Soldier of Fortune, Caribbean venue …

On St. Thomas, we were sipping Cruzan and Coke at an open air bar on Veterans Drive when a balding tourist wearing a Hawaiian shirt sat down next to “Jim.”

“Is this the guy,” he asked, indicating me with a nod of his head.

Jim, whose last name I’ll protect, was flying for Dorado Wings, a private airline owned by the Rockefeller Dorado Beach resort in Puerto Rico. He flew a Beechcraft Queenair back and forth from Dorado to Virgin Gorda — the B.V.I. Site of “Rocky’s” Little Dix Bay complex—with stops at San Juan International and Harry S. Truman airport on St. Thomas.

The U. S. Virgin island of St. Thomas in the ‘70s was a haven for transient adventurers and journeymen rebels-without-a-cause, a blossoming tourist trap served by cruise ships and American Airlines.

Charlotte Amalie was headquarters for Charlie Blair’s Caribbean streetcar airline, Antilles Air Boats. Blair bought and brought a gaggle of Grumman G-21 amphibians to the ramp on the harbor of the Territory’s capitol, refurbishing each Goose over-and-over to a white paint job and distinctive carmine stripe.

Out of the Air Force and unemployed, I had added a multiengine seaplane rating to my ticket, (courtesy of Joe Magueri at Opa-Locka’s Hangar ONE), and was hanging out at Mountain Top awaiting a check ride with The General. Jim and I had crossed paths in Bangkok when he was a pilot with Air America. He professed being much happier as a “taxi driver.”

“Can you fly a Goose? the stranger asked.

“Does it have wings?”

Actually, I had never flown that model of Grumman, having obtained my multiengine sea endorsement in a Widgeon by enduring 35 takeoffs and landings in Miami’s Biscayne Bay.

Stranger looked at Jim. Jim nodded. Stranger fished an aluminum tube from his Bermuda shorts, stripped the seal from one end, and removed a cigar. He bit a hole in the round end, spit out the scrap of tobacco, and rolled the panatella between his lips. From another pocket emerged a Zippo, that after flaming the flat end of the cigar, he placed on the counter. I recognized it as a Viet-Nam souvenir, engraved familiarly:

— ‘Yea, ‘though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow, I shall fear no evil for I am the meanest sonuvabitch in the valley.—’

Jim drained the last of his Coke, stood off the stool, and said, “Catch you guys later.”

Stranger leaned toward me intimately, and whispered in my ear.

“Meet me at the 1829 bar at eight tomorrow morning.”

The two of them left together, walking along the harbor quay, Stranger with his arm around Jim’s shoulders.

“1829” is still a bed and breakfast hotel, originally built as the home of a French entrepreneur, but operated commercially during the last 100 years. It’s close to the busy tourist shops of down town, favored by people who would rather not be seen in the lobby of a Hilton. The bar — once the kitchen — is open to a patio that overlooks the harbor.

At eight in the morning, Stranger was dressed in a business suit, and wore a Panama hat. He was sitting on the ledge of the terrace, puffing on a cigar.

“Here’s the deal. We want you to fly down island and pick up a fellow off-shore. Tomorrow night. In the dark. You’ll have a passenger on the trip, who will pay you five thousand dollars in cash at the completion of the mission. All you have to do is fly the airplane. It has wings.”

‘Easy money,’ I thought. Not quite.

I was told to be in the channel between Grenada and its Sugar Loaf after midnight. I was first to pick up my paymaster from the strip on Anegada, who would identify the Company man we were to retrieve, and return to St. Thomas before dawn.

Doing the math in my head, I worked out the six hour trip would be at the limit of a Goose endurance: about 900 nautical miles round-trip, at 150 knots.

“Uhh, that’s cutting it pretty close. Am I permitted to know any details?”

Jim’s stories about his service with Air America often emphasized that he was given very little information about each mission, nor with whom he might be flying. The Operations Supervisor just assigned him an airplane, told him where to go and when to be there.

Stranger stood up.

“Do you want the job, or not?”

“Sure.”

Stranger took off his hat, and wiped his forehead with a lace bordered handkerchief. It gets hot early on St. Thomas.

“The big Kahuna on Grenada is after our guy there. His cover is blown, and all his exits are being watched. We need to get him out. That’s it. Your airplane is at the seaplane base. You’ll know it when you see it. Anything else you need to know will be briefed by your passenger. You pick him up on Anegada tomorrow evening.”

I shrugged.

“Good morning to you.” I was dismissed.

The next day was a Tuesday. I slept late, went for a swim at Coki Point, and had a leisurely early supper at Bluebeard’s Castle. Affecting the Antilles Airboats uniform of white pilot’s shirt and black shorts with black knee-high’s, I mosied down to the waterfront about seven.

There was no missing my bird. A black Goose was poised on the ramp. It had no numbers.

A fellow in shorts and t-shirt wearing dirty ragged sneakers was sitting on a bench in front of the low building that served as Operations office for the airline. He nodded. I nodded. He got up and fetched a ladder for my preflight inspection.

