The Four Corners of the Sky_ A Novel - Michael Malone [213]
“No! And I never will!”
Annie yelled, “Work it out fast, guys.”
While she made a large loop over the mountains, Dan located the parachute. He told Raffy he was a practiced skydiver and could talk Raffy through the process. Piece of cake. Annie said she was going to circle back and put him down right over a little beachy area they’d passed. She could see a road not a mile from the beach. He could hitch a ride.
Raffy absolutely, definitely refused to put on the parachute. As much as he dreaded returning to a U.S. prison, as much as he knew a coward dies a thousand deaths, as much as he would love to see his mother’s face if he showed her $500,000—Annie’s offering of which, coincidentally, showed, as Shakespeare would tell her, a giving hand—as true as all these things were true, there was no way in the entire history of the infinite and eternal universe of the God of all creation that Rafael Ramirez Rook was going to jump out of an airplane in the middle of the air.
“For Christ’s sake,” Dan said finally, exasperated as Raffy kept slipping away from his efforts to attach the parachute. “Annie, just get us as close to the sand as you can and I’ll jump out with him!”
Annie twisted her head around. “What?”
Dan said he was serious. “I’ll jump out with the little bastard myself just to shut him up. Come back for me! I’ll swim out to you! Can you do that?”
Dan tossed about half of the packets of hundred-dollar bills out of the suitcase onto the floor of the plane. He zipped the rest in the bag.
Annie was circling again, flying low away from the western sun, heading for a lagoon with a small sandy crescent beach. She called back, “Dan! There’s a little boat moored to a buoy. See it?”
Dan looked out the plane window. “Got it.”
“Swim out there. I’ll pick you up!”
Dan stripped off his clothes to his boxer shorts. Then he strapped the parachute on. He thrust the bag of money hard into Rafael’s arms.
Raffy was shouting that Annie couldn’t seriously be planning to put him down in the middle of nowhere in Cuba?
“It’s your country,” she said. “There’s no place like home. When we get to Key West, we’re going to say you pulled a gun on us and jumped out of the plane.”
“I would never do that!” the musician cried.
Dan told him, “We’ll make you sound like Jimmy Cagney. They don’t know what a wuss you are.” He shouted up to the cockpit, “Annie, it’s looking good down there. So, okay, Raffy, I’m going to count, we’re going to jump, just like in the movies, right?”
“Go limp when you land, Raffy,” Annie yelled. “Bend your knees. Run with the chute. Trust Dan. We’ll swing by once more, get the feel, then we’ll do it.”
Annie was calculating just how much open sand there was, how slowly she could go, how close to the beach. Dan opened the seaplane’s door.
“Noooooo!” Rafael kept shouting.
Grabbing the small Cuban to his chest, Dan yelled, “Rook, you little cocksucker, hug me!” Rafael fought back but Dan clutched him tightly. “Hug me like I was the fuckin’ greatest love of your miserable life!”
“Leave me alone!”
“Think of the Love sign lady. Ame a su familia!”
“Leave me alone!”
Annie swung the plane back toward the beach. “On one, guys. Good luck, Raffy! Five, four, three, two, one, jump!”
“Get personal, Raffy!” Dan squeezed the Cuban tightly and leaped with him out of the airplane, above the sandy beach.
***
When Annie looped back over the beach, she saw Dan swimming strongly below her, closing in on the little rocking boat at the white buoy. Her main worry was that they were losing the light. Get as close to the boat as you can, she kept telling herself, but do it safely. Safely. Close. Safely. Closer. Closer.
Dan swam splashing to the old white buoy, reached, grabbed its rusted ring and raised his other arm, waving at Annie.
part five
Home
Chapter 53
Fly Away Home
At the Navy testing site in Patuxent River, Maryland, in the cockpit of the new experimental plane, Annie felt the speed flatten and shake her. She opened the throttle, faster, faster, the jet shaking, her heart too fast, the plane too fast. She