Circles Collide

Chapter 6: I Just Wanna Fly

Bogota, Colombia

July 1, 1996

“There’s our ride,” Jake told Laura as they stepped out of the international terminal of El Dorado International Airport after their five-hour flight from DFW. The loading and unloading area was very crowded, with taxicabs, a few limousines, and large SUV vehicles all vying for the limited parking spaces. Skycaps, passengers, and family and friends were everywhere, mostly speaking Spanish, but some speaking English or Portuguese.

Laura looked where he was pointing and saw a man in dress slacks and a white shirt holding up a sign with their names on it. He was standing next to a black SUV. “No limousine?” she asked, a little breathless from the elevation, which was actually three hundred feet higher than the aircraft they had flown on had been pressurized to.

“I learned a thing or two the last time I was here,” Jake said.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Well ... uh ... it was suggested to me by the hotel staff and by Mr. Gomez himself that riding around in a limousine in Bogota is not a real good idea.”

“Why not?”

“Uh ... well ... Bogota is known for being the ... uh ... the kidnapping capital of the world.”

“Kidnapping?” she asked, her eyes widening.

“Yeah, you know, for ransom. Apparently, it’s a very lucrative business model that contributes considerably to the local economy. Anyway, riding around in a shiny-ass limo is apparently the equivalent of holding up a sign that says: ‘I’m a rich motherfucker, please kidnap me for ransom.’”

This information did not serve to comfort his wife. “Sweetie, are we safe here?”

He shrugged. “Almost as safe as we would be in Detroit or Baltimore,” he said.

“That does not make me feel better,” she said. She had been to both of those places, after all.

“We’ll be fine,” he assured her. “The guy picking us up works for the hotel and we’ll use him anytime we need to go anywhere. Besides, we’re not going to be here very long.”

Their driver’s English was heavily accented, but at least he spoke it. His name was Jorge, pronounced ‘Hore-hey’. He loaded their luggage into the back of the SUV and then held the doors open for them to climb into the back.

“Would you like to go to the hotel, Señor Kingsley?” he asked once he was behind the wheel.

He and Laura had talked about this on the plane. They were here to take possession of their new aircraft, which had closed escrow as of the opening of business hours Bogota time today. Though they did not plan to actually start the long journey home until tomorrow, both wanted to lay their eyes and hands on the plane as soon as possible.

“Actually,” Jake told the driver, “can you take us to Guaymaral Airport? Just for a few minutes?”

“As you wish, Señor,” he replied politely.

The ride to Guaymaral took about forty-five minutes, which brought them there just before sunset. Jorge said little during the trip, just drove and listened to a pop music station. All of the songs they played were in Spanish except for one: Celia Valdez’s latest release, Wounded Love, a moderately hard rocker that had a lot of Jake Kingsley on the distorted electric. Jorge made no mention of the tune, though he did sing along with the choruses.

He parked in front of the airport services building and opened the doors to let them out. They walked inside, finding the usual collection of pilots and their companions sitting at the desks and putting together their flight plans. Jake and Laura walked up to the counter and explained to the early twenties, limited English-speaking female who staffed it that they were here to take official possession of their new plane that was parked in Señor Gomez’s personal hangar.

“Oh, si,” she said. “Señor Gomez let us know to expect you. May I just see your ... how you say ... your identificacion?”

“Por supuesto que si,” Jake replied, pretty much exhausting his supply of Spanish phrases for this encounter. He pulled out his passport, flipped it open to the picture, and handed it to her.

She looked at it carefully for a moment, reading the name and then looking at the photograph and then looking at his face. “Your hair much shorter in picture,” she told him. “And you had bigote.” She pointed to the mustache that Jake had sported at the time of that photo.

“It was a phase I went through,” he explained.

She nodded and then handed the passport back to him. “Even though you look different, I still recognize you. I hear your music on la radio all the time. You are muy talentoso.”

“Gracias,” Jake told her.

She reached into a drawer and removed a key that had a label on it with Jake’s name. She slid it across to him. “Senor Gomez’s hangar is numero dos ocho uno. He asks that you return the key when you remove the plane from the hangar for the final time.”

“Will do,” Jake promised. “We’re just going to look at it today. We’ll take it out of there tomorrow.”

“Muy bien,” she replied.

The walk to the hangar took about ten minutes. Both of them were a little breathless from the thin air by the time they got there. Jake inserted the key in the handle of the large door and turned it, causing the mechanism to click. He turned the handle and then pushed up on the door. It was well lubricated and slid up easily and quietly. Inside the hangar was the Cessna Citation that belonged to Señor Gomez and the Avanti that now officially belonged to the Kingsleys. Jake found the light switch on the wall inside the door and turned it on.

“Oh wow,” Laura said, taking it in for the first time. She had seen pictures of it, of course, but this was the first time she had actually laid her actual eyeballs on the actual aircraft.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” Jake asked, admiring it much the same way he admired Laura’s naked body when she emerged from her shower.

“For four point seven-five million dollars, it had better be freakin’ beautiful,” she said slyly. As promised, she made a point to reference that amount whenever she could.

He let the remark go, as he normally did.

Jake opened up the main entrance on the left side of the plane, just aft of the cockpit, by punching a five-digit code into the locking mechanism and then manipulating the handle. They stepped inside and took in the layout.

“Okay,” Laura said as she looked at the plush seats, the reasonably wide aisle between them, the small bar, and the couch, “this really is pretty nice.”

“It should be for four point seven-five million, huh?” Jake asked her.

“Right,” she said.

“Why don’t you check out the bathroom,” he suggested next. “After all, that’s what got us into this whole deal.”

She walked to the very back of the plane and opened the narrow door, revealing a tiny, cramped room with a ceiling so low that even she could not stand up straight in it. The only thing in the room was a small airline toilet, a roll of toilet paper, and a flush button. Jake was doubtful that he personally would even be able to accomplish a sit-down in there with the door closed (even if he would have dared perform such an act in flight without another qualified pilot to take the controls), it was that cramped. Laura, as petite as she was, would still have her legs touching the walls on both sides.

