Kayak Jim shouts, “Can’t. No mountains with this gas. Gotta be sea level.”
Susie says, “If we can’t go over the mountains, the gulf is out. Gotta go south or east.”
Kayak Jim points out his windshield. “East-southeast. I’ll vector us at the Grenadines. You decide where.”
Anne shouts over me: “No. The Gryphon’s other planes probably went there. Go due south toward Cartagena. That’s another five hundred miles of open water for ’em to fly.”
Susie grabs Anne’s good arm. “We can’t take the gold to Colombia.”
Anne nods. “I know, dearie. We’d be dead before our engines stopped.”
They stare. Then grin and, in unison, say: “Tania Hahn. Hotel Bellavista.”
Susie shouts to Kayak Jim: “South-southwest to Isla del Maiz. Fifty miles off the Miskito Coast of Nicaragua. Come in from due east toward Managua, then hard south at the coast.”
Jim does a thumbs-up.
I ask.
Susi says, “Two islands; part of Nicaragua, but not. Pirate haven in the old days. We know the Indians, the locals. It’s perfect. We’ll fly this asshole riding our wing into the water. His last radio call to the Gryphon will signal us as going inland into Nicaragua.”
“Swell. Then what?”
Susie says, “Tania Hahn. Rugby. Defrocked FBI. Deep green-card CIA. Pirate. It’s her hotel.”
“Green card?”
“Independent contractor. Like me.”
Anne adds, “The island has a five-thousand-foot airstrip. Commercial flights from the mainland once a day; old, old, French-made ATRs. Could carry the weight we need.”
Susie nods. “Better. Tania could get us any plane we wanted. Like a jet. No questions asked. And she could pay cash for us, not gold. A Cessna Citation can land on three thousand feet. Probably get twelve hundred miles in three hours and change. Maybe Houston or New Orleans. Tania’s wired in New Orleans.”
My turn to worry. “Yeah, but customs?”
Susie says, “Have to ask her. New Orleans is kind of a CIA town—Lee Harvey Oswald, Clay Shaw, the usual suspects. Lotta dope goes through there; might be tricky.”
Anne leans back against the bulkhead. “I’m wanted for political murder in Jamaica. No way I get through immigration anywhere in the US.”
The tone is decidedly calm; both women are bruised, cut, bandaged, taped up, and armed to the teeth. They should sound, look, and act desperate, but don’t.
I flatline a smile to the existential wisdom one acquires after many years of racetrack sure things. “Yep. Once again, I may have fallen in with bad company.”
Susie fixes on the tracking plane out her window. “And this time you’ll be glad of it.” She looks back to me. “When that asshole’s boss makes his final appearance.”
I drop my chin, look at her through my eyebrows. “Excuse me? Final appearance? As far as this adventure’s concerned, he’s already done that. Hasn’t he?”
***
Kayak Jim yells back to us: “Nicaragua coastline.”
I check the window. “Tracking plane’s still there.”
Anne says, “Shit. Crapshoot now. If Tania’s on-island, she can get us a jet . . . from somewhere. I’m sure of that. Comin’ from Houston or NOLA, we’re lookin’ at four hours minimum after Tania makes the call. So, best case, we’re off the island five hours after we land.”
Susie checks the tracking plane that we expected to be gone, then does the math. “Haiti’s what, four hours from here? Same for the nearest Grenadines?”
Anne nods. “In a jet or turbo twin—like you know he has if he’s moving human transplant parts—it could be two or three.”
“We’ll be sitting ducks if the Gryphon knows where we landed.” I climb to Kayak Jim. “How much gas do we have?”
Jim checks his gauges. “Two hundred miles. Give or take.”
Anne slaps her knee with her good hand and shouts: “Costa Rica. Lake Arenal. Volcano lake. No airstrips. The Gryphon can’t land anywhere near there.”
Jim yells: “Arenal’s the mountains. No mountains, remember? Can’t trust our gas.”
I stare at Jim. “You know Anne’s volcano?”
Jim nods. “Famous. The lake below the volcano is the best windsurf spot in the hemisphere. Wind blows thirty-plus day and night.”
“And we could land in that?”
“Maybe. If we had the right gas.”
I look back at Anne and Susie, expecting an alternative, survivable option from them . . . not the thumbs-up both are giving Jim.
