We flew in dismal silence across a sparkling clear sea. At least, I grew silent. Sam spent the time acquainting Hector with the plane’s controls and particular handling characteristics.
“Gotta remember we’ve got a ninety-nine-ton brick on our backs,” he chattered cheerfully, as if he didn’t have a care in the world.
Hector nodded and listened, listened and nodded. Sam jabbered away, one pilot to another, oblivious to everything else except flying.
Me, I was starting to worry about what was going to happen when we returned to Col6n with the orbiter still intact and the Cuban president very much alive. Jones and her people would probably put the best face they could on it, like that’s what they had intended all along: a goodwill flight to help cement friendly relations between Cuba and the U.S. But I knew that if the CIA didn’t get me, some fanatical old anti-Castro nutcake in Miami would come after me.
And Hector, too, I realized. I’d put his life in danger, when all he wanted was to protect me.
I felt really miserable about that. The poor guy was in as much danger as I was, even though none of this was his fault.
I studied his face as he sat in the copilot’s chair next to Sam. Hector didn’t look worried. Or frightened. Or even tense. He was happy as a clam, behind the controls of this monstrous plane, five miles over the deep blue sea.
“Now comes the tricky part,” Sam was telling him, leaning over toward Hector slightly so he could hear him better.
Sitting on the jump seat behind Sam, I tightened my grip on the pistol. “You’re not going to separate the orbiter,” I said firmly.
Without even glancing back at me, Sam broke into cackling laughter. “Couldn’t even if I wanted to, oh masked rider of the plains. The bird’s welded on. You’d need a load of primacord to blast ’er loose.”
“What about the explosive bolts?” I asked.
Sam cackled again. “That’s part of the simulation, kiddo. There aren’t any.”
I saw that Hector was grinning, as if he knew something that I didn’t.
“Then how do you intend to separate the orbiter?” I demanded.
“I don’t,” Sam replied.
“Then how …” The question died in my throat. I had been a fool. A stupendous fool. This wasn’t an assassination plot; Sam was taking the president of Cuba—and his ten-year-old daughter—for a space flight experience, just as he’d taken several hundred other tourists.
I could feel my face burning. Hector, his smile gentle and sweet, turned toward me and said softly, “Maybe you should unload the gun, huh? Just to be on the safe side.”
I clicked on the safety, then popped the magazine out of the pistol’s grip.
I sat in silence for the rest of the flight. There was nothing for me to say. I had been an idiot, jumping to conclusions and suspecting Sam of being a partner in a heinous crime. I felt awful.
After the regular routine over the Caribbean, Sam turned us back to Col6n, and we landed at the airport without incident. Sam taxied the plane to his hangar, where a throng of news reporters and photographers were waiting.
With his daughter clinging to his side, the president of Cuba gave a long and smiling speech in Spanish to the news people. Sam squirmed out of his pilot’s chair and rushed down to the hangar floor so he could stand beside the Cuban president and bask in the glow of publicity. Naturally, he grabbed the woman who was supposed to be his copilot and took her along with him.
I stayed in the cockpit with Hector, watching the whole thing. I could see Ms. Jones hovering around the edge of the crowd, together with her people; even she was smiling.
El Presidente put his arm around Sam’s shoulders and spoke glowingly. It was still in Spanish, but the tone was very warm, very friendly. Cuban-American relations soared almost as high as the president thought he’d flown. Sam signed his autograph for the president’s daughter. She was almost as tall as he, I noticed.
Cameras clicked and whirred, vidcams buzzed away, reporters shouted questions in English and Spanish. It was a field day—for everybody but me.
Hector shook his head and gave me a rueful grin. “I guess we were a little wrong about all this,” he said, almost in a whisper.
“It’s my fault,” I said. “I got you into this.”
“Don’t look so sad. Everything came out okay. Sam’s a hero.”
All I wanted to do was to stay in that cockpit and hide forever.
At last El Presidente and his daughter made their way back to their limousine. The fleet of limos departed and the crowd of media people broke up. Even the American State Department people started to leave. That’s what they were, I reluctantly admitted to myself. Jones and her people really were from the State Department, not the CIA.
Finally Sam came strolling the length of the 747’s cabin and climbed up the spiral staircase to the cockpit, whistling horribly off-key every step of the way.
He popped his head through the hatch, grinning like a Jack-o’-lantern. “You want me to send some pizzas up here or are you gonna come out and have dinner with me?”
Hector took me by the hand, gently, and got to his feet. He had to bend over slightly in the low-ceilinged cockpit, a problem that Sam didn’t have to worry about.
“We’re coming out,” he said. I let him lead me, like a docile little lamb.
We went straight to Sam’s favorite restaurant, the waterfront shack that served such good fish. Jones was already there, sipping at a deadly-looking rum concoction and smiling happily.
“I ought to be angry with you two,” she said, once we sat at the little round table with her.
“It’s my fault,” I said immediately. “I’m the one to blame.”
Hector started to say something, but Jones shushed him with a gesture of her long, graceful hand. “No harm, no foul. The flight went beautifully, and I’m not going to screw up my report by even mentioning your names.”
Sam was aglow. He ordered drinks for all of us, and as the waiter left our table, he looked over at the bar.
“Lookit that!” Sam said, pointing to the TV over the joint’s fake-bamboo bar.
We saw the president of Cuba smiling toothily, his daughter on one side of him and Sam Gunn on the other.
“Worldwide publicity!” Sam crowed. “I’m a made man!”
Hector shook his head. “If anybody ever finds out that your orbiter never left the 747, Sam, the publicity won’t be so good.”
For Hector, that was a marathon speech.
Sam grinned at him. “Now who’s going to tell on me? The Department of State?”
Jones shook her head. “Not us.” “NASA?” Sam asked rhetorically. “You think some rocket expert in NASA’s gonna stand up and declare that you can’t remate the orbiter with its carrier plane once it’s been separated?”
Before any of us could reply, Sam answered his own question. “In a pig’s eye! The word’s going through the agency now, from top to bottom: no comment on Space Adventure Tours. Zip. Nada. Zilch. The lid is on and it’s on tight.”
“What about you two?” Jones asked, arching a perfect brow.
Hector glanced at me, then shrugged. “I’m in the Air Force. If I’m ordered to keep quiet, I’ll keep quiet.”
“And you, Ms. Perkins?” Jones asked me.
I focused on Sam. “You promised to end this bogus business, Sam.”
“Yeah, that’s right, I did.”
“Did you tell the president of Cuba that all he got was a simulation?” I asked.
Sam screwed up his face and admitted, “Not exactly.”