White Cargo

10

It was just after eleven, and with no moon the darkness weighed heavily upon them. Cat looked nervously about him as Bluey, strapped into the left seat for the first time, did his run-up of the airplane. In the dim light from the instrument panel, Cat could see the bulky, fifty-gallon fuel tank in the rear compartment, where the luggage usually went, and the luggage piled into the back seat. On top of the luggage was the life raft, surprisingly compact, but heavy. Cat reckoned they were at least ten percent over the rated maximum gross weight for the airplane.

Both men wore deflated yellow life jackets and shoulder holsters with their respective weapons. (“Don’t wear that thing under your jacket,” Bluey had said. “Where we’re going, you want everybody to know you’re carrying.”) Under his right arm Cat wore another kind of shoulder holster, a large, soft, leather wallet containing a hundred thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills, this in addition to the two million dollars in the aluminum case lying next to the life raft, at the top of the pile of luggage. If they had to ditch this airplane, Cat intended to be sure that case went into the life raft with them. On the floor between the seats lay an Ithaca riot gun — a short, 12-gauge shotgun holding eight double-ought buckshot shells — that Bluey had bought from Spike. (“Scarier than a machine gun,” Bluey had declared.)

In the shoulder holster with the money was Cat’s Robert Ellis passport; the matching wallet was in his hip pocket. His own passport and wallet were in the aluminum case with the money. Cat now possessed a forged FAA Temporary Airman’s Certificate, in each of his two names, declaring him to have recently passed his instrument rating. That was a joke, Cat thought, since he hadn’t even earned his private pilot’s license. (Spike had explained that the certificate was what a newly qualified airman was issued on completion of his examination. It was good for six months, and a hell of a lot easier to forge than a permanent certificate.)

They were loaded for bear, Cat thought, and that gave him some reassurance, but the airplane was loaded, too, and that was making him very nervous. He watched as Bluey switched on the taxi and landing lights, flipped in twenty degrees of flaps, trimmed for takeoff, and shoved the throttle in. They sat with the brakes on, vibrating, until the engine reached full power, then Bluey released the brakes.

Cat was appalled at how slowly the airplane seemed to be gathering speed. The clearing couldn’t be much more than a thousand feet long, and they were using up ground fast. Ahead, in the beams of the airplane’s lights, the trees were growing alarmingly close. Then, at fifty-five knots, Bluey hauled back on the yoke, and the airplane staggered into the air at what seemed to Cat an impossible angle of ascent. Surely the aircraft would stall. Bluey brought the landing gear up and the angle increased even farther, and suddenly they were over the trees, and the Australian was pushing the yoke forward, letting the airplane gather speed.

Bluey grinned at him. “That’s your actual short-field-takeoff-over-an-obstacle,” he said, pleased with himself. “You want to remember how that felt, the angle and all. Might come in handy one of these days.”

“Thanks for the demonstration,” Cat replied, mopping his brow with his sleeve. The real thing had been quite different from practicing on a nice, long runway.

Bluey turned sharply toward Everglades City and kept the airplane flying low. A few minutes later, with the airport in sight, he began an ascent, simultaneously calling Flight Services on the radio. They had just departed Everglades City, he explained, and would like to file for Marathon, in the Florida Keys. The flight plan filed, Bluey relaxed.

“I told you it would lift anything you could put in it,” he grinned at Cat.

“I believe you,” Cat replied. “Why are we landing at Marathon?”

“We’re not,” Bluey said.

Silly question, Cat thought. He should be getting used to this by now. Bluey had pretended to take off from Everglades City, and now he would pretend to land at Marathon. His flight plan was on record. Their next stop would be the Guajira Peninsula of Colombia.

An hour later Bluey set up a landing at Marathon, called Flight Services and canceled his flight plan, then roared down the runway, ten feet above the ground. He switched off the rotating beacon, the navigation lights, the landing light, and the wingtip strobes, climbed to two hundred feet, and turned steeply to the southeast, flashing over the narrow island. Immediately, clear of the land, he pushed the yoke forward and dived at the water, causing Cat to close his eyes and grit his teeth in anticipation of the impact.

When nothing happened, he opened his eyes. “What’s our altitude?” he asked shakily.

“About fifteen feet, I reckon,” Bluey drawled.

