Jim squinted at the map, then drew a pencil line along a projected path. “They’ll probably follow this here ridge. José likes to keep to high ground.”

Robert had a healthy belt of mescal. “Flash boy, fire this sucker up, buddy.” He belched, then farted painfully. His diet of tequila, tortillas and salsa had given him a serious case of “ring of fire.”

Flash squinted through the marijuana smoke at the unfamiliar instrument panel. His right arm was in a cast and sticking upward at a forty-five-degree angle, like a Nazi salute, so he reached over with his left hand and tried a different combination of up/down switch positions, then hit the start button again.

Nothing happened. He had never flown a Beech-18 before and was unsure of its starting sequence. All the switch labels had worn off long ago, but Flash was used to that sort of thing. Using his semirandom method of evaluating a switch’s function, he tried another combination. The left engine turned over and fired up.

“Okay, Aileron.” He pointed out a red-tipped overhead toggle switch. “That’s the left-side magneto.”

Aileron, sitting in the copilot’s seat, whined.

“This must be the right-side magneto.” Flash was imprinting the switch system into his short-term memory bank. The 60’s had short-circuited his long-term memory functions, but since he had no recollection of what long-term memory was, he never noticed its absence.

The right engine fired up. Flash gave Jim and Robert the “thumbs up.” Jim displaced Aileron in the copilot’s seat and yelled over the roaring engines, “How much fuel we got?”

“Fuck if I know!” Flash yelled back. “Don’t worry about it!”

“We gotta find those two maniacs before they get in trouble again!”

Flash nodded vigorously. “Treetop level!” He gave both engines full throttle.

An hour later they were barreling along the ridge that Jim had calculated José would favor for the trek north. Flash was trimming the topmost layer of the rain forest, using the big twin props like a giant lawnmower. Occasional branches and chunks of debris flew in the open side-cockpit windows.

Robert passed the mescal up to Flash. Flash passed the joint back to Robert. Jim nursed a fifth of Cuervo Gold.

Both props were slightly bent from plowing through trees, and the old airframe was vibrating badly. It was in precisely this fashion that Flash had demolished the “Loaded Star” a few weeks ago. As usual, he and Aileron walked away from the crash, Flash with a broken arm, Aileron with his tail badly bent.⁸³

“You see that?” Jim was trying to look back through the window on his side. “I saw something. I think it was them.”

“Gimme the bottle,” Robert said, groping for the mescal. He pulled a grenade from his plaid jacket and slurred, “Turn around. I’ll drop this on ’em as a sig-signal.” He belched horribly, filling the cockpit with tequila-and-salsa nerve gas.

“Jesus fucking Christ!” Jim bellowed. He and Flash stuck their heads out the side windows to avoid suffocation. Aileron bounded aft in fright.

Flash made a sweeping U-turn and began to retrace the swath he had cut through the jungle.

The cockpit had just recovered from Robert’s gastric assault when José’s volley of .45 slugs sliced through the aircraft from nose to tail.

Nobody was hit, but the boys voted to change tactics. They decided that their rescue mission would have to be toned down. They would take a different tack. All sorts of euphemisms were thrown around, but the truth of the matter was that José and his big-bore submachine gun made everybody nervous, even Robert. Until they were able to identify themselves as “friend-lies,” they would keep out of sight altogether. They would have to rely on Plan B, which had already been launched anyway.⁸⁴