Feeling restless, and knowing he had done a good day's work for the revolution, Pedrito glanced at the clock on the wall, donned his formal Navy cap—because he was supposed to wear it every time he went outside—and left the office building. He was sure he could find a good time somewhere in the city.
After all, late afternoon was called "happy hour" for good reason.
Halfway down the block from Naval Intelligence headquarters he found a cozy-looking bar—exactly what he was looking for. Removing his cap to show off his head of red-gold hair, Pedrito strode into the dim pub, inhaling the smells of beer and cigarettes and pretzels. He heaved a sigh of relief Finally, at last, someplace that seemed like home.
This wasn't exactly his old stomping grounds of the Cantina de Espejos—in fact, the place had only one mirror, behind the bar—but it would do for now. He was desperate for a stiff drink after tolerating office work all day long.
The ruddy-faced bartender waved at him, smiling broadly. "Lieutenant Tom Smith! Good to see you again."
Pedrito cringed, uncomfortable at being recognized, but he had to go through the motions, for the sake of the mission. He waved back. "Hello, sir."
"The usual. Lieutenant?" The bartender reached for a glass. "Coming right up."
Pedrito's eyes became adjusted to the comfortable dimness of the bar. He made out a pool table, a pinball machine, and several dark tables lined up against the wood-paneled walls. Neon beer signs shed colored light into the murk. In the back, a group of men laughed loudly as they played a low-stakes game of poker. Pedrito raised his eyebrows, his interest piqued. Poker!
"Here you go, Lieutenant," the bartender said. "I'll put it on your tab." He slid across a foaming glass of cold milk.
Pedrito looked at it with a strangled expression. "What is this?"
"Your milk. Lieutenant. Cold and foamy, just the way you like it. I made it a double, 'cause you looked like you needed it today."
Pedrito spluttered. This had gone far enough! He pounded his fist on the bar. "Forget the milk. Today, I want a tequila. In fact, make it two shots of tequila. Your finest gold."
"Tequila?" the bartender said, astonished. He looked at Pedrito for a moment, then burst out laughing. "That's a good one, Lieutenant." He turned around and began washing glasses, clearly with no intention of replacing Pedrito's drink.
"Bartender, I mean it. I want a tequila."
The bartender continued laughing so hard he nearly dropped one of the glasses. "Be careful with your joking, there, Lieutenant. I just may call your bluff."
"I'm not bluffing. I want a tequila! Now!" He slammed his fist down, but the bartender just gestured in dismissal, then wiped sweat off his brow.
"Tom Smith, I remember the last time you took the tiniest sip of hard liquor. You turned green and fell backward off the stool. We had to call an ambulance. Thought you'd have learned your lesson by now." He turned to the cash register and added up Smith's tab, ignoring Pedrito.
Fuming, Pedrito grabbed his glass of milk, took a sip and frowned in distaste—the stuffs came fi-om cows! —then decided to pursue other amusements. He stalked over to the card players in the back, watching eagerly. He recalled many nights in rebel encampments, huddling in tents in the Andes cloud forests, listening to the rain outside and playing just such a game until the others in the group realized how good a player Pedrito Miraflores really was. Then the others refused to bet against him anymore.
"What's the ante?" Pedrito said, pulling up a chair. "Can you deal me in?"
"Oh, hi, Tom," one of the men said, looking down at his hand and folding the cards in disgust. "We heard you joking with the bartender."
Pedrito withdrew his wallet, counting out how much American money he had. Given a half-hour of playing cards, he could triple his spending money and then buy his own tequila.
"Whatever it is, I'm in. Deal me for the next hand."
The men looked at him, then cracked up laughing. "Deal you in? We're not playing 'old maid,' Tom."
"I can see that," Pedrito snapped. "It's stud poker, and I want to play the next round."
The men at the table looked at him, then chuckled louder and louder, slapping their palms on the table. "Smith, you're a kick. I never knew you had a sense of humor." The men went back to playing.
Pedrito stood seething, clenching and unclenching his fists.
"Could you get us another bowl of pretzels, Tom?" one of the players said, glancing up.
Fuming, Pedrito turned about, gulped down half of his milk, then gagged as if he had swallowed a fistful of garden slugs. He stormed out of the bar.
