Six Minutes To Freedom (14 page)
Read Six Minutes To Freedom Online
Authors: John Gilstrap,Kurt Muse
14
It had been hours since they’d first lifted off the parade field at Fort Clayton. That flight had lasted only a few minutes, barely long enough to gain altitude before descending again onto the tarmac of a pristine airfield on what Kimberly would later learn was Howard Air Force Base; still in Panama, but a few miles away from the center of Panama City.
They were on the ground for maybe twenty minutes at that first stop, just long enough to use the bathroom and pick up boxed lunches that someone had stacked up on the kind of folding table she had seen in movies from the States that featured cafeterias. She and Erik were still the dirty ones, it seemed, the ones that no one wanted to talk to. Even the soldiers were silent here. And they were much better armed than Ski and his friends had been.
The lunches had been stacked in the great open space of an aircraft hangar that seemed even larger than it was because there was no aircraftin it. Erik, ever the fan of all things military, thought that this was about as cool as you could get. For her part, Kimberly wondered how people could possibly come to work in such a dingy place day after day after day.
With her bladder empty and her stomach not quite settled enough for food, Kimberly passed the time watching the angst and anger that was spreading like spilled oil among her Panamanian counterparts. Honest to God she tried not to eavesdrop—at least not too closely—but the hangar was such an echoey place that she’d have had to be deaf not to overhear a lot of it. The gist of it was this: The men had been working with her father, doing whatever it was that got him arrested, and the women and children had had no inkling that any such thing had been going on. Now, from what she could tell, they were all facinga choice between death and exile, and they were holding their husbandsand fathers responsible.
Seemed reasonable, she supposed. A little harsh, but reasonable. Not unlike the situation with her own family.
After just a little while in the hangar, an American soldier who, Kimberly noticed, had no branch or unit markings on his jungle fatigues(thus making him just a generic soldier), gathered them together in a cluster and instructed them in Spanish on what they were to do next. They were to join hands—no, not in a circle as if they were goingto pray, but in a long chain—and stay together as he led them to their next destination. When someone asked where that destination was, the mysterious soldier pretended that he hadn’t heard the question.
As the soldier talked, Erik moved in closer to lay claim to Kimberly’sleft hand. Judging from the grip, he had no intention of being pried free. He looked scared to death. Kimberly wished she had words that could somehow make some of this easier, but those words hadn’t been invented.
“Didn’t they say we were going to the States?” Erik asked her softly, pulling her attention away from the camouflaged soldier.
“That’s what they said.”
He stewed for a moment. “They’re gonna make us walk the whole way? Holding
hands
?”
hands
?”
The look in her little brother’s face, combined with the images his question conjured, made her laugh. She explained that they couldn’t possibly walk the whole way. There were rivers to cross. And when he still didn’t look convinced, she added, “They can’t make me walk too far. I don’t have any shoes.” That was the logic that seemed to settle him down.
And then it was time to walk. Twenty-four men, women, and childrenjoined hands in one continuous line and started walking, one behindthe other, following the mysterious soldier out into the setting sun. As it turned out, Kimberly and Erik were numbers one and two in the line—no accident, because the soldier had called out their names (just their names, as if the others in the group mattered less) and told them to lead the way.
It took some effort at first to get the line moving without pulling or getting their feet tangled, but soon they were on their way. In the distance,out on a runway, a C-130 cargo plane sat on the tarmac with its propellers turning and its enormous back door open.
“Look at the C-130,” Erik said, trying to point but abandoning the effort when Kimberly clamped tighter on his hand. “Think that’s where we’re going?” His eyes glowed with excitement. “How cool is that?”
That was exactly where they were going, and Kimberly didn’t think it was the least bit cool. It was stupid. And scary. Didn’t Erik realize that there was never any going back from a trip like this? What about school? What about their friends?
What about Daddy?
Inside, the C-130 was as no-frills as it could get. The plane’s skeletonwas clearly visible where there should have been walls, and the seats, such as they were, weren’t seats at all, but rather just strips of nylon webbing that had been stretched across metal tubing. Packages and luggage lay stacked in an unruly pile on the ground outside the aircraft, testament to the fact that this flight had originally been designatedfor others, who now would have to make alternative arrangementsto get wherever they were going.
The unknown soldier handed them off to another soldier who introducedhimself as Air Force Sergeant Somebody-or-Other, the loadmasteron the aircraft, and therefore the one and only person they should listen to for the duration of the flight. No, he would not tell them where they were going, and no, he would not share with them any details of anything other than this speech he was making. They would sit where they were told, stand when they were told, and otherwisesuit his every whim or else they could get off of his airplane and walk.
“I understand that you’ve already had a chance to use the bathroom,”he concluded, “but if the urge strikes in the middle of the flight, we do have facilities available.” He pointed to a chemical toilet toward the rear of the aircraft whose version of privacy was an olive-drabshower curtain that didn’t even reach the floor.
They’d taken off from Howard hours ago, and for the entire flight, no one had said a thing to anyone else. No one but Antonio and Coronado,that is, who both seemed very interested in making sure that Kimberly and Erik felt like they had friends. For them, this all seemed like a great adventure. It made sense for Antonio, she supposed, who was here by himself, and seemed to have no one else to worry about. But that wasn’t true of Coronado. He had a wife and a little baby to be worried about.
But after a while, even they seemed to grow weary of the façade of happiness and they turned inward to themselves.
In retrospect, Kimberly wasn’t sure how she’d spent the long hours of the flight. She supposed she must have slept, but it was equally possiblethat she just stared forward, out into the miles of space that separatedher from the only world she’d ever known.
