A Woman Involved

by John Gordon Davis

  For a furious instant Morgan was going to take him. Knock the man flat, grab Anna, get the hell out of this. But anything could happen. He raised his hands.

  The man frisked him, and found the gun.

  ‘I thought so.’ He flipped the pistol. ‘You get this back at the end of the trip. Now you, lady.’

  He frisked Anna. He looked in her bag.

  ‘Okay. Get in.’

  Morgan led Anna to the right wing. She clambered up onto it. ‘Into the back,’ the pilot shouted. She crouched into the aircraft. Morgan followed. He sat down beside her. She looked at him, white-faced.

  The pilots clambered in and slammed the doors. Neither looked at them. Their faces were grim in the lights of the instrument panel. The pilot wound up the engines, and the propellers screamed. He let go the brake and the plane went lurching down the dark airstrip.

  They did not have headphones so they could not hear each other above the engines. Morgan was shaky, furious. Goddammit he’d been a fool to trust that José Luis bastard! They were in enough difficulty without the risk of being caught by narcotic agents. Oh Jesus … But they wouldn’t have got their money back without a fight – and what would have happened to Anna in that?

  The dark coast of Venezuela dropped behind. Ahead lay the Caribbean Sea.

  The aeroplane droned through the moonlight at ten thousand feet. Morgan peered over the pilot’s shoulder, and noted that they were steering 315 degrees. He sat back, urgently trying to visualize the map. He had a good idea of it. From Venezuela to the northern Bahama islands opposite Miami would be about twelve hundred miles, was his educated guess. About halfway was Haiti and the Dominican Republic. The maximum range of this Cessna would be about a thousand miles. Unless it had extra wing-tip fuel tanks. Then its range would only be about thirteen hundred miles. If he were a drug smuggler he would refuel halfway, so he had plenty in case he had to run from the Drug Enforcement Agency planes. That meant Haiti, or one of the nearby Virgin Islands.

  He tried to make himself untense, to think what he was going to do when they refuelled.

  Because if he were a drug smuggler and he wanted to get rid of unwanted passengers who were witnesses to his crime, that was where he would murder them.

  17

  About five hours later he felt the plane begin to descend. He sat forward, to look at the instruments. The co-pilot whirled around, and a gun was pointed between Morgan’s eyes.

  He froze, staring at the man; then sat back slowly, his heart pounding. Anna stared, aghast. The plane was coming down steeply now. Morgan’s mind was desperately trying to race. They were going to be murdered … And he was filled with fury and he wanted to lunge and kill kill kill the bastards before they killed him. He sat there, aghast, his mind fumbling. And oh God there was no chance. If he went for the gun they would both get their heads blown apart. And the pilot would also have a gun … If he somehow got at both in time the plane would go screaming down to the ground while they fought …

  He made himself sit back, rigid, sick fury in his guts. The plane was coming droning down in the moonlight. Down, down it came. Then it levelled, then hit the earth and bounced. It went racing down a dirt airstrip, roaring. Then jungle was looming up ahead. Morgan glimpsed a hut on the edge of the trees. The pilot brought the plane to a roaring, trundling stop.

  As he wrenched on the handbrake the co-pilot flung open his door. The pilot twisted in his seat, and another gun was pointing at them.

  The co-pilot scrambled out, onto the wing. He crouched in the propeller blast. ‘Out!’

  Morgan shouted: ‘Why? We won’t tell anybody! –’

  ‘Get out!’ the pilot roared.

  Anna shouted, ‘Please – we won’t tell the police –’

  The pilot rammed the gun against her head. She jolted back, shocked, the gun hard against her temple. ‘Now get out … ’ Morgan stared, heart pounding; then he heaved himself out of his seat. Shaking. He clambered through the doorway, and the co-pilot jumped down to the ground. He backed off, pointing the gun up at him.

  ‘Now your girlfriend … ’

  Morgan crouched on the wing, and held his hand out for Anna. She looked at him, terrified; then came crouching out of the back of the plane. Out onto the wing, her hair flying. The co-pilot motioned them to the ground with the pistol; Anna jumped. Morgan desperately measured the distance to the man, but he was too far. He jumped to the ground.