He had been in many unpleasant situations before, even life-threatening circumstances—but living in the disguise of Lieutenant Tom Smith was turning out to be one of the most unpleasant assignments he had ever undertaken.
Chapter 21
STANDING AMONG THE VEHICLE wreckage on the winding road that led out of Santa Isabel, O'Halloran wiped smashed banana slime off his cheek. As he watched the now empty stake truck lumber away into the hills, he had a sudden realization, a sudden hope.
Perhaps there was a way he could get Pedrito after all— even in the wake of this disaster.
He stabbed a hand into his pocket and came up with a walkie-talkie, a compact new design that could also receive Top 40 radio stations.
"Cain-Idiot-Alpha One to Cain-Idiot-Alpha 465. Come in!" Instead, he heard only a peppy old tune from the Osmond Brothers revival tour. Snarling, he twisted the frequency knob and repeated his call until he received a response.
"Call the Colodoran Air Force and order out jets," he demanded. "Yes, jets! Their best jets—yes, both of them! Pedrito will try to get out of the country by air! It won't be as much fun to shoot him out of the skies, since I wanted to murder him with my bare hands—but the most important thing is that we kill the bastard before he causes more trouble."
The next most important thing, he decided as he smeared more banana mush on his trousers, was to change his clothes.
Beyond the end of the paved road out of Santa Isabel, an old Stinson monoplane stood parked on a grassy plateau, its paint peeling. Brightly clad Indian shepherds shooed their dogs and sheep and children out of the way as the plane prepared for departure. The pilot sat in the enclosed cockpit, waiting for Yaquita and Smith.
As the rickety stake truck approached, the pilot tucked down the flaps of his aviator's cap to hide his swarthy Turkish features. The monoplane's engine sputtered to life, and the propeller reluctantly began turning.
The empty old truck rattled up to within twenty feet of the monoplane's wing. Eating a salvaged banana. Smith climbed out the passenger side, carrying his contraband tan suitcase. He needed to get back home any way he could, yet he didn't like the looks of this. "Are you sure this is an airport? This doesn't look like the gate for international departures."
Yaquita slid out the driver's side, dragging her overstuffed plaid suitcase and her precious guitar. "Hurry, before the pilot takes off!" she said, and Smith took that as his answer. "He's not wasting any time."
They sprinted for the old plane as the throbbing engine sound grew louder; the propeller spun in a faster blur. In the cabin, the pilot sat ready and eager at the controls. "Hurry, my friends. We have a departure schedule to keep."
Yaquita hustled to the back, lashing down her luggage and guitar case, then doing the same for Smith's. "I'll sit back here," she said. "You take the copilot's seat, just in case there's an emergency."
"Copilot's seat?" Smith asked. "What do you expect me to do in an emergency? I can't fly a plane."
The pilot smiled a secretive smile at him. His dark hair was tucked in his aviator's cap, but his exotic features seemed very familiar to Smith.
"Don't worry," Bolo said, "I don't know how to fly a plane either. But I'm sure it's simple enough. I just skimmed the instruction manual." He began to taxi along the short, bumpy runway, narrowing his dark eyes as he leaned forward to look through his bug-spattered window.
Into the engine roar, Smith yelled back to Yaquita, "Where are we going?"
"It's time that you went home!" Yaquita called.
"Home? Let's go!" Smith hollered back.
In the pilot's seat, Bolo smiled to himself as the plane took off.
At the government airfield of the Republic of Colodor, two pilots rubbed their eyes, swallowed another gulp of Nescafe instant coffee and jumped into their F-14 jets, which had been purchased at a discount by piecing together parts from a U.S. military salvage yard.
In their spare time, the members of the Colodoran Air Force had applied decals to the wings and bodies of the jets, as if they were giant model airplanes. Unfortunately, several large wrinkles showed. The Colodoran Air Force had ordered replacement decals from a catalog, but had to wait several weeks for shipping and handling. If the pilots flew fast enough and shot straight enough, though, they could knock their enemies out of the skies before anyone noticed the botched insignia.
Afterburners roaring, the two jets took off, looped up into the skies, switched on their radars (which were inferior models that had been salvaged from police cars in Mexico City), then engaged in pursuit.
