Return to Colombia

The clouds were getting thicker, and ground visibility was getting poorer. Travis had a thought, but he couldn't do it while flying the plane.

"Come here Miranda."

"I think she's dead."

"Huh?"

"Ramona, I think she's dead. What do you want?"

"I want you to take the stick awhile.”

"What! Are you crazy! I can't fly a plane!"

"So what? Neither can I, but I'm doing it! All I want you to do is sit here and hold it on course while I do something. You can do that."

"So what are you going to do?"

"I'll show you, just take the stick." Travis moved out of the seat, while holding the controls, to allow Miranda to slip in. It was a smooth transition, until Miranda, unthinking, pulled back on the stick and the plane turned nose to the sky and began to climb.

"Level it off! You've got to hold it steady!"

"Don't yell at me! I'm trying!"

"I'm not yelling, I'm not yelling, just relax and get it stabilized, yes, that's it! You're doing good!" Travis went back in the plane, looking under seats, and into cabinets, everywhere he could think of, until he found it.

"Yeah, here it is! Enrique said he always packed a parachute on his planes, and I found it! It's in the same kind of bag that my clothes were in, so his mistake was understandable. But he should have stopped to ask himself why the parachute was out lying in the aisle. Have you ever used a parachute before?"

"Are you crazy? No, of course not!"

"There's really nothing to it!"

"Then you use it, if there's nothing to it!"

"I’m going to try to land this plane, but in case I don't succeed, I want you to use this parachute and jump beforehand. I'll show you exactly how to use it. We used them in 'Nam all the time."

"No way, Jose! I'm staying inside this plane! If you crash it, I'll just go down with you, but I'm not going to jump from this plane! I saw what happened to Enrique!"

"But this is a real parachute!"

"I said no!"

"Please?"

"Read my lips, Travis Lee, HELL NO! I'm not going to jump out of a perfectly good airplane. Just forget it!"

"If that's the way you feel. I was just trying to save you from danger."

"Save me from danger? SAVE ME FROM DANGER? Travis, I've been in nothing but danger since I stepped off the plane with you in Bogota! And after traveling with you in Peru, I have to say that you don't know what it's like to go somewhere and not find danger! Since we've been here, we've been robbed by bandits, kidnapped by a drug cartel, right now I'm bruised and cut up from a beating I took trying to protect myself from that horny little would-be dictator. I’ve been shot at with hand-held rockets and machine guns. And now here I am on a plane at 14,000 feet, with a pilot who doesn't know how he got off the ground, and sure doesn't know how to land! And now you tell me you want to ‘save me from danger’, by jumping from the plane! Think again, Mister! I'm staying right here! I'll go down with the ship if I have to, but I'm not jumping!"

"Okay, don't get hostile! I'm not going to make you jump! Did you know you're prettiest when you're mad?"

"Don't try to con me out of being mad! I'll be mad if I want to be, and if you don't like it, you can take a flying leap out of this plane!"

"Nah! I'm not going anywhere. But only because there's only one parachute. If there were two, I might insist that you jump, but I wouldn't make you jump alone. And I'm not going to let you crash alone either. Make it or not, we're going to go together. We might as well, because I'm dead meat when I get home anyway. Janice is going to kill me."

"I hope she does!"