Instead, while climbing out, he endeavored again to get some information from the man. “Where are we?” he asked.
Richards raised his eyebrows. “Well, I guess I can tell you this much. You missed a hell of a time in Panama City yesterday! Great town. Good people. That’s where we landed this morning. I did take your warning to heart, though. Stayed with the box, I mean. Anyway, soon as those folks caught wind of Mr. Gas Mask on top, they wanted no part of it.”
Dugan grinned, noticing then that Richards had exchanged his white suit for a black, long sleeved shirt, army green khaki pants, and lace-up boots.
“Anyhoo, just like yesterday, we’re only passengers, just along for the ride. I suppose I can tell you that our ultimate destination is El Salvador. Real shithole at the moment, but it’s where the unlucky bastard is being held captive, so there’s no getting around it. We should land there just before midnight, then we’ll head out immediately to take care of business. If all goes well, we’ll be finished before the night is through and we can all go back to our lives.”
Dugan felt his eyebrows start to narrow, but checked them before they could give anything away. He still had no clue what his role was in any of this, or what he was being asked to do. Did Richards expect him to kill them? To reason with them? Perhaps more sensibly, Richards brought him along for intelligence alone, to offer information on their strengths and weaknesses.
Hell, he’d find out soon enough.
“Come on back and meet the fellas,” Richards said gregariously, motioning toward the rear of the plane. When he began moving in that direction, Dugan followed.
This plane wasn’t as loaded as yesterday’s, so moving around was less of a challenge. They did have to avoid stepping on metal rollers that ran down the length of the hold and continued all the way up the ramp, so as not to go ass over teakettle. Dugan surmised they were there to ease offloading.
There were three men at the rear. Dugan recognized only one of them, the man whom Richards had talked to for much of yesterday’s flight. He was again belted securely into his seat. The other two were new to him. As they walked into the confined space carved out for them among the cargo, Dugan saw the two were now engaged in what appeared to be a vigorous, though friendly push-up contest.
“Ninety-six, ninety-seven, ninety-eight,” the man on the right counted off breathlessly, though he seemed to still be going strong. A youngish man, late twenties or early thirties, he had a buzzcut and wore cowboy boots and jeans with an unbuttoned flannel shirt. The second man was similarly attired, though older and unshaven and clearly not in the same shape as the other man. He looked to be on his last legs.
When the buzzcut man got to “One-hundred and three,” the second man finally gave up the ghost, wheezing and collapsing to the cold, hard metal floor of the hold.
“Ha, ha,” the younger man laughed, adding a few more energetic push-ups to twist in the knife before rolling over and taking his own deep breaths.
“Semper Fi,” he shouted joyously, raising his hand in a balled fist. “I told ya! Marines could always kick army ass.”
The unshaven man, who presumably represented army, had yet to regain his breath and therefore let the comment pass uncontested.
Springing to his feet, evidently fully recovered, the younger man wiped away some sweat before taking off the flannel shirt and throwing it to the floor. With just the sweat stained, sleeveless T-shirt on, Dugan saw he was indeed Marines, if the tattoos on his muscled arms were any indication: eagles and American flags and yes, Dugan saw on his upper left bicep, the Marine Corps logo.
“Woo, hoo, I tell you what, I could do that all day long,” he crowed in a distinctive Texas drawl. To the man still on the floor he said, “Any time you want a rematch, you just let me know.”
The army guy looked up from his prone position. “Ain’t gonna be no rematch,” he said in perfect imitation of the line from Rocky. “Anyhow boy, hell, I got five years on you. And I tell you right now, not a one of them was easy!”
The Marine grinned and held out his hand. The older man took it. The young man pulled him to his feet. Once that was done, the spirited young Marine finally took notice of Richards and Dugan.
“Well hey there, pardner. Did you bring your kid along on this one? Is it take your child to work day or something?” Cackling, he looked Dugan’s way. “Say, where you been hiding yourself, boy? And goshdawgit, son, why are you so pale? You sick or somethin’?”
