter!”

  That was crazy, Cat thought. Prince’s helicopter had exploded. Then he saw a shadow on the trees in front of him, and a huge, olive-drab helicopter with two rotors rushed past them and banked hard to the left. They were turning for another pass. Cat banked into a hard right turn, pulling on the yoke to stay out of the trees. He reduced flaps to pick up speed. The throttle was still wide open, and the airplane was vibrating so much that he thought it would come apart. The propeller must have been bent when it decapitated Prince, he thought.

  He stayed low and turned sharply to the left, glancing over his shoulder at where the helicopter had been. It was right behind him. He got a glimpse of other helicopters back toward the clearing, sinking below the trees. Cat cut back to the right, nearly standing the little airplane on its wing. The moment he could straighten up, he turned left again and looked for the helicopter. It was flying in the opposite direction, back toward Prince’s camp. He could see columns of smoke rising from the camp.

  “The Colombian troops!” he shouted at Meg. “They found the place!”

  He turned back to the right and glanced at the compass, bringing the airplane on a heading of due south. The blood had blown away from much of the windshield now, and although there were still a lot of hundred-dollar bills stuck to it, he could see reasonably well.

  Cat eased back on the throttle. He had to get rid of some of the vibration, or the airplane would break up. He came back from full power to twenty inches of manifold pressure. There was still vibration, but it was not nearly so bad.

  “Where are we going?” Meg asked.

  “We can’t go back there,” Cat said. “They don’t know who’s in the airplane. They’ll blow us out of the sky. I’m going to make for the Amazon. It’s the only place to go—there’s nothing but jungle for hundreds of miles.”

  He got the airplane trimmed and as settled as he could, then looked at the fuel gauges: less than a quarter of each tank. How far was it to the Amazon? A hundred and forty-five nautical miles, he estimated. They were flying at about a hundred and ten knots. A little more than an hour. He eased back on the yoke and gained some altitude, taking the airplane up to a thousand feet or so. He didn’t want to be high enough to attract the attention of another Colombian army helicopter, but he wanted some gliding room if the fuel ran out.

  By simply flying south, he would come to the river, eventually. He thought that was better than trying to aim for Leticia, which lay south and slightly west—he might miss it. He would find the river, then turn right and fly along it until he came to the town. Simple enough, if the fuel held out. If it didn’t, he was going to have to put this airplane down, and there didn’t seem to be anyplace to put it except into the treetops.

  “I managed this,” Meg said, holding up the canvas-and-leather grip.

  Cat laughed aloud. “Terrific! We may need some travelling expenses!”

  Jinx looked at them both as if they were crazy. “Daddy,” she said, “when did you learn to fly an airplane?”

  Cat looked back at her and laughed. “I’ll tell you all about it later, kiddo! Right now, both of you get your seat belts on. We may not have enough fuel.” They did as they were told.

  Cat relaxed a little, but not much. He still couldn’t believe they were alive, and they weren’t out of it yet. He thought about Dell and a lump gathered in his throat. He wondered what it would have been like if he had made it out. Would it have been different? Better? He would never know. He thought about Bluey Holland. He would have to explain about Bluey and his daughter to Jinx. The man had d
ied trying to find her. He thought about Meg, sitting beside him. He’d have to figure that out later.

  Cat glanced at his watch. They had been flying an hour and seven minutes. He strained his eyes ahead and thought he saw a brown streak across the jungle. The engine coughed. Straight and level, he told himself, straight and level. Get the most out of the fuel. The engine coughed again. They were not going to make Leticia, but they might make the river. The brown streak was wider now. It was out there. Eight, nine miles, maybe? The engine stopped, then started again. He checked the altimeter: a thousand feet. What was the glide ratio? Two miles for every thousand feet of altitude? That was for the Cessna, but the Maule had fixed landing gear, creating more drag. Surely, it wouldn’t glide as far.

  He turned to the two women. “Listen, we’re almost out of fuel. I’m going to try for the river, and if we make it, we’ll have to ditch. The airplane will probably turn upside down when the landing gear hits, so tighten your seat belts. Since the tanks are about empty, the airplane should float, at least for a little while. Wait until we stop moving, then unbuckle and get the hell out, okay?”

  Meg and Jinx nodded.

  Cat looked at the river; it was only a couple of miles now. They might make it. As he thought that, the engine coughed and died. Cat held back the yoke and let the airspeed bleed away. Best glide speed for the Cessna was eighty knots, probably a little slower for the Maule. He looked at the river and saw what seemed to be a little passenger steamer headed upstream, toward Leticia. He pointed the airplane at it.

