These Times they are a Changing

As the helo lifts off to ferry Antonelli and Dr. Adams back to the ship we stand watching. It has been such a wild ride that we don't know what to make of it. I am tired, Ollie and Lou are tired, and we have a long flight ahead of us tomorrow. With the bags of gold safe in Naomi's hold, we decide to make sure they stay there. We get a few cots from the terminal building they keep there for canceled flights and we stay on the tarmac under Naomi's wings.

She had been fueled and serviced by our local ground crew. We do a walk around just the same. When we are satisfied with her condition we hop in and fire her up. Lou has opted for the right seat today. I suspect he has more sleeping to do. We had a quick visit from Loco this morning. He brought breakfast, coffee, and he stuffed a paper bag in the back of the plane. Local produce, I assume. Another reason for Lou's right seat. A Walker is much more enjoyable when you aren't having to fly the plane.

We climb up into cockpit. Ollie stays outside until we get both engines fired up. Once we are satisfied, he pulls the chocks and tosses them inside before squeezing through the door and closing it behind him.

Her engines create a very reassuring vibration.
"Number two temp gauge is sticking."
Lou gives it a sharp flick with his finger and it springs to life.
"Better."
I look back at Ollie, "Hey big boy, move forward a little."
He moves up and straddles the bags of gold. We have decided to split the gold between the six of us. We have eight on board. They are small bags, about thirty pounds apiece. We left Antonelli with Mike and Andy's share. He will contact the boys and let them know what we found, then fly it up there for them.

We amble down the taxi way and get lined up at the end of the runway for take off. I set the brakes and throttle her up until the vibration is at its peak, then release. With a lurch we are off. The emerald green of the forest to our right becomes a blur. To our left, as we leave the ground, are the red clay tiled roofs of the neighborhood. We cross over the houses at the end of the runway and then back to the west.

"She feels good." I look over at Lou for any input. He has a fat Walker in his hand and is feeling his pockets for a lighter.

"Hey... how about a little co-pilot effort before you get so fucked up you will be of no use to me."
"There we go... " He pulls an old Zippo out of a small leather pocket on the side of his seat. For the next five minutes he flicks and slaps and taps on that lighter before realizing it is out of fuel.

"Sonofabitch... " He digs in the pocket and pulls out a little yellow and blue bottle of Ronson lighter fluid.
"Hey, before you get too far into this job of yours, let's set this thing on autopilot and we can both have a little fun."

"Now you're talkin', Nancy." Lou looks at the gauges, "Where is it?"
I point to the autopilot.
"What do I do?"

It would take too long to explain, so I dial in the coordinates.
"Did you see what I did there?"
"What now?"
"You were looking right at it, you didn't watch me?"
"Sorry, Jake, I was thinking?" He says as he squirts the lighter fluid into the bottom of the Zippo.
"Thank God."
"I wonder if I can get that Harley started."

I check my altitude and gauges, then flip the switch for the autopilot and slowly relinquish the controls. This was the first time I used the autopilot. Abby doesn't have that set up, so we never really checked it out on Naomi the first several times we flew her.

"You won't be getting near that bike. No... wait, you will be buying me a new one. That's right, you can do what you want with that bent piece of shit."

There is a couple of sparks from the flint and then the sweet smell of Guatemalan produce. Lou puffs on it a couple of times before he holds his hit and passes it over to me.
"Do you realize we have a couple of million dollars worth of gold on this plane?"
I take a long draw and then pass it back to Ollie. Before he takes it I hear the pop of a beer beer can and a cold one comes our way.
"More than just smoke in that bag?"

Loco set us up with a six pack of ice cold local brew, some jerky, and of course the smoke, enough to make it through the next month if we were careful.

Lou finds the tape of Los Lonely Boys and before long the trio is competing with the twin Pratt Wasp engines for cabin superiority. There is little said between us, just the passing of the Walker and a few drawn out coughs are all we emit. Too much has happened to discuss. In turn we all take a long stretch and about six hits before the Walker is spent.

It is a partially cloudy day and the green of the jungle below comes in patches between the cotton white clouds. I see the Mujer Silvestre off to our right. It is off to our starboard side about ten miles. Our course will parallel the river for a while.

"I want to go into town when we get home and have a home-cooked meal."
"I don't think we have anything to cook." I tell him, breathing out my last hit for a while.
"Not you, Nancy, the Cantina. I want a home cooked meal from the Cantina." He closes his eyes and smiles, "I think those girls like my action."
"I think they think you are a rodeo clown."

