by Quinn, Fiona
Franco was beyond frightened. I could see the shine of it coming off his skin. He would be shot if they found out he’d helped me. I was putting him in terrible danger by asking him to trust me, and more, to trust in his prayers. What if God had sent me to be their miracle, and he turned me down? How could he survive knowing that when offered a chance to save his little boy he was too cowardly to grab it?
His face hardened as he made his decision. “What am I to do?”
“Nothing. Forget I was here. Forget I said anything about your son. Breathe deeply and know that all will go well.”
The bells rang, and Franco moved toward the cab. I shadow walked to the back of the truck, climbed in, and lay down against the tailgate so anyone looking in would see past me into the emptiness. Franco cranked the engine. We drove over the grassy field to the front gate. I heard the guard’s heavy boots on the gravel. He stopped to talk to Franco. Another guard walked over with his dog; it was Alpha. Alpha wanted to know why I was in the truck. He sent pictures telling me I should be in my window. I sent pictures back, saying I needed to go home and feed my dogs, but I would visit him. Alpha walked around the truck without alerting anyone I was inside.
The bells that rang to mark Franco’s time to leave were the same bells that signaled Drunk that his break was over, and he needed to take me in. By now he had discovered that his keys were gone, and I was, too. Since there was no commotion, I assumed that Drunk went into self-protection mode. He would have found that I had left the door ever so slightly open for him. He probably let himself in, and tried to go on about his tasks as if I were still there. Buying himself a little time to find an alibi, an excuse, or an escape plan of his own.
Forty
Elicia would discover that I was not in my cell when she brought my food at four. I wasn’t sure what she’d do. I didn’t think that she’d send up an alarm, but she might ask questions. She was the wild card. Would she bring attention to me? How much time did I have? If I were lucky, I wouldn’t be discovered until Grandma Oatmeal in the morning. Possibly longer. If Grandma Oatmeal didn’t notice then maybe I’d have until Maria and Gray Mustache came to remove my fingers. I convulsed. If any of that were true, I had to get to the airport and away tonight.
As we drove down the road, Franco stopped and jogged to the back of the truck. “Now what should I do?”
“What do you usually do, Franco?”
“I drive by my house and check on things, then I drive the truck over to the supply center and walk home.”
“I need some things. I need a set of Elicia’s clothes, some food and water, a map, a blanket, a plastic ground cover and a gun.”
“I have no gun.”
“Okay, a knife then. Where is the supply center?” We whispered even though we were out in the middle of freaking-nowhere with no one to hear us.
“Ten kilometers to the south of my house.”
“That’s fine. Just stop as soon as you can when there’s no one around, and I can get out of the truck. You will continue on.” Franco pulled a rag from his pocket and wiped at the sweat that dripped in his eyes.
“There’s a tunnel a short distance down the road from my home. It would be a good place to get out, and you can hide in the forest. They will have the dogs out looking for you, but they won’t look to the south, and they won’t look that far away.”
“Where will they look?”
“To the north, where there’s an airport, or to the east, where there are boats on the coast. They wouldn’t think south because of the forests. Do you have a plan?”
“Yes, but it’s better for you that you know nothing.”
Franco looked over his shoulder. I could hear a truck rumbling toward us. He ran and climbed into the cab and headed back down the road.
Our truck stopped. The cab opened and shut. I heard Franco ask about Pablo. Door hinges screeched. The grandmother said she needed to go down the street for a minute; Franco told her to go ahead. Time passed, then Franco told the old woman goodbye. We were off down the road. We had only driven a short way when everything was thrown into darkness and the truck stopped.
“Hurry, hurry, the coast is clear.” Franco thrust a backpack into my arms.
“And here is the map. I have circled our village, so you can find us again, the airport, and a fishing village. The fishing village is twenty kilometers away. The airport is not quite thirty kilometers. I have thought about it – over land, you will fail. Even though they will watch the boats and planes carefully, you seem to know what you’re doing. I’m depending on you for my son’s life. May you be blessed in all you do. We will pray hard. I know it will take you time to get to America - please, please hurry. Pablo hasn’t got much more time to wait.”
