White Cargo

by Stuart Woods

  “Mr. Avery’s office,” a secretary said.

  “My name is Wendell Catledge. I’d like to speak with Mr. Avery,” Cat said.

  “What is this about, sir? Does Mr. Avery know you?”

  “I’ll discuss that with Mr. Avery. We’ve never met.”

  The secretary became officious. “I’m afraid Mr. Avery is in a meeting. If you’ll leave your number . . .”

  “I have a business account with the bank. The company name is Printtech. Please go and tell Mr. Avery that Wendell Catledge wishes to speak with him at once.”

  “I’m very sorry, but . . .”

  “Please don’t make it necessary for me to come to his office.”

  There was a short silence. “Please hold,” she said, exasperated.

  There was a longer silence, then a man’s voice. “Mr. Catledge? Cat Catledge?” The man had been reading his Fortune and Forbes. “I’m sorry you were kept waiting. How can I be of service?”

  Cat identified himself with the Printtech account number and his personal account number. He told the banker how he could be of service, explaining that the man could verify his instructions by calling him at the home number listed on his account records.

  The man was uncomfortable. “May I ask . . . you understand, Mr. Catledge, that by law this sort of transaction has to be reported to the federal government.”

  “I quite understand. I’ll be at your office at eleven tomorrow.”

  The banker was still balking. “This sort of thing takes time, you know.”

  “Mr. Avery,” Cat said, becoming exasperated himself, “you have nearly twenty-four hours. All I really want to do is cash a check. I’ll be at your office at eleven tomorrow morning.”

  “Yes, sir,” the banker said.

  • • •

  Promptly at eleven the following morning, Cat presented himself at the bank. Avery took him into his office, then into an adjoining conference room. Another bank officer and a uniformed security guard were standing at the end of the table.

  In the middle of the table was a stack of money.

  “Twenty thousand hundred-dollar bills,” Avery said, still sounding doubtful, “banded into bundles of five hundred, as you requested. Do you wish to count it?”

  “No,” Cat replied.

  “There are some papers to sign.”

  Cat placed his aluminum briefcase on the table and opened it. “Please put the money into this case while I sign the papers,” he said to the guard. Avery nodded and the guard began to pack the money.

  Avery shoved some papers toward him. “First, please sign a check for two million dollars,” he said.

  Cat signed the check.

  “Then, I have prepared a release of all liability on the part of the bank. We don’t usually transact business this way, as you can understand.”

  Cat signed the release. He noticed that the money fit nicely into the case, with a little room to spare. He had calculated correctly.

  “That’s all in order, then,” Avery said. “I’d like our guard to walk you to your car. This is not the safest of neighborhoods, you know.”

  “Thank you,” Cat said. “And thank you for doing this so quickly.”

  Avery walked him to the door. “Mr. Catledge, if you’re in some sort of difficulty, I’ll do anything I can to help,” he said earnestly.

  “Thank you, Mr. Avery,” Cat smiled, “but it’s nothing like that. I just have to do some business in a place where ordinary banking facilities aren’t available. Please don’t concern yourself further.”

  The guard walked him to his car, looking nervously about them. Cat thought he might have been less conspicuous alone. When he walked into the house the phone was ringing.

  “Hello?”

  “It’s Bluey. We’re on for tomorrow morning. You all squared away?”

  “I think so. I’ve just got to pack. What will I need?”

  “Summer clothes for everywhere except Bogotá, if we end up there. Bogotá is at better than eight thousand feet of elevation, cool and rainy. A raincoat will be heavy enough. Bring a business suit, in case we have to impress somebody.”

  “Okay. Anything else?”

  “You own a gun?”

  “No.”

  “Buy one. Buy one for me, too, come to think of it. Get me a .357 magnum with about a four-inch barrel and a shoulder holster. Get yourself whatever suits you.”

  Cat felt a little queasy at the thought of firearms. He had been shot with the last weapon he had owned. “You really think I ought to be armed?” he asked.

  “Too bloody right. I’d take a bazooka if I could get it in a shoulder holster.”

