Chapter 10

Helen filed a flight plan for Guadalajara, well beyond their actual destination in the Sierra Madre range.

The flight was well-ordered, entirely without problems. The plane was up for it. Helen was up for it. And Dennis was breathing like mad to keep himself dizzy.

She veered off her announced course, alert for any air traffic in the vicinity, not that she expected any. She was no longer flying a commercial route.

The clouds were low, which was fine for flying, but not much good for getting a glimpse of what lurked beneath. Since she knew a mountain range stood below, she didn’t want to descend without being visually in touch with the ground. She continued flying as she crossed the Sierras, passing beyond the site where Diega had spotted the airfield.

She went on for a while, then circled back. The clouds had parted so that she could see straight down the mountain slopes. She caught sight of the strip of blacktop right where Diega had said the field would be and began to drop toward it.

Two runways greeted her. A plane sat on one; Helen angled down as gently as possible toward the other. This maneuver was no slam-dunk—itself a dangerous type of landing at best. Would she have sufficient room sliding into the side of the mountain? Four-thousand feet would be enough, although the stretch didn’t look like four thousand. Yet if anyone knew the length of a runway, Diega did, Helen was certain. She swooped down onto the tarmac and came to a halt a few hundred feet from the face of a granite cliff. Perfect landing, if she did say so herself.

She pulled her Beretta from her purse, just checking that the weapon was there, complete with clip. The gun had been there at the beginning of the flight and so it still was. She pushed the firearm back into her handbag and got up from her seat. She’d like to use the bathroom now since she didn’t know what lay ahead, but if armed guards awaited the two of them on the runaway, she wasn’t sure she wanted to take a time-out first.

In the cabin, Dennis continued to breath avidly. “We had a nice flight, didn’t we?” Helen asked him. “Very smooth.”

“Was it? The flying seemed a little bumpy.”

Now that they had landed, neither one was all that eager to disembark. But they opened the door, let down the stairs, and stepped down. The scene ahead was not entirely as Helen had imagined earlier.

Instead of the one or two guards she thought they would find, about a dozen tough hombres armed with AK-47s shuffled toward them, military style. She definitely had made a mistake here. Helen took one step back up and bumped into Dennis.

“Are we leaving?” he asked. But they were too late, of course. They faced too much weaponry to attempt a retreat. In a moment, the pair was surrounded by a motley bunch of desperadoes who, Helen judged critically, didn’t shower with regularity or pay attention to grooming.

The military types pulled and pushed at the two Americans for a minute, until they had figured out a viable system for urging their prisoners forward. They shoved with their guns. The technique wasn’t civilized, perhaps, but it worked. Helen and Dennis hopped to with great alacrity. The banditos laughed.

They took Helen and Dennis further around the mountain, down a dirt road, through a grove of unhealthy-looking vegetation, to a couple of wooden sheds that had been knocked together by an inexpert hand or hands. One of the bandoleros hammered respectfully at the door of the second shed and all present stood silent, listening to the response—a few words in Spanish that must have granted passage because the one who had pounded opened the door to the little hut and led in the captives.

The inhabitant looked up, at first surprised, and then utterly gleeful. “Welcome to Hell,” said Ernesto Peno, smiling fiendishly at Helen and Dennis. He came forward toward Helen and without a second’s hesitation, punched her along the side of her head. Helen staggered sideways and Dennis caught her, stopping her from falling.

“That’s hell is it, then, where men punch women in the face?” she asked, putting her hand up to her injury. She was breathing hard, both in reaction to the blow and in anger.

Peno laughed.

“Don’t worry,” Helen said to Dennis. “Mr. Peno isn’t going to hurt us. He’s a gentleman. He told me so himself.”

Dennis appeared shocked and upset. “You’ve met before?” he exclaimed. She hadn’t cared to go into the whole story previously.

Peno spoke in Spanish to the two minions who had entered the shed with the prisoners, and the investigators, unable to put up a struggle, were in steel handcuffs in seconds.

“This should be harder to get out of than a rope,” said Peno, referring to Helen’s escape after his men had tied her and Katherine in the house in Queens. Peno took the handcuff key from his henchman and put it in his pants pocket. Helen’s eyes followed the motion. “You’d like to get your hands on that, wouldn’t you?” asked Peno, stroking his groin in a vulgar gesture and then patting his pocket. “I understand you’ve brought me the plane you were flying—the CitationJet. Nice craft. Thoughtful of you to deliver it to me. I did say I wanted it, didn’t I?”

