Gates Of Hades

Chapter Seventeen

Grand Turk

The jailer reached an arm through the bars to accept the plastic bowl Jason was handing to him. The bowl clattered to the floor as Jason moved with the speed of a striking snake. In a single movement, the old man was snatched up against the bars and the daggerlike point of the fish bone pressed against his throat.

"Nice and easy," Jason said calmly. "You take those keys off your belt and unlock the door. Do like I say and you don't get hurt."

The men in the cell opposite Jason's saw what was happening and began to shout. Although he couldn't understand the words, Jason guessed they were clamoring for their freedom, too. It wouldn't take many minutes before someone came to investigate the disturbance. The jailer was fumbling with the ring of keys.

Jason pressed the bone harder against the man's throat. "I got nothing to loose, mon. Somebody come before you get this door open, you die."

Either the threat was effective or the old man had already found the right key. The door swung open with Jason still holding his captive through it. He let go of the arm long enough to snatch the key ring. He shoved his former jailer into the cell and slammed the door shut before turning the key. He was gratified to hear the lock's bolt click into place.

Jason tossed the key ring into an adjacent cell as he sprinted down the hall. He could hear other cell doors opening amid excited voices. The escapees wouldn't get far, not on a twenty-five-square-mile island, but they would provide the distraction Jason needed.

At the end of the cell block was a steel door. Jason shoved but it didn't move. It was locked from the other side.

Curious, Charlie watched his passengers carry the attache cases into the sole taxi parked outside the one-room terminal. He was almost certain he had heard the one who spoke English ask to be taken to the jail.

Surely not.

He shrugged. None of his business. He looked at his watch. There was nowhere on the island that would be more than ten minutes away by cab. Figuring in, say, ten minutes for his passengers to go wherever they had business, another ten to do that business and another ten to return, he had at least a half an hour to spend at the TCA office, trying to get his application moved to the top of the pile.

For some reason, he was thinking about those briefcases as he crossed the street. Maybe they had business papers in the little cases and were planning on flying back to Miami that day. Except the Delta flight on which they had arrived was the only departure today, now long gone.

He shrugged. Mon wants not to carry fresh clothes in this heat, that be his problem, not Charlie's.

Jason turned from the locked door and dashed back down the cell block behind the last group of prisoners to escape their cells. He stopped long enough to snatch a thin mattress from a cot before joining the rush to the prison yard.

Outside, the dozen or so prisoners overpowered two guards. As a leaderless mob, they seemed unclear as to what to do next. With a few quick steps, Jason was at the base of the wall. Grabbing the mattress by one end, he swung it up and across the top of the glass-encrusted stone. Taking a few paces back, he got a running start and jumped, his fingers digging for purchase but finding none.

He slid back to the dusty yard and tried again just as truncheon-swinging reinforcements surged out of the jail and began clubbing the unfortunates within reach. As Jason made his second attempt, six or seven prisoners were beginning what looked like some sort of organized resistance.

This time Jason got high enough to hang one arm across the mattress and get a grip on the rough stone on the outside of the wall. With his feet scrabbling against the rocky surface, he managed to propel himself upward and over, dropping onto the ground below with an impact that buckled his knees.

He stood, turned, and looked straight into the shock- widened eyes of a woman carrying a huge bowl of mangoes on her head.

He nodded politely. "Mornin', ma'am." Then he bolted for the police station in front of the jail.

It was unlikely, he reasoned, that the police would anticipate his return after escaping. The emptiness of the building verified his assumption. It took him less than a minute to empty several open lockers in the room with a coffee machine and two worn Naugahyde couches. As he had hoped, neither of the two officers who had taken his money belt had trusted the other enough to allow its removal from where it was hidden under a pile of odoriferous laundry. A quick glance satisfied him that most, if not all, the bills were still there. More important, so was his passport.

Now he was good to go. The question was, where?

From the sounds coming from the prison yard, there wasn't a lot of time before the would-be escapees' resistance collapsed and the police on duty returned.

