Hitched!

Suddenly the airplane door blew. Instead of leading the charge to escape, Rand stepped aside, drawing Maxine with him. A dozen or so passengers rushed to the opening where the door had been.

No jetway awaited them, just a too-short metal stairway leading down to a graveled field. The first step was a good six feet below the door, but that merely slowed the stampede instead of stopping it.

Two Mexican officials trying to climb into the plane were instead shoved out of the way by the mob. At the first break in the exodus, they tried again with better results. Shouting in a mixture of Spanish and broken English, gesturing grandly, they forced the passengers back until they could drag the two still-unconscious hijackers to the door and pass them down to colleagues waiting on the stairs.

By then, the flight attendants had gained the upper hand, and the evacuation proceeded in a more orderly manner. When the time came, Rand moved into the line, drawing Maxine with him. At the door, he lowered her to the first step, tossed out the luggage and leaped down beside her. When they reached solid ground again, dry heat hit him a hammer blow.

Even in growing darkness, he could easily see that they’d landed in the middle of nowhere. Off to his right, a few lights glowed in the distance, evidence of civilization. Other than that, all he could make out was a small concrete block building at the edge of the field and an overabundance of cactus and rocks.

The pilot had it right; this was insane. The hijacked plane, on the small size by commercial standards, dwarfed the two private planes parked nearby at the edge of what appeared to be a vast network of crumbling pavement.

Maxine’s whole body sagged. “I never thought we’d get off that airplane alive.”

He slid an arm around her shoulders and squeezed. “Hey, don’t cave now. You were great. Hell, we were great.”

She managed a shaky smile. “We weren’t bad at that. Do you suppose—”

“That way, señor.” A uniformed Mexican official bustled up, indicating that they should join the flow of passengers toward a metal shack on the edge of the field. “My colleagues wait to interview all the passengers. We must determine the facts surrounding this crime.”

Rand and Maxine exchanged dubious glances. “We don’t know a thing, but we’re happy to cooperate,” he assured the officer. Once out of earshot, he had a different message for her.

“Look,” he said in a low voice, “I don’t want to get any more mixed up in this than I have to. I’m going to ask that insurance guy if he’ll take the responsibility for bringing down the bad guys.”

“You’ll never get away with it.”

“I will if you’ll go along with me. Nobody really saw what happened except you, me and that salesman. Jessica and her grandmother were heading the other direction, if you recall, and those up front were cowering, not watching.”

“Yes, but—”

“Maxine, please do this.”

“Why? You did a brave thing. You should get credit for it.”

“It wasn’t brave—it was an automatic reflex. I don’t want credit.”

“Or publicity, apparently.”

“That, too.” She was shrewd, that one. “Will you stick with me on this?”

She drew in a deep breath. “Okay,” she relented. “If you can get that guy from Dubuque to lie through his teeth, I suppose it’s the least I can do.”

“Thanks. He’s right over there, so how about you watch the luggage while I talk to him.” The salesman wasn’t going to be a problem, though. He already half believed he’d pulled off the rescue all by himself.

WHEN RAND TOLD the authorities, innocent locals because the big-city boys hadn’t yet arrived on the scene, that the villains were brought down by the heroic actions of the insurance salesman from Dubuque, nobody questioned this version of events. Maxine, however, gave him a look that he found almost…calculating.

IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT, Maxine and Rand followed their luggage onto the last of three aged buses for the short ride into the village of Platillo Volante. Exhausted and unhappy, the Alar passengers settled into their seats with barely a murmur.

When the pilot rose at the front of the bus, nobody seemed to care much. Clinging to a pole while the bus careered down the rocky road, he called for attention.

Someone at the back of the bus roused enough to shout a question. “What time will we be taking off tomorrow? I gotta get home to Texas.”

“Uh, that’s what I have to talk to you about.”

Dead silence greeted this announcement. In the third seat from the front, Rand and Maxine exchanged startled glances.

The pilot continued. “I regret to inform you that the plane was damaged in landing. It looks like…it looks like we’ll have to bus you folks out of here.”

“Bus us out of here!”

“To the nearest decent airport,” the pilot elaborated. “Alar Airlines will send in a crew to fix the plane, but it would be too dangerous to have passengers on board when we take her up, even if you wanted to wait around.”

“Where’s the nearest decent airport, then?”

The pilot squirmed. “They tell me that Platillo Volante is only a few hours from Tijuana. Alar Airlines will send nice, air-conditioned buses to transport us there just as soon as arrangements can be made. In the meantime, you’ll be staying at the best hotel in town.”

“To hell with this,” Rand muttered to Maxine. “I don’t have time to sit around in Podunk, Mexico.”

“What makes you think you have a choice?” she retorted. “Think of it as a nice Mexican vacation.”

She had a point, but he was still fuming over the glitch in his plans when the bus pulled up in front of the “best hotel in all of Platillo Volante.” A collective groan arose from the captive guests. If the crumbling exterior of the once-grand building was any indication, they were in for a rough night.

Weary travelers dragged off the bus and stood around in dejected bunches, waiting for the driver to unload their luggage.

And in Rand’s case, waiting some more. By the time all the others had picked up their bags and wandered into the hotel, he realized he had a little problem. When the driver would have gotten back on the bus, Rand stopped him.

“Wait a minute. My briefcase is missing.”

All this got him was a blank look and a “¿Señor?”

“I said—”

“Let me try,” Maxine suggested, launching into fluent Spanish.

The man’s response was not encouraging. He shrugged, spread his arms wide, said a few words, climbed into the bus and drove away.

“He says—”

“Yeah, I figured it out. My briefcase is missing.”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Dammit!”

She looked genuinely distressed. “I hope there wasn’t anything valuable inside.”

“Just my life,” he grumbled.

An exaggeration, but he was in no mood to worry about that. In addition to a few personal letters, a magazine or two, an address book and a bottle of water, all he could remember sticking in that briefcase was a safe-deposit key to a box in a bank in Boston—a nearly empty box, unfortunately. Nobody in Mexico was likely to figure that out.