by Barry, Mike
“He wanted to come up front,” the gunman said, “I took him up front.”
“Listen,” the pilot said, his voice not the flat, controlled tenor heard through the loudspeaker but rather a high, almost wispy sound in the cabin, “I’ve got to concentrate on flying this plane. I can’t—”
“Shut the fuck up,” the heavy man said almost casually and the pilot turned back toward the console. Neither the co-pilot nor the navigator looked up. “What do you want?” he said to Wulff.
“That’s not the question. What do you want?”
The gunman said, “Let me take him out of here.” It must have occurred to him that there was no control back in the cabin section. There were only the two of them, then. That was something on his side, Wulff thought, although not very much. Not too damned much. They had the guns, he had none, they were in control of the plane and any attempt to shift the balance was not worth the risk. A lot of people could get killed, the plane itself could be lost. As if in confirmation of this, the cabin shook again hitting a stream of turbulence, dived convulsively like a beast caught in a trap and then came out of it reluctantly, the pilot struggling with the controls, bright little droplets of sweat coming off the co-pilot.
The pilot looked up and said almost desperately, “Could you let me fly the goddamned plane? Could you just leave the cabin, all of you, and let me concentrate on this? I can’t take much more.”
The gunman who had escorted Wulff in, exchanged a look with the heavy man, muttered something which Wulff could not hear and then left the cabin. The heavy man turned toward him holding the rifle loosely, easily, his free hand dangling at his side. He had the kind of fingers that looked as if they had strangled men.
“Who are you?” he said.
“You know who I am,” Wulff said, watching the other man carefully.
“You tell me.”
Wulff looked at the cabin, the three men jammed up against the controls trying to move a plane against panic, looked behind him to catch a glimpse of the stewardesses, like birds, fluttering down in the galley. He made a rapid set of calculations, so quick as to be subconscious, and at the end of them he knew that the decision had been made for him. There was just no other situation possible.
“I’m Martin Wulff,” he said.
The heavy man sighed with pleasure, showed his teeth, held the gun on him. “I thought you were,” he said. “It’s a pleasure.”
“What do you want?”
“What do we want, Wulff?” He tapped the rifle with his free hand almost meditatively and then pointed it again. “What do you think we want?”
“All right,” Wulff said, “you can have it.”
“We intend to take it.”
“Let these people off. Let the plane go down and discharge the passengers. I’ll go with you and the valise will go with you wherever you want.”
“You sound very sacrificing, Wulff,” the man said. He belched, covered his mouth with a hand and then clung to a bulkhead as the plane, hit by another wave of turbulence, began to skitter mindlessly, side to side this time, swaying like a hammock. For just one instant the man’s control dropped; his implacable stare was replaced by terror and the gun slipped. But Wulff could not take advantage of the moment, he was holding onto steel himself and he hardly could see the benefit of trying to get control if the tube carrying them all would fragment under the struggle. After a minute the plane began to fly straight again at a lower level and the pilot looked up, his face almost transparent with shock and said, “You’d better let me radio in again. We’ve lost a lot of altitude and if they lose me on a radar track we’re really in trouble.”
“Where are we?” Wulff said.
“As far as I can tell we’re somewhere over the Great Salt Lake. There’s too much cloud cover though.”
“If you don’t let him fly this fucking plane,” the navigator said, looking up for the first time, a much older man than the other two, (were navigators failed or washed-up pilots? Wulff found himself thinking irrelevantly) “we’re going to be in the Great Salt Lake.”
“All right,” Wulff said, “let’s get out of the cabin.”
“Are you crazy?” the man said. “Who do you think you are? What do you think you’re doing anyway?”
“I’ve got what you want,” Wulff said. “I’m the man you want. We can do business together. But there’s no reason to hold the plane hostage. I’ll cooperate.”
“That suits me,” the pilot said. His shoulders heaved. “That suits me; you talk sense to him. But do it out of my cabin.”
“Land the plane,” Wulff said again, “land the plane and let these passengers off. Get a fresh pilot to volunteer and I’ll go anywhere you want … with the valise. But this can be between us.”
For the first time the heavy man seemed to open a trifle, his eyes becoming luminous. “It would be easier,” he said, “it would be nice and simple if we could do it that way.”
“Let’s do it that way,” Wulff said. “Be reasonable. Do it easy.” He understood the gunman now. He understood both of them. He thought that he could see their position and a dangerous and tricky one it was. They were after the valise, that was their job and about the only way they could get it, they figured, was with a hijacking but they didn’t want any part of it. They were professionals, probably more so than any he had been dealing with so far and the theory among professionals was to accomplish the most with the least possible effort; if you could negotiate your way out of something you did it with a mouth not a gun and if you could get hold of a valise the easy way you didn’t have to hijack a plane to do it because hijacking was a Federal rap and quite serious now.
