“Hell, not me, it’s the State Department and the President.”
“They invaded us first, the embassy. Damn. You expect us to walk out?”
“It’s only sixty miles.”
“Oh, yeah, and across a range of mountains that make the Rockies look like anthills.”
Murdock saw the SEALs crowding around, listening to the speaker on the SATCOM and his talk.
“No suggestions, Mister Christian in Action Guy?” Murdock asked.
“Steal a chopper and fly it out?”
“I’m not checked out to fly a chopper or anything else.”
Murdock turned off the handset and stared at the radio. The speaker came on.
“Do the best we can to get the order lifted. Might take a day or two. Be ready to receive daytime at noon, three and six.”
“If that’s the best you can do.”
Jaybird pushed through the men to the front. “Hey, Commander, we’ve got four DC-3 types out front. Why not steal one of those?”
“Can you fly one?” DeWitt asked.
“No.”
“As I remembered your files, none of our men has a ticket to fly a DC-3 or any other aircraft,” DeWitt said.
Murdock began to grin. “We can’t fly them, but someone over there at the airfield sure as shit can. We don’t blow up those craft, we move in and capture them and a pilot. We blow away a few of them until one says he’ll fly us out rather than get his head shot off.”
Jaybird let out a short cheer. “Damn, I’m good. I knew we had to steal one of those gooneys. So I forgot about a pilot.”
The tactical plans changed. The SEALs came up on three sides of the administration building. It was medium-sized, and Murdock hoped it also housed the pilots. They went in silently. One guard on duty had fallen asleep. He would never wake up. They found the office, a records area, then a hall with a dozen doors. Lam listened to three of them and heard snoring at the last one. He tried the handle. The door was not locked.
Murdock went in with his NVGs on. Two men in a two-bed room. Both had pictures on the wall. Each showed a man beside a plane. Murdock clamped his hand over the first man’s mouth and shook him awake. He pulled the man out of his bed. He wore shorts and a T-shirt. Murdock propelled him into the hall.
Ken Ching was there and questioned him in Spanish.
“We won’t kill you if you stay quiet and answer our questions, all right?”
The Colombian nodded.
“Are you a pilot?”
“Yes.”
“Can you fly the twin-engine transport outside?”
“Yes.”
“Is it fueled and ready to fly?”
“Yes, all fueled full.”
“Is the plane loaded or empty?”
“Empty, to be loaded tomorrow.”
Ching told Murdock the gist of the talk, and they hustled the pilot outside. It took five minutes for the pilot to go through his preflight check. As he did, the SEALs examined the interior. It was set up to haul packaged cocaine in liters, but there was plenty of room on the floor for fifteen SEALs.
Canzoneri used the last of his TNAZ and C-4 and planted bombs in the three other transports, the two small planes, and three trucks.
“Ready to activate the timers when you are, Commander,” Canzoneri said.
Murdock put all the men on board, told Canzoneri to set the detonators for ten minutes, and race back on board.
Ching held an MP-5 submachine gun on the pilot as he slid into the cockpit seat.
“When I tell you to, you start the engines, and at once taxi away from these buildings. You do it damn fast, understand?” Ching told the pilot. “Any problem, and you’re dead where you sit.” The Colombian had been sweating profusely since he was jerked out of his room. Now rivelets of sweat worked down his cheeks.
“All on board,” Murdock bellowed as he closed the door and pushed the locking arm in place.
“Vámonos,” Ching said, and the pilot started the engines and almost at once began to taxi away. Behind them lights snapped on in the main building. Men ran out in their underwear, carrying long guns.
“Faster!” Ching told the pilot in Spanish.
They raced down the runaway, and Ching ducked as a bullet slammed through the cockpit side glass and buried itself in the roof. They kept rolling.
“Get us out of here,” Ching’s radio spoke. “We’re taking rounds through the fuselage back here.”
“Faster,” Ching yelled in Spanish. There was no wind. They could take off in this direction. Ching watched the ground speed. He didn’t know what speed the ship needed to get airborne. At last the plane shuddered, then lifted gently from the ground and turned at once to the left and climbed.
The pilot looked at Ching and nodded.
“We’re in the air,” he said in Spanish. “But we took a lot of rounds. The flaps don’t respond. I’m not sure I can fly this machine very far.”
“All you have to do is get us to the coast. Set a course due west.”
The pilot looked alarmed. “That means going over the Montes de Maria. They are over ten thousand feet high.”
“Ceiling on this crate is much higher than that,” Ching said, hoping he was right. “We can get over them easy.”
He switched to English on his radio. “Murdock, we have a small problem up here.”
The platoon leader came into the cabin with a question on his face.
“Pedro here says we have to go over the mountains, something Maria to the west. Up to ten thousand feet. He’s not sure if he can make it.”
The right engine sputtered, almost died, then caught again. The pilot pointed to one of the fuel gauges and yelled in Spanish.
“He says the tank was full, now it’s half empty. They must have hit the fuel tank with the rifle fire.”
25
Murdock looked at the fuel gauge. It was at the halfway level. The pilot could be lying.
“Ask him how far he can go on the fuel he has left,” the platoon leader said.
Ching asked the pilot in Spanish.
“He says he isn’t sure, twenty miles, maybe more.”
“Fine. Tell him to head directly at the mountains. He must know of a pass through them that’s less than the height of the tallest peaks. These aren’t supposed to be the highest in the country. Tell him if he can’t get over the mountains, we’re going to crash into them.”
Murdock listened and watched the expression of the pilot as Ching talked to him in Spanish. He was not an actor. What he felt showed at once. First it was stark fear, then the idea of the pass came, and he relaxed a little.
“The bastard was faking the fuel. Now, get out your MP-5 and hold it on him all the time. Tell him if he does anything wrong, he dies. Remind him we have two men who can fly the plane in case he comes up with a dozen rounds in his black heart.”
The pilot had turned pale by the time Ching finished the small tirade at the man. He began sweating again. He looked at Ching, then at the submachine gun, and nodded.
“Sí, sí. Paso, paso.” He struggled then but said in English. “I know mountain pass. Maybe get through. Plane old, tired.”
Murdock relaxed a little. There was a chance they just might make it over the hump. The mountains were nearer the coast than to Plato. Once over the mountains, they would have a chance to get to the coast.
Murdock could feel the plane climbing, not sharply but probably as steep as the old engines could go. The plane could have been built back in the 1950s or before then. The DC-3 was a workhorse, but even horses have to be shot at some point and put out of their misery. He hoped it wasn’t misery day for this old DC-3.
The climb continued. Murdock caught his men up to date on the cockpit talk.