***
The Gryphon’s plane drops off our wing at Nicaragua’s Rio San Juan, heading for an airstrip we can see at the Nicaragua-Costa Rica border. Anne, Susie, and I high-five.
Anne says, “He’ll be back up in thirty minutes, flying circles or outright guesses. We’re a seaplane. Going to one of three places: Lake Nicaragua, Rio San Juan, or Arenal. The San Juan River would be a last resort. He’ll figure us for Nicaragua first. The wind at Arenal . . . we’d be crazy.”
Susie and I look at Anne, then Kayak Jim.
The brand-new plan B is a go: Land on the lake. Don’t flip. Dump the gold in two hundred feet of dark water when the surfers aren’t looking, get gas at a marina, fly away to safety. Somewhere. Hide there. Recover. Return when we can defend ourselves and dive deep.
My partners think this is reasonable.
What I think doesn’t seem to matter.
Kayak Jim says, “Going down. Hold on.”
We buckle in, dip a wing, then level out fifty feet above the lake, into the wind. The plane bucks like it’s riding a corrugated roof. Jim cuts the power and drops the nose.
The pontoons hit, bounce, slide; we start to spin, don’t, slice through the waves and gusts, don’t get cross-winded, and don’t flip over.
Kayak Jim shouts over his shoulder. “Dock dead ahead. Gas pumps and boats. Get the gas first. Make your sat call from there.”
We make the dock’s end and pop the door. The lake smells like sulfur. Seven surfer types shake their heads—white kids, an old guy, and a fit, leathery woman. All have hands cupped over their ears. Long blondish dreads slap one kid’s face. He uses one hand to wrestle the dreads calm and shouts something Rasta-ish.
Anne leans out the door and shouts street-Kingston back.
The kid and Anne shout Rasta-hip-hop-video to each other until he does a thumbs-up. “Ja, mon! Ja, mon!”
I ask.
Anne leans back in, says: “These pumps are empty. But there’s a pump up the road. They’ll fill us a truck and car, drive ’em here, we siphon it in, keep ’em comin’ till we’re full.”
Susie jumps out onto the dock with her .45 belted in her boat shorts, then separates from everyone and puts the sat phone to her ear.
All the boys do hot-for-teacher.
Anne and I jump out. I focus on the sky. Anne talks more Rasta speak to the surfer kid and watches the other people on the dock watch Susie.
Kayak Jim cuts the engine and jumps out to prep for the gas.
Susie runs back to us, stops, and points west, away. “Talked to Tania; Lana’s about to hit Miami; Tania’s in New Orleans.” Susie pushes her and me farther away from the people on the dock. “We don’t have to dump the gold. Tania said that back in the ’60s and ’70s the CIA had a 14-40 at Liberia—”
“A what?”
“Fourteen thousand four hundred feet. The length of the runway. Could put a full C-130 down on it; safe-supply our revolutions in El Salvador and Nicaragua. Liberia’s a commercial airport now; ten-thousand-foot runway. Maybe thirty-five to forty miles from here—be a wicked drive of bad mountain road, but if we can get there, Tania’s coming in on a Lear 25. Be there in four hours. Said she’ll bribe the local constabulary; we load up and head for the Great Outdoors.”
I want to join the party, but I knew the guys in Huey Lewis and the News back in the ’80s. They had an aging Lear 25 then. I say, “Plane’s kinda old, isn’t it?”
Susie checks the sky. “Younger than you. And lots prettier.”
Anne joins us, listens to Susie repeat what she told me, then says, “We’ll need a truck.” Anne walks to her blond Rasta pal, talks, shakes hands, and walks back to Susie and me.
“My new boyfriend Lester has a mate with a farm truck—lots of ’em around here. Told him we’d hire the truck to San Jose.”
Kayak Jim walks to us, listens to the plan, shakes his head, and says, “Better we fly into Panama Bay. Your drive from here to Liberia would be a bunch safer.” He winces. “But lots more eyes.”
I say, “And we’d have to get back in your plane.”
Anne says, “The road we’ll be takin’ is no picnic. Loaded heavy, bad tires . . .”
Susie spits sideways into a thirty-mile-per-hour wind and votes, “Road.”
I vote, “Road.”
Anne says, “Road it is.” She turns to Kayak Jim. “You get 667 coins—two crates and change. Take it all with you or send ’em with us, your choice.”