Franco jumped into the cab and drove away. I slunk from the tunnel and eased into the trees, walking a ways off, then pulled off the pack to see what Franco had gathered for me.
The heavy camping pack held a compass, a sharp hunting knife in a side holster and belt. I attached those to me right away. I needed the belt to hold my jeans up. There were no other clothes - probably Elicia had no others. That, or Franco was afraid that what he’d packed would implicate his family if I were captured. He had wrapped a ratty wool blanket in a plastic ground cover. Underneath, I found a two-liter bottle of water, some soap, and lots of food in old plastic margarine tubs. I pulled out the packet of tamales wrapped in waxed paper and ate them right away. They were still hot; the pork juices dribbled down my chin. I ate until I was full. I needed the energy, and it was too burdensome to carry all of this weight.
Church bells sounded nearby; it was four o’clock. I would make the best progress while it was still light enough to see. I’d have to push hard with eighteen miles to cover – daunting under the best of circumstances. If I could keep a pace of four miles an hour, I could make it to the airport by dark - maybe get a chance to look over the planes. I checked the map, checked the compass, and kept the road vaguely in sight, on my left, as I made my way through the trees and underbrush at a slow jog.
A little over an hour and a half had gone by when I had to cross the road. I was approaching the jail. I had sent thoughts to Alpha, asking how things were at the prison. He sent back pictures of calm: lazy guards, heat, thirst, boredom. I told him that soon they would discover that I had left my window to go home to feed my dogs, and please lead the guards, away from my scent, to the west. He said he would. I slowed to a walk as I connected with each of the dogs that I had gotten to know over the past months asking them for their help. That might buy me time. And the exercise helped divert my attention away from my screaming body.
Exhausted and panting I leaned against a tree. Eighteen miles had been too much. Too hard, especially in this heat.
I thought of Striker at SEAL training. He had pushed his body beyond what he thought was physically possible and had not just survived but thrived. I focused on that, pretending this was my BUDs training. If Blaze and Striker could get through their hell week, I’d be damned if I was going to ring the brass bell. I pretended I was in training with them beside me -- anything to get away from the voice that said, lay down even when my muscles, enfeebled from months in prison and lack of food, bunched into cramped knots and my heart knocked on my rib bones. The stitch in my side doubled me over. I gasped and spat into the dust at my feet. I will not lay down.
As the sun tilted past the horizon, the evening sky was painted indigo and filled with bats. I crouched beside a pine tree, feeling the rough bark under my fingertips. The forest vibrated with evening sounds.
I spent time getting a feel for the airport - trying to sense any guards, dogs, or people. The SEALs have a saying, “slow is smooth and smooth is fast.” I needed to apply a little smooth to this operation.
I slunk from plane to plane to figure out which one I would take. I settled on a Cessna C500 Citation. It was the largest plane out there. I was looking for fuel capacity. I had a long way to go. The others were little Cessna 150s and the lik
e; their tanks were tiny, 200 maybe 300 miles.
I shadow walked to the C500. Its fuel gauge showed full. As I peeked into the back, I saw everything unnecessary had been stripped out. Most likely, this one was used for carrying drugs and other contraband. There was nothing in it now to balance the weight from front to back. That might be a problem, but I didn’t see another viable choice.
I made my way to the hangar and tried the handle on the locked door. I slithered around peeping in windows. No one seemed to be here. On the far side, one of the bays hadn’t been completely closed. I squeezed under, dragging the backpack after me.
My first task was getting my cell phone operational. I found a five-volt cord and a couple of paperclips to make a you’re-in-deep-shit charger. As the battery charged, I went to the bathroom and took a quick shower. I was desperate to clean myself. I was sure to wipe the moisture out of the stall and take the wet towel with me. I changed my clothes into some man’s jeans and T-shirt I found in one of the lockers, stuffing my clothes into my pack. I refilled my water bottle and filled another bottle that I found under the kitchen sink. I ate a bite or two out of each of the open containers in the fridge – not wanting to give a heads up that I’d been here. And I studied the maps in the control room, jotting down coordinates.
