by Gregg Loomis
Charlie’s hand grabbed Jason’s. “You let go that money, Jason.” He gave the area a quick, nervous survey, the look of a small child checking to see if parents were watching. “Jes’ you sit here; let me get into the terminal. What you does then, that be yo’ bidness.”
“Remember: about thirty minutes before you report the plane stolen.”
Charlie nodded. “You be in Haiti, the DR by then.”
“Never mind where I’ll be.”
Charlie stood and walked away, then stopped and turned. “Jason?”
Jason looked up.
“Good luck!”
There wasn’t time for a complete preflight inspection of the aircraft. Jason only unscrewed the caps to the plane’s two gas tanks to visually verify they were full. He had never flown a Piper, let alone an Aztec before. He had, however; taken the hours of flight instruction mandatory for all Delta Force officers. He could only hope there was enough similarity between the Aztec and the light miliary trainer to keep him from killing himself.
His first glance at the panel was both encouraging and a little frightening. What gauges were present were familiar: altimeter, turn and bank, and their like. A number of empty holes told him he would have a single radio and navigation unit, no transponder or other electronics common to even small aircraft.
The switches were double what he had been used to, one for each engine. He flipped the first one on the right to on and did the same with one marked pump. He heard the reassuring whine of a fuel pump. He gave a winged switch a twist and the left prop began a slow rotation. Keeping the knob turned, he used his other hand to work the fuel-flow lever in the middle of the panel back and forth. He was delighted when the small plane quivered and the prop caught, disappearing into a blur.
He was about to do the same thing with the right engine when something made him look up in time to see an old Buick almost collide with the parked Lincoln as it came to a stop. The four men piled out, this time not even taking the trouble to conceal their weapons. They had not noticed the Aztec yet as they looked around for Charlie before running into the terminal.
Now acquainted with the procedure, Jason had the second engine started and was rolling toward the runway in less than a minute. There was no time to seek taxi and takeoff clearances from the tower. Instead, he went to the western tip of the runway and prepared to do a run-up, the procedure by which magnetos, fuel-flow, and propeller pitch were given a final check.
Through the aircraft’s windshield, he saw the four men racing across the general aviation area, guns held out. They might have missed him earlier, but even the poorest of shots was going to hit the Piper somewhere if they could get within the Uzi’s limited range.
So much for the run-up.
Jason pushed the two center levers flat against the panel and the Aztec began to creep forward.
The four men certainly saw him now. They were gesturing in his direction.
The airspeed indicator was quivering around twenty-five knots. The white arc showed Vmc-liftoff-to be between sixty and sixty-five.
Nothing to do but press the fuel levers harder, hoping for any increase in power. The outside-air-temperature gauge read eighty-two, and standard humidity here was at least the same, adversely affecting power. Too bad he wasn’t trying to escape from an arctic desert.
The four men stood in a line, Uzis raised. The guns were designed for massed fire at close range. The Aztec would be at the outer limit of the weapons’ accuracy and reach. The plane was going to take some punishment, but not nearly as much as it would have from twenty-five yards closer. The fragile aluminum skin was too thin to protect vital parts or Jason from the bullets that did get that far.
The gauge’s needle was crawling past forty knots. If only the damn plane would accelerate a little faster…
The needle hovered between forty-five and fifty.
Parts of his brief aviation instruction came back with the suddenness and impact of a thunderbolt. There was a way to get this thing off the ground quicker.
His looked at the bottom of the panel, where he saw an oddly shaped switch. Pulling it down produced a whir of electronics, and the plane unweighted like a diver about to leave the board. He had hit the flap switch, lowered the flaps at the back of the wing. A procedure designed to slow the aircraft for landing, it also changed the airfoil of the wings, producing more lift, if less speed.
The small plane clawed its way into the air, with Jason pulling the control stick back far enough to keep the stall warning screeching. A stall would occur when the aircraft’s angle of attack could no longer be sustained by available power and the plane simply quit flying. It was an acceptable landing maneuver, but to have all lift spill from the wings only a hundred feet or so in the air left neither time nor altitude for recovery.
But no more fatal than a hailstorm of automatic rifle fire.
There was a loud sound like the clap of hands, and the plane shuddered. At least one of the men had hit the mark. Jason could only hope no essential had been struck. The gauges told him nothing.
At five hundred feet he let the nose down to only a few degrees above the horizon. Turning his head, he could see Grand Turk shrinking in the distance. He lifted the flaps, anticipating the sinking of the aircraft with the loss of extra lift. At a thousand feet he leveled off, pulled the power back to his best guess of economy cruise, and put the Aztec into a slow right turn until both compass and gyroscope indicated a few degrees east of due south.
He sighed as he looked around the small cockpit. He gave the rudder pedals an experimental push, testing the force required to operate each. Maybe flying was like riding a bicycle in that you didn’t forget how.
Quit kidding yourself, he thought. You’ve got to land a plane you’ve never flown before and with possible characteristics of which you’re ignorant.
Oh well, his other self-the pilot self-replied, you’ve already seen the speed at which this baby comes right up to a stall, and what is a landing but a stall into the ground?
