by Thomas Shaw
With his thumb light in hand he found the small stop-cock valve that controlled the flow of gasoline to the engine. He pushed the lever to ON/RES. SAM instructed Donny to push the small primer button he found on top of the carburetor only two times since the engine was still warm. Donny clicked the foot activated shifter lever to the neutral position. He then found the compression release on the left side of the handlebar. He pulled it full in, releasing the compression valve inside the engine. Then he quietly rotated the kick starter to the right so he could grip it with his foot. With perfect timing he gave a sharp downward kick while at that same moment releasing the compression lever. As his foot hit the bottom of its stroke, the motorcycle rumbled to life.
Pulling in the clutch lever, Donny shifted the antique motorcycle into 1st gear and slowly pulled onto the darkened street and headed south. From time to time, SAM would direct him to turn left and go 200 meters then take the 2nd roundabout just like a good GPS.
At one point SAM had him duck into an alley and wait for the police car to pass not more than fifty feet in front of him. With each turn he made, the sirens seemed to drift further and further away. It was about this point that SAM had Donny switch on the headlight and accelerate up to 40 mph. Highway 95 was less than one mile ahead which would take him south toward Taxco another 145 kilometers away.
The cat and mouse escapade with the Mexican police had lasted for over an hour when Donny finally turned south on highway 95. With the headlight on, he was easily able to go 60 mph which made his ETA to the airstrip in Taxco about 12:30 am Pacific Time.
The first hour went smoothly. Each time Donny would come to a little village (maybe a dozen houses), he would slow to 30 miles per hour, to make as little noise as possible. Once he was a mile or so on the other side of the village he would accelerate back to 60 or 70 mph, holding that speed until the next town. Without goggles it was dangerous to push it much past 70 even though SAM was urging him to drive as fast as possible.
After an hour into the trip Donny started gaining elevation. From time to time he would see a sign saying; Elevación 500 metros, then 1000 metros. It was clear that he was entering a mountain range.
As he approached his 5th village he suddenly heard a loud noise coming from his motorcycle. Blaat, Blaaat, like the sound a diesel truck makes when it’s going down a steep hill only with a much higher pitch. Donny rose up from his couched position when he heard the sound of metal scraping on the highway behind him. He turned to look just in time to see something silver flash in the moon light, then a burst of sparks followed by another flash of silver. One of his mufflers had fallen off and was bouncing wildly down the highway. The next bounce sent it flying off into the trees which lined both sides the road.
“That muffler is history,” Donny said, out loud in answer to SAM’s inquiry.
At that moment he was just entering the outskirts of another village. Donny slowed to 30 miles per hour, but the slope of the highway required that he add more throttle which caused him to make a terrible racket.
Blaaat, Blaaat, came the sound of exhaust passing straight out of one of the cylinders.
There was no need to try and be quiet now, he opened the throttle and tried to climb back up to highway speed. The exhaust noise shattered the quiet of the night.
Donny looked back and saw lights coming on in some of the houses, he even though he heard dogs barking through the roar of the exhaust. Up until now the night had been somewhat serene, but the exhaust noises changed all that.
Donny passed another sign: Elevación 1200 metros.
He had to add more throttle to maintain an even 50 miles per hour. To make matters worse, the headlight began to flicker ON and OFF. Donny tapped on the headlight a couple of times and it seemed to work, the light would obediently turn back ON but after a few more outages it became permanent. No more headlight.
Donny’s eyes adjusted somewhat to the lack of light but he couldn’t maintain the 50 miles per hour that SAM was so anxious about.
He knew he was approaching another village even though he couldn’t see it. He could hear the dogs barking before he saw the first house. Lights were being turned on before he was halfway through the village. This was not good. He cracked open the throttle on SAM’s insistence and accelerated through the last half of this village. The good news of sorts was that he only saw four or five houses with lights.
Back in Mexico City…
It was after 11 o’clock at night but the police emergency number had already received six complaints about a noisy motorcycle, waking them up in the middle of the night. The Mexican military was monitoring all police calls due to the National Security emergency the President had just declared.
The Major General who gave the order to pick up Juan had just received a phone call about a motorcycle heading South on Mex 95 at a high rate of speed without a head light.
The General immediately called the military base and dispatched a troop carrier with twelve commandos, a Colonel and his best driver, to pursue this motorcyclist at once. Within fifteen minutes they were in hot pursuit.
SAM had patched into their military frequency and was carefully monitoring their every move. There was now a serious timing problem with the mission.
Back on the mountain road…
Donny had covered almost two thirds of the distance when things went from bad to worse. SAM did not tell Donny that he was being pursued by twelve military commandos; she wanted him to focus on the task at hand.
That didn’t account for the dozen or so members of the team in Quantico, Virginia. They were all talking among themselves as to the best assistance they could come up with.
Donny was very high in the mountains and had just passed a sign saying; Elevación 1265 metros, when the motorcycle engine sputtered a few times, and then shut down.
“I’m out of gas,” Donny reported.
There was no response.
In Quantico the tracking room was buzzing with suggestions.
“Grab the next car, hijack it, do whatever it takes,” one person said.
