Page 71 of Freedom Fighters
Chapter Thirteen
Josh climbed out of the little Cessna and stretched mightily. It had been a cramped three-hour flight down to Acapulco. His shirt, the one he had thrown on as he’d left the house in the small hours of the morning, stuck to his back. The front of it had set-in wrinkles that came from sitting too long.
He looked around. This section of the airport was reserved for small, privateplanes. The hangars were an ants’ nest of prop planes, small jets and the golf carts personnel used to move around the tarmac.
The sky was a dismal dun color. The wind pushed at Josh, coming from a south-westerly position. Most of the frantic activity on the tarmac was because of the coming storm. All these planes were too small and too light to be left out unprotected. Even tied down, they werevulnerable. The planes were being towed into the hangers, where they would cram like sardines until the storm was over.
Nick strode across the tarmac, in the black cargo pants and camouflage shirt he wore when he participated in army exercises and maneuvers. Even in this odd light his red hair was distinctive. A Loyalist non-com walked with him, carrying a heavy canvas bag over one shoulder andwearing green fatigues.
Did the combat clothes mean Nick had been mixed up in something? Was the offensive already underway? Josh had spent three hours trying to figure out what the panic could be, when the coming storm would bring everything and everyone to a grinding halt.
Nick surprised Josh by giving him a hard hug. “Thank you,” he said. “This will make a huge difference. They’re inside?”
“In the cabin with me. You’re right, they don’t take up much room, packed down.” He jerked his thumb back toward the interior of the plane. The door was still ajar and rocking backward and forward with the wind surges.
Nick nodded. “I have another favor to ask.”
“You’re going to be buying me drinks for a century at this rate,” Josh told him. “What now?”
“I need to borrow the plane.”
“And flyit to where?” Josh asked. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there’s a hurricane heading in our direction.”
“You looked up the reports then.” Nick pointed toward the west. “That-a-way,” he said.
“Intothe storm?”
Nick shook his head. “If we go now, we’ll be back before the storm hits. Your Cessna is the only way I can get the goggles where they need to be in time.”
He patently wasn’t goingto explain himself beyond that cryptic remark. Yet he had said on the phone this morning it was urgent and he had repeated himself just now when he said this would make a difference.
“I’ll send the pilot into Acapulco to hunker down for the duration,” Josh said. “Your fixed-wing license is current, right?”
Nick rolled his eyes at him, then waved the non-com toward the plane. “Go do your stuff,Pedro.”
“Sir.” Pedro stepped around them and climbed into the plane, hauling his heavy bag in with him.
“After you,” Nick said. “I’ll let you break the bad news to the pilot.”
“That he doesn’t have to fly into the face of a hurricane?” Josh asked. “I think he’ll take the news quite well.”
Twenty minutes later, after a hasty refuel and consultation with traffic control, they were airborne again.Josh sat in the copilot seat next to Nick. He could tell from the sure way Nick handled the controls he was a good pilot.
Behind them in the cabin, Pedro was doing something mysterious with the big carton of goggles that involved stuffing it in an even bigger heavy-duty plastic bag and attaching yet another plastic bag and glow-sticks to the opening. When Pedro pulled a heavy air canister outof his bag and pushed the spout into the mouth of the bag around the carton, Josh understood.
“We’reliterallydropping the goggles off?” he asked Nick.
“A low altitude approach so we don’t startle the Insurrectos onLas Piedras Grandes, then drop the goggles, bank and get the hell out of there.” Nick’s voice sounded tinny through the headset. “Flores knows we’re coming. By the way, there’sa software application I sent you via email. I want you to install it on your phone, your computer, anything that runs on digital fuel.”
“I saw the email. I wanted to check with you before hitting the ‘execute’ command. What does it do?”
Nick described the impenetrable security shield the software provided.
“That would be damn useful in the corporation,” Josh remarked.
“We’ll sell it to you,”Nick told him with a grin. “For now, it’s just for you and others who are helping us. I’d like to keep the list as short as possible.”
They were out over the ocean now. Josh’s gaze pulled ahead to the horizon. Angry black clouds banked there, a thick wall of them. Lightning flashed inside them. “It looks bad,” he murmured.
