White Cargo (11 page)

“He's CIA, then?” Cat asked.

“If you say so,” Bluey chortled. “He never once showed me his credentials, just his money. That was always
genuine, so I never asked questions. He's a good bloke, though.”

“I guess he is, at that,” Cat said. “He's all right with me, anyway.”

“You sleepy?” Bluey asked.

“Are you kidding? My adrenaline is still pumping from your low flying.”

“You take the airplane for a while, then. I'll grab a nap. Just keep scanning the oil pressure, cylinder-head temperature, and oil temperature.” He pointed out the gauges. “If anything gets out of the green, or if you're worried about something, wake me up.” He wound his seat back and tipped his hat over his eyes.

Cat glanced around the instrument panel. With the loran navigating and the autopilot flying, there wasn't much to do. He ate a sandwich and drank some coffee. The engine droned reassuringly on, and the gauges held rock steady. The moon came up and reflected on the sea below, silver on blue. The stars wheeled above in a cloudless sky. Cat felt a kind of contentment from knowing that he was doing all he could do—at least as close to contentment as he had come since the yacht went down, and he savored the moment as best he could with Jinx still in the front of his mind. Once in a while he still got an involuntary flash of the bloody palmprint, even though he now knew that the body had not been Jinx's. He wondered who the poor girl had been and why she had been murdered with Katie. It made no sense at all, and that bothered him. Had he imagined the voice on the phone was Jinx? Had she really gone down with Katie and
Catbird?
Was he risking his life and his liquid wealth on a fool's errand to find a girl who couldn't be found because she was at the bottom of the sea?

A couple of hours out of Haiti, Cat stirred himself from his reverie to check the instrument panel, as he had every few minutes since Bluey had gone to sleep. The gauges still held steady, and their true airspeed was right at a hundred and fifty-six knots, just where it should be. Fuel flow was twelve and a half gallons an hour, and there were something over five hundred miles remaining to Idlewild. The ground speed, though, was displayed on the loran as a hundred and twenty-eight knots. Startled, he quickly checked the other instruments again. Everything was normal. He gave Bluey a shake.

“What?”

“The loran is showing a lower ground speed than our true airspeed. Have we got a head wind?”

Bluey glanced at the instruments. “Too bloody right, we've got a head wind. Damn near thirty knots of it.” He checked their time to destination on the loran against their remaining flying time on the fuel-flow meter. “Shit,” he said. “If we go higher, we might get even more head wind; if we go lower, the head wind might decrease, but we'd be burning a lot more fuel at a lower altitude. We're best off where we are, but that ain't so hot. Our reserve is going to get eaten up. I calculate that if the wind holds where it is and we cut, we'll make the coast with six minutes of fuel remaining.”

“Is that enough to make Idlewild?” Cat asked, alarmed.

“Maybe,” Bluey replied, looking dour. “We're past the point of no return; we've got to go on and hope for the best.” He reduced power slightly. “We'll cut power to fifty-eight percent. That's our most efficient setting, but it's cutting another four knots off our airspeed, and that's cutting into our time reserve for our window at Idlewild. We sure as hell don't want to be late there. Maybe the
wind will drop. Maybe the fuel-flow meter is inaccurate in our favor.”

Or, Cat thought, maybe the wind won't drop and maybe the meter is inaccurate and not in our favor. Maybe we'll have to ditch, or maybe we'll be late at Idlewild and get machine-gunned for our trouble.

“Let's start pumping our auxiliary fuel into the wing tanks,” Bluey said, fiddling with the fuel pump.

They flew on in silence for another hour, and their ground speed dropped another three knots. Their head wind was rising.

Bluey shoved the throttle in again. “We've got to go back to full power,” he said. “We're at the outer limits of our time reserve now.”

The airplane flew on toward South America, and soon pink began to show in the eastern sky. Bluey did some more work with the loran. “Now it looks like four minutes of fuel when we cross the coast,” he said.

Cat said nothing. He was willing the airplane to fly faster, the wind to drop, the engine to use less fuel.

With eighteen minutes of fuel showing on the meter, Bluey let out a shout. “The coast! The bloody coast! We're not going to have to swim ashore, anyway.”

Cat looked up to see a brown line of land ahead, lit by a rising sun.