Something changed. Something happened. In an instant, everyone at once seemed to be aware that the world was different, yet no one seemed immediately to know why. It took Kimberly a few seconds to realize that it was the propellers. After hours and hours of a single monotone drone, the pitch had changed, and they had begun to descend.Even without windows it was easy to tell; there’s that lightness in your stomach, and the constant popping in your ears.
The consensus was that they had finally arrived at wherever they were going, but consensus brought no comfort. A number of Kimberly’sPanamanian counterparts speculated aloud that they were goingto jail, that their lives were ruined forever. Children started to cry.
Kimberly said nothing, but those predictions of gloom didn’t sound right to her. If they were going to be sent to prison, it seemed a lot easierjust to do it and get it over with. God knows there were prisons in Panama. What was the sense of a long plane ride just for that?
Besides, Kimberly had done nothing wrong. She supposed there was an argument to be made that these Panamanians who had apparentlyviolated the same laws as those broken by her father might be eligiblefor prison, but certainly not she and Erik. She’d figured all along that that was the whole reason for them being on this flight in the first place—to avoid going to jail.
Another panicky theory among the Panamanians was that they were all going to be killed. Again, Kimberly thought, killing them would have been the easiest thing in the world, and accomplishing it didn’t require any of this enormous effort.
No, Kimberly was comfortable with the notion that they were beingsaved from whatever danger had lain for them back in Panama, and she was likewise convinced that what she’d overheard was probablyright—that they were all being taken to the United States. Now, what might happen from there was anybody’s guess. She could only assumethat the plane was going to land somewhere near West Palm Beach, where her mother was staying, that Mom would greet them at the airport, and that the world would once again look like something that was at least close to being normal.
It was funny, when she thought about it, how being normal had had no value to her at all until all semblance of normalcy had been stripped from her life.
The moods of the conspirators continued to sink with each foot of lost altitude. Finally, the loadmaster returned to address the group.
“All right, everybody listen up because I only want to say this once.” He had to shout to be heard above the noise of the engines. “We are approaching our final destination. When we land, I will tell you to join hands just as you did before, and I am going to ask you to exit the aircraft in an orderly fashion. You are in no danger, so I’ll remindyou to stay calm at all times. Are there any questions?”
Hands went up everywhere. Someone asked, “Where are we going?”
The sergeant just stood there, his hands on his hips, looking disgusted.“Are there any questions that I can answer—about the mechanicsof getting off the aircraft?”
All the hands disappeared.
Seeing no further questions, the sergeant gave a satisfied nod. “Very well, then. We’ll have you on the ground shortly.”
And he meant shortly. Kimberly had been on many commercial flights in her fifteen years, but never had she experienced an approach like this one. After some minutes of gradual descent, the pilot nosed the aircraft forward and poured on the power. But for the seat belt cinched across her lap, she might have bounced off the ceiling. Withoutwindows to get her bearings, it wasn’t out of the question that they were crashing. About the time that she was ready to concede that that was exactly what was happening, the plane leveled off and the engines throttled back.
They landed as if to leave a belly print on the ground, the impact jarring everyone, and igniting a chorus of frightened screams among them all. A second after the impact, the pilot hit the brakes and reversedthe thrust on the props in a deceleration that would have left skid marks if it happened on a street somewhere. Within no time at all, they’d rolled to a stop, and then Kimberly sensed that they were turning around, pivoting on their own axis until they were facing the other way.
Now the fear in her belly bloomed large. Wherever they were going,they’d finally arrived. Dreaming and guessing no longer mattered. All that mattered now—all she had to cling to now—was the simple truth of reality. Frankly, it sucked.
But there was precious little time to think about it. Seconds after they’d stopped, the rear cargo door started to lower, introducing a new level of noise to the already deafening humid air, and Sergeant Somebody-or-Other reappeared.
“Up!” he shouted. “Come on, everybody up. On your feet.” He repeatedthe command in fractured Spanish.
They all stood.
“All right, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, link up again, hand in hand. Everybody gets a partner, nobody gets left behind.” As he spoke, he walked to Kimberly, who, because she was first to board, was closest to the front of the aircraft. He put a hand on her shoulder and escorted her past all the others, back to where she was first in line again. Erik hung on to her tightly.
“When I say go,” the soldier continued, “this young lady will lead the way out. Do not stop, do not slow down until you are at least fifty yards away from the rear of the aircraft. Stay together, don’t break the chain, and everything will be just fine. Any questions on what I just said—and I swear to God I’ll smack anyone who asks where we are.”
They all knew better. What would be the point? Questions never brought answers anyway.
“All right then. Go!” He gave Kimberly a gentle push; not a shove, really, but enough pressure on her shoulder to let her know there was more where it came from if she decided to resist.
Still barefoot and wearing only the shorts and T-shirt that she’d had on since she couldn’t remember when now, Kimberly had to walk carefullyon the steel ramp to keep from stubbing a toe or even losing her balance. It seemed steeper on the way out than it did on the way in.
She led the way into total darkness. The immediate area was lit like daylight from floodlights shining down from the back of the C-130, but beyond that, there was nothing but night. And it was a chilly night, at that. Much colder than an evening in Panama. But the humidity was all there. With the lower temperatures, the humidity felt like a chilled, wet wool coat.
At the bottom of the ramp, she found what must have been a runway.It was a paved surface, certainly, and despite the cold darkness, it still radiated the heat of the day. As soon as they hit bottom, Erik tried to stop, but she jerked him along. “He said we have to keep walking.”
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