Hot Rocks

One of ten diamonds in the bag.








"Holy Shit... where did you get these?" Jerry turns a couple of the stones over in his hand. "These are worth a lot of money, man."
"I gathered that. This is why we were being chased by those men, the ones in the plane that Lou downed." I look a Lou, "There was another plane, Lou."
"They must still be looking for us."
Jerry's jaw drops, "Hey... you don't think they followed you to Tapia's, do you?"
"No, the two planes were in different areas. Lou monitored them talking to each other and they were looking in a different grid."
Jerry looks at Lou, worried now, "You think they were somewhere else?"
"That's what I got from it. The plane I shot down radioed the other plane that they had spotted us, maybe even that they were going to force us to land, but they didn't make it to the scene. At least not while we were there."
Jerry stuffs the stones back into the little bag and hands them to me, holding the bag like a dead rat. "These need to go."
"Yeah, I know."

The next morning we are up with the sun. Lou and I give Naomi a quick look and then we fire her up and roll out of the compound. We need to make a call on the satellite phone, but don't want to be anywhere near El Corazon when we do. There is enough fuel in our girl to make a run about an hour away and then turn backwith some to spare. Jerry stays behind to make arrangements with Nester for the equipment run. There has also been some radio traffic requesting Abby for a few cargo runs. Jerry will try to incorporate those on his run to the coast. For now it seems that our paths are running in different directions.
Naomi takes to the air with Lou on the stick. We climb out over the mist covered jungle and continue to gain altitude.
"Let's head south, along the Sierra Madre."

An hour or so out from El Corazon, and up over the Sierra Madre we pull the phone number and dial the satellite phone. After a few interchanges, I hear it ring... and ring and ring. I pull away and look at the number on the read-out and check it against the number on the card. " Same number." I tell myself. I just let it ring. After about ten rings it hangs up and redials the number.
"Great, no one is going to answer."
The phone rings again, but this time after two times it is answered.
"I can barely make out what he is saying." I tell Lou.
"Signal that bad?"
I put my hand over the receiver, "No, it's Agaki." I hand Lou the phone, "You talk to him."
Lou takes the phone and I take Naomi.
"Agaki... it's us, Lou and Jake." He smiles at the recoginition, "Konichiwa to you too. Hey, is Bear there? We really need to speak to him."
There is a pause on the other line while Agaki finds Bear. Lou pushes the button for speaker phone, then...
"Hey boys! How the hell are you? You get your plane home safe?" Bear sounds like cocktail hour started a little early this morning.
"Bear, that's what we want to talk to you about." Lou looks at me.
"Bear, this is Jake. We were followed out of Caracas. Two planes, one of them tried to shoot us down."
There is complete silence on the other end of the line.
"Bear? Did we loose you?"
"No, boys... hell."
"I think we found what they are looking for."
"Well, you did better than I did. The man that owned that plane stiffed me on some cargo. It was supposed to be an even trade, but then he held out for twice the money. I tried to convince the man to tell me where he had hidden them but he didn't make it through the questioning. You boys aren't interested in my business problems. But I didn't expect giving you that plane would bring this shit storm down on you. I would have thought who ever knew about the stones would have known I tore that plane apart looking for them."
"They weren't in the plane, Bear."
Silence... "No? Then where were they?"
"In the satellite phone."
Silence again.
"Bear?"
"Well, congratulations boys."
"No... no, Bear, that is not why we called. We need to bring these to you. How do we find you?"
We can hear him talking to someone in the room with him, then... "We better not talk until we have a secure line. These satellite phones can be intercepted... evesdropped, and the signal can be triangulated."
Lou and I look at each other. "Yeah, Bear... we know."
"Look, I am going to send a courier with a scrambled satellite phone to... " You can hear him shuffling paper, "to Puerto Barrios. That is near you, isn't it?"
"We know where it is, Bear."
"Down by the main marina there is a restaurant and bar with a name you will recognize. I will have a man waiting for you there tomorrow... can you do that?"
"It will be in the late afternoon."
"That's fine. You will recognize the courier. Get the phone and we will talk."

We are about five minutes out from the compound when we see Abby take to the skies heading east. Lou has the stick, so I take the radio.
"Jerry... got your ears on?"
There is just static, then... "Go."
"Where you headed?"
"I am with Nester. He is going to handle some cargo for me, I have to pick up from the growers on Rio Silvestre and drop at Valle Verde. Then we are going to Puerto Barrios to pick up some equipment for him."
"We made contact with the Ice Man... "
Lou smiles, "good one."
"Come back with that, Jake?"
"We got a hold of the owner of our found merchandise and we are going to meet him."
"Gotcha. When an where?"
"We have to fuel up and then we should be on your six. We have to be at your final destination tomorrow afternoon."
"We are parking at Tiller's field, we'll see you there. Good luck."
I key the mike twice and hang it up.
"Where is Tiller's field?"
"It is a dirt strip local airport outside Puerto Barrios by about four miles. We've made quite a few runs from there.... shipping traffic and all."

Lou lands our girl and we pull into the compound. I should tell him how impressed I have become with his aircraft handling abilities, but I don't want him to get a big head about it.
"I think we should grab a back pack and a couple of changes of clothes this time. What do you think?" I ask Lou as I follow him out of the cockpit.
"I think you better have some clothes for me becuase all of my shit is in Barra de la Cruz. What do you think?"
I give the smart ass a little shove as we walk hunched over toward door and he snickers.
"I tell you what we we need... a couple more guns, that's what we need." Lou says as he hops down out of the plane.
"Out choices are limited, but let me show you anyway."
I have the gun safe open now and we both are looking at the three handguns that are left inside.
"What the hell is that?"
"A paint ball gun."
"Unless we want to put an eye out we better leave that one here."
"That leaves this nine millimeter... " I hand it to Lou for inspection, "and this forty four." I hoist the giant revolver up.
Lou pulls the clip and opens the slide on the nine and gives it a quick look. He slaps the clip back inside, pulls the slide back to chamber a round and then looks out into the compound. There are a couple of empty oil cans about thirty yards out. He levels the weapon and draws a bead on one stray can.
"That's a long way out for a pistol... "
He fires and the can jumps in the air about five feet. He fires again before it falls and it launches.
"...shot" I finish. I watch the can sail back toward the fence. "I'm glad you're on our side, Lou."
He tucks the nine in the back of his belt. "What do you have there?"
"It is a forty four that Jerry picked up after we had a little run in with some poachers that came in for one of our drops?"
"Poachers?"
"They were posing as customers at one of our drops. They show up when they hear the plane and try to intercept the cargo before the real recipients show up. It only happens every once in a while. We had to run them off with the M-16 and a grenade, one of them dropped this cannon and ran."
He hoists the gun and aims at the cans.
"I wouldn't use it if I were you."
"Why not?"
"Because those six rounds are all we have for now."
"How about the nine?"
"We have five hundred rounds for the nine."
Lou hands me the revolver and then quick draws the nine from the back of his belt and fires on one of the two remaining cans. It jumps in the air and he hits it two more times before it lands in the rough another twenty feet back.

Within the half hour we are packed and walking out of the crash pad. Lou spots a half empty bottle of tequila and throws it in the bag. There is a liter bottle of sprite that he picks up as well.

We are wheels up and I am at the controls. Lou tries in vane to hail Jerry on the radio. "He's not responding." Lou reports.
"He might be out of range or off our frequency. Let's hope he is just out of range. Just keep the radio on and we'll check in on him."

East bound... the Spanish Main... diamond pirates. We have a delivery to make to our new friend, and a treasure to keep from those men who had tried once to kill us. Good thing we packed clothes this time.