The Guiding Light

Ferdi's Bonfire to help us find his place











On the way back through town, Jerry stops again at the Cantina and grabs a dozen bottles of that Guarana and a case of cold beer and a bag of ice in a foam cooler. He likes the way we respond to that Guarana. Apparently it works better on some than others. By the time we get back to the compound, the beer is getting warm. Lou reaches for one and Jerry stops him.
“Hey, Lou, we have a little work to do and then you can play, Capiche?”
“What are you, my fucking mother?” Lou pulls back from the beer and rolls his eyes. “Let’s make this quick then.”
We all have our tasks. I have to check the sending unit, and then top off Abby’s tanks. Jerry and Lou head into the hanger to grab supplies, some ammo, and another cooler and case of beer. Four guys, six hours, two cases of beer. Some how it doesn’t add up. Jerry will only have a couple.
Ollie moves Nester’s gold from the truck into Abby’s cargo bay. He comes up to me with two of the bags… strong guy, and asks me something in Spanish. I do get his drift, though. “Put them forward, behind the net. By the cockpit.” I make my hands like I am steering a car. He seems to under stand.
I pull the sending unit and clean it out. I know I have a good spare in the hanger, so I don’t fuck with it. I walk over to my bench and dig in the drawer.
“What’s the matter with it.” Jerry is pulling a box off the shelf and handing it to Lou.
“Hell if I know. I have a good one here.” I hold up the one I just pulled out and cleaned. “This one might have just been in need of cleaning, but why take a chance. I’ll deal with it later.”
Lou sets the box at his feet and opens it. “What is this?”
“Those are hammocks. There’s only two of them, but that is all we need. They hang forward in Abby’s cargo bay.”
“Nice.” Lou is tired of sitting on the floor, or standing between the seats in the cockpit.
Ollie steps up and asks Jerry something. Jerry answers him, then translates. “Behind the cockpit wall, not in the cockpit. In front of the net so it won’t slide.”
Ollie turns and heads back to the plane to move the gold out of the cockpit. I follow with my new sending unit and do my install.
Within the hour we have her refueled, along with five auxillary cans tied down in the cargo bay. Jerry raided our food stash and brought plenty of jerky, trail mix, a bag of apples, twenty gallons of drinking water, beer, some dried papaya, and a couple of bags of hard candy. It would be enough to keep the four of us satisfied in both directions.
I took the right seat and we fired her up. I don’t know how many hundreds of times I have heard these engines fire up, but I love it every time. I look at the oil pressure gauge and it moves right on up. “Sending unit.” I confirm.
We taxi out and make the turn. Jerry pours the coals to her and she rolls out.
“Hey, big boy, you alright?” Lou asks Ollie.
I turn to see a huge pair of eyes staring back as the hammock he is in swings with the acceleration.
“First time?” Lou asks, getting a rapid nod in return.
Abby speeds down the dirt strip and lifts off fifty yards before the treeline. We are on our way.
The trip to Mexico City is long and boring. I have been there twice before, both times with Jerry and Abby. It takes about four to six hours depending on the headwind and if we make a fuel stop or not. Today we have full tanks. That should get us there and back. Jerry always carried aux tanks just in case. Without correct registration, we can’t just fly into the nearest city airport and fuel up. We have landed on a few vacant strips of highway to gas up with the aux cans.
Just after take off, I can smell one of Lou’s “Walkers”. Before long, it is passed up my way. I take a hit and pass it back. I have to stay relatively sober just in case we have an in flight emergency. But several times in the past that just meant not passing out.
“You want a beer?” I ask Jerry. He nods.
“Hey, you derelicts, hand me up a couple of beers.”
I hear Lou whisper something to Ollie.
“Go fuck yourself.” Ollie says in a thick accent. Then he giggles. Totally out of context for an Aztec giant.
“You fucking stoner bastards hand me a couple of beers or I’ll dive this plane into the trees.” Jerry shouts back over his shoulder.
Two cold ones rapidly appear and I open Jerry’s and hand it to him. It is late afternoon and the sun is already setting to our left. For once we don’t have that glare in our eyes. We are at about a thousand feet right now. That is probably as high as we go for now. We have always kept her close to the ground. Kind of like having an old wooden boat in deep water. Whenever possible you like to keep the shore in sight just in case of trouble.
The Walker makes its way back up to me and I take another toke. In the back, Lou is comparing scars and tattoos with Ollie. Turns out Ollie was in Nicaragua when they had their trouble with the Sandanistas. He worked with the CIA in some capacity, delivering arms and supplies that had been flown from here to there. I just thought he was a big, dumb local. That whole “Book by its Cover” comes to mind for just a second, then I have to piss.
I slip between the two hammocks which are hanging length-wise just behind the cockpit bulkhead net. Lou has his pants leg pulled up to show Ollie the scar he has running down his shin.
“I have six screws holding my shin together.” He tells him. As he speaks, Ollie is removing his shirt. On his back are what look like bites, animal bites.
“Un pedacito del mono mí.” Ollie says.
“No shit, a fucking monkey?”
These guys are stoned out of there mind. I stand at the cargo door and relieve myself. Just before putting myself close to the edge, I snap the safety line that Jerry installed onto my leather belt.
Outside the sun is going down and the jungle below has that misty look again. It is getting patchy now, larger spots cleared of vegetation where encroaching farms have taken over the land. Pretty soon we will be over the arid desert terrain of southern Mexico.