Both men's eyes alternated between the fuel-flow meter and the Colombian coastline, which seemed to be nearing at all too slow a rate.

“Bravo One, this is Bravo Two,” Bluey said to the radio. He was greeted by nothing but static. “We're still too far out,” he said. Then his face fell, and he pointed at the loran. A red light had come on. “That means the signal is unreliable.” The red light went off. So did the loran
display. “We're at the outer limits of the loran chain.” The display came back on, then went off again. “Bravo One, this is Bravo Two. Do you read?” Static.

They crossed the coastline, and Cat looked at the fuel-flow meter. Two and a half minutes' fuel remaining.

“I'm going to hold this course for another five minutes, then start a descent,” Bluey said, grim-faced. He switched on another navigation radio. “Maybe I can get a radial and a distance from the Barranquilla VOR.” He fiddled with the radio. “Dammit, we're getting the VOR signal, but not the distance-measuring equipment. Out of range. Maybe . . .” As he spoke a red flag appeared on the instrument. “Correction,” he said, “we're not getting the VOR, either. What else can go wrong?”

As if in answer to his question, the engine sputtered, then caught again. The fuel-flow meter was showing a minute and fifteen seconds. The engine sputtered again, and the meter read zero. The engine ran for another half a minute, then gave a final sputter and died. The nose of the airplane dropped.

“We're landing this airplane,” Bluey said, somewhat unnecessarily, Cat thought. “Check your side for a place to put her down. Bravo One, this is Bravo Two. Cat, you make the radio call. I've got to turn this crate into a glider.”

Cat began speaking the code words into the radio while looking desperately out the window for someplace to land. “It looks pretty flat down there,” he said to Bluey. There was brown, dry-looking land, dotted with scrub brush, all around them.

“It is flat,” Bluey came back. “The Guajira Peninsula is shaped like Florida and looks like Arizona. It's a desert down there, and I can put us down in one piece, more or
less, but I don't want to land in the middle of nowhere with no transportation, no refueling, and at the mercy of any bastard who's inclined to shoot us for our shoes.” He had the airspeed down to eighty knots now, the airplane's best glide speed. The altimeter was showing a steady decline, and the earth was getting closer.

“Bravo One, this is Bravo Two,” Cat repeated. “Bravo . . . Jesus, Bluey, what's that?” He was pointing just ahead of the right wing, a couple of miles ahead in the bright morning sunshine.

Bluey rolled the airplane to the right slightly and looked where Cat was pointing. “I'll tell you what that is,” he crowed, “it's a goddamned dirt strip! Looks like an old crop duster's field!” He pointed the airplane at the gash of earth. “We've got enough altitude, too. We're going to make it! Oh, Jesus, I hope they've got fuel!”

“Bravo One, this is Bravo Two,” Cat said, mechanically, keeping his eyes glued to the strip. They passed over it at a couple of thousand feet.

“Is that some sort of tank down there?” Bluey asked, pointing.

Cat looked and saw what looked like a large metal cylinder lying on its side. “I hope it's not a water tank,” he said.

Bluey made a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree turn to lose some altitude, then lined up with the dirt runway and let the airplane glide toward it. When he was sure they had it made, he lowered the gear and some flaps, and the airspeed came down to seventy knots. “Picture-book approach!” he chortled. They landed smoothly enough, and Cat marveled at how quiet it was with no engine. The runway was rough, but passable. Bluey let the airplane roll until it came to a stop on its own. Ahead of them about
fifty feet, just off the strip, was what looked like about a five-hundred-gallon tank set on a wooden cradle about ten feet off the ground. “That's fuel,” Bluey said, pointing. “Look, there's a hose. Quick, let's get the airplane over there.”

They scrambled out of the airplane and began pushing on the wing struts. The aircraft moved slowly across the pebble-strewn dirt strip. Cat looked around but saw only a shack with a tin roof about fifty yards on the other side of the tank. Was it really a fuel tank? Was there anything in it?

Finally, they were within reach of the hose. As Bluey ran for it Cat saw some letters roughly painted on the side of the tank: 100LL. It was aviation fuel.

“Quick!” Bluey whispered, glancing at the shed. “There's a collapsible stepladder in the luggage compartment with the auxiliary fuel tank. Get it, and be quiet about it! If there's anybody sleeping in that shed, I don't want to wake them.”