Richards smiled ambiguously. “That’s classified,” he said, motioning Dugan to take one of the jump seats on the right.
“Classified, classified,” the man teased with good humor. “Everything with you CIA boys is classified. You ask me, friend, we oughta be fixin’ to shout from the gosh darn rooftops what we’re doing up here, bringing democracy to dern savages. God Bless America and pass the ammunition, I say.”
“Duly noted,” Richards said dryly, taking a seat beside Dugan. “We’ll take up your proposal at the next meeting.”
The man’s eyes went wide. “You will? Or are you just messin’ with me? Heck, either way, it don’t matter. I still appreciate ya. Besides, our made in the USA guns and ammo can take out any of their Russian crap. Just look what it’s doing in Afghanistan! Kind of proves God’s on our side, dontcha think?”
Richards just tilted his head neutrally. The man smiled sincerely.
“You think I’m kiddin’, dontcha? But I don’t mind telling you, I truly do believe we are doing the Lord’s work up here. Yes siree, I do. That’s why I’m doin’ it, anyway, unlike army here,” he razzed, pointing a thumb toward the man he had beaten in push-ups. “Why, I’ll bet you he is only here for the money, and if that ain’t a fact, God’s a possum!”
The army man took feigned offense.
“Now, now, ain’t nothin’ wrong with doin’ something for the money, boy,” he replied in an accent plucked straight from the Ozarks. “You might understand that once you’re out of diapers and have yourself some life experiences, along with a couple of ex-wives and a brood of kids to support. Anyways, hell, if a man can do well by doing good, what’s the harm?”
The buzzcut Marine chortled at the joke, whatever the heck that was, Dugan thought, doing his best to piece it together. Here’s what he had so far:
He read the papers enough to know that much of Central America was embroiled in brutal civil wars. From Honduras to Nicaragua to El Salvador, the whole region had become yet another front in the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. It didn’t surprise him that the United States would be furnishing arms to one side or another, even both, though it occurred to him these people could kill each other just fine without America’s help. But hell, it was all above his pay grade.
Let the humans kill each other, he thought. It was none of his business.
The hours droned on. The two men who had participated in the push-up contest had since moved on to a rowdy game of cards. If the Marine was to be believed, army cheated with every hand. Richards left his seat for a while, going across to talk with the third man in the cabin. The two again scrutinized maps for a stretch until suddenly, a piercing alarm started chiming throughout the hold. It announced itself first with a long, uninterrupted ring, followed by three short buzzes. Coincident with the alarm going off, red lights affixed to the walls began flashing.
“Woo, hoo!!” the buzzcut Marine squealed, throwing down his cards. “It’s time to start kicking ass and taking names.”
From across the cabin, Dugan watched Richards unbelt himself and stand. Upon catching his eye, Richards grinned and motioned for Dugan to do the same. Once he had unbuckled, the two made their way down the aisle toward the open cockpit doors. Reaching them, Richards went inside and walked down two steps to join the flight crew. Dugan followed, stopping at the first step while hanging onto the doorway. To his left was the cowboy hatted, cheroot smoking man from last evening in the pilot’s seat. In the right hand chair was a rail-thin, balding man who looked more ac
countant than co-pilot.
“Straight ahead, twelve o’clock,” the pilot shouted to Richards, nodding in that direction.
Dugan followed his gaze out the window. Through the illuminated darkness that was one of the advantages of his condition, he saw the plane was flying extremely shallow through thin, wispy clouds, barely skimming the treetops while overflying a mountainous region of thick jungle. Some miles ahead were a series of low lying hills. At the top of each, signal fires blazed. The pilot reached out and rang the bell again, this time a long buzz followed by two short ones. Richards turned and raised his eyebrows at Dugan, who stepped aside to let him pass and then shadowed him down the increasingly windswept aisle. Directly ahead, he saw the long cargo ramp at the tail of the plane was almost fully extended.