“It’s a little bit small,” she said doubtfully.

“What were you expecting?” he asked. “A luxury shitter with a shower and enclosed bath?”

“Kind of,” she said.

“Will it be better than peeing in the female urinal?”

“Well ... yeah, it would have to be,” she admitted.

“There you go then,” he said.

While she continued to peruse the bathroom and the sink/bar combo outside of it, Jake made his way back forward and took a look at the darkened cockpit. He was very nervous about tomorrow’s flight, much more nervous than he had ever been at the thought of taking to the air before. True, he had taken the two-week course at the Piaggio facility in Greenville, South Carolina to acquire his type-rating for the aircraft and had now logged twenty-two hours of flight time behind the controls of the same model and year as this one, including eleven takeoffs and landings and twenty-seven touch and goes, but he had had an instructor with him for all of those hours. And now, his official type rating in hand, he was planning to take off from an airfield that sat 8390 feet above sea level—two thousand feet higher than Jake had ever taken off from before—and then fly across a South American border to a major international airport located in a valley surrounded by steep mountain peaks, with no one but himself to rely on. Was this really a good idea? Would it not be a better idea to just hire someone to ferry the aircraft back to California for him?

It would be a better idea, but he was not going to do it. He yearned to get behind the controls of his new plane. That was why he and Laura had made the decision to fly all the way to Bogota in the first place. She was as enthusiastic about this trip as he was. But it was she that he was worried about.

“Hon,” he said softly as she made her way up to where he was staring at the controls.

“What’s up?” she asked.

“Are you sure I can’t talk you into flying commercial for this first leg of the trip?”

Her expression clouded. “Why in the world would I do that?”

He explained to her about high altitude takeoffs, about crossing international borders, about landing in a valley at one of the five busiest airports in South America, about a pilot mostly inexperienced in a new aircraft type trying to do all of this on his very first solo flight.

“Are you saying you might crash this plane?” she asked.

“Well ... probably not,” he said. “It’s just that, when you add everything up, this first flight is statistically more dangerous than any other flight I will likely have on this journey home or in the future.”

She thought this over for a moment and then shook her head. “No way,” she said. “If we go down, we go down together. Besides, how much safer would I be flying on a local Venezuelan airliner?”

“Considerably safer, I would imagine.”

She shook her head. “You’re not getting rid of me that easily,” she said. “I’m going with you.”

They closed up the plane, turned off the lights, and shut the door to the hangar. They then strolled back to Jorge and the SUV and he took them to the Hotel Charleston, the same hotel that Jake had stayed in during his last visit to Bogota. Jake tipped Jorge a cool one hundred thousand pesos—the equivalent of about thirty US dollars—for his trouble. Jorge was extremely happy with this amount and assured Jake and Laura that he would be overjoyed to drive them anywhere they wanted to go for as long as they wanted to stay.

“Thanks, Jorge,” Jake told him. “We’ll just be taking one more trip though, back to Guaymaral at ten o’clock tomorrow morning.”

“I will drive you,” he promised.

“Gracias,” he said.

They checked in and made their way up to their suite on the top floor, tipping the bell boy another fifty thousand pesos for his trouble.

“This is nice,” Laura said, taking in the furnishings and the view.

“Isn’t it?” he replied. “What do you want to do, go down to dinner, or fuck first?”

“Let’s go down to dinner first,” she suggested. “I’m starving.”

“Fair enough.”

They went to dinner. They then went back up to their suite and fucked. After that, they went to bed and slept quite soundly thanks to the heavy Colombian meal, the jet lag, the thin air, and the fucking.

Jorge drove them back to Guaymaral Airport at ten o’clock the next morning. They went into the airport services building and Jake composed his flight plan to Simon Bolivar International airport just outside Caracas, Venezuela, the first stop on their trip home. He had never flown into such a busy airport before but, in this case, he really had no choice. Since he was coming in from Colombia and had to clear customs with a recently purchased aircraft, the only place in the area he could do that was at SBIA. He carefully calculated the weight of the aircraft, he and Laura, and their baggage, cross referencing it with the distance he planned to fly and the amount of fuel he would need to carry and then factoring in the weight of that fuel and then cross-referencing all of that with the altitude and the runway length at Guaymaral in order to figure out his V1 and VR speeds. He whistled as he came up with the final numbers. V1 was one hundred and twenty-five knots and VR was one hundred thirty, both about fifteen knots faster than a similarly loaded plane on the same length of runway at sea level. Assuming his engines worked as they were supposed to, he would have less than a thousand feet of runway remaining when his wheels left the ground. He would then have to make a quick right turn to a heading of 350 in order to avoid the high terrain immediately to the west, and then climb at least two thousand feet per minute in order to clear the high terrain a little further out to the north.

“Everything okay?” Laura asked him after watching him stare intently at his figures and take more than twice the time it usually took him to compose a flight plan into an unfamiliar airport.

“Yeah, everything is cool,” he assured her, taking care to keep the worry out of his expression and tone. “Let’s do this thing.”

He filed the plan with the clerk on duty and they walked to the hangar. Jake used Señor Gomez’s key to open the door and then he and Laura used one of the tugs to pull the aircraft out of the building. While Laura ran the key back to the office, Jake began the process of preflighting the aircraft. He was still working on the external examination when Laura returned.

Finally, it was time to get inside. He turned on the batteries and then the avionics, checking first to see how much fuel was in the tanks. There was hardly any, maybe enough to get airborne, but not much more. And so, the first step was to use the radio in the plane to call for a fuel truck to pump eight hundred kilograms of jet fuel into the tanks, enough to cover the flight and give him nearly an hour and a half of reserve flight time in case of unexpected circumstances. After paying for the fuel with his credit card and watching the truck drive away, he visually confirmed the presence of the fuel in the tanks with a flashlight and a metal rod and then sealed the tank, triple checking that he had put the cap on correctly.