Cat ran around the airplane, opened the compartment, and found the little stepladder. He ran back to the right wing, set up the ladder and stood on it, taking the fuel hose from Bluey. He got the tank open and the nozzle inside.

“It's not even locked,” Bluey said in a loud whisper.

Cat squeezed the handle and fuel began to flow. The tank was about half full when Bluey tugged at his trouser leg.

“Get down from there; get the shotgun and cover me.”

Cat looked over his shoulder and saw four sleepy-looking Indians approaching them from the direction of the shack. Three of them had pistols. The fourth was wielding a light submachine gun. Quickly, he got the cap back on the fuel tank and jumped down.

“Give me some money,” Bluey said hoarsely.

Cat dug into his shoulder holster and snatched out a bunch of fresh, new hundred-dollar bills. He gave them to Bluey, tossed the collapsible stepladder into the airplane, and grabbed the shotgun. He stood under the wing, his feet apart, with the weapon held at a stiff port arms, and tried to look calm.

“Amigos,” Bluey cried out, waving to the men. They stopped, and one of them began to talk rapidly. He stopped.

“What's he saying?” Cat asked out of a corner of his mouth.

“I don't know,” Bluey said, “but he's pretty mad.”

“What do you mean, you don't know? You said you speak Spanish!”

Bluey shook his head. “Yeah, but this is some kind of dialect.”

The Indian started talking again, and the man with the submachine gun cocked it ominously. Cat, somewhat to his surprise, worked the pump of the shotgun noisily. The four men all stepped back, staring at it. Bluey had said it was scary.

Bluey stepped forward and held up a hundred-dollar bill. The Indian stopped talking, then waved him forward. Bluey began to speak in Spanish, smiling, waving the money. Cat heard the word “amigos” used several times. The Indians were glancing at each other.

Bluey called over his shoulder without taking his eyes from the men, “How much fuel did you get into the tank?”

“Maybe half full,” Cat called back.

Bluey continued to talk. Now he was peeling off hundreds, counting loudly in Spanish. One of the Indians
stepped forward, nodding, and took the money. The man with the submachine gun still looked threatening.

Bluey turned and began to walk toward the airplane. “Just keep standing there with the shotgun,” he called to Cat. “I'm going to turn the airplane around, then we'll get the hell out of hero.” He walked to the rear of the plane, pushed down on the horizontal stabilizer, lifting the nose-wheel off the ground, and spun the airplane on its axis. When it was pointing down the runway again, he began to climb inside. “When the engine starts, get your ass in here,” he called to Cat.

“Right,” Cat replied. A moment later the engine cranked, then fired. Cat, half backing, made his way around the airplane, waving and smiling at the four Indians. They remained impassive and suspicious. Cat leapt into the airplane, and it started to move.

“No time for a run-up,” Bluey said, shoving the throttle to the firewall. “Here we go. I hope those bastards don't start shooting.”

The airplane rolled down the short strip, picked up speed, and lifted easily into the air, lightened by its lessened fuel. Cat let out a long sigh.

“Okay,” Bluey said, “we've got a little more than an hour of fuel. Let's find Idlewild. Bravo One, this is Bravo Two.”

To Cat's astonishment, a voice immediately said, “Bravo Two, this is Bravo One. How far out are you?”

Bluey let out a whoop. “Stand by,” he said into the radio.

He pushed a button on the loran, and it came to life. “Bearing one three five degrees, distance twenty-two miles,” he said into the radio. “Sorry we're late.”

“Exactly how late are you?” the voice asked, suspiciously.

Bluey glanced at his watch. “Thirty-one minutes,” he replied.

There was a pause, then: “Right, you're cleared to land, Bravo Two,” the voice said.

Bluey and Cat looked at each other.

“Does that mean we won't get shot at?” Cat asked.

“Looks that way,” Bluey grinned.

Five minutes later, Bluey pointed dead ahead. “Field in sight!” he shouted.

Cat looked at the long strip of dirt ahead of them and smiled weakly. “How much was the fuel?” he asked.

“A thousand bucks,” Bluey said, dropping the landing gear and lowering the flaps. “Do you mind?”