Posnick put us on ADF, slumped back in his seat and lit a cigarette. "Hey, you two back there, you may as well try to get yourselves comfortable. We got a long grind ahead of us."
That's when I lost track of time. Even worse, I wasn't sure where we were or how much time we had left. The only thing I knew for certain was that we had a lot better chance of getting control of the situation with only Posnick to deal with.
When we put down at Barlow Key, it was going to be too late.
Hannah had scooted back and I could hear her moving around. She had twisted herself to one side and had one leg coiled up under her.
"Hum, sing or something — anything that makes some noise," she whispered. "I've got it so I can rub the ropes against one of the vertical studs. It already feels like they're starting to get loose."
Humming and singing aren't my thing, but I did as the lady requested. Posnick wasn't impressed with my rendition of "Old MacDonald Had a Farm,'' and after the fourth chorus he told me to knock it off.
Suddenly there was a twitch followed by a sigh of relief, and I felt Hannah's hand curl into mine and remove the pistol. She was moving back again, but at the same time her long fingers were working feverishly on my ropes. Posnick snuffed out one cigarette and lit another. This time he put us on auto pilot, picked up a thermos and poured himself a cup of coffee. He ignored the fragmented transmissions of the other planes in the area.
The knot let go, and my hands slipped free. I could feel my fingers start to tingle as the blood surged back into them. I glanced out the window and caught another quick glimpse at a landscape dotted with lights. It had to be Cuba, but exactly where, I couldn't be sure.
"Hedonism two-three Yankee seven-seven… this is Miami. We've got a United pilot reporting vertical build-ups to thirty-seven thousand and moderate turbulance. Suggest you alter to two niner five and try to avoid them as much as possible."
Posnick acknowledged. "Any icing?"
"Affirmative, Hedonism, moderate to severe, twenty-seven and up."
"Shit," Posnick grumbled, "my de-icers are on the fritz."
The controller in Miami didn't acknowledge until he was certain. "Is that your transmission, Hedonism?"
Posnick grumbled again. "Roger, Miami, got it. Give me a second to figure out what I'm gonna do."
To Hannah it was the opening she was looking for. She scrambled to her feet. Posnick spun in his seat, the cigarette still dangling from the corner of his mouth. "What the…"
"This," Hannah informed him calmly, "is a gun, Mr. Posnick, and it's pointed right at the back of your ugly head. The other thing I should tell you is that although I'm not a very good shot with it, at this range I can't miss."
Posnick was up to the challenge. "Look, lady, we're at twenty thousand feet, surrounded by thunder cells, and we gotta figure a way to get around them. You ain't gonna fire that thing because if you waste me, we're all gonna take a drink — a permanent drink — and you know it."
I managed to get to my feet and took the gun away from her. I buried the barrel in the flesh behind Posnick's ear and made sure he knew it was there. "Don't bullshit the lady, Posnick. Get in touch with Miami control and tell them to route you around these boomers."
When Posnick hesitated, I made sure he heard me click off the safety. "Miami control… this is Hedonism."
There was lots of static. Posnick threw the switch and twisted the dial, looking for a different channel. Out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of cloud to cloud lightning to the northwest of us. He tried again. More static.
"Damn it, I'm not getting through."
I knew just enough to be dangerous. "Just in case this thing does go off," I said ominously, "take her down to eight thousand."
"Are you crazy?" Posnick sputtered. "We're in a tightly controlled zone. Everybody's lookin' for a way to get around this shit."
Posnick's half-hidden eyes kept darting from Hannah to me and back to the illuminated instrument panel. Behind me I could feel the pattern of Hannah's uneven breathing on my neck. I jammed the barrel up a little tighter against the big man's skull. "Just like the boy told his dog, Posnick — 'down' — take this old girl down to eight thousand."
Zercher's boy probably wouldn't have won any awards for mental alacrity, but he understood the feel of hard steel against tissue and bone. He turned back around in his seat and stared at the panel. Finally his hand darted up to the auto pilot and the other leaned out the mixture for the descent to 8000 feet. I backed off on the pressure but made sure he knew the barrel was close enough to put a hole the size of a half dollar in the back of his brain.
"For Christ sake, Wages," he challenged, "if you pull that trigger, you and your lady friend are dead meat."
The time was right, and I was going for it.
"Look, Posnick, I'm about to make you the deal of a lifetime."
"Yeah, what?"
"You get us down — safe and sound — and we split. The lady and I take the cylinders, and you take the stuff that's stashed back there under the fake floor of the cargo area. I don't tell anyone which direction you were headed, and that's the end of it."
Posnick may not have been exceptionally bright, but I had hit him where it counts — in his greed zone. He turned around again to confront the instrument panel. For what seemed an eternity he sat there doing nothing. Finally he began twisting dials on the radio again.
"Miami control, this is two-three Yankee seven-seven. We're descending to eight thousand on a heading of two-seven-five. We're trying to get under these big mamas."
There was another delay, this time from the controller in Miami. Finally, he came through. "Roger, Hedonism, eight thousand, but keep it on the straight and narrow. We've got some clutter up there. You're not alone. File PIREPS every fifteen minutes."
Posnick acknowledged and started down. The Aztec began to vibrate, and I felt Hannah tense up.
I kept one eye on the altimeter and waited to see if the errand boy had taken the bait. We had descended to 12,000 before he decided to say anything. "What makes you think there's enough stash back there to make it worth my while?"
"I saw them load this baby. There's enough back there to put a man on easy street."
Posnick was either a sharp negotiator or dim-witted. I suspected the latter. He was still hesitating.
"Look," I urged, "it's the chance of a lifetime and you know it. Zercher thinks you're headed for Barlow Key. What's to stop you from putting us down somewhere else, dumping the lady and me and the cylinders, and hightailing it out of there? The street value of that stuff has to be worth a fortune."
I had him on the ropes, and he was buying it. We dropped through the 10,000 level just as a bolt of lightning ripped past the window and plunged the plane into darkness. "Damn," Posnick sputtered, "we've lost our generator."
Hannah was frantically fishing through the Aztec's emergency kit for a flashlight. "Can we make it without a generator?" she stammered.
I nodded. "But you'd better say a quick prayer that we don't lose that magneto."
We were in it now, and Posnick was fighting it. The Aztec was doing a devil dance, pitching first one way then another. Sheets of rain hammered against the windshield and streaks of lightning traced chaotic patterns through the darkness around us.
Suddenly the floor let out and we went into a stall, dropping another 1500 feet before Posnick got us righted. Hannah got the worst of it. She slammed her head against one of the cylinders and slumped to the floor. I reminded Posnick where the gun was pointed and bent over to help her. I touched her face and felt something hot and slippery, the unmistakable feel of blood. Her face was covered with it. I shouted her name, but there was no response.