“Who did you get the Learjet from?” Helen asked, without answering.

“The Lear belonged to John Rotz,” said Dennis. “He flew out of Sandhurst.”

Peno smiled. “And who might you be?”

“He’s a friend,” interrupted Helen. She didn’t see that saying Dennis was from the FAA would do anything but elicit some anti-American tirade—or worse.

“Ah, your protector,” observed Peno. “As my own friend Carlis turned out to be. Such a disappointment to find that you have misjudged someone you trusted. What happened there? Were you too alluring for him to kill?”

“I suppose so,” agreed Helen. “Although right before you called, my boyfriend did come home and put a gun to Carlis’s head.”

“You run with a rough crowd,” Peno observed. He spoke again in Spanish to his men, who began pulling on Helen’s and Dennis’s handcuffs, hauling the two to the door. “I’m tired now and want to rest a while. I’ll deal with you both later—execution style. I love those words. Yes, execution can be done in style, and I think I will do yours very stylishly. But you never know what sort of mood I may be in later. I may skip the style part for a brutal ending. Barbarity can be fun as well.”

The door banged behind them and they were led to the nearby shack and shoved inside.

This structure was, in fact, a storage shed and the two found themselves in a sort of airplane parts depot. They had nowhere to settle themselves, except the dirt floor, so Helen thumped onto the ground. Dennis hesitated, then followed suit.

“Did he hurt you?” Dennis asked.

“Of course he hurt me, but I let him do it. I’m a trained fighter. I didn’t have to let him hit me.” She could see in his eyes that he was completely skeptical. “Yes,” she said. “Think of it as a sucker punch. I suckered him. Defending myself wouldn’t have done me any good. There were too many of them. They would have held me while he hit me a few times anyway. I know you think I’m entirely impulsive, but sometimes strategies do go through my mind.”

“You didn’t tell me you had run into Peno before,” Dennis complained with some degree of heat.

“I don’t mean to lie to people. I did mention something about the incident,” she said. “Things became so complicated though, I couldn’t tell the whole story without being bogged down in the details.” Dennis gave her a look of total disbelief. “That’s the reason I didn’t bring it up,” she protested. “But never mind that. Let’s plan our escape.”

“Our escape,” he repeated. “Are we going to have an escape?”

“We most certainly are.” Indeed, she wondered, too. “We most certainly are.”

“I have to pee,” she remarked a little while later.

Dennis looked at her. “It’s a mental thing, really,” he told her. “Remember EST, how they used to make people go for twelve hours or something without going to the bathroom?”

“I don’t know what EST is, but I think the Chinese used to do that to flyers captured in Vietnam.”

“You don’t know what EST is!” he exclaimed. “You must be even younger than I thought you were.”

“You weren’t in the Army?” she asked. “Were you a conscientious objector, or just a draft dodger?”

“I had a deferment,” he informed her loftily. “First I was an undergraduate, and then I went to law school.”

“You’re a lawyer?” She was surprised.

“No, I didn’t finish. Law didn’t make any sense to me after a while—all that memorizing. Then the war ended.”

“Ah—you were in school to avoid going into the Army. Did you demonstrate against the war and smoke marijuana?”

“I suppose so,” he said. He seemed to be trying to remember. “I took LSD a few times, too.”

She nodded her head. “So, you’re simply typical of your whole generation. One thing led to another. And now that you’re kind of aging, you eat health food and do yoga. Your whole life is a zeitgeist kind of a thing.”

He didn’t answer. “My shoulders and wrists hurt,” he said finally. “Don’t yours?”

“Yes, but mostly I have to pee.”

She must have fallen asleep because by the time she next opened her eyes, everything seemed a little gloomier than before. Although the shed had no window, chinks in the siding let in small amounts of the dying light. Helen still had to pee, but she now found herself better able to tolerate the pressure of her bladder, and she was thirsty. She looked over at Dennis. He was awake and their eyes met. “I think we should try the escape part now,” he suggested.

“Oh, yes, I haven’t come up with a plan yet, have I? But as I’m sure you understand, this is psychological warfare Peno is playing at. He wants us to be uncomfortable and afraid.”

“Then he’s got us where he wants us,” said Dennis. “The man knows his business.”