As calmly as he could manage in shoes with no laces, he sauntered outside, hands in his pockets to support beltless trousers, and merged with the foot traffic. He could easily walk to the airport; it was less than a mile away.

He had gone one, perhaps two blocks when the squeal of rubber against asphalt split the air. He turned just in time to see four men spilling out of an eighties-model Lincoln on which a faded taxi was still legible. Jason's attention was not drawn to the passengers themselves as much as the briefcase each was opening. He didn't have to look twice to recognize the collapsible-stock Uzis. It was the same gun, carried the same way, as the Secret Service's presidential detail.

He had hoped to get the hell out of Dodge before Eco's disciples, Eglov or others, arrived for their revenge. A few more minutes and he would have made it.

Jason ducked into an alley along the back of Front Street, trusting the shade to make him difficult to see by the gunmen standing in brilliant tropical sunlight. He never knew if the theory worked. A string of shots showered him with concrete fragments as they dug into a wall above him.

He tried to pull his head into his chest like a turtle into its shell. In these narrow confines, the ricochets and cement chips could be deadly.

There was screaming from behind him, a terrified woman in shock, mixed with shouts in Russian that were getting closer.

The alley was only a couple of blocks long, ending in an open park just off the beach where Jason would have no cover at all.

Desperation made a decision for him.

He snatched at a door leading into one of the buildings, finding it locked. He had better luck with the second, pulling it open only wide enough to slip inside and locking it behind him.

He was in a well-lit, air-conditioned corridor lined with offices. In those with the doors open, Jason could see guayabera-clad solicitors and consultants advising clients or speaking softly on telephones as they conducted the financial affairs of those who did business where income and property taxes were only nightmares. From the voices he heard, both blacks and whites had spent time in England. There wasn't a native accent among them. A couple of heads came up with curious stares. Jason made himself walk slowly and calmly, as though looking for someone in particular.

"Can I help you, sir?" a well-dressed native woman asked in Oxfordian tones. "Is there someone you wish to see?"

Jason tried to push his pursuers from his mind long enough to remember the name of the Irish-born solicitor who had handled the purchase of the property on North Caicos. "O'Dooly, Seamus O'Dooly. Is he in?"

One eyebrow twitched in what might have been annoyance. "I believe Mr. O'Dooly has his offices next door."

Jason gave her the best imitation of embarrassment he could manage as he headed toward the front of the building. "Thanks."

He stood in the reception area for a moment, trying to see past the four or five people plastered to the plate-glass window that looked out onto Front Street and the beach.

"What's going on?"

"A shooting," someone said without turning around. "Some idiots just started firing guns in the middle of the street and looks like someone's hurt."

Edging closer, Jason saw ten or so people gathered in the middle of the street. Behind them, its doors still open, was the Lincoln. The gunmen were nowhere to be seen, no doubt checking each door off the alley behind him.

Soon enough they would come around front to check on those they couldn't enter. Jason didn't intend to wait.

With purposeful steps he strode into heat made all the more intense from his brief exposure to air-conditioning. He hardly noticed that his shirt was instantly sweat- plastered to his back. He kept his face away from the buildings and alley, fighting the urge to look around for men with guns. He gave only a cursory glance at the crowd gathered in the middle of the street. Shielded from view by the morbidly curious, a woman was wailing. From the few words Jason heard, her child had caught a stray bullet.

He should, he supposed, have felt some degree of guilt. Had he not been here, there would have been no blameless victim. The child lying on the pavement had been no more deserving of that bullet than Laurin had been of a hijacked airliner. His well of remorse was long dry.

Besides, he did not have the luxury of debating hypothetical fault. If he didn't make the right moves, any guilt he might bear would become academic.

The Lincoln was empty, its doors open and the engine running. Jason cast a thankful glance skyward. As usual, luck was going to play a stronger hand than skill. No one noticed as he shut all but the driver's door and climbed in behind the wheel. The interior stank of stale tobacco smoke, the headliner had long ago been replaced with some sort of ragged and gaily colored cloth, and the seat's loose spring was trying to castrate him.