Time passes. I fight the lulling from the engines that want to have me drift off to sleep. The Walker was a bad idea. There is no caffiene in the plane and I have to get us back down on the ground eventually. I make myself inspect the gauges every couple of minutes. Not much to see out of the windows. What had been hovering on the horizon is now cloud cover about a thousand feet below us. That is a little bit unnearving. The weather reports are anything but reliable in this part of Central America. I turn on the radio for the first time this trip and try to find someone out there that might know how deep the cloud cover is below us. I get two pilots and a FBO somewhere in Mexico. The pilots are in blue sky above and below them and are heading north/south. The FBO checks the latest weather report all the way to the Pacific and tells me that the ceiling is about 500 feet. This makes me nervous.

Ollie is snoring like a wounded grizzly. I don't have the heart to wake him up to this boring shit, so I let him sleep. My illustrious co-pilot is out as well. If I had a magic marker he would wake up with glasses and a mustache. But I don't. Just as well... if my laughter didn't kill me he certainly would.

I think of Jerry, of Abigail. No one has been servicing her. Jerry knows how to oil and fuel her, but there is a lot more that I do to keep her flying. I will probably have to take close to a week to get back on top of the maintenance. It really doesn't sink into my thoughts that I don't have to do any of this shit any more with the money we have. I could retire. But where would the fun be in that?

This autopilot is unnerving. We have been flying on this heading for just long enough. Without being able to see the ground below us there are no reassuring landmarks to pinpoint our position. Five hundred feet, huh? We'll see about that.

I turn off the autopilot and pull back a bit on the throttles. We start to drop and drift down toward the cloud cover. I think about our position and the jungle below. We should be fine if this stuff starts at five hundred feet off the ground. If we fly too far west then we would be in a little trouble with the mountains near Nester's waterfall. As we sink into the clouds sleeping beauty awakens in the seat next to me.

He looks out the window, then over to me. There is zero visibility. He reaches out and grabs his control wheel with a start.

"Easy now. Hands off that wheel."
"Get her down out of this shit."
"I am, it can't be more than a... "
We break through and below us is the jungle. I can see the thin line of mountain on the horizon ahead before they are swallowed up in the low clouds. Perfect. We just turn a little to the north and below us will be...
"Holy shit."

Lou looks at me and then out the window.
"What the fuck?"

I bank Naomi over on my wing and search the jungle floor. I fly a long lazy eight, banking from my wing and then over on Lou's side to use his eyes.
"Where is the compound?" I ask him.
"That's not funny, Jake."
"I don't think it is either, but our compound should be right below us."

We fly east again and turn about two miles down range to make our approach, one that I have made in Abby a thousand times. There doesn't seem to be anything out of the ordinary. The jungle breaks at one point and there is a meadow of sorts, then it gets thick again before it stops right where our runway begins.

But there is no runway. And as we pass the spot where El Corazon sits, with our big gates, the hanger/home that Jerry and I have shared all these years, my tools, our guns and money, our clothing and personal belongings, even those pesky monkeys... gone. Not there. All that is there is jungle, undisturbed as though it hasn't seen human involvement since the days of primordial ooze.

"What the FUCK?"

I fly toward Nogalas. Something is different. There aren't quite as many buildings or roads. The bulk of it is the same, but changes have taken place.
"This is like the fucking twilight zone."

Ollie is awake and leaning on the backs of our seats to see what we see.
"Permítanos volar al lago y hablar con Nester."

"He says we should go and talk to Nester."
"It's a damn good thing we are in a seaplane."

We bank over toward the mountain range. The lake is not big enough. It is going to easy enough to land. It's taking off again that worries me. Like that is the only thing. What happened to El Corazon. It is like it never existed. This has to be the result of this trip to the wild west... to the men we killed.

As we make our approach, we get the flaps down and drop as much speed as we can. Just a make a little flare, we feel the water on the hull. I try to keep a little pressure on the controls to let us down gently, but that doesn't happen and we do a little bit of a plunge, shooting water up and over the wing. I hear the engines start to sputter, but with some quick moves I keep them running.

We idle toward the beach near Nester's home. It looks different as well, not as grand as it had looked the last time we had seen it.

"This is like the goddamn twilight zone."