“So, if he can make the pass over the mountains, it will cut down the altitude needed. This old bird isn’t exactly a spring chicken looking to cackle.”
“This is the same bird the Air Force used to call the C-47,” Jaybird said. “First ones came out in 1935. Let’s hope this one was built a hell of a lot later than that. They should have a top cruising speed of a hundred and eighty-five miles an hour, so it shouldn’t take long to get thirty or forty miles to those mountains.”
They looked out the small windows but came up with nothing but blackness.
“We’ve been in the air for fourteen minutes,” Canzoneri said. “Stopwatch counts up as well as down,” he said before any challenged him.
Murdock went back to the small cockpit. Ahead, he could see a few lights sprinkling the ground.
“He says it’s a small village, and the road leads sharply west into the only pass he knows of. He drove over it once and it was over twenty-seven hundred meters. That would be about eight thousand feet.”
“I’d feel better if those mountain folks were much farther below us,” Murdock said. “Now I wish we had our chutes.”
“Everyone else had the same idea,” Ching said. He turned and jabbered something to the pilot. The man nodded.
“Just reminded him that he lives or dies by getting us through that fucking pass. He gets the idea.”
Murdock thought of trying the SATCOM. He wasn’t sure they could hold a satellite with their antenna as they were flying. They’d never tired that before. He really didn’t have anything to tell Stroh or the Navy. When they got down, if they could, he’d yell and scream at the CIA asshole. How could they hang the whole platoon out in the wilderness this way with every chance they would get their balls shot off?
The pilot yelled something.
“He says the pass is right ahead. He’s been following the headlights of a few cars. He figures we need another three hundred feet altitude.”
“Tell him to circle around until he gets the vertical feet that he needs,” Murdock said.
The pilot frowned when he heard the orders. He shrugged and pulled the aircraft in a half-mile-wide circle, climbing as fast as the old engines would permit.
They made six circles, and Chin yelled at the pilot. “Nobody is coming to help you. We have the altitude, we’re at almost 8500 feet if you set your altimeter right.” He shouted it in Spanish at the man. “Now, get us over these mother fucking mountains or your ass is stretched and blasted and cut in half with nine-millimeter rounds. Does that sound good?”
The pilot wiped his dripping eyebrows, glanced at Ching and his leveled submachine gun, then stared straight ahead. He pulled the bird out of the circle and angled slightly to the northwest.
Ching looked out the cockpit window on his side, and he could see the loose string of lights below. Then a few miles to the side, he saw the pattern of streetlights that lit up a small subdivision of houses. No mistaking it.
He grabbed the pilot by the throat. “Are we heading west? What’s a housing project doing up here on the mountain?”
Ching had screeched it in Spanish. The pilot pawed at his throat. The plane took a steep turn to the left. Ching let go of the pilot, who righted the plane.
“Yes, big government project. Need many men, so build houses. Mountains here. Look at compass. West.” Ching looked closer at the floating compass and saw that the heading was generally west.
“The pass, can you find it?”
“Yes, ahead, three miles. Almost high enough. More power and maybe get over.”
“Damn well better, or like I say, you die first, in the air, not in a crash.” Ching clicked the safety on and off on the MP-5 sub gun and pushed the muzzle into the Colombian’s side.
“Now fly us the fuck over this mountain.”
Murdock watched the small drama play out. Ching was handling it perfectly. No chance to fake it on the pilot’s part. If he did, he was dead meat. So were the rest of them in the plane, but he didn’t know that.
Murdock looked out the window at the dark shadows ahead. The mountain or clouds? No clouds out tonight. It was solid Colombian soil, rock, and trees.
“Get us higher,” Ching shouted.
The pilot grimaced and pulled the controls back a little more. The throttle was on maximum.
Murdock watched the mountain come closer. He could see the headlights crawling along below. Then all at once he realized the headlights were no more than a hundred feet below them. They were almost on top of the road. Now he could see the opening where the road went. It was a good three or four hundred feet below the peaks on both sides. Plenty of room for the wingspan of the old DC-3.
The sudden rumbling of the air and the screaming roar of a plane overhead slammed into the transport and made it veer to the left. The pilot swore and pulled the ship back on course.
“Fighter overhead,” Murdock said. “He knows we’re here, he’s probably asking for permission to shoot us down.”
“What was it, a MiG?”
“Heard they had a few.”
“Yes!” the pilot shouted. Murdock looked out the cockpit windows to the front and couldn’t see the mountain.
They were over it, through the pass.
“Now, get as low as you can go,” Ching said. “We want to be right on the treetops all the way to the coast. Can you do that?”
“Yes, but not too low. Some small mountains out front. Lower, but not good to crash into.”
“Was that a MiG jet fighter that buzzed us?” Ching asked the pilot.
“Oh, yes, my country has twelve now. And twelve pilots to fly them.”
Ching checked the fuel gauges. One for each engine. He saw the one on the right was down to a quarter of a tank. That was the one he figured took a rifle round. The other one had the needle hitting the red line of empty.
“Fuel!” Ching brayed.
The pilot checked the gauges. He swore in Spanish before he looked at Ching. “One engine quit in two, three minutes. Fly some with one engine, not far.”
“Find us a place to land,” Ching said. “We’ll belly land it with the wheels up. You understand?”
Sweat poured down the pilot’s face again.
“Yes, long valley, maybe with grass.”
“Good,” Murdock said. “Can you find one in the dark?”
The pilot grinned, suddenly the man in control. “Yes, have flown this way before. Another five miles or so. Long valley, much farmers there.”
Murdock wondered about the farming fields. There weren’t a lot of options. He went to the cabin and told the men they would be making a belly landing without wheels.
“When I give the word, hold onto something. Brace against something forward because that’s the way you’ll be pushed as the bucket here stops suddenly.”
“Just not too suddenly,” Jaybird cracked.
Murdock went back to the cockpit. He saw that the pilot had slowed the airspeed and was turning to his left. Then he saw it out the window in the moonlight. An open valley maybe five miles long.
A few lights showed at the sides of the valley.
“No chance go around for second try,” the pilot said. “First time. Slow as much as possible.”
They came in over the valley, in a steep glide, then leveled out twenty feet over the ground. All Murdock could see were a few fences and land plots, and then a field filled with bales of hay. He couldn’t see directly below, but they must be within fifty feet of touching down.
The pilot yelped and nosed the plane down sharper, then brought up the nose and flared out as he waited for the plane to stall out just before it touched.
The nose dropped a foot, then the whole transport eased to the ground and skidded along.
Murdock had glued himself to the forward cabin door and held on. Ching had strapped himself in the copilot’s seat and had both feet on the instrument panel.