Whatever amenities the car lacked were more than compensated for by the opportunity. At the moment, he would gladly have settled for a garbage truck.

As he slipped the balky gear into drive and eased away from the center of town, he could hear a siren. He crossed his fingers that the ambulance from the island's only medical facility got there in time.

He might be fresh out of guilt but he had a full tank of hope.

In minutes, the stubby control tower was visible above the low brush along the road. Jason pulled into one of the three parking places outside the small cement-block passenger terminal. The absence of other cars told him no arrivals were imminent. Getting out of the Lincoln, he walked past the terminal and onto the tarmac of the general aviation area, that part of the airport reserved for private aircraft.

Under the shade of the only tree nearby he recognized a familiar face and walked over to where a young native in a white shirt and dark, well-pressed pants was sipping the last swallow from a drink can.

Jason extended a hand. "Charlie, how you doin', mon?"

Charlie looked up with a smile showing perfect, brilliant white teeth. "Doin' fine, Jason." He shook the hand briefly. "Sorry t' hear 'bout that fire over to yo' place, though. Folks say you gonna leave."

In these latitudes, custom required polite conversation before coming to the point. Jason opted for brevity instead. "Charlie, some men are after me. There's already been some shooting in town."

Charlie's smile was replaced by confusion. "Mens? Mebbe four big guys, carryin' briefcases?"

"Those are the ones, yeah. I-"

"But dey can't," Charlie protested. "I mean, can' nobody bring guns into the Turks 'n' Caicos, not 'less you gots a permit."

Jason just stared, thinking of the collection of firearms that had gone up with his house, weapons that had sailed through local customs when accompanied by a liberal "gift" for the inspector. Charlie, like anyone else who lived here, knew full well that a few dollars placed in well-connected hands bought the right to do just about anything.

Capitalism was alive and well in the Turks and Caicos Islands.

Charlie turned his head to look down the road toward town. "That noise I heard…"

"Gunfire, shots aimed at me."

What Jason was about to ask suddenly dawned. "Listen, Jason, I got me a charter, gotta wait on 'em to come back. They kill me, I go off an' leaves 'em."

Jason pulled his shirt out of his pants and dug into the money belt. He slowly counted out ten one-hundred- dollar bills. "Tell you what, Charlie: you go back to the terminal, buy yourself another cold drink, take your time. You hear a departure, you just finish refreshing yourself there in that nice air-conditioned terminal. You come out, your plane's gone… well, you walk-don't run, walk- over to the police and report it."

Charlie's eyes flicked between the money and the Aztec parked fifty or so yards away. The door was open in the vain hope of a breeze to cool the interior. "Jason, I can't…"

"Can't what, Charlie? You know how many planes were stolen in the Caribbean last year, snatched just to make a single dope run, then abandoned? Hell, look how many old dope wrecks you see in the water 'tween here and Provo! Your plane gets stolen and it's unfortunate but not even unusual."

"But in the daylight, right here at Grand Turk?"

Jason began to slowly fold the bills up as though to return them to the money belt. "I'd thought theft was the reason the man who owns your charter service paid for insurance. But that's okay, Charlie. I understand you can't take a risk to save my life from those men with guns. I understand…"

Charlie's hand grabbed Jason's. "You let go that money, Jason." He gave the area a quick, nervous survey, the look of a small child checking to see if parents were watching. "Jes' you sit here; let me get into the terminal. What you does then, that be yo' bidness."

"Remember: about thirty minutes before you report the plane stolen."

Charlie nodded. "You be in Haiti, the DR by then."

"Never mind where I'll be."

Charlie stood and walked away, then stopped and turned. "Jason?"

Jason looked up.

"Good luck!"

There wasn't time for a complete preflight inspection of the aircraft. Jason only unscrewed the caps to the plane's two gas tanks to visually verify they were full. He had never flown a Piper, let alone an Aztec before. He had, however; taken the hours of flight instruction mandatory for all Delta Force officers. He could only hope there was enough similarity between the Aztec and the light miliary trainer to keep him from killing himself.

