Adventures In A Pair-A-Dice

by Terry Michael Peters

  “Now!” I shouted out.

  With that Bruce got up and headed in the direction I was pointing which was toward the kitchen. Once in there, I had him sit down at the table and called for Tom. As Tom came through the doorway, I asked him to keep an eye on Bruce while I had a talk with Bishop.

  “Sure, no problem,” he said, sliding a chair up next to Bruce at the table.

  I walked back into the room and stood in front of Bishop. He was in a seated position with his ankles bound together with duct tape, hands bound behind his back with duct tape and duct tape covering his mouth.

  I put the gun to his forehead and said to him “Ok, I’m going to ask you one time and one time only and if you give me any bullshit about it, I’m going to kill you right here, right now, right in your fucking house. I’ve already killed your dogs and I’ve already killed your two compadres and I’m going to fucking kill you if you don’t play straight up with me. Now, do you understand?”

  He nodded assuredly that he did.

  “Ok,” I said. “Now, let me tell you a little story. First of all. I don’t give a fuck about you or that little prick in the other room. He lied to me a couple of months back and it almost cost me my life when you and your thugs were shooting up his boat that day in the Bahamas.

  “Then your little asshole friend over there on the couch left me for dead in a closet in Nassau. So I don’t care about any of you. This is all about money. Surely, you can appreciate that, right? All I have to do is get him home and his family is going to compensate me and Tom here with a large amount of money. Only we got one little problem.” I said staring into his eyes.

  “I understand you got some sort of incriminating evidence that you’re holding over his head to get him to jump like a dog when you say jump and, here comes the kicker, I’m only going to ask you one time to hand it over. That’s it, one time – now, where is it?”

  He motioned his head towards a hallway. I reached down and ripped the duct tape away from his mouth.

  “Down there,” he said. “It’s in a safe.”

  “All of it?” I asked.

  “Yes, everything.”

  “Ok, where is the safe and what’s the combination?”

  After he told me I reapplied the tape over his mouth and headed for the kitchen. I asked Bruce what kind of incriminating evidence he thought Bishop had on him. Apparently it was in the form of Super 8mm film - one for each of the flights they had made so far and some photos.

  “Ok, I’ll be right back.”

  I walked back past Bishop and down the hallway to where he had told me I would find the safe. It was up against the back wall of a closet and the second try with the numbers opened it up. Inside were bundles of cash, a couple of hand guns, some jewelry and three rolls of Super 8mm film along with Bruce’s passport and about a dozen pictures that showed André loading drugs onto his plane.

  I was thinking of taking it all but this wasn’t about robbing the guy, it was about getting Bruce and anything that Bishop had over him. Despite my feelings of wanting revenge for his actions against me, I left the rest of it there in the safe.

  Walking back through the living room, I held the three rolls of film and the pictures up to Bishop’s face and demanded to know if this was everything. He nodded that it was. Walking back into the kitchen, I laid all that I had in my hands and Bruce’s passport down on the table in front of him.

  “There,” I said. “Now let’s get out of here.”

  “Do you think this changes anything?” Bruce asked as he looked up at me.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Well, you don’t know Bishop. He’ll come after me thinking this was somehow my plan.”

  “The way I see it, you should have been a little more careful about choosing your friends. All I know is that you’re coming back to St. Maarten with us now.”

  “Then what?” Bruce asked.

  “Then I’m having your father fly down here and giving you to him. After that I don’t give a fuck what you do. Now get what you are taking and let’s get out of here. Now!,” I shouted.

  With that, Bruce got to his feet.

  “I’m ready,” he said.

  “You got nothing here you want to take with you?” I asked him.

  “No.”

  “Ok, then let’s get out of here.”

  I went back into the living room and asked Bishop for the keys to his car. He motioned towards the garage.

  “In the car?” I asked.

  He nodded, indicating that they were. I walked over and leaned over to Bishop sitting on the couch and looked him in the eye.

  “Look,” I said. “Despite the fact that you killed a friend of mine by the name of Kevin and tried to kill me as well, I’m going to put that all behind me. I hope that you can overlook this small indiscretion, as well and that we can call it even.” Looking into his eyes, I could see that that probably wouldn’t happen.

  “Ok, we’re out of here,” I said aloud still staring into Bishop’s eyes.

  We found the keys in the ignition of the car along with an electric door opener. I pushed the button to open the door and was surprised to see that it was dark outside. With all the commotion, I had lost track of time. Just how long had we been in the house?

  At the end of the drive we found the gate closed.

  “How do you open the gate?” I asked Bruce.

  “Either back at the house or with a combination number here at the gate.”

  “Do you know the number?”

  “No,” was his reply.

  I got out to see how substantial the lock was. It was pretty stout.

  “We could ram it,” Tom said as we both stood there figuring how to get it open.

  “I’m thinking that would pretty much screw up the headlights which we are going to need. Get in,” I said.