The Stinson monoplane flew over low clouds and bumpy air in the Andes. Smith clutched the copilot's seat, trying to figure out where they were going. The mountains below looked very rugged, and very close. Since he had never seen an official map of the country, he could make no guesses as to the terrain below, or where the actual borders were. He only knew they were somewhere in the vicinity of Colombia, Ecuador or Peru.
Smith wondered how long it would take for them to reach the United States, especially in a tiny plane like this. Failing that, he wondered if a flight attendant would come by with peanuts and soda. He peered into the back of the plane. As far as he could tell, though, the only other person on the plane was Yaquita, and she didn't seem the least inclined to act as a stewardess.
"I've got a nervous stomach," Smith said. "I'm a sailor, not an aviator."
Yaquita came forward and handed Smith the bottle she had snatched from the table in her room. "Here, this always helps."
Smith glanced at the label. "What is this? Rum?"
"You ought to know," Yaquita said with a grin. "You've been drinking it for days."
"I have?" He took a swig straight from the bottle and tasted it carefully in his mouth. "So I have." He took another swig. "Funny, I never thought I could tolerate alcohol. Maybe it's just beer that makes me sick." He supposed he should be open to new experiences.
While Smith nursed the bottle and stared out the cockpit window, Yaquita unlashed her guitar case and removed the instrument before she sat back down and buckled herself in. With the guitar in her lap, she turned a tuning peg and whispered secretively into the hole. "Roger-Echo-Dog Eighteen to Roger-Echo-Dog One."
"Come in, Roger-Echo-Dog Eighteen," the Cuban-accented Colonel Enrique responded, his voice crackly with static.
"I've got baggage aboard and am heading for home," Yaquita said.
"Any trouble?" Enrique said.
"Everything's wonderful," Yaquita said, a dreamy smile on her face. "Just wonderful. He seems to have a bit of amnesia ... but I don't mind."
Hubbard & Anderson
"Good," Enrique said. Yaquita leaned closer to the hidden speaker. "To you, Ivan sends his love. Roger-Echo-Dog One— out."
Smith was puzzled at the muffled sounds coming from behind him. He had never heard of a talking guitar before, but it seemed that telephones were hidden in all kinds of things these days. Maybe this was the next trend—cellular phones hidden in guitars. He knew he would get even queasier if he turned around to look. "Who are you talking to?"
Yaquita strummed a chord on the guitar, smiling. "Oh, it's just a song. I wanted to Hsten to the words before I played it for you." She began to play a simple melody, a forcibly rhymed ode to her future husband. She kept her big dark eyes on him through every stanza.
Now that they'd gained a bit of altitude, Smith's ears felt as if they were going to pop. He wondered if that had caused him to hear funny noises, imagine that her voice was coming from a guitar.
Listening to her sing. Smith smiled. "You're going to get married?" he asked idly. "Congratulations."
"You just wait!" Yaquita said. "It will be exactly like in a storybook."
As the Stinson droned along above a level of thick cloud, a fighter jet screamed by, jostling the windows in the cockpit. Smith held on for dear life as a second jet whooshed past even closer. Their monoplane bucked, nearly out of control.
"Hey, those are F-14s!" Smith said. "I thought we sold all those to military surplus dealers."
"Look at the decals," Bolo said through gritted teeth. "Those aren't U.S. planes. They're from the Colodoran Air Force. They're after you!"
Bolo released the controls and grabbed a submachine gun from under his seat. He elbowed open the window, aimed the submachine gun, and fired as the first F-14 made another pass. The gunfire made a deafening roar in the enclosed cockpit, and wind roared into the old plane. Below, clouds scudded along the tree-covered peaks of the mountains.
With no one at the cockpit controls, the Stinson tilted and began to descend recklessly toward the jagged Andes. Smith grabbed the copilot stick.
"I thought you said you couldn't fly," Yaquita said.
"I can't, but it looks like a good time to learn."
Somehow, he managed to keep the plane level, but as he jerked on the stick he overcorrected and tipped the craft violently the other way. The Stinson slid sideways down toward the clouds just below and the tall, spindly trees of the lush cloud forest. Bolo fired the machine gun again, but his strafing bullets went wide.