This was the scary part. My survival came down to the decisions I was about to make. I needed to figure out what in the world I was going to do from this point. I could try flying to a different country, Belize or Mexico - but I still had no idea about the role I was playing in the kidnap-Lexi show. Would the prison guards just ignore the fact that I was gone? Would they launch an international man hunt? Who was the puppet master here? If it wasn’t Sylanos himself were there others from the cartel in on Maria’s scheme? I didn’t understand the conversation between Maria and Gray Mustache. They seemed afraid of Sylanos knowing where I was. Was he actively looking for me? Were they holding me away from Sylanos’ group because they wanted me, and Maria wanted a pay-off? If the cartel was searching for me, then I couldn’t land anywhere in the Caribbean, Central or South America; their players would snatch me as soon as the door opened. The Sylanos machine’s power and connections were omnipresent, and they would not like it if a little chicklet from Iniquus outwitted them. I would die.
What if it were just Maria and her tio? Then I could safely land at any airport and ask for help.
Since I didn’t know, I had to assume worst-case scenario and act as if there was an international manhunt that I needed to thwart. So, the only direction I could go was to the US. Texas was about a thousand miles away. Miami looked like around 800 miles. I was going to aim for Miami. I didn’t know how far a single tank would take me. I’d have to plan on refueling.
I’d retrace my original flight and set down on that grass landing strip on Isla de Juventude to refuel. Oh, holy hell, Maria would probably know about this strip. I’d have to make the stop darned fast. Up and out, and back to the States before morning when my escape would certainly be discovered. I shook my head at the map, hands resting on my protruding hip bones. My teeth chattered together, rattling my thoughts.
It had been many months since I had been at that landing strip. Hopefully it was someone’s job to come in and refill those fuel bladders regularly. I sucked in a deep breath and tried to focus, moving my shaking finger over the map. There were little red lines all over the Caribbean and all of them were in remote locations. Secret landing strips. I found a red line drawn on Isla de Juventude. I would bet anything this one was the strip that I was looking for. Probably a drug lord paid the government graft to ignore it.
I heard a jeep motoring up the road. I crouched by the window and watched it go by. They didn’t even glance over at the airport, so far so good. I wiped my sweaty palms down the stolen pants. Okay, I had a plan.
I grabbed a set of keys from the flight room and retrieved my cell phone. Making my way carefully to the plane. I did a pre-flight check. If I was going to leave, it had better be sooner rather than later. The wind bent the tree tops, and the air hung heavy with moisture. A storm boiled in the distance. I needed to get going while I still had a chance. “Stupid as hell flying in this weather,” I muttered.
Whoever owned this plane was serious about what they did. I checked for an ELT, the emergency tracking device, and found that it had already been disconnected. The owner didn’t like to be tracked any more than I did. The plane had a Garmin system for navigation. I put in the coordinates for the grass strip. Time to go. The engine roared. I taxi-ed to the runway, and the plane raced upward.
Forty-One
When I turned twelve-years-old, I joined the Civil Air Patrol with my dad. C.A.P. was like the aviator version of scouts. We learned how to fly and practiced our skills by doing orienteering runs and search and rescue missions. I won a scholarship to do ground school, which I loved. My dad taught me how to fly, and I’d go up with him on practice missions all the time.
I’d flown a lot of different kinds of planes – jets and props — not just the little two-seaters like the ones I had left behind at the airport, but I’d never flown a C500 before, especially one that had been stripped down. I couldn’t wrap my brain around just how mind-bogglingly dangerous this was. With nothing in the back to balance the plane, I ended up front-end heavy. Now when I made adjustments with my flaps – the only way I had to adjust for my height and orientation in the sky — the plane responded erratically. My plane acted like a drunken sailor listing from side to side, sliding up and down in the sky.
And if that wasn’t enough, the turbulent air bobbled me around. My stomach lurched - not good. Eating food rich with fat for the first time in months made my stomach volcanic. It roiled - wanting to spew everything back up as red hot lava. I found a pile of air sick bags in a side pocket of my chair, and I used them one after the other until I had nothing left in me but dry heaves and a trickle of bile.