  We both got back into the car and I quickly turned the car back towards the house. Then I stopped and looked at Tom. He knew exactly what I was thinking. I put it in reverse and floored the accelerator. The car hit the gates so hard it broke the hinges that held it to the stone wall but it stayed locked in the middle. I could see this as we literally backed over the whole gate and quickly headed down the road to where we had left the rental car.

  I pulled up next to the car and told Bruce to go with Tom. Bruce got out of the back seat and just before he closed the door I told him to get in the car with Tom and to not do anything stupid.

  “Do you hear me?”

  “No problem,” was his reply. I think that after all he had witnessed over the past few hours he knew that Tom and I meant business.

  “I’ll meet you back at the airport,” I said to Tom as I handed him the keys to the rental car.

  I waited until I saw the rented car start up and headlights come on before starting to pull away. As I pulled out Tom started to follow when he started flashing his lights. I stopped, got out and started walking back to see what the problem was. He reached his head out of the driver’s side window and was pointing at the back of Bishop’s Mercedes.

  “No lights,” he said.

  “Damn,” I said. The gate had not only taken out the rear tail lights but the locking mechanism on the gate had hit the trunk in such a way that you could no longer use a key to open it.

  As Tom and I stood there assessing the situation Tom asked if this looked familiar.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Remember the last time we had to open up the trunk of a Mercedes to retrieve a backpack?”

  I looked at him. “Right,” I said. “Ok, let’s leave the car right here.”

  I parked Bishop’s car where we had parked the rental car. We used the tire iron in the rental to pop open the trunk of the Mercedes then retrieved the three duffel bags and headed for the airport. When we got to the airport we were surprised to find no one there - no sign of the airport manager who rented us the car and no customs officials. It was around nine o’clock and it appeared that everyone had gone hom
e. Bruce asked how we were going to get back to St. Maarten.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, there’s no one here.”

  I then assumed that he thought we were going to catch a flight out or something like that. At about that time the headlights were shining on the side of Andrés’ airplane as I pulled up next to it.

  “André’s here?” Bruce asked.

  “No,” I said. “He let us use the plane.”

  “So you fly?”

  “You see the plane here, don’t you?”

  We unloaded the trunk and I asked Tom to park the rental up near the office and put the key through the mail slot on the office door. As he pulled away his headlight quickly flashed across the hulk of a 210 Cessna as he turned towards the office. It was parked on the other side of the ramp area.

  “Stay here,” I told Bruce. “I’ll be right back.”

  I headed off towards the 210 then stopped. I turned around and went back to the plane. I reached inside one of the duffel bags and pulled out a screwdriver and large pair of vice grips. I wasn’t sure then what I was going to do but I was feeling compelled to take the tools.

  The 210 looked well-cared for. Its paint looked shiny even there in the dark. The one thing about airplanes is that they’re not very secure in the sense of locking them up. The door locks are simple and easy to break and, basically, if you unground the magneto electrical system you can start them.

  Looking at Bishop’s airplane there started me thinking for the first time about what Bishop would do about our assault upon him and his dignity. He was definitely not used to people taking advantage of him, especially in such an intimidating way. I knew he would react in a bad way and most likely in the form of violence, even when he realized that we hadn’t actually killed his dogs or his two buddies there at the house.

  My plan was to take Bruce to St. Maarten, put him in a nice hotel room and have his father fly down. That way we could put them face to face and seal the deal. I figured I would need just a day or two to do that.

  With that thought in mind, I decided to take Bishop’s airplane out of commission. I didn’t want to do something that was obvious. If it was obvious it could be recognized and fixed quickly.

  On all high wing Cessnas the fuel tanks are in the wings. In the form of hard solid aluminum tanks or in bladder form. Either system has fuel lines that run from the wings down the sides of the inside cabin fuselage into the floor area before they reach the front engine compartment. With that also in mind, I took the screw driver and prepared to pop the lock on the door.

  I needed to be very careful because I didn’t want to leave any sign of forced entry that might draw suspicion. Just before the attempt, I tried the door latch. When I did the door opened right up. Bishop hadn’t locked the doors on the airplane. I suppose down here in the islands, there was no real need to do so. Back in South Florida I couldn’t imagine any airplane at any airport not being locked up.

  Once inside the plane, a matter of removing a few screws on both side panels revealed the fuel lines as they made their way into the floor area. I took the vice grips and adjusted them down to an opening of about a quarter inch. I then found a nice accessible area where I could crimp the line. It took a few adjustments on the wrench but I managed to crimp each line down. I then carefully screwed the panels back in place. Just as I was closing the doors Tom walked up and wanted to know if everything was alright.

  “Oh, yeah, nice plane,” I said to Tom.

  “Yeah, nice plane, now let’s get outta here,” Tom replied with some urgency in his voice.

  We all loaded into André’s airplane and taxied towards the end of the runway. The wind had about given up and the light shining on the windsock showed it just hanging limply indicating no particular direction. I figured we would go out the way we came in.

  I would prefer hitting the water to the side of the hill anytime. At the end of the runway I held my feet hard on the brakes and pushed the throttle in. The engine was near full power before I let off the brakes.