Jake and Laura got into the aircraft and he closed and sealed the main door. They took their seats in the cockpit, Jake on the left, Laura on the right, and buckled in. It was time for engine start. He fired up the number one engine first, watching over his left shoulder to confirm that the prop was actually turning. He then fired up the number two engine, making Laura confirm prop turn on that side. Since the bleed air flow was set to automatically keep the aircraft pressurized to eight thousand feet apparent altitude, and since they were sitting almost four hundred feet higher than that while still on the ground, their ears popped a little as the system started doing its job right way. This gave Jake yet another burst of apprehension as he considered the ramifications. I’m actually going to take off from eighty-four hundred fucking feet! Am I crazy?

“It’s a very quiet plane,” Laura remarked as she donned her headset.

“Shush!” Jake barked at her, a little sharper than he had intended. “Sterile cockpit is in effect.”

“Sorry,” she said quietly.

“Me too,” he said, feeling badly. “I didn’t mean to yell. I’m just a little nervous about this.”

“You’ll do fine,” she assured him, though she had absolutely no evidence to back this up. “I have faith in you.”

He gave her a smile and then started punching his navigation, flight information, and radio frequencies into the flight computer. Once that was all in, he opened up his pre-departure checklist on the computer screen before him (it really was nice to have a computerized checklist instead of a tattered hard copy) and began to go through the items one by one, checking them off as they were accomplished. Finally, it was time to get the show on the road. He called the clearance center and asked for his flight plan to be activated. They did so, telling him the clearance would expire in thirty minutes if he was not airborne by then. He then called Guaymaral tower and asked for permission to taxi to Runway 29R for departure. They granted this permission, directing him on the route he should take to get there.

He took a deep breath and then released the parking brake on the aircraft. He throttled up a bit and they began to move. He drove them carefully out of the hangar area and onto the taxiways, using the rudder pedals to steer. It took nearly five minutes to get to the hold line, where he was told to do just that and hold for incoming aircraft. While waiting, he went carefully through the takeoff checklist, making sure he was properly configured for a high-altitude departure.

“Flaps to takeoff setting,” he recited, pulling the lever and watching as the surfaces moved. “V1, VR bugs set. Auto-throttle set at two zero zero knots indicated. Autopilot off. Landing lights on. Barometer set to two-eight, decimal six. Elevator trim to takeoff.” He looked over at Laura. “Configuration complete.”

“Good to know,” she told him, not looking the least bit nervous.

He smiled and they waited while a Mooney Bravo and then a King Air touched down in front of them. The tower controller then told him he was clear for takeoff with departure to the north.

Jake acknowledged the instruction and throttled up once again, steering them onto the runway. Once they were facing down the runway, roughly into the five-knot wind, he took one more deep breath and then advanced the two throttle levers slowly forward to ninety-five percent thrust. The engine noise increased, but still was very quiet compared to the Chancellor. The airframe began to vibrate gently and they began to pick up speed. He kept them on the centerline instinctively, using the rudder pedals. He glanced continuously back and forth between outside the window and his airspeed indicator, watching it roll upward, past fifty, sixty, seventy, a hundred, until it reached V1 and then VR.

“Rotate,” he said softly and then pulled gently back on the yoke.

The nose came up and there was a thump as the wheels broke contact with the ground. The ground dropped away below them.

“Positive rate of climb,” Jake said, watching as the altimeter began to wind upward. He reached down and flipped up the lever for the landing gear. The sound of machinery winding began from beneath and behind. By the time he got lights out on the gear, they were seven hundred feet above the ground, well beyond the perimeter fence, and climbing at twenty-five hundred feet per minute.

Jake was pleased with the takeoff. It had gone smoothly, and, despite the high altitude, he was still climbing more than fifty percent faster than his Chancellor had been capable of even at sea level takeoff and traveling nearly twice as fast as the Chancellor could even dream of on climb-out. He turned to the right, marveling over how nicely the aircraft handled, watching as the compass spun to the heading of 350. After rolling out of the turn, he retracted the flaps, which brought the nose down a bit, settling them into a climb of two thousand three hundred feet per minute. A glance forward told him he was in no danger of not clearing the high terrain ahead as long as this rate of climb was maintained.

Guaymaral Approach handed him off to Bogota Center. He gave his position and they confirmed it matched with what their radar was getting from his transponder. They directed him to turn to 005 and to climb to flight level 200 for now but to expect to climb out to flight level 310.”

“Three one zero?” Laura asked, once again violating the sterile cockpit rule but they were well past ten thousand feet now, so it did not really matter much. “That’s thirty-one thousand feet, right?”

“That’s right,” Jake confirmed. “We’re in the freakin’ stratosphere now, hon. Literally.”

“Cool,” she said, genuinely impressed.

As soon as they intersected Airway J9, which led to the CVD VOR station just across the Venezuelan border, the point in their flight plan where they would make a left turn toward Caracas, Jake turned on the autopilot and let it take over. He set the auto-throttle for 220 knots and then turned on the GPS navigation and the flight director. The plane obediently heeled over a bit and lined up exactly with the airway, continuing to climb to the altitude he had set. Though the autopilot was using GPS to find its way, Jake kept the nav radio programmed to switch to each upcoming VOR on their route as a backup. When they reached flight level 200, they were directed to climb to flight level 250. He adjusted the altitude setting accordingly and they continued their assent. Once they reached 250, he was directed to climb and maintain flight level 310. He programmed that in, and they ascended some more. Finally, when they reached 310 sixteen minutes after liftoff, he set the auto-throttle to 235 knots indicated—the most fuel-efficient setting at that altitude—and they began to pick up speed. 235 knots indicated at 31,000 feet equated to a true airspeed of 350 knots, or about 400 miles per hour over the ground at a throttle setting of only sixty-two percent.

“That’s pretty fast,” Laura remarked when he explained that to her.

“Yep,” Jake agreed, still a bit nervous about the upcoming descent and landing at SBIA but feeling much more confident now that he had got them airborne and on course without even a minor incident.

“The scenery is incredible,” Laura said.