You’ll be fine as long as you can find a nice long, deserted beach to put her down. Nothing to it.
A flicker of a needle caught his eye. The left fuel gauge was bumping against the empty peg. Gas gauges in airplanes were notoriously inaccurate; hence the visual check of the fuel level before takeoff. Still, the wing tank could have taken the hit he had heard. He quickly searched the floor between the two front seats and found a lever for each tank. He switched the left engine to feed from the right tank. He was unsure exactly what that would do to the balance of the aircraft, but better another unknown than the certainty of a fuel-starved engine.
Squinting, he peered into the blue haze. Clouds made dark patterns on the water easily mistaken for islands. Each form had to be examined closely. Where he was headed, he would quickly run out of altitude at a mere thousand feet. The mountains were some of the Caribbean’s highest.
In a pocket in the door beside him was stuffed a tattered map, a color chart published periodically by the United States government’s Coast and Geodetic Survey. Jason unfolded it carefully, fearful it might tear. To his pleasant surprise, the side that did not show part of the Turks and Caicos depicted the north coast of the island of Hispaniola. It was well out-of-date-he would riot be able to rely on the printed radio frequencies-but he had no intent of making contact with facilities that could well have been alerted to the theft of the airplane. The depiction of the physical shape of the coastline, however, would be valuable.
He glanced up from the map in time to see shadows ahead coalescing into a definite form. A strip of foamy white surf along a golden beach confirmed his arrival. The question was, exactly where?
He turned to fly almost due east along the coast and passed over what was clearly a resort area. A golf course was laid out amid a jungle; the blue of a swimming pool twinkled in the sun. He was low enough to see people on the tennis courts. A few minutes headed the other way and he was over a finger of land running east and west. It took only
a glance at the map to confirm he was over the Samana Peninsula of the Dominican Republic’s north coast. Now to find a place to land.
There were several airstrips carved into the jungle, distinguishable from roads only by their straightness and the fact that one or two aircraft were visible on the ground. Tempting, but Jason decided not. Leaving a stolen aircraft where it likely would be found would start a trail he would prefer did not exist.
He descended slowly, his eyes on the beaches below him. Over a slight ridge, a muddy river formed a small delta along the coast. As far as Jason could see, there were no roads or other signs of habitation nearby, probably because the silt from the river’s mouth spoiled the beach for swimming and sunbathing.
With one eye on the airspeed gauge and the other on the altimeter, he entered a lazy downward spiral. He made one final check, a low pass over the coast to spot rocks or other obstructions along the beach, before he lowered the gear and let the flaps back down. With the wheels hanging in the airstream, the Piper settled faster than Jason had anticipated. He was reluctant to add power, which would increase speed, which, in turn, would extend the length of beach required to stop. He eased back on the controls until the stall warning’s bray began.
With a nose-up attitude, the Aztec slammed its wheels into sand that felt far less solid than it looked. There was the sound of tearing metal and the plane dipped to the left as it careened across the beach toward the river. One of the gear struts had collapsed. Now Jason was a mere passenger with no control over the aircraft. He could only flip off the power switches and hope.
The plane took a couple of spins before the left wing dug into the riverbank and came to a tooth-jarring stop.
Either the frame or the door had been bent, because Jason had to put his back against the exit and use his feet against the other side of the Piper to force it open. Panting with exertion, he dropped into wet, cool mud.
His shoes, still without laces, were underwater, invisible in the brown flow. Holding on to the crippled plane, he climbed onto the bank and surveyed his location. Palm trees screened anything more than a few yards behind the beach. Unless someone happened to be flying along the coast, he doubted the Piper would be seen for some time. Within a day or two, it was likely the force of the river might push it underwater, where it would never be found.
He sat, took off his socks, and wrung them out before putting his shoes back on and beginning what he knew would be a long trek to the resort he had seen. Before rounding a curve of the beach, he stopped and took one last look at the little twin engine.
Old pilots’ lore: any landing you can walk away from was a good one.
Chapter Eighteen
Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic
Two nights later
The warm night air brought whiffs of salsa music from the band on the beach sixteen stories below the balcony of Jason’s hotel room. He could also hear party voices, although he could not tell if the words were in Spanish or English. He had had a spicy Spanish dinner, the name of which he could not remember but one he suspected he would continue to taste for hours, if not days. He had washed the meal down with several El Presidentes, the light Dominican lager. If he was going to make the early flight out in the morning, he needed to go to bed soon.
But he really didn’t want to end the evening. He had never been in a city quite like this. He had been to tropical climates before, in the slums of dusty settlements on the Horn of Africa, where the rodent population outnumbered humans and the smell of rotting garbage and open sewers were strong enough to make the eyes water. If he had been lucky, he had arrived by aircraft, fixed-wing or rotor. More often, he and the members of his six-man Delta Force squad had reached their destination by parachute-HALO
(high altitude and low operations)-at night into leech-ridden Asian jungles where the night brought fever-bearing mosquitoes that filled the moisture-laden air with buzzing, and where cotton uniforms were always damp.
The enemies he had been sent to bring out or leave for others to bury frequently did not live in the resort spas of the world.
