Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Pancho’s plane was sputtering and misfiring badly through the dust storm. She had to land whether she liked it or not. It was that or crash. “Don’t you dare smash your belly!” Pancho yelled at her plane. “Don’t. You. Dare! Hear me?”
She tried to picture her last glimpse of the ground and how high she might be above it now.
Easing off the power, she descended gradually, praying she spotted the ground before she slammed into it.
She had one shot at this. And if she was going to stay in the race, she couldn’t damage her plane so badly that it couldn’t fly out of here.
The windscreen was coated in thick dirt.
The altitude needle was at zero, but the thing couldn’t tell the difference between twenty feet and zero.
Cutting the power at ten feet would end up in a pancake for sure.
Come on, Lord. Throw me a bone. Give me a glimpse of the ground.
Her prayer lacked any sort of humility. It was a straight-up demand.
Well, she figured God knew who she was by now.
No point in trying to play the humble penitent.
Off the tip of her right wing, she caught the outline of a steer. Yes! Her wheels were about level with the bovine’s back. She cut the throttle, and the plane landed firmly, the gear springs groaning under the impact. But she was down and in one piece. So far.
One worry down, and on to the next. She steered the plane around a large clump of sagebrush before slowing down enough to feel her tail wheel contact the ground. Relief washed through her.
She eyed the fuel gauge, checking to make sure she had enough gas to take off. She did. Not that it would do much good if she didn’t find out where she was first.
As she rolled to a stop, she leaned her head out of the plane, looking for the building and the people. The dust devil blessedly was moving away from her, and as the air cleared, she made out a man and a woman watching her from the doorway of the building.
The front wheels abruptly hit something that stopped them in their tracks.
Pancho was flung forward, her seat belt digging into her hips and holding her in the seat.
The tail of her plane popped up off the ground, rising behind her.
Up, up it went. She flung her weight against the back of the seat as hard as she could and prayed the wind wouldn’t tip her over.
All at once, the tail smashed back down to the ground.
Pancho muttered a curse and turned off the engine. Frustration tore through her. So much for a quick stop to get a place-name yelled at her and be off again. Nope. Until this dust storm passed, she was stuck and lost. At least she could fix being lost readily enough.
She climbed out of the cockpit and jumped down to the ground.
She bent over to check what had stopped her plane so abruptly, praying it wasn’t something she would need a tow truck to get out of.
Turned out her wheels had sunk into the soft, deep earth of a vegetable garden.
She’d hit it across the furrows, and her tires had plowed deeply into the first mound of dirt.
She looked up and saw the homeowners staring at her wide-eyed. “Hello,” she said, holding out her hand to them.
The man replied angrily, “Llegas tarde. El flyover ha terminado.”
Her Spanish wasn’t great, but she was pretty sure tarde meant “late.” What was he talking about? She replayed the rest of what he’d said to her. Had he said “flyover”? And it was terminado—“finished”? The flyover was finished?
Confused, she tried in English, “Could I trouble you for a shovel?”
The couple blinked, obviously not comprehending.
She muffled a curse. She’d crossed into Mexico. And with a stuck plane, she had no way to get out of here.
Baby Moses isn’t even in the basket anymore. Poor kid is floating in the water with the crocodiles.
“Now, Mr. Pullman,” Marvel argued, “surely it can’t be that big a problem if Pancho crossed into Mexico.”
“If the Mexican government discovers her identity, her grandfather’s use of hot-air balloons for espionage might not reflect very favorably upon her,” he replied grimly.
Someone nearby shouted, “A plane’s coming in to land!”
Marvel looked up eagerly. “It’s a Gipsy Moth biplane!” she called. “That’s Thea.”
The women smiled in relief that one of the four missing planes was safe. But then they checked their watches. The other planes had to be running way low on fuel by now.
Marvel scanned the empty sky nervously. Where are you, Pancho? Be okay, darn it.
“A shovel?” Pancho repeated, making digging motions with her hands.
She pointed at the landing gear, but all she got were blank stares.
She propped her hands on her hips and looked around to see if she could spot anything of use.
If there were a more desolate, remote homestead on the planet, she would be surprised.
“Allí.” The man pointed behind Pancho.
Her Spanish was basic at best, but she thought that meant “over there.” She turned around and saw a truck coming straight at them. Her belly knotted in apprehension, but she plastered a congenial smile on her face.
The driver didn’t stop until he was darned near on top of her. Behind the cab several men were crowded into the flatbed of the truck. The dust its tires kicked up finally cleared, affording her a clear view of the guns they were holding.
Oh, crap and biscuits . . .
The men jumped down, bringing along their firearms, and beat a path to her, their expressions foreboding.
She stared straight back at them. The one in the front demanded, “?Americano?”
Thea Rasche was furious. The German pilot normally wore a small hesitant smile. But when she broke through the crowd to where the pilots were clustered, her face was beet red, and it had nothing to do with the sun.
Thea held out a paper sack to Pullman. “Dis! They do dis to me!” Her accent was noticeably stronger in her anger.
Pullman peered cautiously into the bag, his forehead furrowing. “What is special about this . . . garbage . . . ma’am?”
Marvel leaned in to peer into the bag and saw scraps of rubber, bits of yarn and fabric, twigs, and some string. The scent of gasoline rose from it all.