  When they crossed the riverbank, he still had a hundred feet of altitude. He made a right turn and aimed the gliding airplane upstream. They shot past the steamer, a couple of hundred yards to his left. The river seemed about five miles wide here. He glanced around at Meg and Jinx. Both were staring, wide-eyed, at the brown water ahead, rushing up to meet them.

  Cat grabbed the handle and put in twenty degrees of flaps. The airplane floated a little and slowed down. When they were twenty feet off the water, he put in the full flaps, then put both hands on the yoke. The stall speed must be something like thirty-five or forty knots, he reckoned. He held the nose up, bleeding off speed; until the stall warning horn went off. He let the airplane down from there, keeping the horn going, right on the edge of a stall. When they were almost skimming the water, he brought the yoke back into his lap. The nose came up slightly, and he felt the airplane’s tail bump the water.

  A second later, the airplane’s nose dropped, and the world turned upside down with a wrenching jolt. Suddenly, all Cat could hear was the sound of rushing water.

  “Is everybody okay?”

  He got two positive answers. Bracing a hand against the ceiling of the airplane, he got his seat belt undone, then helped Jinx with hers. Meg was already free and opening a door. The high-winged airplane was floating, high and dry. Cat helped Jinx out Meg’s door, then grabbed the canvas-and-leather grip and went out his side.

  They stood on the airplane’s wings and looked around them. They were drifting with the current, the trees on shore a hundred yards away moving past them. Cat looked upstream and saw the steamer turning downstream toward them.

  “Hey, Cat!” It was Jinx’s voice. She sounded like her old self.

  He looked across the inverted airplane’s fuselage at her. They all looked ridiculous, he thought, standing on an upside-down airplane’s wings in the middle of the Amazon river, dressed in tennis clothes. “What is it?” he called back to her.

  “You could lose your license, you know, doing this to an airplane!”

  Cat roared with laughter. “Are you kidding? What license?”

  Epilogue

  CAT WAS IN THE KITCHEN MAKING A SANDWICH WHEN THE INTERCOM rang. It was the security guard, down at the gate.

  “There’s a Mr. Drummond here, Mr. Catledge. Do you know him?”

  “I know him,” Cat said. “Send him up to the house.”

  He padded through the house in his bare feet, tossing his sweat socks at the washing machine along the way, and opened the front door.

  It was Jim. He looked fresher than the last time Cat had seen him, in the hotel room in Washington. His suit was neatly pressed, and he was closely shaved. “Hi,” he said.

  “Come in, come in,” Cat said, pumping the man’s hand. “What a surprise! I’m delighted to see you!”

  “I was changing planes at the airport,” Jim said, “and I had a couple of hours layover. I just thought I’d look in on you. I’m sorry I didn’t call first.”

  “Don’t worry about it, I’m glad you’re here,” Cat said, clapping him on the back. “Sorry about the guard—we’ve had a lot of press attention since Meg’s piece ran on the Today show. Jinx and Meg are playing tennis. Let’s go into the study and have a drink before we go down to them.” He propelled Jim into the study and gave him a chair. “What’ll you have?”

  “I guess I’ve got time for a small scotch.”

  Cat made the drinks and flopped down onto the leather sofa. “You know,” he said, “I thought I might never see you again, and I’ve got a lot to tell you.”

  “Your letter told me most of it, I guess. I just wanted to know how your girl is doing.”

  “Better and better,” Cat said. “It was tough on her at first. I think I wrote you that when we found her, she was like another person—had, for all practical purposes, become another person, according to the shrink. She wouldn’t speak English; she had just blocked out everything that had happened to her before she arrived in Cartagena.”

  “She’s gotten past that, though?”

  “Yeah, she started to come around when we still were in the jungle. After that, it was mostly a matter of time, I guess. She didn’t want to leave the house, at first, after we got home. The shrink came here every day for nearly a month. She’s a resilient girl, though, and she’s pretty much her old self again. A bit more serious, maybe.”

  “I’m glad she’s okay. Did you get your airplane back?”

  “Yep, and my million bucks, too. We flew it back to Bogotá, and the air attaché at the embassy flew it home from there and got it through customs. I’m not quite sure what route the money took. It just arrived here one day in a registered package from Washington. I figured it was from you.”

  Jim laughed. “I only forwarded it. It was really from Barry Hedger. He said the Colombian chopper pilot who chased you was impressed with your flying.”

  Cat grinned. “I got my pilot’s license, too. I’m working on my instrument rating now.”

  “Are you back at work yet?”

  “I haven’t figured out what I want to do about that. I’ll probably just do some development work for the company as a consultant.”

  “Miss Greville is here, too, you say?”

  “Yep, she’s been here the whole time. She’s been a big help to Jinx. They get along well.”