  Cat went to the gun shop where he had bought the little shotgun for the yacht. The place was a wonderland of death, with every conceivable sort of weapon. He picked out a magnum for Bluey, but balked when choosing something for himself. The only handgun he had ever fired was the .45 automatic the Marines had given him, although he had fired Expert with the pistol and a carbine. He didn’t want anything as big as Bluey’s magnum, and finally he accepted the salesman’s recommendation of a very expensive Hechler & Koch 9-millimeter automatic pistol, because it was light and held a fifteen-round magazine. He bought the appropriate shoulder holsters and a box each of ammunition and left the shop with everything in a brown shopping bag, feeling foolish.

  • • •

  By seven in the morning they had the airplane loaded, and Cat followed Bluey around the aircraft, learning the preflight inspection.

  “You been taking lessons, huh?” Bluey asked. “How many hours you got?”

  “About sixty. I was supposed to take my check ride for my private license a couple of weeks ago, but all this got in the way.”

  Bluey nodded. “Okay, you fly her. Let’s see how good you are.”

  “What?”

  Bluey shoved him into the left seat and climbed in beside him. “It’s not all that different from the trainer you learned in. You’ve got a couple extra knobs, that’s all, for the landing gear and the constant-speed propeller. Anyway, I’m the hottest instructor who ever came down the pike.”

  Cat shrugged. “Well, I guess my student license is good.” He buckled in and, with Bluey reading the checklist and pointing at things, got the engine started. The tower wasn’t open yet, so they checked the wind sock and taxied to the runway. Bluey announced their departure on the Common Traffic Advisory Frequency and nodded. “We’re off. Full throttle.”

  Cat shoved the throttle all the way in and marveled at how the airplane accelerated, compared to the less powerful one he had been flying. As instructed, at sixty knots of airspeed he pulled back on the yoke and the craft rose into the air.

  “Retract the gear,” Bluey ordered. “Flaps up. At five hundred feet reduce throttle to twenty-three inches of manifold pressure—there’s the meter, there—and trim the propeller back to twenty-four hundred rpm.” He glanced at a chart. “Now start a turn to the left and aim for Stone Mountain. Climb to three thousand feet.”

  Cat did as he was told and picked out the giant granite lump that was Stone Mountain, rising through a patch of early morning mist.

  Bluey got on the radio and called Atlanta Flight Services and opened the flight plan. “I filed for Everglades City,” he said, winking, “but we’re not landing there.”

  “Where are we landing?” Cat asked, while trying to concentrate on leveling out at three thousand feet.

  “A little place near there. A friend of mine runs it,” Bluey said mysteriously. “You’ll see when we get there. When you get to Stone Mountain, turn right to one eight zero degrees and hold your altitude. We’ve got to get past the Atlanta Terminal Control Area before we can climb to cruising altitude.”

  Twenty minutes later, Cat climbed to nine thousand feet and leaned out the engine. Bluey switched on the loran navigator and punched in the three-letter code, X01, for Everglades City. He pressed two buttons on the autopilot and sat back.

  “Okay, let go the controls,
” Bluey said.

  Cat let go and the airplane flew itself.

  “Great thing, loran,” Bluey grinned. “Now it will fly us straight to our destination at nine thousand feet, giving us ground speed and distance remaining. I’m going to grab a nap. Wake me when we’re fifty miles out of Everglades City.” He cranked the seat back, pulled the brim of his hat down over his eyes, and seemed to be instantly asleep.

  Cat sat and stared at the instrument panel of the self-operating airplane. This was the biggest aircraft he had flown, and he was very pleased with himself. A decent takeoff, a good climb—his instructor would be proud of him. He sat back and gazed out over the clear, Georgia morning, at the green, lake-dotted earth below him. The loran clicked out the distance remaining and their ground speed, a hundred and sixty-seven knots. They must have a tail wind, he thought. It seemed a good omen.

  When they were over South Georgia and the Okefeno-kee Swamp, Bluey opened an eye, glanced at the instrument gauges, then went back to sleep. The Gulf Coast of Florida appeared on their right, then the Tampa/St. Petersburg area. After three hours of flying, Cat woke Bluey.

  “We’re fifty miles out of Everglades City,” he said to the Australian.