And it was. They were flying over the Tropical Andes Mountains—the northernmost section of the largest mountain range on Earth. Below, as far as the eye could see in every direction, was a huge expanse of peaks ranging from fifteen to twenty thousand feet in elevation. Snow capped most of the taller peaks but down lower was dense tropical rainforest. Steep canyons cut over millions of years by the flowing rainwater could be seen between the peaks, their rivers twisting and turning, occasionally forming small lakes. Clouds drifted in between the peaks just below the snowline.

“Yeah,” Jake agreed. “You can’t get a view like this through the little window on a commercial jet.”

“Nope,” she said. “It is a little bumpy though.”

That was true as well. They were flying over a huge mountain range in a plane that was considerably smaller than an airliner. The turbulent air being pushed upward by wind flowing over and through the mountains was making them bounce and bump around considerably.

“It’ll smooth out once we get over the plains,” Jake promised, his eyes still taking in the view. “You know, this is why I really love flying. Not just because it gets me where I’m going fast, but because I get to see things like this. I get to see how big our planet really is and how much empty, desolate space there is down there.”

“That’s deep, sweetie,” Laura said, reaching over and patting his leg. “I wish I had some smoke so I could ponder that properly.”

“Sorry,” he said. “I thought it might be a bad idea to bring marijuana from Colombia into Venezuela when we have to go through a customs check in a plane we just purchased from an alleged Colombian drug lord.”

“Yeah,” she said, nodding. “I can see your concern with that.”

“I just hope Señor Gomez made sure to empty all of his stashes before we took possession.”

“Yeah ... me too,” she said, seemingly more nervous about that thought than anything else that had happened today.

They bounced and bumped their way along for about twenty minutes and then came out of the mountains over the Llanos Plains, a vast expanse of tropical jungle terrain. As Jake had promised, the turbulence mellowed out considerably when they left the mountains behind.

“All right!” Laura announced, unbuckling her restraint. “It’s time.”

“Time for what?” Jake asked.

“Time to pee in the plane,” she said. “I deliberately didn’t go before we left just so I could try out the facilities.”

“You realize that once you actually go in that toilet, I have to arrange to have the tank dumped out at some point.”

“No, I did not really think about that,” she said, “but I’m still going to pee. I’ve been looking forward to this ever since you first told me about this plane.”

As she worked her way back there, Jake sighed and looked up at the overhead panel. Just next to the exterior light switches was a switch labeled LAV VAC. He flipped it to the on position and watched as the little light illuminated. Her toilet was now hot.

She opened the door and shut it behind her. After about three minutes or so, Jake faintly heard the sound of the toilet whooshing. The door opened again and she stopped at the sink to wash her hands. She tried to turn it on and nothing happened.

“Hey,” she said. “There’s no water.”

“Sorry,” Jake said, thinking it was testament to how quiet the plane was that he could even hear her. He reached up and flipped another switch on the overhead panel, this one labelled INT H2O. “Try it now.”

He heard the sound of water running a moment later. “That did it,” she announced. She washed her hands and then dried them with paper towels from a roll installed next to the bar. She threw the towels in a little trash receptacle and then made her way back forward.

“How was it?” Jake asked as she sat back down in the copilot’s seat.

“A little cramped,” she said. “A little awkward during the wiping process, but otherwise very nice.”

“That’s good to know,” he said. “I learned at the type-rating that the toilet seat is certified safe to use for takeoffs and landings.”

“Really? Why would someone want to do that?”

“Most of these planes are used by charter companies,” he said. “I’m guessing that that is where the flight attendant sits if all the other seats are full.”

“Wow,” she said, marveling over that. “I was wondering why there were seatbelts on the side of the toilet. I just thought it was in case you had to go while there was turbulence.”

“I guess you could use it for that too,” he said with a shrug.

“I’d have to go really bad to try that trick.”

They flew onward for another minute or so and then Jake looked over at her. “You better put your seatbelt back on. We’re going to pass pretty close to the mountains again as we cross into Venezuela.”

“I’ll put it back on in a bit,” she said. “Right now, there’s another first I need to accomplish.”

“What do you mean?”

She smiled her come hither smile at him. “I notice this cockpit is a lot roomier than in the Chancellor.”

“Yes, it really is,” he confirmed.

Her smile got bigger, more come hithery. “There seems to be a fair amount of distance now between your stick and your yoke.”

Understanding washed over him. “Uh ... yes, there is,” he agreed, “but I don’t think doing that right now, on my first flight, is a really good idea.”

“I think it’s a wonderful idea,” she said. “The autopilot has the plane now, right?”

“Well, yes, but...”

“No buts,” she said. “I’m sucking your dick, sweetie. You can either cooperate or I’ll take it by force.”

He looked over at her and smiled again. “Well ... I wouldn’t want things to get violent up here.”

“Good decision,” she said. “Now, break it out.”

He broke it out. And they officially broke in the new plane before he even managed to make his first successful landing.

As had been the takeoff, the landing at Simon Bolivar International Airport was anticlimactic and went rather smoothly. Jake was directed step by step by Caracas Center to descend and enter the landing pattern for an ILS approach to Runway 27. He was slid in between a Viasa Airlines MD80 that was three minutes ahead of him and a LASAR Airlines 727 that was three minutes behind him. Jake, as was his habit, had his nav radio tuned to the ILS frequency so he could see the glide scope on his instruments, but hand-flew the actual approach himself. He touched down neatly on the centerline at exactly the spot he wanted to only four minutes behind the ETA he had calculated. Though the runway was long enough that he did not really need to use reverse thrust to slow down, he used it anyway, partially because simply having it was a novelty that his Chancellor did not enjoy, but mostly because the thought of a fully loaded 727 right behind him on its own approach made him want to get his ass off the runway as quickly as he could.

The ground controller directed Jake to go immediately to the international terminal alongside Runway 10 and to park there and await the customs officers. Jake acknowledged this and followed the route he had been given. The terminal had multiple gates, at which were parked about half a dozen commercial airliners from three different countries. Jake’s assigned parking slot was on the tarmac well away from any of the gates. There were no other aircraft parked there currently. He brought the plane to a halt and then shut down the engines and the avionics. Since there was no APU, the air conditioning and air circulation died with the engines.

