“First, I’m going to tell you a story about my family, and then I’m going to tell you a story about my last adventure with Jake. I’ve only flown product for him once or twice, but each time he’s held out on me. He’s held out on me, and I’ve never gotten all that I’ve been promised. In all the time I’ve known him, it’s been hard to get a straight answer out of him. Tell me, have you ever known him to be on the level with you? Answer me honestly?” Hewlett sat there abashed. Everyone in the business knew that Jake was his partner, and some of Jake’s bullshit would rub off on him.
“This isn’t about Jake. It’s bigger than Jake. Besides, my friend from Sicily won’t ever go for that much.”
“He’ll have to.”
“My friend can be very persuasive.”
“Has he ever been on the level with you?”
“I’m just taking the Sicilian’s word on this one.”
“Who is this man from the mob?”
“I could give you a name, but I’m certain it’s a pseudonym.”
“But you never saw the cash?”
“No. They plan for me to go with you to pick it up. It will be in a briefcase handcuffed to my wrist.”
“If it’s the mob’s money, and you fuck up, you’ll be running the rest of your life. Or feeding the fish somewhere off one of the Florida Keys. That’s a given.”
“Don’t I know that? Look, they have me by the short hairs.”
“I’m going to tell you how it’s going to be. To fly to Colombia, I have to refill in the Dominican Republic.”
Hewlett nodded his head. “For my services, you pay me an even one million. You pay me one million, and the money has to be up front. Jake has burned me before. And I’m cautious, too.”
Hewlett was expecting a quarter to half of that. Hewlett couldn’t imagine paying that much. He had paid a hundred thousand once before for a significantly smaller load from Colombia. If he knew it, so, too, did the mafia. “Now, that’s outrageous.”
“You heard me: one million dollars. That may seem like a lot, but you have to consider just what I’m risking. The DEA catches me; they’ll put me away for twenty years. At my age, that’s a life sentence. How do I know they haven’t flipped Townsend?”
“Trust me, the DEA hasn’t touched him.”
“Yeah, Mr. Hewlett, but how can I be sure? See, right now, you’re asking me to take all the risk.”
“My friend from Sicily doesn’t see it that way; I don’t see it that way.”
“Well I do. Do you know what the DEA can do? Besides jail, they can confiscate my plane, take my license, and I’d never be able to fly again.” For a moment, Davis seemed like a deflated balloon. “With this, I’ll have my retirement. I’ll have my family problems taken care of. As it is, the mob has the money. They have more than enough money. Trust me. There are always other pilots. There are always other planes, but these pilots don’t know Colombia the way I do. Nor do they have the Ariel. In that beast, I can land and takeoff with thirteen hundred pounds of cargo on an unimproved strip less than five hundred feet in length. I made alterations in the configuration of the plane, so I can haul the more than three hundred kilograms. That would make up for what I’m charging. You know what the stall speed is of that plane?”
“It’s twenty-five knots or so.”
“You’ve done your homework. That would be more than enough to cover the one million I’m asking to do the job. The only plane that can beat those numbers is a Piper Cub, an Aviat Husky or a Bellanca Citabria. And they can’t haul shit. Furthermore, I have a range of about a thousand nautical miles. I can make Colombia in one with one stop. Flying there, I usually stop in the Dominican Republic. I have connections there. Then it’s another eight hundred or so nautical miles to Colombia. To get to the Dominican Republic is a long haul. It’s no shorty getting into Colombia. It’ll be stretching the range of the Ariel, but she can do it.”
Hewlett sat there, feeling stunned. He would not like to play poker with Skeeter Davis. Not a lot was lost on him. Jake would not be a problem. The problem was the mob. Knowing his superior in the mob, he knew that he’d be furious at the demands Davis was making. He’d be furious, but in the end, he couldn’t imagine him not going along with Davis. If Rosario got word of his talking to Skeeter, he just might threaten Skeeter to pilot the plane whether he wanted to or not. He was just about to inform Skeeter of this, when he spoke up.
“Where’s the strip?”
Hewlett pulled out an airplane sectional. On the map, he pointed to the spot, about a hundred miles from the coast.
“You’re talking Buendia’s airstrip, aren’t you? I’ve flown in and out of that strip a number of times. You can put your sectional away. I don’t need it to find Buendia’s strip.”
“I have no idea whose strip it is. It was all arranged by the higher ups in my organization. Have you been there?”
“Yeah, a couple of times. The last time I was there it was two years ago. I had no trouble getting in or out of there with the Ariel. And where’s it to be delivered?”
“To a small airstrip about ten miles southeast of Royal Fakapalm. A strip just outside the Glades.”
“What’s this makeshift strip like?”
“It’s six hundred feet. It shouldn’t be a problem for you or your plane.”
“You can get someone to clear the field and do a visual inspection of the airstrip before we go down there?”
“Better if you looked at it. I can get one of our associates to take you there tomorrow.” Hewlett suspected that Davis knew about every hardscrabble airstrip that strung along the peninsula of Florida in and out of the Everglades.
“I expect you to pay for my time tomorrow.”
“Of course. How much for the day?”
“That will be a thousand.”
“That shouldn’t be a problem.”
“Up front.”
“I should have guessed.” Hewlett dug in his pocket and retrieved his money clip. He gave the thousand to Davis. “There’ll be a man in the morning coming by to pick you up at eight tomorrow morning. Is that satisfactory?” Skeeter just nodded his head.
“Can we go early next week?”
“There’s a storm brewing, but they’re predicting that it will head east over the Atlantic.”
Davis assured him that he could reach Buendia’s strip with just one stop for fuel.
“And we can go next week? Early next week?”
“That’s fine by me. If he can just get decent aviation fuel we need for that big Lycoming engine at the airstrip in Colombia.”
“If this field checks out, we go in two days…But I’m not promising you.”
“That’s all I was expecting.”
Chapter Two
The wind picked up and a fine drizzle began, an overture to the nastier storm that was gathering over the Eastern Seaboard. When it hit, it seemed to come from all