  The plane moved forward and I added full power and about ten degrees of flaps. We were pretty heavy now with Bruce in the back seat and I knew we were close to the weight limit of the airplane.

  We passed by the airport office to our right and I knew then we were halfway down the runway and still not off the ground. I could see a light out ahead of us and reasoned it was a marker light at the end of the runway.

  “Lookout!” Tom yelled.

  His night vision was better than mine and he saw the hash marks indicating the end of the runway seconds before I did. I pulled back on the yoke and the plane struggled into the air just as we passed over the last of the markers.

  The light I had seen was actually a stern light of a boat that was about 50 yards offshore. The stall warning sounded letting me know we were too slow and about to stall the plane. I pushed the nose over and again we were over the beach at just a few feet.

  “We gotta stop doing this!” I yelled out to Tom over the noise of the full throttled engine.

  Chapter 11

  Once in the air, the airplane picked up speed and we climbed to 2000 feet. As we headed north, it was easy to see our destination. St. Maarten was all lit up and was quite a contrast to the dark ocean that surrounded it.

  “How we gonna get this plane on the ground?” Tom asked.

  “What?” I asked not quite hearing him over the noise of the plane. He leaned over towards me and asked again.

  “How are you going to land this plane in the dark?”

  Suddenly, I realized that the airport we left from that morning had no electrical power anywhere, let alone runway lights. We were getting close to the south end of St. Maarten and decided we should fly over the little French airport and check it out.

  Worst-case would be a landing on the Dutch side of the island at the big airport. The problem with that idea was that André’s plane radio was not working and there was no way for us to request a landing there or even talk to the control tower.

  I turned and yelled over the plane’s noise to Bruce asking him if he knew where the French airport was. He did but said we couldn’t land there at night and insisted we go land on the Dutch side.

  “Look, I’m going to just check it out. Now, where is it?”

  “Right over there,” he pointed out. “See those lights there? That’s the road that leads from French Cul-de-Sac up to the main road. The airport is just beyond that intersection. It runs perpendicular to the Cul-de-Sac Road and pretty much parallel to the main road.”

  “How far off the main road is it?” I asked.

  “About two or three hundred feet.”

  “Is the middle of the runway about where the two roads intersect?” I asked him.

  “Pretty much.”

  I remembered in my younger days flying my uncle’s planes at night and landing them with the aid of just the head or wing light on the plane. That was into a familiar field and something I did enough to feel comfortable. This was different and I didn’t want to come this far in this ordeal to crash and die.

  “Right there,” Bruce said as he tapped me on the shoulder.

  I pushed the head light switch to ‘On’ and it threw very little light into the night sky. I circled over the intersection a few times to get my bearings. You could see a dark area on the ground where the airfield was, but that was it.

  I didn’t remember seeing any obstructions at either end of the field that morning and reasoned I would approach at about 200 feet then see where we were. I banked the plane around. As we got lower you could see a definite tree line that I remembered seeing earlier.

  “Right there,” I said as I nosed over for what I thought to be the airfield.

  Looking out the side window, I could see better than with the head light and as I got a little lower, I could see that we were over the runway but better than halfway down the length of it. I pulled back on the yoke, added power and decided to go around. On the next approach I got
lower and slower before the intersecting roads which I could see off to my left.

  This time when I saw the shadows of the tree line in front give way to open space, I pushed the nose of the airplane over and pulled back on the power. As we dropped in over the tree line I focused my attention out the front window of the plane. The light was still just refracting off the blackness of the air then suddenly I saw in its beam the clumps of grass growing out of the cracks in the runway which was just below us.

  We were descending too quickly and as the runway rushed towards us I pulled back hard on the yoke and added full power. The nose came up quickly and suddenly the plane hit the ground.

  Fortunately, we were leveled off but still moving at too high a rate of speed for landing. Looking out the front window I could see we were on the runway but just about to run off the left side of it and into some scrub brush.

  I slammed my right foot on the right rudder pedal. The plane quickly corrected to the right and we were still moving fast enough that it lifted the right landing gear back into the air while dipping the lift wing down towards the ground.

  I let off the right rudder and slammed my left foot on the left rudder pedal. The plane then leveled off and I was able to safely control its direction down the runway until we slowed to a stop.

  “Wow,” I said aloud. “Maybe next time we go to the big airport.”

  We all laughed. “Nice job,” Tom said.

  “Man, what a day. Let’s get this thing parked.”

  I added some power and turned the plane around towards the tie- down area of the field. I pulled the plane up next to the twin Apache and parked it right where it had been when we took it. Once we were all out of the plane, I took notice to the moon on the rise.

  “Damn,” I said. “If we had waited a little while we could have landed by the light of the moon.”

  But even where it was in the sky right then had helped in defining the shadow of the tree line. I felt relieved to be back on the ground and back on St. Maarten.

  “Now what?” Tom asked.

  “There’s a restaurant within walking distance,” Bruce said.