The two fighter jets circled back for another pass. They rushed by the Stinson just as it sliced into the cloud cover. Smith covered his eyes, but even blind he did no worse keeping the plane on a level course.
In the ground control tower, O'Halloran yelled into a microphone. "Goddamn it, shoot them down! Use missiles, use rockets, use bullets!" He wiped a spray of spittle from the microphone, then shouted again. "Use stones for all I care—just shoot them down!"
In a jet cockpit, one of the two Colodoran pilots spoke through his in-helmet microphone. "That old Stinson is so slow we keep missing!" He knocked his radar. According to the old police radar unit, the Stinson had been traveling sixty miles per hour. He couldn't slow the F-14 that much, or he'd stall and crash.
The pilot felt terrible. All of his previous flight experience had been gained by crop-dusting for a local guava plantation owner. He'd thought that shooting a gun would be very much like dropping a load of pesticides, but he'd never flown a plane that was so fast, and he'd never had to drop pesticides on a moving spider—except for that one time, when millions of banana spiders were migrating from Colombia. He wasn't at all prepared for this!
He looked below, trying to see through the narrow cockpit windows. The sharp, folded mountains were so close they skimmed just below the fighter jets. "Yes, sir. Well, they've gone into cloud cover now. They seem to be safe."
"Safe!" O'Halloran screamed. "Well, make them un-safe!"
"But, sir," the pilot whined, "there might be mountains down there, and how would we know, with the mapmakers all on strike!"
"You go into those clouds after them," O'Halloran shouted, "or I'll come up there and kill you myself."
"Madre de Dios!" the pilot muttered, crossing himself.
The two jet pilots opened their throttles wider, then dove into the fog and low clouds after the monoplane.
The Stinson plowed through thick mist, with Smith at the copilot's controls. He could barely tell they were flying upside down. "Hey, maybe I can pilot this thing after all."
"Something doesn't quite feel right," Bolo said. "I better take over. Can't see anything to shoot anyway."
"No need," Smith said, "I'm a sailor at heart. You can't see through fog like I can."
Dark treetops appeared through the mist just above the top
wing, flashing past. Leaves and twigs scraped against the Stinson's fuselage. A gargantuan vertical cliff came up at them like a hammer. Calmly, Bolo pushed the stick into the panel and hit the throttle full open. The Stinson put its nose straight up in a swoop, standing on its tail.
"Then again, maybe I'd better stick with books about Nelson," Smith said, chagrined. "You can pilot us the rest of the way, sir."
Behind them, lost in the mist, came the rumbling boom as two F-I4 jets—the entire Colodoran Air Force—slammed into the cliff face.
Continuing to cruise low, Bolo took them out of the clouds until the mist drifted away in tatters, allowing them to see ahead. Smith spotted a rudimentary landing field on a rugged grassy plain beyond the heavy mountains. They had passed the main Andean ridge.
"That doesn't look like any airport I'm familiar with," Smith said. "I take it we're not flying directly to New York? Are we changing planes here?"
On the ground, a group of vaqueros waited beside an ancient coach drawn by four horses. They waved colorfial ribbons in the air, signaling the plane.
"What happened to those jets chasing us?" Smith asked.
"We're over the border by now," Yaquita said. "They can't follow."
"How can they tell where the border is, if nobody has any maps of Colodor?" Smith asked. Bolo shrugged. "Instinct."
After circling the field, Bolo came in for an easy landing, touching down in the smooth, flat grass. The horsemen yipped and galloped along, pacing the Stinson. The horse-drawn coach rolled forward to meet the passengers.
"You're home now, my darling," Yaquita said, leaning forward to kiss Smith on the cheek. "We're safe."
"Home?" Smith said. "This isn't the United States!" He looked from her to Bolo, but neither seemed perturbed. "I need to report to my superior officer. I need to call the office—and I need to do my laundry. This isn't where I want to be."
"You're home just the same," she said. "You'll see."
Bolo remained in his pilot seat as Yaquita and Smith climbed down the plane's folding stairs to the ground, then walked toward the horsemen, carrying their suitcases. Yaquita also brought her spy-radio/guitar.