“Oorah!” the Marine yelled as he and army busied themselves shuffling cargo and preparing the drop. Three rows of crates were quickly lined up across the metal runners on the floor. Seconds later came another long buzz and a single short. “Bombs away!” shouted the Marine as he lifted his leg and kicked out the first crate, soon followed by a second and a third. The well practiced army veteran swiftly rolled up three more.
Outside the plane, Dugan saw parachutes start to open as the payload made its way toward the deep jungle below. Yet more crates fell from the sky as they passed over the second, third, and fourth signal flares.
Within seconds, the shrill thrum of the engines shifted gears and the plane banked sharply to the left as if to make a U-turn.
“We’re making a second pass?” the so far mostly silent third man in the rear asked no one in particular. He was still fastened into his jump seat.
“Why the heck not?” asked the Marine sneeringly. “May as well empty out this bucket. Give those poor bastards something to fight with!”
Dugan flashed a deliberate glance toward Richards and saw he was on board with anything. He might also have detected a certain amount of pride, as if this whole thing had been his project from the start, or at the very least he had been involved in its planning and execution. Dugan couldn’t help but wonder just which country they were now littering with American weapons, and who it was that would eventually wind up on the sharp end of the spear.
Another long buzz and a single short announced they were again over the drop zone. With another whoop, the Marine again started kicking crates out of the plane. The second man went deeper into the hold, muscling the remaining cargo forward for the first man to unload. Within minutes, Dugan saw the hold was all but empty save for a couple of incidental crates and his own custom-made government sleep chamber.
A glance at Richards revealed in his face the satisfaction of a job well done. A glimpse of army informed that he was out of breath from exertion and now lighting up a cigarette. Explains the lack of wind, thought Dugan. A peek at the man still buckled in his seat showed what reservations he might have harbored about that second pass were evidently quelled by its success. A twist of the head toward the Marine saw him standing a few feet down the sloping edge of the ramp, most of him outside the plane as he swung one-armed from a long piece of strapping bolted to the ceiling.
“Uncle Sam says hello, you commie bastards!” he hollered tauntingly into the wind, before raising his one free arm and beating it against his chest Tarzan-style. Perhaps not surprisingly, his Tarzan yell continued echoing throughout the hold for a long few seconds even after he was torn in half by a hail of bullets.
6
The singsong zing of stray ricochets clattered around the plane. The whipping wind showered the hold with blood and chunks of flesh from the man’s ruptured midsection. Dugan winced to feel a warm wetness splash against his cheek, then bit back his natural tendency to lick it away. Instead, he looked over in time to see what was left of the Marine tumble from the rear of the aircraft.
Within seconds, an explosion from somewhere outside the plane knocked Dugan from his feet, causing his head to thump on the hard steel deck. After a dazed moment, he looked up to see Richards start to lurchingly careen his way toward the front of what Dugan knew was, if the baying yowl of the stricken engines was any indication, a fatally crippled airplane.
Heaving himself to his knees, Dugan noted that somehow, the now ghostly looking man was still buckled into his seat. He appeared to be struggling with something. Swiveling his head, he saw that army was alive, though leaning awkwardly against the side of the aircraft with a befuddled expression on his face. Blood was streaming down his nose from a nasty head gash. Willing himself to his feet on the no longer level deck, with a staggering shuffle, Dugan followed Richards trail.
Catching up to him, he saw Richards was in the cockpit, bent over and staring keenly out the window. The co-pilot was dead, or if not, had affected the same pasty hue as Dugan. Round holes poked through the window to his right.
In the lefthand seat, the pilot had the unlit cheroot in his mouth and was struggling to maintain control. Outside the windows, Dugan saw just ahead through the low clouds was a black void that appeared to be a body of water. Mercifully, beyond that was what looked to be a cleared area of jungle. Dugan sensed the pilot saw it too.
“Hang on, folks. It’s gonna be a bumpy one,” he warned, gently easing down on the yoke and heading toward the open field.