His first glance at the panel was both encouraging and a little frightening. What gauges were present were familiar: altimeter, turn and bank, and their like. A number of empty holes told him he would have a single radio and navigation unit, no transponder or other electronics common to even small aircraft.

The switches were double what he had been used to, one for each engine. He flipped the first one on the right to on and did the same with one marked pump. He heard the reassuring whine of a fuel pump. He gave a winged switch a twist and the left prop began a slow rotation. Keeping the knob turned, he used his other hand to work the fuel-flow lever in the middle of the panel back and forth. He was delighted when the small plane quivered and the prop caught, disappearing into a blur.

He was about to do the same thing with the right engine when something made him look up in time to see an old Buick almost collide with the parked Lincoln as it came to a stop. The four men piled out, this time not even taking the trouble to conceal their weapons. They had not noticed the Aztec yet as they looked around for Charlie before running into the terminal.

Now acquainted with the procedure, Jason had the second engine started and was rolling toward the runway in less than a minute. There was no time to seek taxi and takeoff clearances from the tower. Instead, he went to the western tip of the runway and prepared to do a run-up, the procedure by which magnetos, fuel-flow, and propeller pitch were given a final check.

Through the aircraft's windshield, he saw the four men racing across the general aviation area, guns held out. They might have missed him earlier, but even the poorest of shots was going to hit the Piper somewhere if they could get within the Uzi's limited range.

So much for the run-up.

Jason pushed the two center levers flat against the panel and the Aztec began to creep forward.

The four men certainly saw him now. They were gesturing in his direction.

The airspeed indicator was quivering around twenty- five knots. The white arc showed Vmc-liftoff-to be between sixty and sixty-five.

Nothing to do but press the fuel levers harder, hoping for any increase in power. The outside-air-temperature gauge read eighty-two, and standard humidity here was at least the same, adversely affecting power. Too bad he wasn't trying to escape from an arctic desert.

The four men stood in a line, Uzis raised. The guns were designed for massed fire at close range. The Aztec would be at the outer limit of the weapons' accuracy and reach. The plane was going to take some punishment, but not nearly as much as it would have from twenty-five yards closer. The fragile aluminum skin was too thin to protect vital parts or Jason from the bullets that did get that far.

The gauge's needle was crawling past forty knots. If only the damn plane would accelerate a little faster…

The needle hovered between forty-five and fifty.

Parts of his brief aviation instruction came back with the suddenness and impact of a thunderbolt. There was a way to get this thing off the ground quicker.

His looked at the bottom of the panel, where he saw an oddly shaped switch. Pulling it down produced a whir of electronics, and the plane unweighted like a diver about to leave the board. He had hit the flap switch, lowered the flaps at the back of the wing. A procedure designed to slow the aircraft for landing, it also changed the airfoil of the wings, producing more lift, if less speed.

The small plane clawed its way into the air, with Jason pulling the control stick back far enough to keep the stall warning screeching. A stall would occur when the aircraft's angle of attack could no longer be sustained by available power and the plane simply quit flying. It was an acceptable landing maneuver, but to have all lift spill from the wings only a hundred feet or so in the air left neither time nor altitude for recovery.

But no more fatal than a hailstorm of automatic rifle fire.

There was a loud sound like the clap of hands, and the plane shuddered. At least one of the men had hit the mark. Jason could only hope no essential had been struck. The gauges told him nothing.

At five hundred feet he let the nose down to only a few degrees above the horizon. Turning his head, he could see Grand Turk shrinking in the distance. He lifted the flaps, anticipating the sinking of the aircraft with the loss of extra lift. At a thousand feet he leveled off, pulled the power back to his best guess of economy cruise, and put the Aztec into a slow right turn until both compass and gyroscope indicated a few degrees east of due south.

He sighed as he looked around the small cockpit. He gave the rudder pedals an experimental push, testing the force required to operate each. Maybe flying was like riding a bicycle in that you didn't forget how.

Quit kidding yourself, he thought. You've got to land a plane you've never flown before and with possible characteristics of which you're ignorant.