Suddenly they blew past a sailing yacht, no more than a hundred feet from the wingtip on Cat’s side.

“Watch out for boats,” Bluey said, tardily.

“Sure thing,” Cat said. “How long are we going to maintain this altitude?”

“All the way past Cuba to Hispaniola,” Bluey said. “Take the airplane.”

Cat lunged for the yoke as Bluey turned his attention to the loran, punching in another set of coordinates.

“Don’t let her climb!” Bluey commanded.

Cat realized he had been unconsciously pulling the yoke back. He tried to settle down.

“Watch the water, not the altimeter,” Bluey said. A moment later he took the controls back from a relieved Cat.

Bluey had told Cat they would be flying around Cuba, down the Windward Passage between that island and Haiti, but he had not told him they would be doing it at fifteen feet. Cat found it impossible to relax.

“There’s a balloon back in the Keys on a fourteen-thousand-foot cable,” Bluey said. “They run it up and use it to look down with radar. It’s not up tonight, but we’ve got to stay under both the American and Cuban radar until we’re in the clear. I don’t want a couple of Fidel’s MIGs using us for target practice.”

For nearly two hours the airplane skimmed the sea, while Cat’s eyes roamed the dim horizon looking for ships and small craft. At one point he saw some lights off to the right. He assumed they were Cuba, but he didn’t want to distract Bluey by asking. Later, lights appeared dead ahead.

“There’s Haiti,” Bluey said. “We’ll be climbing shortly.”

The lights drew closer, and Bluey climbed a couple of hundred feet, Then a beach flashed beneath them, and the airplane began to climb in earnest.

“There’s a nine-thousand-foot mountain out there,” Bluey explained.

“Is nobody going to notice a strange airplane over Haiti?” Cat asked.

“Oh, sure,” Bluey said. “We’re on American defense radar now. They’ll think we’re a Haitian airplane taking off. We’re on Haitian radar, too, if they’re awake, which I doubt, but Haiti doesn’t have an air force, so what the hell?”

Clear of the island, Bluey set the autopilot’s altitude hold at nine thousand feet, leaned out the engine, and tapped in a new longitude and latitude. “That’s Idlewild,” he said. “We’ll be there in about six hours. Our window is between seven-thirty and eight o’clock. I built us an extra half hour into the flight plan for safety.”

“Safety?”

“If you arrive early or late at Idlewild, they shoot you down when you try to land,” Bluey explained cheerfully. “Touchy lot.”

“I see,” Cat said. “Have you flown in there often?”

“I guess I’ve made a couple dozen round trips.”

“How will they know who we are?”

“We’ve got a code. Idlewild is Bravo One, we’re Bravo Two. How’d you meet Carlos, Cat?”

“We had a mutual friend. How’d you meet him, Bluey?”

Bluey laughed. “I was dusting crops in Cuba in ’59. Batista was still in power, but Fidel and his merry band of men were pressing hard. A lot of foreigners — a lot of Cubans too — were leaving the country, but I stuck around. There was money to be made, and I was young and foolish. One day, I was gassing up the airplane, and this Cuban peasant sidles over to me and asks me if I want to make some extra money. Asks me in an American accent. I do a double take, then I say, sure, I’d like to make some extra money. He gives me a camera and says he wants some pictures of a beach near the cane field I was spraying, wants ’em from less than a hundred feet, a couple hundred yards offshore. I made two or three passes, got the pictures, got paid. We had a few beers, got along. The beach was at a place called Bahia de Cochinos. Bay of Pigs.”

Bluey poured himself some soup from a thermos Spike had given them, then continued. “When Castro broke out, I flew the crop duster to Key West — liberated it, you might say — and started a little business in Florida. Couple years later, when I’m pretty sick of crop dusting, I get a call from Carlos. God knows how he found me. Next thing I know, I’m in Guatemala, where they’re training Cubans for the party at the Bay of Pigs. During the invasion I dropped supplies onto the beach from a DC-3, not the most fun I ever had, and I took a little shrapnel in the ass doing it. I ditched in the ocean and got picked up by a landing craft. Carlos was waiting for me when they took me aboard ship. Over the years since, he’s popped up now and then with a job, always for good money.”

“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?”

“A bargain,” Cat said, and meant it.