“Put it in the water,” Richards yelled.
Dugan watched the embattled pilot turn his head Richards way to send him a look that said he was plum crazy. Turning again, he hollered, “My plane, my rules,” and pushed forward lightly on the control column.
Dugan estimated they were now at about three hundred feet. The engines were sputtering. A stall felt only seconds away. The plane was moving slowly, gliding, really, but otherwise descending smoothly. The pilot calmly reached out his right hand and eased back on the throttle. The clearing was just ahead. Outside the windows, Dugan saw they were about halfway across the lake and approaching the open field in such a way that the forced landing may not necessarily even be that bad.
“We’re going in the water,” Richards said quietly, almost to himself.
Dugan turned to see Richards standing directly behind the pilot with a gun pressed to the back of the man’s head. He pulled the trigger. A thundering ‘pop’ reverberated around the cabin. The pilot’s head exploded. Brains and skull and bits of grayish goo spattered the controls and decorated the cockpit windows. As if deciding only that moment to follow Richards’ instruction, the pilot’s lifeless body collapsed onto the yoke, nosediving the plane and sending it into a dizzying spiral.
Losing his balance, Dugan grasped the cockpit doors with both hands as his feet came out from under him. Seeing nothing but water out the window now, he managed to yank himself backward into the cabin and brace himself against the wall behind the co-pilot. He saw Richards do the same against the back of the dead pilot’s seat.
The plane slammed into the water with an ear-splitting crunch. The nose collapsed. Glass and shards and bits of plastic from the flight deck spewed upward in a geyser and then fell back into the drowning cockpit. The plane stayed perpendicular long enough that Dugan found himself lying flat on the cockpit wall, staring up at the starlit sky through the still open cargo bay door. Curiously, he noticed then that the other man on board, who had remained strapped in his jump seat, was still there, though now dangling precariously about eighty feet in the air. Lot to be said for buckling up, Dugan thought.
To his right, he saw army’s impossibly broken body lay opposite him, gazing his way with an open mouth and a single, unstaring eye. A thick splinter of wood protruded from the other. Score one for Larry, thought Dugan. He noticed too that the dead man’s body was draped almost regally in what could only be the red velvet interior of his sleep chamber.
That thought reminded him of something important, but before he could take action, an explosion rocked the outside of the plane, forcibly twisting his head forward to see the starlight above had been exchanged for an orange burst of flame. A searing wave of heat swept down the cabin,
singeing his eyebrows and burning his hair and giving his unnaturally pallid complexion an almost human, orange tint. A split second after the heat dissipated, Dugan realized there was no sign of Richards.
Rolling off the wall, he dived into the shattered cockpit and looked left, seeing only Richards’ wildly kicking legs. He had become trapped between the rear wall and the dead pilot’s crumpled seat. Swimming to his left, Dugan planted his feet on the ceiling and pulled with all his strength, managing to dislodge the mangled chair just enough to provide Richards some leverage. Seeing the man now moving, Dugan swam up, breaking the surface and lurching himself back onto the wall.
Seconds later, Richards bobbed through the doorway of the submerged cockpit. He sputtered and coughed before lifting himself up and tumbling over to the side opposite Dugan, beside the dead man.
Looking across at Dugan, he asked, “You okay?”
Dugan just shrugged. It seemed the most appropriate response.
Inexplicably, the plane remained vertical, long enough for Dugan to observe Richards assess the situation, no doubt wondering how in hell they were going to extricate themselves, when another explosive blast shook the fuselage. With a jarring sense of vertigo, the plane pitched from its upright position, settling further into the water and flooding the area Dugan and Richards occupied. Both went under for a few seconds before popping up to see the plane now mostly level, with only a slight tilt rearward. The crushed nose had broken away entirely, leaving a scant few inches of dark emptiness where the cockpit used to be.
Applewood (Book 3): The Space of Life Between Page 6