  “Right,” Bluey said, yawning. He scanned the instruments again, then pulled out a sectional chart of Florida and pointed to an area west of Everglades City. “Spike’s place is about here,” he said.

  Cat looked at the chart. “That’s the Everglades swamp,” he said. “How the hell are we going to land there?”

  Bluey grinned. “Oh, we’ll put her down on a crocodile, if we have to,” he said. A few minutes later he turned to Cat. “Reduce power for a five-hundred-foot-a-minute descent,” he said. “The loran and the autopilot are still aiming us at the airport.”

  Cat eased back on the throttle, and the nose of the aircraft dropped. “I see an airport dead ahead,” he said after a few minutes.

  “That’s our supposed destination,” Bluey said. He waited another five minutes, then called Flight Services. “This is One Two Three Tango; I have the field in sight; please cancel my flight plan.” He changed frequencies and announced, “Everglades traffic, One Two Three Tango, on a five-mile final for Runway One Five.” He turned to Cat. “Switch off the autopilot and line up with one five. Make a normal, straight-in approach.” Two miles out, he said, “Drop the gear and put in ten degrees of flaps. Let your airspeed drop to one hundred.” One mile out, Bluey said, “Twenty degrees of flaps, eighty knots. Keep her at that speed and aim for the end of the runway.”

  Near the end of the runway, Cat started to flare for a landing, but Bluey took hold of the control column.

  “Give me the airplane,” he said. He punched the transmit button. “Everglades traffic, One Two Three Tango going around.” He pushed in full power, flipped up the flaps a notch, and retracted the landing gear. He climbed to a hundred feet and made a sharp left turn. “Take the airplane,” he said to Cat. “Maintain one hundred feet.”

  “One hundred feet?” Cat took the controls as Bluey began to tap a new longitude and latitude into the loran.

  “There we go,” he said, flipping on the autopilot and pressing the altitude hold button. “Let the autopilot take it and keep a sharp lookout for radio towers.”

  Cat stared wide-eyed at the low swampland rushing past the airplane. “Jesus, Bluey,” he said, “we’re supposed to maintain five hundred feet above the nearest obstacle. Do you want to lose your license?”

  “Are you kidding?” Bluey snorted. “What license?”

  Cat tried to stop thinking about Federal Air Regulations and look for obstacles in their path. The distance to destination read twenty-seven miles on the loran.

  A few minutes later, when the distance was down to three miles, Bluey said, “I’ve got the airplane.” He switched off the autopilot, dropped the gear, and put in ten degrees of flaps. “Watch for traffic,” he said, “although I don’t think there’ll be any.”

  Cat looked around them. It all looked like swamp to him. Where the hell was Bluey planning to land? His answer was a sixty-degree bank to the left and a loss of altitude. Then, as the wings came level again, he saw what seemed like an extremely short expanse of treeless ground, a small clearing, really, dead ahead of them.

  “Full flaps, airspeed sixty-five knots, cut throttle,” Bluey recited aloud to himself. The airplane skimmed some treetops, then dropped into the clearing. The landing gear touched the ground, and the moment the nose wheel touched, Bluey dumped the flaps and shouted to himself, “Brake hard!”

  Cat held his breath as the trees on the other side of the clearing rushed toward them. The airplane seemed to float for a moment, then Cat felt his safety belt press into his chest as the brakes quickly brought their speed down. He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. It had been a textbook short-field landing. He began to feel some confidence in Bluey Holland.

  Bluey turned left and pointed at some more trees. A man waved from their shelter.

  “There’s old Spike,” Bluey chortled. The man was waving them toward him. Finally, he held up crossed arms. Bluey spun the airplane a hundred and eighty degrees and killed the engine.

  Cat climbed down from the airplane. Bluey waved him over to where Spike was standing.

  “Spike, meet me mate—”

  “Bob,” Cat said quickly, sticking out his hand. He had already decided to use the Robert Ellis cover in Colombia. He might as well start now. From the looks of this place, the cops could arrive at any moment.

  Spike was small and scrawny, but his hand was surprisingly big. “Howyadoin’?” he asked, as if he didn’t really care. “Let’s get this bird into the trees.”

  The three men pushed the airplane backward under a camouflage net.

  “Welcome back to the world, Bluey,” Spike said when they had finished. “What can I do you for?”