“Well, let’s open this thing up and see what’s in store for us,” he said.

He opened the main door and unfolded the steps. He and Laura stepped outside and enjoyed the fresh, thick air of the near sea level elevation. It was a beautiful day, cloudless, with bright blue sky overhead, about seventy-five degrees, and a gentle breeze blowing from the west. The humidity was a little thick, but no worse than Florida or Georgia or Tennessee.

“Welcome to Caracas,” Jake told her, giving her a side-armed hug.

“I’ve been here before, remember?” she said. “Already have a stamp on my passport from this very building.”

“Did you do the thing with the groupies here?” he asked.

“Nope,” she said. “Venezuela was early in the tour, before I discovered my relief valve.”

“A pity,” he said. “Venezuelan chicks are hot.”

“Have you ever done a Venezuelan?” she asked, her tone light, teasing, and not the jealous interrogation that many wives would display. Laura was just simply not like that, which was one of the reasons he loved her and had married her.

“Nope, never have,” Jake assured her, lying smoothly and completely and without guilt—with hardly even a mental acknowledgment deep in his own mind that he was lying. After all, the one time he had been with a Venezuelan had never happened. It was all just a dream now. “I nailed me some Mexican pussy back in the day though.”

“Oh yeah?” she asked. “How was it?”

“It was all right,” he told her. “They’re not much into keeping things trim down there.”

“But that wasn’t a deal breaker, right?”

“Oh, hell no,” he told her.

She punched him playfully on the shoulder and he playfully accused her of domestic violence. She countered by suggesting that domestic violence was probably not even against the law here. He was about to reply to that when a door opened on the terminal and three men stepped out. All of them were in uniform. All of them had sidearms strapped to their waists. One of them carried a clipboard. One of them had a black Labrador retriever on a leash.

“It looks like the welcome wagon is here,” Jake said, starting to feel a little nervous again.

“Yep,” she agreed.

The three men approached and stood before them. The dog sat on the ground at its handler’s feet, grinning that grin that only labs could grin.

“Welcome to Venezuela,” the man in the middle—the one with the clipboard—said in slightly accented English. “I am officer Sanchez of the Customs Department.” He did not introduce the other two men.

“Thank you,” Jake said. “I’m Jake Kingsley. This is my wife, Laura.”

Sanchez nodded. “We were expecting you, Señor Kingsley. You just flew in from Bogota, correct?”

“Correct,” Jake said. “And please, call me Jake.”

“And I am Laura,” Laura put in.

Sanchez nodded. “As you wish. Your passports, por favor?”

They took out their passports and handed them to him. He opened Jake’s first, flipping to the picture and the actual document first. He examined the document carefully, made a few notations on his clipboard, and then flipped to the pages where the stamps were. “I see you are well traveled, Jake. Mexico, Spain, Italy, United Kingdom, France, Monaco, Italy, Japan, Australia, New Zealand. Two trips to Colombia. This is your first visit to Venezuela?”

“Yes, it is,” he said.

He nodded and then handed Jake his passport back. He then flipped through Laura’s in the same manner. “You’ve spent quite a bit of time in South America, Laura.”

“That’s correct,” she said. “I’m a musician. A saxophone player. I was on tour with Bobby Z when he toured the continent.”

“We are aware of who you are,” he told her matter-of-factly. “This is your second visit to Venezuela?”

“Yes,” she said, starting to look a little uncomfortable now.

He turned back to Jake. “What is your purpose for visiting Venezuela?”

Jake pointed at the plane. “We just bought this aircraft in Colombia. We’re taking it back to California. That’s our primary reason. This is our first leg.”

He looked over at the aircraft and then back at Jake. “Not a very lengthy first leg,” he said.

“We have other reasons to be here,” Jake said. “Celia Valdez—you know who she is, right?”

“Yes,” he said as if he had just been asked a blindingly obvious question by a moron. “I know who Celia Valdez is. Everyone in Venezuela knows who Celia Valdez is. She is perhaps our most famous native.”

“Yeah, I guess that makes sense,” Jake said. “Anyway, Celia is my business partner. She is one of the owners of our record label and we have been friends for years. Laura is her sax player on her tour. They’re both on hiatus currently between the North American and European legs of the tour. Celia is going to meet us here in Caracas. She should be landing in another hour or so and she is going to show us around the place for a day or two. After that, we’re going to fly to Barquisimeto so she can show us her hometown and she can visit her family. After that, she’s going to stay for a week or so, but Laura and I will be continuing on our journey. We’ll be flying to Panama City after Barquisimeto. From there, we’ll go to Guatemala City, then Mexico City, then Cabo San Lucas, then San Diego, then home, staying one night at each stop.”

“I see,” Sanchez said. “That all makes perfect sense. You say that Celia Valdez will be landing here in Caracas in an hour?”

“That’s right,” Jake said. “Continental flight 721 out of Houston. It’s probably coming over Aruba about now.”

“Interesting,” Sanchez said thoughtfully. “Do you have anything to declare?”

Jake shook his head. “Nothing. All we have is what we left Los Angeles with.”

“Except the plane, of course,” Sanchez said.

“Well ... yeah, except that.”

“A plane you purchased from a gentleman named Eduardo Gomez.”

“That’s correct,” Jake said.

“How well do you know Señor Gomez?” he was asked next.

“I’ve only met him once,” Jake said. “That was on my last visit to Colombia, when I went to inspect the plane before I committed to purchase. Señor Gomez made a point to meet me. We went out and had a few beers while my mechanic was inspecting the aircraft. Played some darts. He was a nice enough guy. Very down to Earth.”

“I see,” Sanchez said. “Are you aware of what Señor Gomez does for a living?”

“He told me that he was in the import and export business,” Jake said. “That he imports consumer electronics and exports coffee.”

“Si, he does those things,” Sanchez said. “But it is highly suspected that those are just covers for his real business.”

“Which is?” Jake asked.

“He is believed to be one of the biggest exporters of yeyo to the United States in South America.”

“Is that a fact?”

