Blue Gold

The pilot had his hands on the gun and was wrestling it away. Phillipo tried to hold on to the pistol, almost had control of it again, but the grip was slippery from the jets of blood flowing from Riordan's nose. In a wrenching twist the pilot took control of the gun, got his fingertip onto the trigger, and squeezed.

There was a muffled crack! Phillipo's body jerked and then went limp as the bullet plowed into his chest.

The plane righted itself as the copilot put it back into its nor mal position. Riordan stood and staggered toward the cockpit. He stopped and turned, apparently sensing something wasn't right.

The gun he had left behind was propped up on the body guard's chest. Phillipo was trying to steady it for a shot. Riordan charged like a wounded rhino. The pistol cracked. The first bullet hit the pilot in the shoulder, and he kept coming. Phillipo's brain died, but his finger twitched twice more. The second shot caught the pilot in the heart and killed him instantly. The third went wild and missed him completely. Even as the pilot crashed to the floor, the pistol had dropped from Phillipo's hand.

The struggle from one side of the cabin to the other had taken only a few seconds. Francesca had been thrown between the seats and played possum as the bloodied pilot was making his way back to the cockpit. The shots sent her down again.

She cautiously stuck her head into the aisle and saw the pilot's still body. She crawled over to Phillipo's side, pried the pistol from his bloody hands, and approached the cockpit door, too enraged to feel fear. Her anger quickly turned to shock.

The copilot was slumped forward, his body held in place by his seatbelt. There was a bullet hole in the partition separating the cockpit from the cabin and through the back of the copilot's chair. Phillipo's third shot.

Francesca pulled the copilot upright. His groan told her he was still alive.

"Can you talk?" she said.

Carlos rolled his eyes and whispered a hoarse "Yes."

"Good. You've been shot, but I don't think it hit any vital organs," she lied. "I'm going to stop the bleeding."

She retrieved the first aid kit, thinking that what she really needed was an emergency-room trauma unit. She almost fainted at the sight of the blood flowing from the wound down his back to puddle on the floor. The compress she applied immediately turned scarlet, but it may have helped stanch the loss of blood. It was impossible to tell. The only thing she knew for certain was that the man was going to die.

With fearful apprehension she looked at the glowing instrument panel, numbed by the realization that this dying man was the key to her survival. She had to keep him alive.

Francesca retrieved the bottle of rum and tilted it to the copilot's lips. The rum dribbled down his chin, and the little amount he swallowed made him cough. He asked for more. The strong liquor brought color to his pale cheeks and the gleam of life back into the glazed eyes.

She put her lips close to his ear. "You must fly," she said levelly. "It's our only chance."

The proximity of a beautiful woman seemed to give him energy. His eyes were glassy but alert. He nodded and reached out with shaking hand to flick on the radio that co

"What do you advise us to do?" she said.

After an agonizing pause the voice said, "Proceed to Caracas immediately."

"Caracas too far," Carlos croaked, mustering the strength to talk. "Someplace closer."

Several more moments dragged by.

The dispatcher's voice came back. "There's a small provincial airstrip two hundred miles from your position at San Pedro, out side Caracas. No instrument approach, but the weather is perfect. Can you make it?"

"Yes," Francesca said.

The copilot fumbled with the keypad of the flight computer. With all the strength at his command he called up the international identifier for San Pedro and entered it in the computer.

Guided by the computer, the plane began to make a turn.

Carlos smiled slightly. "Didn't I tell you this plane flies by itself, senhora?" His wheezy words had a drowsy quality to them. He was obviously becoming weaker from loss of blood. It was only a matter of time before he passed out.

"I don't care who flies it," she said sharply. "Just get us on the ground."

Carlos nodded and set up the automatic descent profile on the flight computer to take the plane down to two thousand feet. The plane began to descend through the clouds, and before long patches of green were visible. The sight of land reassured and terrified Francesca at the same time. Her terror rose a few degrees when Carlos shuddered as if an electric current had gone through him. He grabbed Francesca's hand and held it in a death grip.

"Can't make San Pedro," he said, his voice a wet rattle.

"You've got to," Francesca said.

"No use."

"Damn it, Carlos, you and your partner got us into this mess, and you're going to get us out of it!"

He smiled vacantly. "What are you going to do, senhora, shoot me?"

Her eyes blazed. "You'll wish I had if you don't get this thing down."

He shook his head. "Emergency landing. Our only chance. Find a place."

The big cockpit window offered a view of the thick-grown rain forest. Francesca had the feeling she was flying over a vast unbroken field of broccoli. She sca

"What's that?" she said, pointing.

Carlos disco

Flying almost on automatic himself, Carlos passed the open area and set up a thirty-degree banking turn to the right. He ex tended the wing flaps and put the plane in a boxlike flight pat tern. With a hard right he prepared the plane for its final approach. They were at eighteen hundred feet, descending on a long, shallow glide. Carlos extended the wing flaps to slow them down further.

"Too low!" he growled. The treetops were rushing at them. With superhuman strength born of desperation he reached out and gave the throttles more power. The plane began to rise.

Through blurred vision he scoped the final approach. His heart fell. It was a terrible landing field, small and lumpy, the size of a postage stamp. They were doing a hundred and sixty miles per hour. Too fast.

A soggy gasp escaped from his throat. His head lolled onto his shoulder. Blood gushed from his mouth. The fingers that had clutched the wheel so tightly were curled in a useless death grip. It was a tribute to his skill that in his last moments he had trimmed the plane perfectly. The jet maintained trim, and when it hit the ground, it bounced into the air a few times like a stone skipped across water.

There was an ear-splitting shriek of tortured metal as the bottom of the fuselage made contact with the earth. The friction between the plane and the solid earth slowed it down, but it was still going more than a hundred miles an hour, the fuselage cut ting through the ground like the blade of a plow. The wings snapped off, and the fuel tanks exploded, leaving twin black and orange swaths of fire in the plane's wake for another thousand feet as it hurtled toward a bend in the river.