  “Oh, let’s see: a fifty-gallon auxiliary tank, a raft, a couple jackets, and some new paperwork and numbers ought to do it. Fuel, too. What’ll that run me, and when can I get out of here?”

  “Two grand for the tank, three for the raft and jackets, five for the paperwork and numbers, and ten bucks a gallon for the fuel. I got to bus it in here on an airboat. I’ll throw in a bed and a steak.”

  “How quick?”

  “I’m not too busy. You can take off tomorrow night.”

  “Do it, sport!” Bluey bellowed. “Now, point us at the beer. I want to get outside a pint or two in a hurry.”

  A few minutes later they were settled into a small, comfortable cabin with a supply of Swann’s Lager, an Australian beer. “Spike was down under a few years back,” Bluey chortled, “and now he won’t drink anything else. Christ knows where he gets it.”

  Shortly, Spike joined them. “Where you bound for, Bluey?”

  “I need a window at Idlewild the day after tomorrow.”

  “I’ll make the call after dark,” Spike said, sucking on a beer. “Jesus, Bluey, I thought you got hard time for that last one. What you doing running around loose?”

  “Parole, mate. Model prisoner, and all that,” Bluey laughed.

  Spike turned to Cat. “Hell, Bob,” he said, “this crazy old digger put down a DC-3 in a farmer’s field up at Valdosta, Georgia, a couple years back. No engines! At night!”

  “Didn’t put a scratch on her, either,” Bluey added, graciously accepting the praise.

  “Shit, they should of give him a medal!” Spike crowed.

  Cat looked at Bluey. “A DC-3? You mean a C-47? With no engines?”

  Bluey nodded. “Worst piece of luck I ever had,” he said. “Little miscalculation on the fuel.”

  Cat winced at the idea of putting the big twin-engine airplane down dead-stick in a field at night. He hoped Bluey would do a better job of calculating fuel the following night.

  Spike left the cabin, and Cat turned to Bluey. “What’s this about a ‘window at Idlewild’? You talking about Kennedy Airport in New York?”

  Bluey shook his h
ead. “Nah. Now Idlewild is an airfield in the Guajira Peninsula of Colombia, a sort of aeronautical Grand Central Station for blokes in the business.” He took a long swig of the Swann’s. “Spike’ll call down there tonight on his handy little high-frequency radio and get us a window, half an hour or so when we can land. It’s the sort of place where it’s best to be expected.”

  Cat nodded. “I think I’ll take a little run around the clearing out there. That okay?”

  Bluey nodded. “Stay near the trees, though. If you hear an aircraft, get yourself under some cover. Spike would like for folks to continue to think of this place as a deserted chunk of the Everglades.”

  Cat changed into some shorts and running shoes and left the cabin. He walked past an open-sided hangar where a twin Piper was being worked on by a man. There were already two men working on 1 2 3 Tango. He reached the clearing and started to jog. It was high noon, hot and sticky, but Cat wanted the exercise. He didn’t like running—he had done too much of it in the Marines—but there was no pool here, and the nearest water had unfriendly creatures in it.

  He wanted to run, too, because he felt the paralysis of fear sneaking up on him, and it was best to move around when that happened. He tried to think of the last time he had felt that feeling coming over him and realized it must have been at boot camp, a long time ago. For Cat, exercise had always been an antidote for fear, and fortunately, as a shavetail ROTC lieutenant, there had been plenty of exercise available, because there had been plenty of fear to go around, too: fear of the drill instructors; fear of not being able to do what they wanted him to do; fear of humiliation before the rest of his company; fear of dying of what they had done to him—done to everybody—at Quantico.

  Now he felt the fear he had associated with Colombia since the yacht had been sunk. He didn’t want to go back there, and he especially didn’t want to go back there in a single-engine airplane with a convicted drug smuggler. He had to go, he knew that, but now he was thinking of getting himself to Miami and taking Eastern Airlines to Bogotá. He could meet Bluey later. But what would Bluey do if he was left here with ten thousand dollars and an airplane with new numbers and papers? Jim had told him not to give the man a passport until necessary. Wasn’t money and an airplane even more tempting than a passport?