“It is a strong suspicion backed up by considerable evidence,” Sanchez said. “And that is why we took a particular interest when we saw your flight plan. You see, this aircraft has been flagged for the last two years.”

“Surely you do not suspect that I am in cahoots with Señor Gomez?” Jake asked.

“Now that I have talked to you and your story seems reasonable enough, no,” Sanchez replied. “I sense no deceit from you.”

“Oh ... good,” Jake said, relieved. He was, however, a little disappointed that Sanchez had not implored him to not call him Shirley.

“Nevertheless, we will give your belongings and your airplane a quick onceover, just to be sure.”

Jake waved them in the direction of the plane. “Be my guest,” he offered. After all, it wasn’t like he had much of a choice in the matter.

The onceover took about twenty minutes. Sanchez had Jake and Laura remove their suitcases from the cargo hold and open them up on the tarmac. The dog—her name was Maria—sniffed over their things for a few minutes but gave no reaction. Sanchez and the non-dog-handling agent then dug through their things for a few more minutes, seemingly disappointed when they found nothing out of the ordinary. Laura thought they did spend a little more time than necessary looking at her panties—particularly the dirty ones stored in a plastic laundry bag—but she said nothing. After that, the dog-handling agent led Maria all around the perimeter of the aircraft. She sniffed at everything and gave no reaction. She was then led inside the plane and remained there for the better part of five minutes. At last, the handler and Maria emerged. The handler held a whispered conversation in Spanish with Sanchez and that was it.

“You may put your luggage back into the plane,” Sanchez told them. “After that, you may accompany us inside the terminal and I will stamp your passports. After that, you may proceed to the general aviation terminal to arrange for temporary berthing.

“Very good,” Jake said, nodding, wondering if he was now supposed to tip them or something.

Apparently, he was not. They turned and walked back to the terminal. Jake and Laura put their suitcases back together and stowed them back in the plane. Jake closed the door back up and he and Laura went and got their passports stamped and were given their tourist cards since they would be staying less than thirty days. They were now free to move about Venezuela.

They got back in the Avanti and taxied it over to the general aviation terminal on the far side of the airport. There, Jake was able to acquire some Venezuelan currency at a rate of 207 bolivars for each US dollar. He got a thousand dollars worth and, using this currency he paid his landing fee of 10,000 bolivars and his daily tie-down fee of 5,000 bolivars. They took their luggage out of the plane and secured the aircraft with the passcode lock. They then walked back into the terminal and out the other side, where they caught a circulating shuttle van back to the international terminal, entering it from the main entrance this time.

They found a waiting area near the security checkpoints—which they had no intention of traversing—and were delighted to find that a fully functioning bar and lounge was located within it. The staff there all spoke English to varying degrees. They found seats at the bar and ordered some drinks. Jake, since he was not going to be flying or even driving in the next few days, went with a rum and coke, specifying one of the local rums. Laura ordered a glass of one of the local wines. These drinks cost another thirteen hundred bolivars, including the tip—about $6.28 in US dollars.

“You gotta love this exchange rate,” Jake said as he sipped from the potent concoction. It really was pretty good rum.

“Celia told me it’s getting worse every year,” Laura said. “She said the country seems to be heading for some kind of financial meltdown.”

“Interesting,” Jake said. “You would think a place with as much oil as Venezuela would be a little more financially secure.”

“You would think.”

“They’re a member of OPEC, for god’s sake.”

“I guess they just don’t manage money very well,” she suggested.

Continental Flight 721 landed on time. Jake and Laura finished their drinks and then headed over toward the baggage carousel assigned to it. It was nearly another forty-five minutes before passengers began to emerge from the escalator that led downward from the customs and declarations station on the second floor. And when they did begin to emerge, they did so in dribbles and drabbles. Jake expected that Celia and Suzie, who was traveling with her, would be among the first off since they were flying first class. He was wrong. They were among the last to emerge, and the moment that Celia stepped off the escalator, her carry-on bag in hand, she was mobbed by a crowd of disbelieving Venezuelans who chattered to her in Spanish and asked for autographs, ecstatic that their most famous citizen had returned home. Suzie got separated from her in all the chaos and so it was she that Jake and Laura greeted first.

“Fly Girl!” Laura greeted happily when she saw her.

“Teach!” Suzie shot right back. They came together and shared an affectionate hug.

“How was the flight?” Laura asked her when their embrace broke.

“Not bad,” she said. “I don’t get to do first class very often. I kind of enjoyed it.” She then looked over at Jake. “Jake. Good to see you again.”

“You as well,” Jake said.

To his surprise, Suzie gave him a hug too. He returned it affectionately. After all, he was now going to have an actual commercial transport pilot along for the ride with him for each hop back to San Diego. The thought was very comforting.

“How was the Avanti?” she asked him. “I can’t wait to see it. I am actually green with envy that you have one now.”

“It flew like a dream,” he told her. “I was a little nervous about taking off from eighty-four hundred feet for my first flight solo, but I hardly even noticed other than the high VR speed.”

By the time he finished his summary of the flight from Bogota (leaving out the part about the blowjob at FL-310), Celia had finally managed to free herself from the crowd and locate them. She came over and gave first Laura and then Jake big hugs.

“That was quite the welcome home,” Jake told her, nodding his head in the direction of the crowd, which was still hovering nearby.

“Yeah, I probably should have expected that,” she said. “Especially after what we just went through upstairs.”

“What did you just go through?” Laura asked.

“The customs people wouldn’t let us go,” she said. “We were the first ones to make it to the counter and the last ones to leave.”

“What was the problem?” Jake asked. “They didn’t think you were smuggling, did they? Who smuggles things into Venezuela?”

“Lots of people do, actually,” Celia said. “Cash mostly. Illicit income from the drug trade in US dollars. But that wasn’t what took so long. They didn’t even go through our bags. They just kept talking to us, asking us personal questions. They asked about the whole story with Suzie and me. They asked about my divorce from Greg. They asked about Mindy Snow. They even asked about you and Laura.”

“Why were they asking about that?” Laura asked.

“Simple curiosity would be my guess,” Celia said. “The same reason all the other random people ask us about it. Only they were trying to use their authority positions to get me to say something.”