“Go to the nearest farmhouse, take their car. We are rapidly running out of time,” said another.
“Dump the bike and start running, he can’t just stand here with his thumb in his a…!” Dr. Merrill exclaimed, frustrated by the indecision.
“Wait,” SAM finally broke in.
“Donny, I want you to push the motorcycle up the hill another 200 yards.”
“Are you crazy,” shouted Dr. Merrill. “Do you think there’s a gas station up there?”
He suddenly stopped. “Is there a gas station up there?”
***
“No,” said SAM, “but he’s almost to the summit and he can use all the kinetic energy he has built up to coast down the other side.”
“I didn’t think about using kinetic energy but it’s a great idea to use the bike to coast down the other side. I’ll bet he can hit speeds up to 80 miles per hour if he gets a good straight-a-way,” Ed said excitedly.
It was an exhausting effort, but Donny finally pushed the bike past the sign saying; Cumbre 1330 metros. (Summit 4,363 feet).
The bike began coasting down the other side, faster and faster until he was jogging at a pretty good clip, when he jumped onto the foot peg and swung his leg over the seat.
By using his thumb light he watched the speedometer climb to 10 mph, then 20 mph, 30 mph. He was accelerating so fast it was difficult to make out the curves in the darkened road ahead. Don pressed his foot on the rear brake and felt the bike respond. He would have to anticipate his speed by the feeling of wind on his face. SAM wasn’t much help here.
Don felt the bike accelerating faster and faster. He pressed on the brake harder and harder; the bike started to slow down but the road kept turning tighter and tighter to the left. He must be entering a switch-back. The turn became much tighter. He was pressing so hard on the brake pedal he thought the rear tire would start skidding out of control any second. His right hand instinctively
reached for the hand brake.
***
“Don’t use the…” was all SAM could get out before Donny pulled on the front brake.
The front wheel was at its maximum turning angle for this speed. The slightest resistance from the front brake caused the tire to immediately lose traction and the bike went down.
Donny’s left leg was pushed up by the ground moving underneath him, forcing him to sit sideways on the gas tank as it went over the embankment sliding downward at a steep angle until he hit bottom on the lower portion of the switch-back.
After a little communication between SAM and Donny, it was determined that he was OK and needed to immediately continue with the mission.
Donny lifted the motorcycle back onto its wheels and rolled it a few feet down the hill. At least the wheels weren’t bent, but the handlebars hadn’t fared as well. The left side was bent down at a 45% angle causing it to hit the gas tank when you turned to the left. By putting both feet on the front wheel and pulling up on the bent handle bar with all his strength he was able to straighten the handlebar to a near normal position. Within minutes he was back on the bike and coasting down the hill, this time using much more caution in controlling his speed through the switch-backs.
At his current rate of progress, SAM estimated Donny’s ETA to the airstrip at 1:45 am Pacific Time. She also estimated the ETA of the troop carrier at 1:55 am, a mere ten minutes behind him.
As Donny passed below the 700 meter elevation, the trees started thinning out, giving him a little better view of the road ahead. As the road straightened out, he was able to use the brakes less and less. At times during this downhill dash, Donny would reach speeds over 70 miles per hour but as the elevation approached 250 meters the road flattened out as it approached the fields that surrounded Taxco (an ancient Silver mining town).
Donny’s speed was dropping fast as he made the final turn toward Taxco. He could just make out the distant lights in this historical town. When he lost all forward movement, SAM instructed Donny to roll the motorcycle off the road as far as possible. She obviously didn’t want the military transport to see that he was on foot. SAM instructed Donny to jog the last ten kilometers as fast as he could.
One kilometer into the run it was clear that the commandos would intercept him on the highway.
SAM instructed Donny to stop.
“What the Hell are you doing?” demanded Dr. Merrill. “We’ve only got seconds to keep him ahead of those soldiers!”
SAM ignored Dr. Merrill’s outrage and issued a Code-10 to changed Donny Briscoe back to the original personality of Jim Peterson.
Jim opened his eyes and began to realize that he must have had another blackout spell. The first thing he noticed was that he was out of breath and sweating heavily. He also noticed he was wearing different clothes and a knit cap which he pulled off and discarded onto the side of the road. He didn’t even liked to wear a baseball cap let alone some sort of ski cap in the middle of the summer and what’s this, he was wearing a backpack. What was going on?
As he stood there trying to collect his thoughts, he suddenly realized that everything around him was dead still. In fact it was scary still. The more he checked out his surroundings, the more unnerved he became. “What was that?” Jim found himself saying into the darkness.
He wasn’t sure but he thought he felt the ground tremble under his feet. There it was again. Was this the beginning of an earthquake?
There it was again… this time it seemed much stronger but he also heard a heavy thumping sound coming from behind him. He turned and peered into the night straining his eyes to see if he could make out the source of the noise.
Whap… Whap… the ground trembled as the sounds of heavy footsteps appeared to be coming down the road. Suddenly the whole roadway behind him lit up with a bright light which appeared to be made by some sort of giant flame.
The hair stood up on the back of Jim’s neck.