  “What’s going to happen there?”

  “I expect we’ll probably get married before too long; we’re just playing it by ear.”

  Jim shifted in his chair. “I had a look at her FBI file. There was a lot of Hoover-style garbage in it, nothing whatever of substance. It doesn’t exist anymore; I shredded it myself. She’s off the customs and immigration shit list, too. She won’t get any more grief in airports.”

  “Thanks, Jim, I appreciate that—and everything else you’ve done. I never would have gotten to first base without you.”

  “Don’t mention it. Glad to help.”

  “I haven’t heard much about what happened in the jungle once we got out. We were in Bogotá only long enough to get a plane for the States.”

  “There was some shooting, but no organized resistance, since Prince and Vargas were dead. The Colombians shot the place up pretty good, killed a couple of dozen people. Most of the franchisees were rounded up. They’re in Colombian prisons, now, and they won’t see the light of day for a long time.”

  “Did they find the money?”

  “In the nick of time. The
soldiers were having a look around the place before putting the torch to it, and they heard somebody kicking on a wall in the radio room.”

  Cat laughed. “I know who that was. Dell and I put him there.”

  “There was more than seventy million dollars in that room,” Drummond said. “That will fund a lot of drug busts in Colombia, and the Narcotics Assistance Unit won’t have quite so many budgeting problems.” He paused. “I’m sorry about your boy, Cat. If we’d known he was there, we’d have at least gotten his body out for you. I’m afraid he went into a mass grave with the others.”

  “It’s all right,” Cat said. “Katie’s in the sea, Dell’s in the jungle. Maybe it’s better that Jinx and I don’t have any graves to visit.”

  Drummond nodded and stood up. “Well, I’d better catch my plane.”

  “Can I drive you to the airport?”

  “No, I rented a car.”

  Cat stood. “Well, before you go, you have to meet Jinx and Meg. Especially Jinx.” He walked Drummond through the house and out onto the deck. They could see the two women playing on the court below.

  Drummond stopped and put his hand on Cat’s arm. “This is okay,” he said.

  “Don’t you want to meet her?” Cat asked.

  Drummond managed a smile. “If you don’t mind, I just wanted to have a look at her.” He stood and watched Jinx for a moment, then turned and went into the house, rubbing his eyes.

  Cat followed him to the door. “I’ll never be able to thank you enough,” he said.

  Drummond’s voice trembled. “The sight of her was enough,” he said.

  Cat watched from the door as Drummond went to his car and drove away. He went back into the house and walked out onto the deck, standing where Drummond had stood. The man had been right, he thought, watching Jinx serve the ball to Meg. The sight of her was enough.

  Acknowledgments

  I HAD THE HELP OF MANY PEOPLE IN RESEARCHING THIS book. Among them, I am particularly grateful to: Robert Coram, for sharing his knowledge of Colombia and his contacts with me; John Ford, for the same; Tom Susman, once again, for sharing his knowledge of Washington; Nancy Soververg, of Senator Edward Kennedy’s office, for introductions to helpful people; Lee Peters, of the State Department, for his advice about Colombia and for introductions at the American Embassy in Bogotá; Dr. Jose M. Vergara-Castro, president of Asociación Colombiana de Aviación Civil General, for his kind assistance in finding and renting an airplane; Rodrigo V. Martinez Torres, for a superb tour of Cartegena, especially the Old City, and for sharing his knowledge, as a lawyer, of the Colombian drug trade; Maribel Porras Gil, for her services as copilot, radio operator, navigator, interpreter, liaison with the Colombian Police, and especially, for her good company; Candis Cunningham, Press Attaché at the American Embassy in Bogotá, for introductions, advice of all sorts, and for a lifetime supply of the best Colombian coffee; Morris Jacobs, Cultural Affairs Officer, and Teresa Bocanegra, adviser to the U.S. Ambassador on Colombian Law, for their advice; John Stallman, head of the Narcotics Assistance Unit in the Bogotá embassy, now in happy retirement in Florida, for a detailed look at the big picture of the Colombian drug trade; Maria Arango, for enlightening conversations about Colombian life; Lt. Col. David Mason, Air Attaché at the Bogotá embassy, for his advice about flying in Colombia; Bill, the Colombian-American taxi driver in Cali, for the grand tour and inside knowledge; Dan Spader, Sr., of Maule Air, Inc., for a hair-raising ride in a Maule Lunar Rocket; Gibson Amstutz, for his knowledge of drug-trade flying; and especially, Mark Sutherland, who was brave enough to fly all over Colombia with me, for his good company; and Agent Gregory Lee of the Drug Enforcement Agency, for information on how the Agency operates.