Wings of Steele - Destination Unknown (Book 1) (8 page)

"
NO
!"
she screamed, "they will try to stall you, or block the runway,
just
Go
!
GO
!
Get us up in the air!" She felt the surge of power as Brian
throttled slowly up, and was relieved.

Brian
surveyed the gauges, adjusted the flaps and swung onto the runway,
right across the grass from the taxiway, knocking down a runway
marker. "Hold on!" He yelled. He cut in front of other
planes waiting for take off and hammered the throttles wide open.
The radio came alive with frantic calls from the tower and startled
pilots alike. Brian ignored their calls and turned down the volume.
With the engines roaring at full power, the props hungrily devoured
the air. Brian eased the yoke back and the B25 lifted easily off the
runway, leaving an airport in complete chaos. He retracted the
landing gear and flaps, keeping her at low altitude and full power
to get maximum speed. Brian flew her on the deck, just barely above
treetop level for almost fifteen minutes, frequently changing
headings to avoid tracking or pursuit. Having dutifully filed their
flight plans first thing in the morning, Brian chose an alternate
flight path not listed on their submission. Instead of flying
straight South-Southwest across the Caribbean Sea, to either
Maracaibo or Caracas, Brian decided they would fly a half moon,
following the British and French islands that created a dotted line
from Puerto Rico to the coast of Venezuela. Avoiding cities they
logged, he figured they could land and refuel in Bogota, then fly on
from there.

Jack
lay on the floor of the plane across Maria's lap, his eyes closed as
she wiped the dirt and blood from his face. Maria wept as she spoke.
"I can't tell where all this blood came from."

He
opened his eyes and looked into hers, "Don't worry, it's not
mine... at least I don't think so." He smiled, and she half
giggled, half cried, releasing a mixture of emotions all at once.
Jack reached up and touched her face. "I'm Ok, really,
everything'll be just fine. Well, I guess I better get up to the
cockpit and see where we're headed, see what Bri is up to..."
He looked down at his torn and soiled shirt, covered with blood and
grime. "Dammit, ruined a perfectly good shirt..." He sat
up. "Aaaauuugh!" the pain in his left side was deep and
took his breath away.

Maria
held him. "Oh God, oh God, I knew you were hurt... that
was
your blood!"

Jack
held up his hand and Maria stopped ranting. "Just bruised..."
he opened his shirt slowly, his ribs were pink and purple. "Bruised
I think...” he inhaled slowly, “I hope."

"What
do you mean, you hope?" inquired Maria, confused.

"Bruised,
as opposed to broken." Jack said calmly, trying to control his
breathing and reduce the pain.

Maria
looked a little sheepish. "Oh."

Jack
carefully peeled off the torn shirt, wincing. Maria helped him to
his feet, handing him a fresh shirt from his bag. After washing with
a towel and some cold water from their cooler, he gingerly slid into
the clean shirt, leaving it unbuttoned. The cold water felt good on
his tender ribs, making it easier to breathe. Maria pinned his wings
above his left pocket. Steele looked down at the young beauty
standing before him, whose life had been changed so suddenly and
completely. What seemed so incredible to him was that she had
retained so much composure. This is truly a remarkable woman, he
thought to himself. "Can you read a radar unit?"

"Yes...
I can fly too," she replied.

"Ok..."
Jack guided her to the navigators table and flipped the power on for
the unit. "Can you run this one?"

"Sure
can..." she replied without hesitation, "are we looking
for anything special?"

Jack
ran his hand through his dark hair. "Any possible pursuit, or
any other conflicting flight traffic, 'cause when we come up off the
deck, we're going to suddenly pop up on somebody’s scope
somewhere, and we may have some unwanted company."

"No
problem," Maria said, smiling sweetly and sliding into the
navigators seat.

Damn,
Jack thought, I just love that accent. Of course, the rest of the
package is nothing to sneeze at either, said his little voice. This
time Jack agreed with the voice. He turned and made his way to the
cockpit, with Fritz at his heels. Jack winced and exhaled sharply as
he stooped to duck under the avionics console getting into the
cockpit. Brian looked back over his shoulder from the captains seat.
"Need your seat, Skipper..?" he unbuckled to vacate the
seat. Steele closed his eyes and shook his head, putting his hand on
the copilot's shoulder. He eased himself into the copilot seat,
gritting his teeth. Glancing at the gauges the pilot drew a long,
deep relaxing breath.

Jack
belted himself in loosely. "Ok, first, lets ease power a bit,
she's running a tad hot from all this work. Good evasive work, by
the way."

Brian
nodded as he reduced throttle, "Thanks, did the best I could,
did a little sweatin' too."

Jack
smiled. "Yeah, welcome to the club."

"You
Ok?"

Jack
nodded, "Yeah, a little bruised, but I'll be fine." Steele
eyed the gauges as the oil pressure, head and manifold temperature
gauges slowly crept down out of the yellow. "Ok, now, let's get
off the deck and grab some sky, gently though...” Nodding, the
copilot eased the yoke back and the B25 nosed up towards the
scattered clouds.