A two hour flight, I cajoled myself. But faced into an enormous head wind, I knew it would take much longer. The squall slowed my progress and sucked my fuel. My palms sweat, my knees trembled — I never once thought that it would’ve been better to have stayed back at the prison with Maria.
I shouted Blaze’s motto out loud every time the plane dipped and dropped through the sky, “If I’m going out, it’s going to be in a blaze of glory!” Somehow this fit Blaze so much better than me. But I needed to borrow some of his bravado.
The storm expanded on the Garmin screen; most of the Caribbean fell under its enormous reach. Expletives zipped up and burst like fireworks on the surface of my consciousness. I heard men talking over the radio about Tropical Storm Ivan, out in the Atlantic. As it approached the Gulf, Ivan was organizing into a category one hurricane. Holy hell! I needed to get down. NOW.
Please, God. I don’t want to die. Please let me get home.
I inched closer to my goal. My nerves were frayed and misfiring. Desperately, I grappled with my panic – “Head in the game, Lynx.” I heard Striker’s words coming back to me from the bank robbery debacle.
“I can do this!” screamed my inner cheerleader over the roar of the wind and the engine. Gusts tossed me like a rag doll. The wind shear could break my wings off at any given moment. Insanity. I forced my eyes to blink, my lungs to expand then contract.
I didn’t hear the voices of any other pilots coming over the radio. I did see some boats below me being pitched on the waves. I wondered if they had looked up, and having seen me, thought, “at least I have a chance.”
I approached my coordinates with thanksgiving. But boy would landing take all of my skills and then some. I could only see by the strobe lightening. Well, I had that to be thankful for, I guessed. I had landed a few times in pastures and on country roads to get a feel for making emergency landings. Everything I knew was from my dad; he was the best. God, I wished he were piloting now.
“Dad, help me. Help me get down,” I prayed. Landing in this albatross was going to take fine-tuned skill. I needed the han
ds of a surgeon, or I would wreck in the jungle.
I took every inch of the landing strip. I skid toward the tree line then jerked to a stop. The storm winds picked up in velocity. I took a deep breath, opened my door and fell thankfully to the ground.
I stumbled to my feet - my legs rubbery beneath me.
Okay, Lexi, think. The storm was too big. I’d have to wait it out. Maria shouldn’t find out I’ve gone until morning. Then they’d form a search party. Possibly, she’d make a call to someone to check this place out if and when she figured out I had a plane. I should be safe here until the storm calms — from Maria at least. I looked at the sky and the trees. This was bad.
If I were to park the plane by the trees and a tree fell on it, and if I survived, I’d be stuck in Cuba. If I parked on the runway, the plane would take the brunt of the wind. The wind could get under the wings and toss me around some more. I could lose the plane that way. I had no idea what to do here, and I was well aware that my decisions were forming in a panic-stricken brain. I blew out a long-held breath and climbed back up behind the steering column. I taxi-ed around to the bladders to refuel and make my plane as heavy as possible.
I peeked under the reservoir cap. Yes, full. I did a happy dance. As I grabbed up the hand pump and filled my reservoirs, the wind whipped up debris that stung my exposed flesh. I had to lean against the plane for support.
Lying flat on my back in the belly of the plane, I tried to be reasonable. Okay, my situation sucked, but it sucked a lot less than twelve hours ago. Anything was better than rotting with gangrene, waiting for death in prison without my fingers.
Oh, Maria, this isn’t over by a long shot. When I’m strong again, I’m coming for you.
I kept my cell phone turned off. I was afraid to call any attention to myself. If I checked for bars on my phone, I could ping on some cell tower, and that just might be the thing that would put a spotlight on me. Even if people weren’t looking for me because of my prison break, the guy I stole this plane from wouldn’t be happy. I’d guessed that this type of plane costs about a half million - used. And again, I had no information. The plane’s owner could be working solo, or he could be in a show with a big-time puppet master. That wouldn’t be pretty. I may have two drug kingpins looking for me now.