“You didn’t tell them anything, did you?” asked Jake.

“Only what I tell everyone: that I deny everything.”

“And then they asked why I was traveling with her if none of it was true,” Suzie said.

“What did you say?” asked Laura.

“Just that we were good friends, I am now on a one-month hiatus from my assignments, and that Celia invited me to see her country and her hometown. I then told them how beautiful I found Venezuela so far.” She smiled. “That seemed to mollify them a little.”

“That was exactly the right thing to say,” Celia said. “We Venezuelans are culturally very proud of our country. Even more so than the other South American nations, I believe.”

“They looked at my panties,” Laura said.

Suzie and Celia looked at her. “Your panties?” Celia asked. “They made you take off your pants?”

“No, not the panties I’m wearing,” she explained. “The ones in my luggage. Even the ones in the laundry bag. They looked at those the longest.”

“Disgusting!” Suzie said.

Jake simply shrugged. “They were just being guys,” he said. “I’d have done the same thing in their situation.”

All three women gave him dirty looks at that piece of information.

“Anyway,” Jake said, deciding a change of subject was in order, “how about we go collect your luggage and blow this scene?”

Everyone thought that was a good idea.

They collected the luggage with only a few more fans harassing Celia. None of them seemed to notice that one of her traveling companions was Jake Kingsley, which Jake thought a little odd since Venezuela was second only to Brazil in Intemperance album sales among South American countries. Maybe we all look alike to them, he was finally forced to conclude.

Outside of the terminal was a white limousine that Celia had arranged for. A tall, handsome driver in a chauffer’s uniform and hat was standing next to it, holding up a sign with Celia’s name on it. He babbled excitedly to her in Spanish when they approached. Jake got enough of the jist of his words to understand that he considered it an honor to drive her and her companions around.

They got in the back and he closed the door for them. Jake asked warily, “Is it safe to ride in a limo in Caracas?”

“Of course it’s safe,” Celia scoffed. “Where do you think you are, Bogota?”

“Good point,” he allowed.

They had a wonderful time in Caracas, spending two days there. They traveled about by limousine and Celia showed them all the sights, the touristy ones and the out of the way places that only a native of the region would know. They saw four-hundred-year-old churches and cathedrals that dated back to the Spanish conquistador era. They rode the Teliferico tram to the top of Avila Mountain and took in the cityscape below (as well as a few drinks). They went into small bars and taverns in the downtown area and mingled with the locals (all of whom were astounded when Celia Valdez just came strolling in like an ordinary person). They visited the clubs where Celia and her brother used to play music before they were discovered and turned into La Diferencia by Aristocrat Records. They ate in five-star restaurants and at little madre and padre eateries in out of the way places. In general, Jake, Laura, and Suzie found Caracas to be a vibrant city, on par with New York or Boston, but with a distinct Latino twist.

Jake actually wanted to stay one more day even though he knew Celia was burning to get to Barquisimeto to finally see her family. His reason for wanting to delay their trip was not because he thought there was much more to see and do in Caracas—although he did think this. It was because a heavy cloud cover had drifted in while they were there, blanketing the entire region in uniform overcast with occasional thunderstorms. Jake did not want to fly in conditions like this.

“Why not?” Suzie asked him when he finally confessed his reason to her. “You’re IFR certified. A flight like this is no problem.”

“I am IFR certified,” he confirmed. “And I fly IFR all the time, usually when we’re going back and forth to Oregon, but ... well ... I only really fly it when I have to go above seventeen thousand and it’s required or if there are spotty clouds. I’ve never really done it when the clouds were so dense I couldn’t see the ground at all—except in training. If there is thick cloud cover or rain or anything like that, I usually just postpone my flight until the weather is better.”

“That’s no way to live your life,” she scoffed. “You have an all-weather aircraft now. Embrace it. Don’t be afraid of it.”

“I get what you’re saying,” he told her, “but I think it’s something I need to work my way up to.”

“Nonsense,” she scoffed. “I’ll sit in the copilot chair and talk you through it. Let’s get Band Geek back to her people.”

“Why don’t you just take the controls for me?” he asked.

“I can’t do that,” she said. “While I’m sure I could fly that plane if I needed to, I’m not type-rated in it. You are. You have to fly it.”

“I really don’t know about this, Suzie,” he said.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I’ll tell you ... there’s a little motivational speech I learned from Band Geek that she says she learned from you. It seems to fit the situation right here and now.”

“What are you talking about?” he asked.

She looked him dead in the eye, her expression one of challenge. “You don’t have a fuckin’ hair on your ass if you don’t make that flight tomorrow morning.”

Jake looked at her in astonishment. “That’s hitting below the belt,” he told her.

She smiled. “Sometimes you have to do that in the interests of teaching.”

And so, it came to pass that the four of them were dropped off at SBIA the next morning at 10:00 AM to get ready for the thirty-eight-minute flight to Jacinto Lara International Airport in Barquisimeto. Jake’s doubts took a significant upturn when he and Suzie went in to compose a flight plan and Jake reviewed the weather report for his destination.

“The ceiling is at thirty-four hundred at JLIA,” he told Suzie. “That’s only fourteen hundred feet AGL.”

“So?” she enquired. “You have ILS. That’s well above the safety limit.”

“I don’t actually use the approach autopilot,” he told her. “I never have since training. I use the nav to give me the glideslope and then hand-fly the landing once I have visual. I’ve never let the autopilot make my descent before.”

“Seems like a good day to start,” she said flippantly. “This is a perfect time to learn to trust your ILS.”

He opened his mouth to reply, but she cut him off.

“Do I need to bring up the hair on your ass—or lack thereof—again?” she asked.

She did not. And, in truth, the idea of having her sit next to him and talk him through the landing was alleviating some of his fear. If Suzie was not nervous about the upcoming IFR flight, why should he be?

“All right,” he said. “Let’s do it.”

They put together a flight plan that had them ascending to FL-310 and then descending into the JLIA pattern for an ILS approach to Runway 09. Jake filed the plan and they went back out to the main terminal, where Celia and Laura were drinking bloody Marys in the bar and chatting about the things she was going to show them in her hometown.

