Since he couldn't see over the nose of a taildragger aircraft, he swung the tail back and forth so he could look out the side windows for a view of the end of the runway, increasing speed.
Thirty knots.
The vibration increased, harder until he wondered if the whole thing would shake apart in his hands before they left the ground. He held the plane together with the force of his will and finessing of the yoke.
Fifty knots. Come on. Come on, damn it.
No one spoke. He regulated his breaths, in and out. The tail lifted off before the nose, finally giving him a clear view forward.
Seventy knots.
Now! He lifted the nose. Prayed again. The Cessna soared upward, skimming over brush, higher over an adobe steeple, then cresting above the tree line.
The exhales from his passengers swirled in the dusty cockpit. Behind him, Sara snorted with laughter.
Was she hysterical? Adrenaline overload? She was certainly due a meltdown, but he didn't want her to spook Lucia. "Everything okay back there?"
"Wonderful. Simply wonderful." She laughed harder, then lowered her voice to male decibels. "Oh, I can fly anything. Just call me Chuck Yeager, oh, and is that the start button?"
His mind winged back to their first date in the glider. His mouth twitched. "I'm flying this plane, aren't I?"
Seabrook chuckled beside him. "You told her that?"
He shrugged.
The Captain turned to look over her shoulder. "We're pilots. We brag. It's what we do." She pivoted back to the front. "You were trying to impress her, weren't you?"
"Duh." Trying to impress her in the past and present. Although it hadn't escaped his notice she still hadn't said yes to staying with him now, either.
Except this time, he damn well wouldn't let anyone harm a hair on her head.
Seabrook shook her head, eyes forward on the tree-filled horizon. "The Colonel said 'duh' like a regular dude. They're never going to believe this one back at the squadron."
Ramon kicked aside a rocking chair in the living room of the abandoned apartment.
He'd arrived too late. They'd wasted valuable manpower and blasted their way into this village for nothing.
After that blond bitch Nola had jumped him—a blow to his ego he couldn't afford to share with his men— she must have alerted everyone here. At least she hadn't taken him down.
Still her fighting skills weren't average. He recognized a warrior when he fought one. If she'd come here then she was everything he'd suspected and more. She wasn't with Padilla. She was some sort of spy or soldier.
But where was Sara?
Padilla's people hadn't been the only ones in his compound and they swore they didn't have Sara. Those old instincts of his that had kept him alive in early days insisted that his contacts in Padilla's camp were telling the truth.
Padilla didn't have her. But the U.S. government had been looking for her recently. The logical assumption? Somehow word had leaked that she was still alive.
More proof that his country needed a return to the old days when traitors weren't just shot. They were tortured as an example that Cartina's business stayed inside Cartina's borders.
Ramon lifted the half-empty coffee cup, stomping through the abandoned apartment. Two bedrooms and an empty office. Things looked normal enough. Perhaps his tip-off could have been wrong about this being a safe house belonging to the United States, but his source was rock solid.
Search deeper.
Ramon stepped into the first bedroom, a single bed, dent in the pillow small, covers askew, a food tray on the bedside table with a half-eaten meal. He sniffed. Not rancid. He touched the remains of the burrito—cold. Could mean nothing, perhaps a bad housekeeper.
Rage simmering low, fueling him past normal endurance, he checked the bathroom next. The washrag was damp. Whoever had been here left within a few hours.
He spun on his heel to leave...and hesitated. He searched the small bathroom looking for a trash can or hamper. Yanking open cabinets one after the other, he found only basics—toothpaste, toothbrushes still in the boxes—the shelves otherwise empty except for towels I and a bucket of cleaning supplies. Behind the door? Nothing.