“Dis was inside my engine,” Thea declared. “My plane. It start to run so rough I must land in, how you say, in field with . . . many cows.”
“A pasture,” Pullman supplied mildly.
Marvel looked up from the bag. “What does this stuff have to do with that?”
“I open my engine and find dis . . . dis trash inside zee carburetor.” Thea reached into her pocket. She withdrew a folded piece of paper. “And . . . I have here, witnesses.”
Marvel read over Pullman’s shoulder: “We, the undersigned, were present when Miss Thea Rasche was forced to land in our back pasture. We saw her take off the gasoline clarifier, which contained scraps of rubber, fiber, and other impurities.”
“My fuel line clogged also. Zee engine failed very fast. I was so lucky to be over zee cow field. I am lucky to be alive.”
Amelia offered Thea a comforting hug while the others murmured their support for her.
Marvel’s belly clenched in disgust. Malfunctions were always a possibility, but sabotage was an intentional evil that made her want to heave up her nonexistent breakfast. She turned around, desperately searching the sky.
Suddenly, the idea of Pancho being stuck in a Mexican prison sounded downright nice.
Because the alternative made her shudder.
The man repeated his question. “?Americano?”
Pancho lifted her chin. “Yes.”
The guy’s eyes narrowed to slits. He and his men were a rough-looking lot.
“Look. I need to get my plane out of the dirt.” She pointed at her plane and then at the landing gear, trying to recall some Spanish. “Necesitas ayuda,” she tried. Need help.
The man in front of her whistled without warning and said something in rapid Spanish over his shoulder.
The truck’s driver started the engine and turned the truck around while his comrades slung their rifles over their shoulders and attached a long chain from the back of the truck to the rear wheel of her plane.
“Perfect!” Pancho exclaimed.
The truck pulled her plane clear of the garden and about fifty feet more, giving her plenty of room to turn around without going into the garden again. Now to get out of here.
The leader made eye contact with her, then lifted his hand and rubbed his fingertips together.
Well, that didn’t need any translation. She dug out her pocketbook and pulled out some cash, but the guy shook his head. “All I’ve got is American currency,” she tried telling him.
One of the other men popped open the cargo door of her plane to take a look inside. A couple more assumed guard-duty poses. What were they worried about?
When the guy at the cargo hold stuck his head in and then reached inside, she protested, “Hold up, there!”
The man in front of her dropped the rifle off his shoulder to point it at her. She watched helplessly as the other man pulled out her suitcase and emergency supplies and dumped them on the ground.
The man in front of her narrowed his eyes and rubbed his fingers together again, this time thumping his hand against his opposite palm.
Think, Pancho! Think!
Her supplies were only valuable if she landed in the desert. Her suitcase had her evening clothes in it. Circumstances were about to make a monkey out of her by making her awfully grateful for the gala banquets. Along with her evening attire, she’d packed some jewelry. And gold was universal.
“My suitcase.” Pancho pointed at it and rubbed her fingers together.
The guy called to his men, “Traiga el caso aquí.”
The suitcase was deposited at her feet. She opened it and pulled out the small jewelry case. She worked its clasp free and opened the lid. Sunlight glinted off the gold inside. Thank God she’d left the Marie Antoinette pin at home, along with the rest of her most expensive pieces.
The leader lifted the entire box from her hands. This was going to be the most expensive tow she’d ever paid for, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.
“Está bueno,” he announced. “Tráeme el merchandising.”
A snap of fabric like a sail in a stiff breeze made Pancho look over at the truck. The men were pulling a length of oilcloth off several large wooden boxes in the bed of the vehicle. A man carried one of the boxes over to her and the boss.
They thought she was someone else!
The rifles left no doubt in her mind that whatever was in the crates wasn’t legal. The leader cracked open the lid to reveal hay lining the box. He shoved his hand in deep and withdrew a glass bottle with a wax seal on its corked top.
Booze.
Pullman is gonna love this.
A knife blade flashed as the leader cut open the bottle’s seal. He pulled the cork out with his teeth before offering the whole bottle to her.
Pancho took it, catching the strong odor of tequila. The leader motioned at her to drink some. Behind him, the men commenced loading the crates into her plane. She was going to have quite a story to tell when she got to Yuma!
Pancho tipped the bottle back, taking a swig of the amber liquid.
It burned a path across her tongue and all the way down to her belly.
Whoa. She hadn’t had tequila that strong since she’d been in Panama running guns.
She fluttered her eyelashes rapidly and cleared her throat to keep from coughing. “Bueno,” she choked out.
The leader chuckled.
Over his shoulder in the distance, she spied a dark dot in the sky.
Listening closely, she could just make out a faint buzzing.
Crud. The real smuggler was arriving. These guys had been looking for a plane to cross the border exactly beside the air derby route, with their load ready to go.
Comprehension exploded across her brain.
Horace Aldridge had taken his phone off the hook during a race he was responsible for so Ayers could make a last-minute decision to send them all to Calexico.
Mighty convenient, that.
She had never believed in coincidences, and she wasn’t about to start now.
What were Aldridge and Ayers elbow-deep in here?
Regardless, they wouldn’t be too keen on discovering they had a witness to their booze-running operation.
Not to mention, these men would shoot her on the spot when they realized their mistake.
And the cattle certainly wouldn’t tell anyone where Pancho’s body was buried.