“You’ll cooperate?” the heavy man said. “You’ll go with us all the way?”
“I have no choice,” Wulff said, “I don’t want to get people killed. I’m not in this to kill people; I’m trying to save them.”
That at least was the truth. If nothing else he had not lied there; his quest was not worth the lives of the innocent. He could litter the continent with the bodies of vermin but he would not, if he could help it, make victims of those who were not culpable because if he did he was playing the vermin’s game.
“All right,” the heavy man said, “all right, I think we might be able to do business that way.” He seemed to think, pointing the edge of the gun at his nose and for a surreal moment Wulff wondered if the equation was going to be solved by the man killing himself, then he dropped the gun to waist-level and said, “I heard that you were a pretty professional guy: I guess that’s the truth.”
“Let’s let them get that plane down,” Wulff said, “and we can find out who’s professional.”
“That suits me,” the heavy man said. He made a gesture with the gun. “Go on,” he said, “you get out, go back to the coach section and shut up. I’ll stay in the cabin and help this man fly her in.” There was no irony in this.
“That makes sense,” Wulff said. “I think that that makes a lot of sense.”
“What do you think?” the heavy man said. He shrugged; in that shrug was a great deal of understanding, more comprehension than Wulff would have wanted the man to have. “You think I’m some kind of goddamned fool?”
“No,” Wulff said, “I don’t. It’s just business.”
“That’s right. Business.”
On the way back to his seat then, Wulff passed the other gunman. The other gunman was in the galley, his gun held loosely on the stewardesses, his features quite lively. Fuck he was mumbling and the stewardesses were looking at him impassively. Fuck indeed. In a few moments, the man would reach below his belt, start to grapple with himself.
Well, Wulff thought, trying to smile reassuringly at the passengers, most of them already looking as if they had suspended hope, it took all kinds, even cruising at thirty-eight thousand feet. It was as much the world up here as down there and you might as well take your pleasure where you could.
II
Delgado sat in the small room, feet on the f
loor and waited for the two men to come in. He tried to keep his mind empty, thinking nothing at all. Thinking only meant anticipation and rage and he could afford neither. Handle things as they came. Delgado breathed deeply, evenly, trying to suspend himself against the killing rage. It was true. He could kill them.
A security guard brought the two men inside. They contradicted what Delgado had conceived them to be. He had supposed that they would have a lurking stupidity, the clumsiness and indelicacy which he had always associated with the type of people who worked at low organization levels up north, but no they looked reasonably competent, even comfortable, particularly the taller, heavier man who seemed to have decided that he would do all of the speaking. The other one held himself against a corner under the gaze of the guard. “Listen,” the heavier one said, “I’m glad that we finally got a chance to get in here. We’ve been waiting—”
“Shut up,” Delgado said.
“I’ll shut up when I’m ready to. Now you people listen to me, you just can’t—”
“I said,” Delgado said, “that I wanted you to shut up.” He made a gesture toward the guard. The guard shrugged, came toward the desk, stood behind the heavy man and very carefully lifted his pistol.
Almost delicately he hit the man behind the ear. It was contrived to be a grazing blow, successful that way, and only a thin smear of blood came from the scalp lining behind the ear. The heavy man did not even fall. He stood there in confusion as if someone had whipped out a handkerchief and thrust it upon him and then, almost casually he moaned, staggered backward, landed against the wall.
The other man reached forward in a gesture of appeal. “Look,” he said, “I don’t know—”
“You keep quiet too,” Delgado said. He found that his hands were curling convulsively in rage. No good. It could not be this way. If anything was to come of this he would have to remain in control. “All right,” he said to the guard, “get out. Stand outside the door. I don’t think that we’ll have any problem here but if you hear any noises—”
The guard nodded. His English was only fair but he gave the impression of complete comprehension which was enough. He walked to the door, opened it gently and went outside.
Delgado leaned back in his chair and looked at the two men. The one that was supposed to be the spokesman was running his hands through his scalp, feeling the seam of the cut, a strange, blank expression in his eyes which was worse than fear because he had not yet judged what was happening to him. The other man stood quietly, holding his hands together, looking past Delgado out the window where he could see the mountains. They were not thoughts of escape that were overtaking him but merely a wistful desire for an openness he would never see again. Delgado knew the feeling well. He had been there.
“You gentlemen have put us—all of us,” he said, “in an impossible situation. Now I am going to do the talking and you are going to do nothing but quietly listen. I do not think that you truly understand what you have done and I have been appointed to tell you.”