Santo Domingo had the same humid air Jason associated with snakes, insects, and rot. But here, the night’s fragrance hinted at tropical flowers. Here in the city, he had seen more high-rises than tin-roofed hovels. Cars filled streets lined with high-end shops. People smiled at one another and laughed a lot.
Sort of like an egalitarian St. Barts with a Latin beat.
The band below launched into a samba, and Jason took a sip from the Brugal rum and tonic he held.
The old life was behind him. Instead of risking his ass for a soldier’s pay, he was rich. Instead of chasing petty warlords, he sought the major pooh-bahs of world-stage nasties. He could afford good hotels and flew first-class only, thank you.
He thought of the Aztec and the cashier’s check he had instructed his Swiss bank to send its owner to cover any insurance deductable. Mostly first-class, anyway.
The bigger the game, the higher the stakes. No matter how high, he’d trade it all for a final five minutes with Laurin, a chance to say a proper good-bye rather than wait for a cup of coffee that never came.
The rum, he guessed, was making him maudlin. High stakes, big money. Had he been asked to, he would have hunted at his own expense the animals who killed the innocent. He had a major score to even. Moslem fundamentalists with a hijacked airplane, a shadowy group who killed those who earned a living in a manner they didn’t like. Terrorists were terrorists whether using a bomb or a secret weapon. Jason would take pleasure in eradicating them like the vermin they were.
He patted the money belt, fattened this afternoon by the arrival by diplomatic courier of three passports, each with supporting driver’s permits, credit cards, club memberships, and the like. One even had a Dominican Republic entry visa already stamped in it. Mama thought of everything.
Tomorrow he would take a number of flights that would eventually end on the other side of the Atlantic.
Rome, then to Sicily, where Dr. Bergenghetti was currently doing some sort of research, according to Mama. He frowned.
Rome.
It was a city he and Laurin had planned to visit in the spring of ‘02. She had already begun the planning, looking at hotel brochures, reading guidebooks.
The glass in Jason’s hand shattered before he realized how hard he had been squeezing it. He went inside arid wrapped a towel around his bleeding palm, so absorbed in his mental anguish he did not feel the throbbing of sliced flesh.
Chapter Nineteen
Taormina, Sicily
Villa Ducale
Two days later
Taormina spilled down the side of a mountain, ending at the Strait of Messina. The slope upon which the town had its tenuous grasp was not what snagged the visitor’s eye, however. The center of visual attention was Mount Aetna, a dark mass in the haze to the northeast. At eight in the morning, its white beard of heat-generated clouds was the only blemish in an otherwise blue sky.
Jason sat at one of only four tables on the hotel’s piazza, sipping coffee with the consistency of molasses. He would not have been surprised had it sucked the spoon out of his hand. Probably enough caffeine to make Sleepy, one of Snow White’s dwarves, into an insomniac.
He was just about to help himself to the breakfast buffet of fruit, cereal, cheese, and meats when the hotel’s manager stepped outside. “Mr. Young?”
Jason’s passport, the one with the Dominican entry and exit visas, proclaimed him to be Harold Young of Baltimore.
“Mr. Young, the package you asked about has arrived.”
The parcel was heavy for its size. Besides his name, it had no other markings. If the manager found the private delivery of a package to a foreign guest unusual, he didn’t show it.
Giving the man a few euros as a tip, Jason abandoned breakfast for the moment to return to his room, a white plaster-walled backdrop for paintings of the flowering cacti that covered Sicily. Once alone, he tore the brown paper from a box made of
heavy cardboard. Inside was a holster with a belt clip, a SIG Sauer P228, the same type of weapon he had carried on St. Bart’s, and two clips loaded with thirteen rounds each. A quick inspection revealed a third clip, also loaded, already in the weapon.
Jason slid the extra magazines into his pocket and fastened the gun onto his belt at the small of his back, where it would be concealed under the loose-fitting guayabera he had purchased for that purpose. For the first time since arriving, he felt completely dressed.
Maria Bergenghetti was waiting for him when he returned to the lobby.
He had anticipated a middle-aged academic, perhaps with the dark skin and short stature of most Sicilians. Instead, he was looking at a young woman of five-nine or -ten whose sun-streaked hair was tucked into a bun under a pith helmet, the sort of headgear one would expect to see on a British archeologist of the last century. She wore khaki shirt and shorts, loose fitting but not enough to conceal a figure that would be perfectly at home on a beach on St. Bart’s.
Blue eyes peered at him quizzically. “Mr. Young?”
Jason managed to shake off his surprise. “Er, yes, you must be Dr. Bergenghetti.”
“Well, I am hardly Dr. Livingstone. Do you stare like that at everyone you meet?”
He felt himself flush as he extended a hand. “Only the ones who look more like a swimsuit model than a volcanologist.”
She shook. Her hand was cool, as though it had somehow managed to evade the growing Sicilian heat. “I am not sure what a volcanologist looks like.” There was a sparkle in her eyes. She was obviously enjoying the repartee. “And that remark borders on sexism, something I understood you Americans abhorred.”
He couldn’t place her accent, if indeed she had one. “Only unattractive women, Doctor. The pretty ones enjoy being admired, as they do in any country. Join me for breakfast?”