Nobody
had ever saved Jack's life before, and he wasn't so sure he was
comfortable discussing it. He tried to formulate in his mind, how to
broach the subject and after several aborted attempts to organize
thought and reason, he finally resigned himself to the reality that
he would have to just blurt it out. "Listen, um, thanks."
Completely uncomfortable, Jack stared at the gauges.

"For
what?" Brian wasn't trying to be difficult, he really hadn't a
clue as to what the pilot was referring to.

"Um,
well, for the heavy artillery support." Not speaking, Brian
just shook his head. Steele was thoroughly confused. "What...
no..." he said flatly.

The
copilot looked over at Jack. "
Dude
,
I couldn't leave the controls..." he said, adjusting the fuel
mixture with one hand. "I just moved the plane..." he
thumbed over his shoulder, "where
she
told me to." Brian paused, letting this sink in before
proceeding. He watched reality hit home.

"You
mean..."

"Yeah..."
Brian interrupted, as he eased the yoke forward leveling the plane
off at four thousand feet. "She loaded the belts into the guns,
figured out how they worked and figured out the turret controls...
all on her own. 'Cause I was busy up here."

"Holy
shit..." said Jack slowly, his voice trailing off. He felt a
sudden chill run up his spine. There was definitely more to this
girl than meets the eye... a lot more! He wondered if he would ever
really know how much... or, if he really wanted to know.

The
pilot felt like he was caught in someone else’s dream, he
rubbed his face with both hands. He wanted, no,
needed
to think of a new subject. "So, where are we headed?"

Brian
explained the route and the destination of Bogota. Jack pulled on
his lower lip. "Hmmm..." He pulled their charts out of the
pouch, folding them across his lap. "Hmmm... good route
basically, but it takes us to a destination too close to our
original plans. Bogota is also quite large and'll probably be well
informed. We need a more back-water place with little connection...
aaahhh here we go, on the east coast..." he said pointing on
the map, "Georgetown...” He checked it with a protractor
and line. “Take a heading of one-seventy-seven...” He
glanced at the fuel gauges, and checked his math with a calculator.”
We should have plenty of fuel to make it, no sweat. And let's go up
to about ten-thousand."

"Got
it.” Brian adjusted course and eased the nose up again. “What
next?"

"I'm
really not sure, I think we ought to try to get word to Stephen, we
definitely need distance between that airport and us... as quickly
as possible. We need time to effect damage control... and I'm not
really sure how to do that yet. It's a U.S. Territory, so I would
expect FBI involvement - maybe CIA since we're outside of the
country now...” He pinched the bridge of his nose in thought.
Those weren't cops... at least not most of them. They were cartel.”

"How
could you tell?" asked Brian.

“
Hard
to say... gut feeling maybe, something I saw that I'm not
remembering. I don't know for sure... what I
do
know, is that's not how the story will break.” Jack slid the
charts and protractor back into its pouch. ”We'll be gun and
drug runners who mercilessly slaughtered an entire platoon of
gentle, noble policemen doing their job of protecting the innocent
public.”

“
You're
right, that does sound bad...”

"Don't
remind me." Jack ran his hand through his hair, deep in
thought. His dad was a cop, his uncle was a cop, and he had been a
cop. He grew up knowing cops were the good guys. And even when they
weren't, as was the case here, killing a cop was close to blasphemy.
This didn't sit well with Jack's conscience, even though he knew
deep inside, he had done no wrong. Jack looked up and scanned the
skies around them after a long stare at the gauges. A long
unblinking stare, the kind of wide-eyed blank stare that a man in
all engrossing thought succumbed to. Looking but not seeing. The dry
sting in his eyes brought him back to the living.

"Watcha
thinkin about?" queried the copilot, tapping on the glass of
one of the gauges.

"Everything...
nothing..." Jack's voice trailed off. He scratched his mustache
and ran his hand through his hair. This statement was not altogether
true, however, because like most men after experiencing a crisis,
Jack was reviewing the events in his mind, over and over again,
hoping to glean another speck of information, in order to help solve
the predicament they were now in. To his intense dismay, there were
no answers there, only questions. Things like; Paulo had told the
police the plane contained drugs and guns. Of course, there were no
drugs, but what about the guns... a good guess? Coincidence? What
about the drum of Methyl ethyl ketone. He hadn't noticed any
painting equipment around the hangar. What was really in those
crates? He hadn't time to look. And why was it so important for
Maria to leave with them? He could see no real danger there if she
had stayed. There was probably a logical explanation for all of
these, but not knowing truly irritated him. The pilot wanted to
forget about it for a while.

Jack
noted that while his ribs had turned an interesting shade of purple
they didn't hurt quite as much as they had earlier.

WASHINGTON
DC: CIA OFFICE

A
woman’s voice, crisp with professionalism spoke through the
intercom, "I'm sorry to bother you sir, but there's a messenger
here with an important communiqu
é
for your eyes only." The man behind the large mahogany desk
leaned forward from the overstuffed leather chair, put down the
official papers he was reading and reached over to the comm-phone on
the desk. "Thanks, Maggie, send him in."

Obviously
no ordinary messenger, a young man in a suit and tie, entered the
office, sealed manila envelope in hand.