The heavy man said desperately, “Listen, damn it, we had instructions—” and then at a look from Delgado seemed to become aware of the fact that he was speaking. He put a hand to his mouth like a child. A thread of blood came down over his eyebrow giving him a clown’s aspect.
“Your instructions have nothing to do with our situation,” Delgado said, “nothing to do with our situation at all. You have hijacked a major airliner with very controversial contents, have set it down in this country, have drawn international attention at a time when we want a minimum of attention, and have put my government in an impossible position. Certain agreements which were being worked out through the most intense and delicate of negotiations may have been utterly destroyed by this adventure. You have drawn maximum attention to a very dangerous situation at precisely the point where for the first time that situation seemed to be ending. And furthermore—” the heavy man seemed about to say something and Delgado raised a hand which quieted him, the man burbled to silence, the other one was looking at Delgado with an expression of absolute terror—our government has very strong feelings about being involved in what is known by the uninformed as the international drug trade. My country has had bery serious problems with this in the past and it is only through the most dedicated cleansing of the government at all levels, from bottom to top, that in the last several years we have come to assume some control over the situation. And now you have brought here and placed in our custody perhaps the largest single amount of drugs which has ever existed in a single shipment and you have also placed in our custody an extremely dangerous man who has drawn more attention. Do you begin to see now what you have done? Is there any awareness?”
Delgado sighed, leaned back from the desk and fumbled in the drawer for a cigarette, not looking at the two men now, letting them consider what he had said, trying again to reach that blankness of mind and aspect which he had had before they entered the room. It was not so much a mask now, not as much of a mask as it might have been if he had not been on the other side of this kind of desk many times in his life, knew what they were going through, knew exactly how the situation was opening up underneath them. They had a feeling of peril, of falling. It was always that way when you carried through something difficult and dangerous only to find that all along the signals had been wrong, had been issued in a different language.
“A million dollars worth of heroin,” he said to the silent men. “Let’s call it what it is, gentlemen, let’s not use any of your American terms like shit, smack, horse, H. It’s heroin, the most addictive and dangerous of all the hallucinatives used by humanity over a period of fifteen hundred years, a drug whose mere private possession in your country is a crime with severe penalties … and you have hijacked a plane in flight, imprisoned the crew, imprisoned a man named Wulff who was in original possession of these materials, have discharged your passengers at an earlier point and then have brought all of this within our borders. And what are we supposed to do, gentlemen?” He kicked the desk drawer closed with a force he had not expected; his rage was showing again. “What are we supposed to do?”
He looked at the spokesman intensely and finally, the man saw that he was supposed to speak this time and that an answer was being awaited. “Our instructions were clear,” he said. “We were, if possible, to take the plane in here. We were told that all arrangements had been made at this end and that—”
“No arrangements had been made,” Delgado said quietly. “There is no level of dialogue whatsoever between those people who are your superiors and my government. There has not been any for many years. You have been lied to, gentlemen, you have been misdirected all of the way. We do not want your plane in our country, we do not want your drugs and we have no arrangements whatsoever for disposition. Cuba is a free country now; it is not a backyard and a playpen for your interests.”
“Look,” the heavy man said, “I’m sorry; we were only told—”
“I don’t care what you were told,” Delgado said and came over to the man. He raised his hand and struck him in the place where the wound was, once, hard, the man groaned and spat a trickle of blood and then fell to his knees, Delgado hovering over him. Delgado kicked the man in the stomach until he arced over and then coughed, spat blood on the floor. Instantly, the rage discharged, he was calm again. He walked back to the desk. The man against the wall was looking at him in a pleading way. Delgado let the one on the floor continue to choke and spoke to this one.
“You see,” he said gently, “I am here to tell you that your position is untenable. As untenable as you have made ours. We do not want anything to do with your traffic, we do not want any of your internal problems. The internal problems and politics of our country itself have changed a great deal over the past decade and some of your people have, perhaps, not caught up to this yet. You have given us an almost insuperable difficulty. The premier himself is very embarrassed. What are we supposed to do with you?” Delgado concluded quietly, his tone almost reasonable
, they could have been working out the final details of some arrangement here.
The other man shrugged and looked away. With the spokesman incapacitated, however, he seemed to feel that some kind of statement was expected from him and after a moment of silence his eyes swung back, away from the mountains, toward Delgado. “I’m sorry,” he said. “We had very specific instructions and no reason to feel that we would find difficulties here. This man left fifty people dead in Las Vegas.”
“Which man?”
“Wulff. The one we brought here.”
“Fifty people dead?” Delgado said. “I’m afraid that fifty of your people—they were your people were they not?—dead means far less to us than the fact that there were another fifty aboard that airliner and but for the grace of God they might have been dead and we would have had to bear the responsibility. You see, whoever is giving you your orders is a fool.”