“What about the naked pictures?”
Anne laughs. Susie checks her condition, then Anne’s with her arm duct-taped to her stomach. “Really?”
“Really.”
Susie says, “We’ll come see you when we’ve been to the hair-and-makeup trailer.” She holds up her hand to stop a response. “For now, thanks. Keep your crates and get outta here before the Gryphon gets lucky and spots the plane.”
“How about three full crates and I wait, let him spot me, then fly him into the clouds and take my chances?”
A full third crate would add eighty-three coins: $250,000.
Anne laughs again. “A mentaller, you are, James.”
“Nah. Better pilot. You’re alive, aren’t you?”
Anne nods, walks to him, and kisses him on the mouth. “We’ll bring a Playboy photographer with us. Do you proud.” She waves her new boyfriend over and asks him to take a photo. He pulls a brand-new iPhone 3 that has a camera built into it, tells the four of us to scrunch together, and pops a photo. Jim scribbles him an email address.
Susie points Lester away, then tells Kayak Jim: “You know you’re not going back to Rum Cay, right? The Gryphon will find you through this plane or some other way. But he’ll find you. You gotta become someone else, and not in the West Indies.”
Kayak Jim winks. “I’d get your gold off the plane and into your truck. Me, I’ve got some adjustments to make. Flew races after Vietnam, did stunt work, but not in a seaplane. Gotta grease her up a tad.”
***
The road from the south side of Lake Arenal is two-lane hairpins, boulders on one side, certain death on the other, and potholes in the blind spots. Half the guardrails are gone. The sun’s starting to drop, adding deep shadow stripes to the blinding glare. The good news? Arenal’s volcano isn’t spewing lava.
***
It takes our rented truck and tico driver two hours to make Highway 1, Costa Rica’s version of a real road. Outside the city of Cañas, a sign points west and reads: “Liberia 43 kilometers.” Scrunched against our driver, Anne says, “Change of plans. Same pay, shorter trip. Go to Liberia. The aero-porto.”
Our driver says, “No comprendo.”
Susie’s bouncing on my lap, hair in my face, and even with most of me beat to death, the bounces feel pretty good. Susie repeats Anne’s instructions in Spanish. Our driver turns right. We can’t be sure that he doesn’t understand English, so we can’t talk much. In Spanish, Susie asks him, “How long?”
Our driver shrugs and answers. I think he says, “One hour; a little more. The road is good, but the holes—” He points through the windshield on a sixty-mile-per-hour highway at sudden potholes that would swallow a sports car.
In English, Susie says, “One hour in Tico means two. This is the Pan-American Highway. Supposedly runs from Tierra del Fuego to Prudhoe Bay in Alaska. More concept than highway.”
I have one arm around her waist. “Does it go to the airport?”
“Used to.” Susie checks her watch and pulls her hair behind her neck out of my face. “Tania should be there when we get there. She said to drive all the way to the far end of the only parking lot. There’s an unmanned gate to the private aviation area. She’ll be at the gate with someone ‘official.’ They’ll lead us to her plane. We’ll load the crates and ammo boxes, shoot whoever won’t take money, and head for happy-land.”
Susie’s bare neck is on my cheek. I sniff. She notices, smiles like maybe I should be thinking about survival.
Anne says, “Tania bringin’ painkillers?”
Susie grins. “Bottles full.”
I ask, “Her share of our boxes?”
“Five million, plus what’s in the water. Includes the plane trip.”
“Fine with me.”
“There’s a catch.” Susie glances over Anne to the driver, adding: “Wait till we’re outta the truck.”
***
A short cherubic blonde in Ray-Ban 2140s and well-fitted jeans stands at the private aviation gate for Aeropuerto de Liberia. Next to her are three armed policemen and a dark-skinned guy in a white guayabera shirt.
I ask Susie, “Your friend, Tania, she wouldn’t rob us, would she?”
Susie grips her .45, tells me to pull mine, then in Spanish, tells our driver, “Stop at the gate.”
Anne says, “Don’t get out, no matter what anyone says, till we’re at the plane.”
Our driver stops when the cherubic blonde pats the headlight. She walks the fender to the driver’s window, glances at the bed and its covered cargo, then leans in at the window and says, “And there you are, the Witches of Eastwick.” Grin. “Siri hiding under the tarp?”
