“Duck,” I hissed at Carter.
“Gustavo estará aquí hoy,” one of them said. Gustavo will be back today.
The other one sounded relieved. “Sabrá que hacer con los rehenes.” He will know what to do with the hostages.
The first guard laughed as they passed the window and walked away.
“Fuck,” I said. “Gustavo’s on his way back.” I scrambled as fast as I could to finish the last screws, but before I could get the second-to-last one out, I heard Gianluigi’s voice in the hallway outside our door.
“Obtener los americanos,” he said, the panic clear in his voice.
Another man said, “¿Déjalos caer en las montañas?” Drop them in the mountains?
“¡Tomarlos en el avión! No quiero verlos de nuevo,” Gianluigi said in response. Take them in the plane! I don’t want to see them again.
“Shit,” I muttered. We needed to get the hell out of here. As soon as the guards outside the window had rounded the corner of the house, I stood back up and rammed my shoulder against the metal grate over the window in a desperate attempt to force it. The remaining screws held tight, and the only gap that opened was too small for either of us to fit through. I began working the zipper pull again, but it was tedious, slow work. Too slow.
Hard boots hit the tile outside of our rooms, and I knew we were out of time. “Do as they say,” I said quickly, shoving the Horn into one of Carter’s cargo pants pockets and then scrambling in the medical bag for as many small tools as I could fit in his other pockets. “They’re taking us to the plane. We’ll find our opportunity. Be ready to follow my lead.” I didn’t mention the part about one of the guards mentioning dropping us out of the plane. Carter didn’t need anything else to be terrified of, and our chances of getting out of this alive weren’t all that great.
“Maybe they’re letting us go,” Carter said excitedly. “Maybe they’re flying us to Caracas.”
And maybe pigs were going to fly right alongside us.
“¡Vamos!” The guard rushed into our room. I could hear another guard doing the same next door. At least we’d have Buck with us in case we got an opportunity to escape.
The guards grabbed Carter roughly and pulled his hands behind him, tying his wrists together with rope before doing the same for me. They weren’t total idiots since they noticed my attempt to hold my hands thumb sides together instead of wrists together. The man barked an order at me and yanked the ropes tight enough to cut off my circulation.
They hustled us outside in the rosy beginnings of dawn. Gianluigi was waiting for us outside, screeching in panic. He swung wildly between English and Spanish, but the bottom line was wanting us gone ASAP.
I walked faster past him in hopes the guards would get us onto the plane before Gianluigi simply lost his cool altogether and ordered us shot where we stood. He hadn’t seemed like a dangerous man, but panicked people were unpredictable, especially panicked brothers of cartel members. There was no sign of Buck until I was shoved up the small stairs and into the plane.
“Shew, I thought it was just me on this joyride,” he said. His face was pale and damp with sweat. I couldn’t imagine how painful the rush out to the plane would have been for him on an injured leg. “Y’all’re a sight for sore eyes.”
The small red-and-white plane was old as hell, to the point I wasn’t quite sure it was air-worthy. It was a single-engine bi-plane that looked like Santiago had maybe gotten it cheap at Drug Lord Planes ‘R Us. Or maybe that dark-web eBay where Buck had tried to sell his seed.
The guards shoved us down on the crazy metal benches lined up against the interior walls of the cargo area. It was obvious most of the cargo area had been cleared for cargo rather than human passengers. Carter kept flicking his eyes back at me as if expecting me to do something. The main guard tied Carter’s and my hands to a metal pole behind the benches. Clearly this wasn’t their first rodeo.
Thankfully, the pilot climbed past us and threw himself into the cockpit quickly, starting up the engine while Gianluigi was still fretting.
“Goodbye, my American hostages!” he shouted. “I wish that things could have ended differently. We could have been friends! I will remember you fondly. You have made this great man an even greater man by being… great. My women will thank you for healing me, although I will remain in throne position as is decreed by my especial Dr. Carter and, obviously, the respect that is due to one such as myself.”
Someone else shouted something at him in rapid Spanish that I didn’t catch, and then Gianluigi’s voice came back more stressed than before. “Be off! Be gone! Godspeed and good luck. May God have mercy on—”