“He’s a Zapatista, I guess. They’re called the EZLN, whatever that stands for. They’re the ones who have engaged in underground revolution in Chiapas and control the territory. Chiapas is way south of here, on the Guatemalan border. The Mexican government put down an open rebellion there quite a long while ago. When then Mexican President Salinas offered a pardon to all the rebels who would stop fighting, the leader of the Zapatistas said, ‘Pardon us for what? For not keeping quiet in our misery?’ They shot a presidential candidate.”

Dennis was impressed. “How do you know all this?”

“Eric follows this stuff. He did covert counter-insurgency in Central America at one time.”

“That figures,” said Dennis. “He wouldn’t just be a house painter or anything, would he?”

Dark had just about overwhelmed the day by the time someone opened the door to the shack and stepped in. Their visitor was Ernesto Peno. Peno had chosen an unfortunate moment—for himself—to enter, because Helen was worked up into a rage. She didn’t care to be treated like an animal. Not that anyone should cage or torment animals either, of course.

So as soon as her eyes focused on him, all she could think were savage thoughts. She waited a moment to see if he was accompanied by one of his troops, but the second the door closed behind Peno and only Peno, she launched a sturdy kick of her right leg to his chest. Her intention was merely to throw the revolutionary off balance. She was hoping Peno wouldn’t cry out and she thought that he wouldn’t because he would lose that psychic advantage he was striving for. He grunted and went on the counterattack, trying to punch her again as he had done so successfully earlier that day.

She hadn’t been kidding when she told Dennis that she had suckered Peno by letting him hit her. This time, she dodged the man so that he couldn’t repeat his earlier success. When the punch didn’t land, he grabbed her in a bear hug and held her tight, squeezing the breath out of her. Again, in Helen’s view, she was leading him on, because for her to control the situation absolutely, she had to knock him out. She groaned and struggled weakly in his powerful grasp.

Once Peno began to relax in his victory, Helen struck the blow she knew would fell him. She knocked the back of her skull forcefully against his jaw—the classic punch that a mixed martial arts prizefighter wins the big bucks for. Peno’s grip went slack, and he crumpled onto the hard dirt floor.

She had been taught that such a move would work in that way, but until this moment, the lesson had been theoretical. Now Helen gasped for breath and immediately sat herself down on Peno’s chest.

“You come sit on him, too,” she urged Dennis in a quiet voice. “We don’t want him to get up or to shout for help.”

“We might break something,” her friend responded slowly.

“We won’t break anything, although he might.”

“He’s still a human being,” objected Dennis.

“You’re a goddamn saint, but have a seat.”

Dennis reluctantly settled himself astride the fallen firebrand skyjacker. Although handicapped by having her hands trussed behind her back, Helen began groping in Peno’s pockets. “You look, too,” she instructed her companion.

“I’m afraid of what I might run into,” Dennis said.

Helen laughed softly. “We have to find the key and get ourselves out of these cuffs. Wow, a gun! I’m a good shot, but I’ve never done any shooting with my hands behind my back.” She let the gun slide onto the floor and kept searching.

“I found it,” Dennis told her. “Unless the key fits into a suitcase.”

“See if you can open my handcuffs.” This action was awkward in the extreme and they certainly couldn’t perform it sitting on something as lumpy as Peno’s fallen body. They stood and Dennis tried again for a while. The task was hopeless. “Hand me the key. I’ll try opening yours.” Amazingly, Peno was still unconscious.

The key dropped and they fumbled around in the dirt for a minute to retrieve it.

At last Helen got the key in hand and worked at fitting it into the lock on Dennis’s handcuffs. Both of them stood still and concentrated to the utmost. Finally, the key turned, and one cuff popped open. Dennis pulled his wrist out and grunted from the pain as he brought his arms back around to the front. He took the key from her and, without removing his second cuff, freed Helen from the steel restraints. “Thanks,” she said. She meant it. He unlocked his other cuff.

Peno stirred and Helen, picking up the gun from the ground, turned him over and used the butt of the gun to knock him out again. She pulled the Zapatista’s arms around behind him and locked his wrists in the cuffs still warm from her own body.

“Eric would kill him, I guess,” she told Dennis. “I wish I could, but I can’t. Maybe we can take him with us though.”

“He’s a little hard to handle,” Dennis pointed out. “What if he got loose in the plane? He might be unpleasant or cause a crash.”

“I hate to let him go.” She tore part of the sleeve off her shirt with difficulty, then stuffed it into Peno’s mouth. She was pleased with her handiwork. “He’s too heavy to lug around during our getaway,” she agreed, considering their captive. “We’d better get going before his buddies come in to check on him.” She jumped up and took hold of Dennis’s arm, pulling him toward the door. She stopped. “Shh,” she cautioned.