Anne shakes her head. The blonde looks past Anne to Susie on my lap.
Susie says, “Died helping these two save me from that fucking monster.”
The blonde frowns hard and cuts her eyes. “Sorry to hear that.” She pushes her hand through the window to me. “Tania Hahn. Susie said good things about you. And that’s unusual.”
“Bill Owens. We ready?”
“Yeah. This ain’t the kinda place a girl wants to be long.” Tania points at a Lear 25 with the door steps folded out and down and the cargo bays open. “Drive.”
She steps back, waits till we pass, then jogs behind our truck.
Susie, Tania, and I unload, then reload, the seventy-two remaining crates. Tania’s stronger than she looks. Anne stays with our driver, keeping his eyes away from our cargo.
A Latin woman who is clearly not a flight attendant stands in the plane’s door and watches the terminal. Anne pays our driver as agreed. Tania points at the Latina, says “My partner, Shelia Lopez,” then does a thumbs-up at the pilot’s window.
The engines fire. We board into dated luxury. Shelia Lopez has a smile on her face, an automatic pistol behind her leg, and the eyes of someone who you wouldn’t want as an enemy. She greets Susie by name, hugs her, then helps Anne up without touching the duct-taped arm.
Tania follows, slaps the pilot’s exposed shoulder. “Vamanos, muchachos!” She levers the door tight and jumps into a seat facing me. “Go. Go. Go.”
The plane jolts forward, runs the taxiway too fast, and hits the runway roaring. Takeoff shoves my shoulders into my seat. The wheels clear the tarmac and we ramp into a forty-degree climb. My lungs flatten and both eyes roll halfway back. “Jesus. Your boy’s not screwing around.”
Cherubic smile. “Colombia. Been shot at before.”
The Lear screams higher into the climb like we’ve got heat-seekers on our tail, then finally breaks into a bank.
Half the Gs quit. I glance at Anne across the aisle.
She s
ays, “Nothin’ in these windows.”
Tania turns and shouts at the pilots: “Keep it full out. Everything we got!”
I hear “pop” and smell champagne.
Behind me, Susie hoists a foaming bottle of Dom Pérignon. “To Siri, Tommy, and Cyril.” She drinks a messy chug, then shoves the bottle to Anne.
Anne chugs three swallows. “Aye, and BeBe, Taller, Sundown, and Lon. And Sistah, God rest her.” Anne chugs three more. “I’ll be having a tablet or two if we’ve any.”
Tania palms a prescription vial from inside her jacket. The copilot reaches back to Tania’s shoulder, pulls his headphones, and says, “Ten minutes.”
Tania nods and tosses Anne the painkillers. “Go easy on ’em, we got business yet.”
From behind me, Susie wraps an arm around my seat and me, grabs the bottle of Dom from Anne, and says, “And here’s to you, Bill.” Her arm and the bottle hug me tight to the seat. “You sent that fucking Renfield to hell for all of us. Drink the rest; you deserve it.”
I take the bottle, swig it twice, then hand it to Tania. She waves it off, eyes me favorably and the compliment Susie just paid, then says, “Ten minutes, then we decide.”
“Decide what?”
***
Five minutes pass.
Tania says, “Should’ve gotten a hospital plane. You guys look like shit.”
Anne blinks. “I’m fine.”
Tania looks down her nose. “Don’t think I’d go with fine.”
“See to our business. Or the extent of my scratches won’t matter a’tall.”
Susie takes the bottle back and chugs again. “What day is it?”
Tania says, “Tuesday. And you don’t look that good either.” She focuses on me. “Or you. Speaking of which, why are you here?”
“Well, let’s see. Last Friday—five whole days ago—I was at Arlington Park wearing a well-tailored seersucker suit. Things were looking pretty good. Saturday, I met her.” I nod at Susie. “Sunday, I flew to Kingston and rehooked up with Herself.” I point at Anne.
Anne makes a smile.
“Anne took me on a boat ride to Haiti in a hurricane. She introduced me to Siri and the latest Haitian Rebelyon. Lots of people tried to kill us. We found Capone’s gold, dodged more bad people and police, and now we’re with you. I’d say we have a right to look somewhat rumpled and still be considered upstanding citizen-pirates.”
Privateers Page 36