Whap… Whap… This time Jim could clearly hear the blast of gas as flames shot four or five feet out of the nostrils of the biggest, ugliest head he had ever seen. It looked like a cross between a T-Rex and a Chinese dragon and was headed straight for him.
SAM had created this image in Jim’s mind to scare the hell out of him and would create an adrenalin rush that would give him the energy to run at a much faster pace. Before he even had a chance to think about what was happening, Jim’s feet were moving faster than they had ever moved in his life. Time seemed to slow down as the adrenalin surged through his body. He turned and ran away from this hideous sight as fast as possible.
Jim’s mind and body were in high gear but to his conscious mind everything was in slow-motion. He could feel the ground tremble under his feet and the heat from the flames told Jim this bad boy was getting closer.
With every ounce of effort Jim urged his feet to move even faster and somehow they did.
The monitors on the walls of the control center in Quantico clearly showed the super-human effort Jim was making.
“I hope this doesn’t blow the guys heart out,” one of the technicians commented. “I’ve never seen anyone run fourteen to fifteen miles an hour for a sustained period like this.” SAM had similar concerns as she watched Jim’s heart rate pass the 200 mark.
Jim’s endorphins kicked in to the point that he couldn’t tell if his feet were hitting the ground or if he was simply running on a cloud. He pressed on even harder, the fear of death ever present on his mind.
As Jim’s heart rate passed the 250 mark, SAM decided to back off the illusion she had created in his mind to reduce the stress on his body, thereby controlling his metabolic rate.
It was clear to Jim that the “monster” was still behind him but losing ground; he was slowly pulling away from it.
A couple of minutes later the “monster” was completely gone and Jim was able to take a peek over his shoulder for the first time. He had just run an incredible two miles in a little over six minutes.
SAM issued a Code-5 and Donny was back in the game, although much weakened by the exhausting run. As instructed, Donny turned off the highway and headed down the dirt road toward the private strip where “Black Gold” was waiting for him in the hangar.
The troop carrier had just passed over the summit and was headed for Taxco at top speed.
21
Donny jogged slowly down the 1/8th of a mile of dirt road toward the hangar, taking the time to breathe deeply, trying to replenish the oxygen used up in his hyper-drive run.
As Donny approached the hangar, SAM informed him that the military had posted two guards at the behest of the government under the pretense of a National Security measure. Every foreign airplane flown into Mexican airspace during the last two weeks was under the scrutiny of the military.
As he got closer, Donny moved off the road into the grass field that placed him between the hangar and the small out building sitting about ten yards off to the left side. He stayed low as he approached the side of the hangar 90 degrees away from what SAM was calling the guard shack. He stayed in the shadows and worked his way toward the shack using the hangar to block their view. The side door to the hangar was directly opposite the guard shack. Donny looked around the side of the hangar and quickly moved back. He though he sensed motion in the small building but there were no windows so he couldn’t be sure. SAM urged Donny to move quickly into the hangar to develop a plan for his final escape.
Taking a deep breath Donny swung around the corner of the hangar, hurriedly walked the fifteen feet to the door, pushed it open and was inside in a matter of seconds.
Once inside he fished out his thumb light and found that he was standing between wooden shelves about ten feet tall filled with parts and pieces of airplane parts. There was a light with a green umbrella type fixture hanging on a single wire from the ceiling just inside the door. There was a light switch next to the door with a wire running up toward the ceiling. Don gave the switch a quick ON and OFF to see if it worked… It did.
> SAM was urging Don to search the area for a weapon that would allow him to neutralize the guards. The seconds were ticking off as Donny, used his thumb light to find some sort of weapon. He found a screwdriver a rusty hammer and some nails, nothing that would give him an edge against armed guards.
***
As he worked his way along the wall he would whisper the things he saw for SAM to evaluate. At one point he told SAM that he saw a breaker bar. She asked how much it weighted.
[A breaker bar is a heavy steel bar about five feet long with a sharp beak type head on one end, used to drive between heavily loaded pallets to pry them apart so a tow-motor can pick them up]
“It feels like about 20 pounds,” Don said, in a whisper.
“That’s it,” SAM said quickly.
“What is she doing now?” Goodman said, truly confused, as he listened to the events unfolding in the control room.
The support team listened intently as SAM instructed Donny to use his Leatherman hand tool to remove the staples holding the electrical cord running to the light switch. Once he had freed up about fifteen feet of wire, SAM instructed Donny to move the switch box to one end of a row of shelves positioned about twelve feet in front of the side door he had just used. With some string he had found earlier, Don tied one end to the light reflector and the other end to the top of the door frame. He pulled the string tight so the light was pointed directly toward the door about five feet away.
He was almost ready. His final instructions were to leave the door slightly open and take up his position next to the heavy wooden shelving just a few feet from the door. Standing with his feet wide apart like a javelin thrower, Donny hefted the heavy steel bar up on his shoulder while balancing equal amounts of weight on either side of his hand. With his foot, he kicked over five empty paint cans he had stacked in the isle beside him. The cans made a loud racket as they clattered to the floor, breaking the silence of the night.