Oh well, his other self-the pilot self-replied, you've already seen the speed at which this baby comes right up to a stall, and what is a landing but a stall into the ground?

You'll be fine as long as you can find a nice long, deserted beach to put her down. Nothing to it.

A flicker of a needle caught his eye. The left fuel gauge was bumping against the empty peg. Gas gauges in airplanes were notoriously inaccurate; hence the visual check of the fuel level before takeoff. Still, the wing tank could have taken the hit he had heard. He quickly searched the floor between the two front seats and found a lever for each tank. He switched the left engine to feed from the right tank. He was unsure exactly what that would do to the balance of the aircraft, but better another unknown than the certainty of a fuel-starved engine.

Squinting, he peered into the blue haze. Clouds made dark patterns on the water easily mistaken for islands. Each form had to be examined closely. Where he was headed, he would quickly run out of altitude at a mere thousand feet. The mountains were some of the Caribbean's highest.

In a pocket in the door beside him was stuffed a tattered map, a color chart published periodically by the United States government's Coast and Geodetic Survey. Jason unfolded it carefully, fearful it might tear. To his pleasant surprise, the side that did not show part of the Turks and Caicos depicted the north coast of the island of Hispaniola. It was well out-of-date-he would riot be able to rely on the printed radio frequencies-but he had no intent of making contact with facilities that could well have been alerted to the theft of the airplane. The depiction of the physical shape of the coastline, however, would be valuable.

He glanced up from the map in time to see shadows ahead coalescing into a definite form. A strip of foamy white surf along a golden beach confirmed his arrival. The question was, exactly where?

He turned to fly almost due east along the coast and passed over what was clearly a resort area. A golf course was laid out amid a jungle; the blue of a swimming pool twinkled in the sun. He was low enough to see people on the tennis courts. A few minutes headed the other way and he was over a finger of land running east and west. It took only a glance at the map to confirm he was over the Samana Peninsula of the Dominican Republic's north coast. Now to find a place to land.

There were several airstrips carved into the jungle, distinguishable from roads only by their straightness and the fact that one or two aircraft were visible on the ground. Tempting, but Jason decided not. Leaving a stolen aircraft where it likely would be found would start a trail he would prefer did not exist.

He descended slowly, his eyes on the beaches below him. Over a slight ridge, a muddy river formed a small delta along the coast. As far as Jason could see, there were no roads or other signs of habitation nearby, probably because the silt from the river's mouth spoiled the beach for swimming and sunbathing.

With one eye on the airspeed gauge and the other on the altimeter, he entered a lazy downward spiral. He made one final check, a low pass over the coast to spot rocks or other obstructions along the beach, before he lowered the gear and let the flaps back down. With the wheels hanging in the airstream, the Piper settled faster than Jason had anticipated. He was reluctant to add power, which would increase speed, which, in turn, would extend the length of beach required to stop. He eased back on the controls until the stall warning's bray began.

With a nose-up attitude, the Aztec slammed its wheels into sand that felt far less solid than it looked. There was the sound of tearing metal and the plane dipped to the left as it careened across the beach toward the river. One of the gear struts had collapsed. Now Jason was a mere passenger with no control over the aircraft. He could only flip off the power switches and hope.

The plane took a couple of spins before the left wing dug into the riverbank and came to a tooth-jarring stop.

Either the frame or the door had been bent, because Jason had to put his back against the exit and use his feet against the other side of the Piper to force it open. Panting with exertion, he dropped into wet, cool mud.

His shoes, still without laces, were underwater, invisible in the brown flow. Holding on to the crippled plane, he climbed onto the bank and surveyed his location. Palm trees screened anything more than a few yards behind the beach. Unless someone happened to be flying along the coast, he doubted the Piper would be seen for some time. Within a day or two, it was likely the force of the river might push it underwater, where it would never be found.

He sat, took off his socks, and wrung them out before putting his shoes back on and beginning what he knew would be a long trek to the resort he had seen. Before rounding a curve of the beach, he stopped and took one last look at the little twin engine.

Old pilots' lore: any landing you can walk away from was a good one.