Manchineel
For Mercedes
MANCHINEEL
John Ballem
A Castle Street Mystery
Copyright © John Ballem 2000
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency.
Editor: Marc Côté
Copy Editor: Barry Jowett
Design: Jennifer Scott
Printer: Webcom
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Ballem, John
Manchineel
ISBN 0-88882-217-0
I. Title
PS8553.A45M36 2000 C813’.54 C00-930054-6 PR9199.3.B36M36 2000
1 2 3 4 5 04 03 02 01 00
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J. Kirk Howard, President
All the events and characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual people, places or events is purely coincidental.
Printed and bound in Canada.
Printed on recycled paper.
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Manchineel (man-chi-neel)—a tropical American tree of the spurge family with a blistering milky juice and apple-shaped poisonous fruit.
Webster’s Dictionary
Chapter One
The Grenadines stretched to the southern horizon in a long, graceful arc, a necklace of jewel-like islands adrift on a turquoise sea. At four thousand feet, the Cessna 180 was well below the white cumulus clouds that dotted the Caribbean sky. St. Vincent was coming up on the port wing and Skye MacLeod eased back on the throttle. Bequia passed beneath him and he altered course slightly to line up with Manchineel, the distinctive hump of its Mount Morne still blue in the distance. The airstrip was directly beneath Mount Morne which, although it was more of a hill than a mountain, was still high enough for the winds to create a dangerous lee-wave turbulence as they flowed over it. The 2,500-foot runway terminated abruptly at the edge of a small cliff that dropped straight into the sea. The Caribbean is notorious for its dicey landing strips and Manchineel had the reputation among pilots of being the diciest of all of them.
It was time to make contact with the airport. “Manchineel radio, this is November 115 Charlie. Position report, 20 out at 3,500 feet. Transponder squawking at 1,200. Landing at Manchineel. Request advisory.”
“Welcome home, November 115 Charlie.” Skye recognized the warm Caribbean accent of Henry Armbruster, the manager of Manchineel Air who doubled as the flight service operator. “Active runway 07, winds 130 degrees at 20, gusting to 30.”
Gusting to 30. Jesus Christ. The Cessna 180 was a high wing monoplane and very susceptible to crosswinds. Closing in on the northwest tip of the elongated, amoeba-shaped island, and dropping the vintage Cessna lower, Skye saw the figure of a man kneeling beside what appeared to be three bodies lying on the sand. It looked like there had been a multiple drowning. The man looked up and waved as Skye banked for another look. With the wind throwing his airplane around, he didn’t dare fly low enough to see who it was. He raised Armbruster again to ask what was going on. “Shark attack,” was the answer. “Bodies washed up on the beach. Haitian refugees most likely. Some kid found them about a half hour ago. We’re trying to keep a lid on it until we know more about it. Look, Skye, the wind velocity is increasing. You better bring her in.”
“Roger.” Skye gained altitude and headed for the airstrip. Landing the airplane in wind conditions like this required all his attention. He overflew the airstrip midfield at 1,500 feet. When he first started to take flying lessons, he wondered why anyone would fly directly over the field until an instructor pointed out that when other airplanes were taking off or landing, they used the ends of the runway, not the middle. On the downward leg, he dropped to one thousand feet. Up ahead the wind was really tossing the palm trees around on the top of Mount Morne. Armbruster had been right, the wind was stronger than 30 knots. He put on 10 degrees of flap. It would increase the airplane’s vulnerability to wind gusts but the short runway gave him no choice.
Over the water, he turned onto his final approach. The wind was playing havoc with the windsurfers in Maggins Bay, their rainbow-coloured sails lying flat on the water. As the Cessna 180 swept over Mount Morne, its wheels almost touched the tops of the towering coconut palms. Grazing goats didn’t even bother to look up as its shadow passed over them. As soon as he had the runway made, Skye retarded the throttle, but still kept some power on and held the 180’s nose down to prevent a stall. The wind buffeted the airplane, tossing it up, down and sideways. Skye dipped a wing and crabbed into the wind to stay lined up with the runway. Over the runway numbers he pulled the nose up. A stronger gust broadsided the Cessna as the wheels touched, pushing it toward the verge of the narrow runway. Skye applied power and the nimble 180 lifted off the ground, then immediately bounced back into the air. Skye held the control column as far back as it would go and the 180 touched down once more. But he couldn’t keep her on the ground. The wind was too strong, and she bounced once again, although this time only a few feet in the air. The bounces were using up too much precious runway, and as soon as she touched down again Skye rode the brakes, praying that he could bring her to a stop before they ended up in the drink. It was too late to abort the landing and take off again. Skye expelled a pent-up breath as the 180 slowed to a stop just short of the end of the runway. As he had so often in the past, he blessed the short landing capability of the ancient tail dragger. She wasn’t officially listed as a STOL airplane but she could handle short runways with the best of them.
Skye could feel the sweat trickling down his ribcage. He tried to persuade himself it was simply because of the heat that quickly invaded the cabin now that he was on the ground. Propping the door open, he taxied back to the small, thatched-roof building that served as both an open air passenger terminal and customs and immigration.
“I should charge you four landing fees for that one.” Henry Armbruster was smiling; but his large, blotchy freckles stood out more than usual. He was from Bequia, where many of the people were of mixed race, and he had lightly pigmented skin.
“It was more of a controlled crash than a landing,” Skye agreed ruefully as he jumped down onto the tarmac. “But I’ll take it.”
The airport manager nodded. When conditions were almost outside the envelope, the wise pilot didn’t try to paint his airplane onto the runway, he was content to get it on the ground without bending it. “Andy Foster needed three tries before he made it,” he told Skye. “Lord and Lady Fraser chartered the 421 to fly over from Barbados. His Lordship