“And you can pee in the plane now!” Laura told Celia excitedly. “An actual normal pee, into a real toilet, with toilet paper and everything!”

“I think I’m probably going to have to try that out before we land,” Celia said.

“It’s really cool,” Laura said. “Maybe not four point seven-five million dollars cool, but cool all the same.”

Jake had a fuel truck come over and pump in another four hundred kilos of jet fuel. Once it left—after running his credit card for the charges—he sealed up the plane. Jake and Suzie strapped into the pilot and copilot seats, respectively. Laura sat in the forward-facing seat just behind Jake. Celia sat in the seat next to her, just behind Suzie. Jake fired up the engines. Ten minutes later, they were taxiing. It took almost twenty minutes before they were cleared for takeoff.

“God, this thing is sweet,” Suzie commented as they accelerated down the runway—her tone almost sexual in nature.

Jake lifted off at 110 knots, a bit slower than he had had to at Guaymaral despite the additional weight. They roared into the sky, climbing at 2900 feet per minute. Within three minutes they were in the clouds and could no longer see anything but grey blur.

“Too low and too tropical for icing concerns,” Suzie advised him. “So don’t worry about that.”

“Okay,” Jake said. He actually had not been worried about that until she mentioned it.

They broke out of the clouds at eleven thousand feet, bright sunshine now filling the aircraft. Both pilots put on their aviator sunglasses to combat it. Jake looked around nervously, seeing nothing but cloud cover as far as the eye could see in every direction—cloud cover that extended well into their destination and would not break up until some fifty nautical miles north of the coast of Venezuela. He had absolutely no visual references other than the possibly misleading cloud horizon. No mountain peaks, no cities, no terrain at all. Even though he had trained for this and knew what to do, he had never been behind the controls in such a situation before, having always avoided it as a matter of course.

His confidence grew, however, when the plane and its navigation system kept him exactly on course, making turns when they were indicated, the little airplane on the GPS map and the navigation screen tracking exactly along the line, even when the line angled in another direction. His VOR navigation tracked as a backup, offering even more reassurance.

“Nothing to it,” Suzie told him. “If fact, when you do it as much as I do, it gets a little boring. Sometimes I hand-fly in IFR just to break the monotony.”

The nervousness came back when it was time to descend. They dropped back into the cloud cover and Jake knew they would not break through the ceiling until they were just a minute or two from touchdown.

Suzie talked him through it.

“You’re doing great,” she said, her posture relaxed, her hands to her side, well away from the controls. “Everything is just the same as a normal landing except the autopilot is flying it and you can’t visually confirm your references.”

“That’s a big difference,” Jake said, watching as they made the last turn toward the runway and started final approach. Outside, there was still no visibility whatsoever. He could barely even see the wings and the engines.

“All right, there you go,” she said. “We’re at forty-six hundred and on the line. You should be able to catch the glideslope any minute now. Switch to approach hold mode and watch for capture.”

Jake hit the button for approach hold and watched as the nav radio switched to the ILS frequency. They continued forward for another minute or so, still traveling at 220 knots indicated on auto-throttle (the auto-throttle was something that Jake had already embraced with enthusiasm. It was one less thing to concentrate on during climb and approach). Finally, the horizontal indicator started to move upward. The entire plane lurched a little, the nose going down as the autopilot followed the electronic glide slope.

“That’s capture,” Suzie said. “Now just do everything else like normal. Reduce speed when indicated. Drop your flaps when indicated. Drop your gear when indicated. All just like on a manual landing. The only thing you’re not doing is steering and manually descending.”

“This feels so weird letting the plane fly when I can’t see,” Jake said, chewing his lip a little, his eyes staring intently at the glide slope indicator. It was perfectly centered.

“Like I said,” Suzie told him, “you have to learn to trust it. Once you do, you’re home free.”

Jake nodded and continued to concentrate on his instruments. And then, just 1300 feet above the ground, they dropped out of the cloud cover and he saw the airport a little more than a mile ahead. He was perfectly lined up for Runway 09, could see the big number painted on its surface, directly ahead. He breathed a big sigh of relief and then reported to Barquisimeto Approach that he had the runway in sight. They acknowledged. He had already been cleared to land.

“All right,” he said happily. “Back on familiar ground. I’m taking over now.”

“No,” Suzie said. “Don’t do that.”

“Why not? I can see the runway now.”

“It’s part of learning to trust the ILS,” she said. “Let it take you down to just before touchdown, to two hundred and fifty feet AGL. That’s when you take over.”

Jake gritted his teeth and did as she asked. His left hand rested on the yoke and his right on the throttles, but he made no inputs. He now had the flaps fully deployed and the gear down. His speed was set at one hundred knots indicated. The glideslope indicator was still perfectly centered. The thing really did work. Who would’ve thought?

He shut off the autopilot at 250 feet, just as they were crossing over the highway that ran past the airport. He made a few minor adjustments to the yoke and the rudder, throttled down just a tad, and touched down neatly on a centerline that was slick with rainwater. The plane hardly made a thump.

“Very nice,” Suzie told him as he deployed the reverse thrust and retracted the flaps. “Almost like you knew what you were doing.”

“Almost,” he agreed.

He slowed to forty knots and then throttled back the reverse thrusters, returning the props to normal pitch. He turned at the next taxiway and contacted ground control to receive directions to the general aviation terminal. It took about ten minutes to get there. He parked the airplane in the spot he had been assigned and shut it down.

When he opened the door, they looked out on a drizzly, overcast landscape. The tarmac was wet and the mountains could not be seen. The air temperature was warm and muggy. Jake did not see a single thing that impressed him.

But Celia walked off the plane and out into the rain without hesitation. She looked up at the sky, feeling the wetness come down on her and she had a big smile on her face.

“I’m home,” she said happily. “After all this time, I’m finally home.”

And just hearing those words, Jake felt a little more enthusiasm for the place. If Celia loved it this much, it must be a nice place to visit.