  The co-pilot motioned them towards the forest, thirty yards beyond the plane.

  Morgan took Anna’s hand. It was trembling. Her face was a mask of fear. He started towards the wing tip. It was unreal. All he knew was that he had to lunge at the man, lunge and swipe and go down fighting. The co-pilot followed, three paces behind. Morgan reached the wing tip. He walked on four paces. Now …

  He wrenched Anna’s hand and slung her and in the same movement he sprung wildly on the co-pilot, and he hit him. Swiped him with all his hate and might across the face with a karate chop and the pistol cracked and the man reeled. He crashed sideways against the wing, and Morgan bounded wildly after him and hit him again with all his might and the man crashed backwards, arms outflung – and the propeller got him. And there was a crash and half of him was gone. Gone in a screaming smash of flying flesh and bone – in an instant he was cut in half by the propellers, flesh and blood flying high into the night; and the plane lurched and began to rumble forward and Morgan screamed at Anna, ‘Get out of the way! –’

  He threw himself flat and the wing rumbled over him. He looked desperately for Anna. She was running wildly towards the forest. He scrambled frantically for the corpse, feeling the bloody earth for the gun. He found it and jumped up. The plane was swinging its tail towards him. He ran after it, flat out, rasping. The plane swung into the last of its turn, and there was a burst of gun fire from the cockpit, crack – crack – crack – and Morgan dropped to his stomach. He held the gun in both hands, aimed, and he fired. The plane skewered. It went trundling slowly away into the moonlight, and Morgan scrambled up and raced after it.

  He ran flat out for the right wing. He caught up and he flung himself onto it, belly first. He got the handgrip and swung his legs up and flung open the right-hand door. The pilot was slumped, blood all over his face. Morgan got in frantically. He slammed in the throttle and wrenched on the handbrake.

  He sat a moment, rasping, gasping, then he flung open the door again. ‘Anna!’

  She was running frantically through the moonlight. Morgan scrambled out and jumped to the ground. ‘Get in!’ He ran around the tail and jumped up onto the left wing. Flung open the door. He feverishly pocketed the dead man’s pistol, then seized his collar, and heaved.

  The torso came out, slopped onto the wing. Morgan seized his trousers and heaved again. And again. The man came out onto the wing, headfirst, and slid off, onto the ground. Morgan jumped down. Rasping. He grabbed the body by the ankles. He started dragging it across the airstrip towards the jungle.

  He dragged it and dragged it, ten yards into the trees, then dropped it. He ran back for the other corpse.

  It was a hideous sight. The left arm, left shoulder and the back of the head were gone. Morgan grabbed the ankles.

  He dumped the two bodies together, then crouched and frantically went through their pockets, looking for money. He stuffed a wad of notes and coins into his pocket, then went scrambling back out of the black jungle. He ran to the plane. Anna was in the co-pilot’s seat frantically examining the instruments. Morgan leapt up onto the wing. ‘Can you fly this thing?’

  She shouted, ‘I’m figuring it out!’ She shook the checklist. ‘It’s the same as Horst’s but a newer model!’

  ‘I’m going to look for fuel!’

  He leapt back to the ground, and looked feverishly along the edge of the jungle for the hut he had seen. It was a hundred yards away. He ran to it, crashing through the undergrowth. It had a padlock. He kicked at the door, and it splintered. He kicked again, with all his might, and it bur
st open. And, yes, inside were the barrels he had expected. He shook one, and it was full. He shook another drum. Also full. A third – it was empty. He cast desperately around in the gloom, looking for the hand pump and the iron bar. He saw them. He heaved the first barrel over, onto its side, with a thud. He rolled it out of the door.

  He rolled it onto the airstrip, panting. Up to the leading edge of the wing. He heaved it upright. He ran back to the hut for the pump and the iron bar.

  He inserted the iron bar in the cap of the barrel, and twisted. He unscrewed the cap feverishly. He smelt the fuel, to make sure. He lifted the fuel flap on the wing. He rammed the pump into the barrel and the hose into the wing tank and he started to pump furiously.