We have been flying now for two hours. Lou and Ollie have downed most of a case of beer and are singing something in spanish. Sounds like Louie Louie. Ollie has a real falsetto voice, quite nice actually. He and Lou are trying some harmony. I reach back and grab a couple of beers and a bag of jerky and return to the cockpit.
“Want some?” I hold up the bag of Jerky.
“In a minute. How about you sit with her for a moment. I gotta piss.”
Abby is equipped with auto-pilot, but it is an archaic system that Jerry has little trust in at this altitude. So one of us has to be ready to take the controls in a heartbeat if something goes wrong. We caught a windshear that almost put us into the ground on a return trip from Cali, Colombia. If it weren’t for the fact that Jerry just had to move his hands from his lap to the controls, we would have bought the farm.
When he comes back he just stands in the doorway. “Did you know that Ollie fought the Sandanistas?”
“Lou told me.” I took another bite of the jerky and chewed. “Those guys aren’t going to be any use to us tonight.”
“No shit. I be they are asleep in those hammocks by the time we get there.”
“How much longer?”
Jerry slides in behind the controls and takes a quick survey of the gauges. He pulls up his clipboard with a chart. He clicks on the map light and looks at the route, his watch, and then out the side window for good measure. “We’re making good time. I bet we make it in an hour, maybe a little more.”
He tucks the clipboard back along the seat. “When we get in toward the city you call Jorge’s cousin Ferdi on the cellphone so we can let him know we are coming.”
There is a crash behind us. Ollie fell out of his hammock, and now Lou is dangling from his, laughing his ass off. He drops to the floor and looks like he is having a seizure he is laughing so hard.
“Jesus,” I am looking around the corner at the two of them, “I missed a hell of a party.”
“Once we’re parked we will have a little party of our own.” He pulled a big fat “Walker” out of his shirt pocket.
“Where did you get that?”
“Pulled it from behind Lou’s ear when I came back from taking a piss.” He tucked it back in his pocket. “I sorta hid the other case of beer under a tarp behind the side netting too. Those guys have had enough for now.”

Turns out Ollie had a flask of homebrew and the two of them had drank that pint in just over an hour, along with that case of beer and who knows how many Walkers.
We come up on the city at about 500 feet. I dial the number when the lights are still over the horizon. I actually have a signal. When it starts ringing I hand it to Jerry and take the controls. Abby is off of auto-pilot and I am flying, with Jerry just a reach away.
He talks to Ferdinand, keeping his eyes on the terrain. We have a bright full moon tonight. I can see the farms and roads below us. It is relatively flat. Jerry pulls his chart up and uses his penlight. “You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Hurry up.”
He goes back to the phone call. Pretty soon he circles a spot on the map and the phone call is ended.
“Alright, I’ve got her.”
I let go and Jerry banks her over. “Hell, we already missed our turn.”
“Did we pass it?”
“No, but it is just a ways up that river there. Ferdi said he could hear our engines. He has a huge bonfire lit… says we should be able to see it.”
We both look out the windscreen and pan the horizon.
“There, there it is.” Jerry puts her over on her wing and banks it in.
It is a huge bonfire with flames two stories high. We make a fly by to assess the runway. It is short, too short for what I have seen us land on. But Jerry doesn’t seem too worried. There is a rocky end to one side of it, a bit of a cliff. The other end is the river.
Jerry lines up on the strip and drops the flaps all the way, taking most of the power off along with it. We drop quickly. I grab both sides of my seat. The boys are snoring in their hammocks in back, totally oblivious to the impending crash. Jerry jockies the throttles a little and then we hit hard, but are down just the same. Throttles back to idle, props feathered, brakes applied. The rocks are coming up fast. Jerry is calm and cool. He hits the rudder pedals hard over and Abby spins just before the rock wall. It feels like she is going to go on one wheel, but she doesn’t.
“Shit, man… that was awesome.”
“Yeah. Let’s party.”