I did the walk. The two 450s looked new, or at least refurbed. Still warm. No oil leaks. The interior was bare, no seats except the pilot’s. The instrument panel was spare, too, with basic VFR and engines gages — no radios. I sat for about thirty minutes, thinking it over. I was about to attempt a 900-mile night flight over the ocean with no navigation gear (except my brain) to a channel between two tiny islands. At least there would be a full moon. I wondered if that would be good, or bad.

‘What the fuck,’ I thought. ‘It’s five thousand dollars.’

The Goose’s 900 horsepower took me off the water quicker than I expected, and I turned south out of the harbor over a cruise ship too large for Yacht Haven. Skirting to the south of the Virgins, and around the eastern tip of the fat lady, in 25 minutes I made a low pass over the barely discernible strip on Anegada. I did not forget to lower the landing gear. After landing, I shut down in front of a ramshackle one-room building mid-way on the east side of the “runway.” No one was there.

Just before it was fully dark, with the moon up, a motorized golf cart appeared from the north end with two occupants and several large parachute bags. One of the men was in a wet suit. They put the bags in the aircraft, and Wet Suit said, “Off we go.”

So, we did. I figured to hold about 130 degrees until I saw the lights of Kingstown on St. Vincent, and then turn right a little west of south for about 15 minutes. I leaned out as much as I dared and stayed as low as I could without leaving a wake. Boring, even at zero altitude.

It was a good plan. After Kingstown, I climbed to 1000 feet and followed the Grenadines to approach our planned destination.

Wet Suit stood beside me with a brick in his hand. No, it was a black hand held radio. Everything about the mission was black.

He said, “No lights.” Easy for him to say! There were no lights below, either.

“There we go,” he said, indicating the small island off the northeast end of Grenada.

“Land as close as you can to Sugar Loaf.” Just like that. He went back in the cabin, talking to the brick.

It was too dark to see any indication of wind on the waves, so I set up for a glassy water landing, carrying a bit of power and descending in a flat attitude until I hit the water and stopped with a great surging splash.

“Helluva pilot,” I thought. I checked the fuel. One-half gone, one-half to go.

“Now what,” I asked.

“We wait.”

I shut down the port engine, and set the starboard to idle on one magneto, making the boat describe a circle in the ocean. The water was not quite calm, hardly any wave action. We waited.

After about fifteen or twenty minutes I was getting antsy about the fuel problem, and was about to jack up Wet Suit when — I’m not kidding — two guys in a canoe (black) came paddling furiously from the direction of the small island.

“Give us a hand back here,” said Wet Suit. I left the engine running, and opened the hatch. Wet Suit had opened one of the bags, and was holding an Uzi machine pistol behind his back.

I thought, “Uh, oh. What am I doing here?” and then, “Five thousand dollars.”

He leaned out of the hatch until the canoe bumped against the hull.

“Hold this,” he ordered. I took the Uzi, while he helped my new passenger into the airplane.

The guy was a she, dressed in shorts and a sheer blouse that even in the moonlight I could see covered only skin — no brassiere. Her companion in the canoe tossed in a pair of sandals and shoved off.

“Off we go,” said Wet Suit.

Restart the port engine, pour on the coal, and off we went, heading 315 degrees in ground effect, and I hoped some tailwind from the tradewinds.

‘Piece of cake!’ But my concern grew with each passing minute as I watched the fuel indication move toward none. It kept me awake.

The worst part of the flight was when the fuel quantity indicated “Empty.” No land in sight. No lights but the reflecting trail of the full moon on the sea, ‘though there was a trace of morning twilight off the right wing. We should already have been at St. Croix. I climbed to fifteen hundred feet, looking for lights.

I waved Wet Suit forward. He had changed to khaki trousers and a white shirt with rolled sleeves.

“How ‘bout we land at St. Croix? We’re almost out of gas.”

“St. Thomas, or no pay.” He was a mean talker. I thought about the Uzi. And the money.

We were right on the money, navigation wise, passing over south shore lights of St. Croix.

‘C’mon Goose,’ I thought. Just a few more minutes.’ Forty miles to payday.

I breathed easier when I could see the lights on Mountain Top, and started a slow descent, throttled back. Landing lights, tip floats down, gear up.

I landed east of Water Island and taxied on the step through Haulover Cut, sinking with idle on the approach to the Airboats inclined ramp. Gear down, and with a burst of power I crested the sloping concrete.

Both engines quit before I could park; the aircraft was stopped at the top of the ramp.

‘Halleluia,’ I said to myself. Ragged Sneakers came out of the shack, yawning, and circled the plane to assist the passengers to debark. I just sat in my seat, relieved at our good fortune. The three of them crossed in front of me, carrying the parachute bags. They tossed them in the back of a (black) VW station wagon. Wet Suit spoke with Ragged Sneakers, then got in the vehicle and drove away.

‘Wait a minute! Where’s my five G’s?’

After shutting down all the switches, I hurried to the hatch, where Sneakers handed me a fat #10 envelope. He said, “She said you’d probably better use some of that on the afternoon flight to Miami.”

I did.