  He looked feverishly about as he worked. There were no lights. It took an interminable time to empty the drum. Then there was the gurgling noise. He rolled the barrel out of the way. He leapt up onto the wing. Anna was going down the checklist, shakily touching instruments as she read. ‘Hurry!’ Morgan shouted. She nodded feverishly, without looking up. Morgan ran back to the hut. He rolled out the second barrel. Back to the plane. He unscrewed it, and began to pump. He emptied it, then rolled the barrel out of the way.

  He ran back to the plane, to the luggage compartment, to throw out the drugs. He twisted the handle. It was locked. He cursed and ran to get the keys. He scrambled aboard, and clambered into the pilot’s seat, panting. There was blood on the instrument panel. There was a second key on the ring holding the ignition key. He twisted it off the ring feverishly, leaving the ignition key in place. Anna rammed on a headset and nudged him to do the same. He rammed his on. Anna tapped the DME and the chart and shouted over the intercom:

  ‘We’ve done six hundred and nineteen miles! Did you notice the course?’

  ‘Three one five.’ Morgan snatched the chart from her. She thrust a parallel ruler at him. He feverishly laid off course 315 degrees from the northern tip of Venezuela. It passed through Haiti. He measured off six hundred odd miles along course 315 degrees – it took him to western Haiti. So that’s where they were. He laid off a new course, for the northern Bahama islands. He rasped, ‘About three three zero.’

  ‘Three three zero.’ She thrust a checklist at him. ‘Quickly go through this!’

  ‘I’ve got to get rid of the drugs! Rev her up!’ He scrambled out of the cockpit. He jumped to the ground and ran to the luggage compartment door.

  Anna tested the yoke, back and forth, left and right. She moved the pedals, back and forth. She opened the throttle, watching the rev. counter, then eased it back down.

  Morgan rammed the key into the lock and twisted. It did not move. Wrong key! He wanted to bellow. The key must be in the pilot’s pocket! He turned desperately for the forest. Then he saw the car lights. They were approaching the airstrip, coming through the forest, but still a hundred yards from the edge. His heart lurched.

  He leapt up onto the wing and scrambled into the cockpit. ‘Go!’ He pointed. The car lights were flashing through the trees. Anna stared, then crossed herself, and she opened the throttles again.

  The engines wound up to a roar. Up, up, the revolutions went. Now the plane was straining. The car lights were closer. She slammed off the handbrake, and the plane lurched forward.

  The plane went careening bumpily in the moonlight, gathering speed. Now the car lights were swinging onto the airstrip. Faster and faster the plane went and Morgan felt as if they were being pursued by the hounds of hell; then it was going flat out, the jungle at the end racing towards them, and the car came onto the airstrip. The headlights shone straight at the plane, blindingly. Closer and closer the lights raced, then the plane reached V–R and Anna eased back the yoke, and the nose came up. The car lights raced towards them. Closer and closer – then the plane left the ground with a lurch and the lights flashed by below them. The plane went climbing into the moonlight. Anna let out a quivering sigh.

  ‘God – who were they?’

  Up, up, up, the plane climbed; she banked to the left, and kept climbing. The black jungle was dropping away below. Morgan looked back down. The car was at the far end of the airstrip. Anna turned onto course three three zero, and kept climbing. Morgan’s shoulders slumped. His mouth was salty dry. ‘Bloody well done … ’

  The plane was still climbing. Anna was ashen, concentrating fiercely; then she untensed her shoulders. She said over the intercom: ‘Who the hell were they?’

  ‘Accomplices. Or police. Both crooks. How does the plane feel?’

  ‘She’s more tender than Horst’s.’ She glanced at him. ‘So they’ll find the bodies. And the drugs.’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’ He wasn’t going to tell her that the drugs were still aboard. She had enough to worry about flying the aeroplane.

  ‘Oh my God …’

  ‘Stop worrying about that now. We’ve got away. You’ve done bloody well!’

  There was no way he could get at the drugs without putting the plane back on the ground.

  18

  He was feverishly furious with himself.

