o o o
Chuck got clearance to take off and land. Pete called Guy Banister and explained the situation.
Guy said he’d call John Stanton and try to rig a plan. He had short-wave gear out at Lake Pontchartrain and could radio in to Chuck’s frequency.
They took off at 8:16. Chuck put on his headphones and cribbed flight calls.
The Border Patrol plane departed late. Their Guatemala City ETA was forty-six minutes behind them.
Chuck flew medium-low and kept his headset on. Pete skimmed hate pamphlets out of sheer boredom.
The titles were a howl. The ultimate: “KKK: Kommunist Krucifixion Krusade!”
He found a skin mag/hate mag combo under his seat. Dig that zaftig blonde with the swastika earrings.
Big Pete wants a woman. Extortion experience preferred, but not mandatory.
Dashboard lights flashed. Chuck bootjacked a plane-to-base message and transcribed it in his log.
The Border Patrol guys are goofing on Carlos. They radio’d their HQ that they’ve got no lavatory on board & Carlos refuses to piss in a tin can. (They think he’s got a little one.)
Pete laughed. Pete pissed in a cup and doused the Gulf from 6,000 feet.
Time dragged. Stomach flutters came and went. Pete chased a Dramamine with warm beer.
Lights flashed. Chuck rogered a Pontchartrain patch-in and transcribed the message.
Guy got through to JS. JS pulled strings & got thru to Guat. contacts. We’re cleared to land with no passport check & if we can get ahold of CM its set up to register him at G.C. Hilton under name Jose Garcia. JS says KB says to have CM call lawyer in Washington D.C. at 0L6-4809 tonight.
Pete pocketed the message. The Dramamine kicked in to his system: good night, sweet prince.
o o o
Leg cramps woke him up. Jungle terrain and a big black runway hovered.
Chuck eased the plane down and cut the engines. Some spics rolled out a literal red carpet.
It was a bit frayed, but nice.
The beaners looked like right-wing toady types. The Agency saved Guatemala’s ass once–some staged coup expunged a shitload of Reds.
Pete hopped out and stamped his legs awake. Chuck and the spics talked rapid-fire Spanish.
They were back in Guatemala–too fucking soon.
The talk escalated. Pete felt his ears pop-pop-pop. They had forty-six minutes to rig something.
Pete walked over to the Customs shack. He got this little Technicolor brain blip: Carlos Marcello needs to urinate.
The bathroom adjoined the passport counter. Pete checked it out.
It ran about 8 feet by 8 feet square. A flimsy screen covered the back window. The view featured more runways and a line of rattletrap bi-planes.
Carlos was stocky. Chuck was rail thin. He was all-around-huge himself.
Chuck walked in and unzipped by the urinal. “We got a big foul-up. I don’t know if it’s good news or bad.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying the Border Patrol’s set to land in seventeen minutes. They’ve got to refuel here and fly to another airport sixty miles away. That’s where Customs is set to pick up Carlos. That ETA I got is for the other goddamned air–”
“How much money have we got in the plane?”
“Sixteen thousand. Santo said to drop it off with Banister.”
Pete shook his head. “We grease the Customs guys with it. We fucking inundate them, so they’ll take the risk. All we need is a car and a driver outside that window, and you to push Carlos through.”
Chuck said, “I get it.”
Pete said, “If he doesn’t have to piss, we’re fucked.”
o o o
The spics dug the plan. Chuck greased them at the rate of two grand per man. They said they’d keep the Border Patrol guys busy while Carlos Marcello took the world’s longest whiz.
Pete loosened the window screen. Chuck stashed the Piper two hangars over.
The spics supplied a ‘49 Merc getaway car. The spics supplied a driver–a musclebound fag named Luis.
Pete backed the Merc up to the window. Chuck crouched on the toilet seat with last week’s Hush-Hush.
The Border Patrol plane landed. A crew hustled out refueling pumps. Pete crouched behind the Customs shack and watched.
The spics zipped out the red carpet. A little geek brushed it off with a whisk broom.