She opened the door a crack and looked around. A soldier patrolled down the road a way, but that was all. She opened the entry a little wider and stepped out, holding the door open for Dennis to join her. The night was moonlit, not good for escapes. Eric would handle this really great, she knew. It was his kind of sortie.

She moved out. “You’re going the wrong way,” Dennis whispered in her ear.

She shook her head. She knew what she was doing. She crept further into the enemy camp, toward Peno’s cabin. She was taking a chance, but she was stubborn. She approached Peno’s shack warily, Dennis Malloy at her heels.

Helen stopped outside the shed, put her ear to the door, and listened. She stood that way for quite a while. All she heard was Dennis behind her, growing restless. With a sudden jerk, she opened the door to the shack, pulling Peno’s gun up at the ready. No one was there. The two Americans walked right in. Helen looked around and saw her purse lying open on a battered old table, her Beretta alongside. She gathered her belongings and gave Peno’s gun to Dennis.

“I don’t know how to use this,” he whispered.

Silently, she showed him the simple steps to take in order to fire. “It’ll recoil,” she warned in a low tone. “Try to shoot up close so you hit something.” His expression rejected the possibility that he would ever do anything of the sort.

Helen inspected the premises for a minute more to see what might be valuable to them in their flight, but, strangely for someone of his apparent upbringing, Peno was surrounded by few material possessions. This cabin presented a sharp contrast to the extravagantly outfitted office of Peno’s uncle, Robert Avilla.

They exited carefully from Peno’s little wooden house. In the distance, Helen could see the sentry still pacing back and forth. Where were the other bandoleros? she wondered. Was there truly only one armed guard between the two Americans and the airfield?

Again, she led Dennis away from the airstrip, although he pointed out the direction in which he thought the two of them should go. “Stay here,” she whispered intensely. They were in the underbrush.

“Where are you going?” He gripped her arm.

“I have to pee something terrible.” She disappeared. Praying that there was no poison ivy in the area, she pulled up her skirt and pulled down her underpants. This was heaven. This was the most delightful moment of her life. And making for total triumph and for comfort, she had a packet of tissues stashed in her purse that now served their purpose. She felt extremely satisfied with herself.

She returned to Dennis, causing him to jump when she appeared soundlessly behind him. “This way,” she hissed and led him in a circle that kept wide of Peno’s man on post.

Once they had passed the guard, however, they had a long walk in the moonlight out in the open where anyone who happened by would see them with utmost clarity. No shadows were available to keep to, so they doggedly trotted forward up the dusty road, hoping that the other armed bandits were, in fact, gone for the night. They came near the airfield and Helen could hear a couple of men singing near the side of the cliff. She didn’t know what the song was, but the men sounded drunk. She could hardly wait to get into her plane and fly out of this place. She and Eric wouldn’t come to Mexico on their honeymoon, she promised herself.

As the two escapees came closer to the planes at the end of the runway, Helen saw that the front tire had been removed from the CitationJet and that the jet itself was up on a block. The purpose of this, she couldn’t tell. She was so mad with frustration that she nearly wept. “Those ignorant peasants have disabled my aircraft,” she told Dennis.

“Does the wheel matter?” he asked in all innocence.

“The damn thing isn’t a helicopter,” she snarled. “It doesn’t lift straight up into the air.” She came closer to the plane to see if the situation could be remedied, but obviously the Zapatistas were in the middle of doing something with the craft—probably hiding contraband—and it would take a while to put it together again.

This was as close as she had gotten to utter despair on this journey. Her wings had been clipped. But she thought of one possibility!

Helen walked toward the Learjet, circled it to see if the airship looked in reasonably good shape and went to open the door. The entry was ajar; the steps rolled down for her. At least superficially, everything was operational. She hopped up the stairs, entered the cabin, and was hit by the lovely odor of Western civilization—the smell of goods manufactured for luxury, ease, and functionality. She peeked into the cockpit. The plane was begging someone with the right skills to fly it away.

She was the someone who was going to rescue this craft that had a Pennsylvania, U.S.A. home base. Smiling, she went to fetch her partner in good works. She walked off of the airplane. The moon had gone behind a cloud and the night had turned pitch black. She stumbled down the staircase and stepped blindly into the arms of two soldiers who held Dennis at gunpoint with his hands in back of his head.

“Oh,” Helen said. This hadn’t worked out as well as she thought it would.