  The aeroplane was locked on three-three-zero degrees. Here and there were the distant twinkle of ships’ lights, the scattered jewels of shore lights on the chains of islands. He had told her to fly at a hundred feet, to keep under the radar of the dozens of stations that would be tracking them across their airspace, but she had been unable to maintain it. It was too dangerous, too nerve-racking. And it was doubtful whether even a hundred feet was low enough to avoid radar over the sea. If they had to go above a hundred they might as well go to ten thousand.

  The plane droned through the night. They hardly spoke. The cocoon of the cockpit, the noise of the engines, the vibration. Anna’s face was gaunt in the glow of the instruments. She was flying the plane on automatic, trying to push the horror of the night out of her mind, and what lay ahead. They had been through the checklist together, until they knew where everything was. Morgan had flown the plane for an hour, to get the feel of it, so he could take over from her and let her rest. But he felt far from confident. Anna was dreading landing. Though she had not told him that. He had enough to worry about. Standard Approach and Landing Procedure. Yes, but on what, in what wind? In what light? She had never landed on anything other than a proper airfield. Morgan was over the shock now, the terror of almost being murdered; now he only felt the feverish fury with himself for failing to offload the drugs, and murderous hatred. He had never killed a man before and it did not bother him one bit that he had just killed two – and he would furiously murder the next drug bastard who crossed his path.

  But please God not today …

  Oh God, today … In a few hours, they had to put this plane down somewhere in the Bahamas. Today, way ahead in that blackness, the bastards were waiting for this plane …

  If it weren’t for the drugs he would have flown the plane straight into America. Arriving in daylight, finding an airfield, and brazening it out. Telling some tale and abandoning the aeroplane. It would have been risky, but private pilots are buzzing around America all the time. But the drugs made that impossible.

  So it had to be the Bahamas. The safest place to land a plane loaded with drugs. The Bahamas, however, was exactly where the drug bastards were waiting for this plane …

  He looked at her. ‘Rest,’ he said. ‘We need you rested.’

  ‘I am resting.’

  ‘Try to sleep. I’ll watch her.’

  Anna closed her eyes.

  Course three-three-zero degrees. Straight across the island of Andros, for the islands of Bimini. That’s where he had said they should land. She had been relieved, because it had a conventional airfield. ‘Shee-it,’ Big King had said, ‘the whole fuckin’ Caribbean’s got more illegal fuckin’ airstrips for drug smugglers than Carter’s got pills …’ Indeed the chart had scores of airstrips marked on it in pencil on dozens of islands. But she had been frightened of landing on anything but a conventional airfield. So Morgan had said Bimini, to put her mind at rest. But he dare
d not land there, or on any other airstrip. He dared not land a stolen smugglers’ aeroplane on islands infested with murderous drug smugglers who were gunning for them. And even if they were lucky and landed the plane without being seen, how would they get off any one island, to the next? And to the next after that? He didn’t know the islands – nor did Anna. There was only one way to land this plane and get rid of it.

  Morgan sat in the glow of the instruments, his mouth dry and salty, and told himself there was nothing to it.

  One of the first things they teach you at flying school …

  Except you never actually do it at flying school. Or any other time, if you have your way. Everybody knows how to do it, but only the unlucky few have ever had to – not even those shit-hot instructors have ever done it.

  He glanced at Anna. She seemed to be asleep at last.

  In the hour before dawn he saw the scattered lights of Andros. Where José Luis had said this plane was bound for, where, right now, some murderous bastards were waiting to collect their millions of dollars’ worth of drugs.

  God, Morgan wanted this next hour to be over.

  The pinprick lights grew closer and closer. Then the southern shoreline of Andros was sliding under the aircraft’s nose.

  A hundred miles or so to the Biminis.

  Morgan checked the chart, mentally did the arithmetic again. And he shut those bastards down there out of his mind.

  The very first light was coming into the east when he made out the lights of the Bimini islands, dotted south to north in the vast Gulf Stream.

  Closer and closer they came. He peered, searching the sea for lights of boats. There were none. He prayed, Please God no unlit ones, and please God a flat sea …

  ‘Wake up.’

  She opened her eyes, startled. She had not been asleep.

  He said over the intercom: ‘Those are the lights of Bimini ahead. Are you properly awake?’

  ‘Yes? …’ Her hands, went to the yoke.