Chapter 12
Winston spread the charts out and checked his compass heading. He made some calculations and saw that Tuesta was off by a quarter of a mile. It was too close for a rough guess. He knew where he was going. The plane veered east toward the towering range that lay somewhere through the thick blanket of vapor and wind. He saw Tuesta was checking him, and his shoulders slumped.
"You've got to do it, Winston," Clara said.
"Yes, Sharp, you've got to. It's part of your ethic to be concerned for all the lives on board. I'll remind you it's not part of mine. Not even my own life is important compared with the needs of our cause. You fly the plane, Captain. I have need of a woman right now. It always happens when I have succeeded." He grinned with madness sparkling from his eyes. "Don't try anything, Sharp, or someone will be dead." He tugged at Clara's arm. "Get up, old bitch. I want to see what kind of woman our glorious captain finds worth fucking and fighting for."
"Goddamn you, Tuesta..." Sharp began.
But he stopped when he saw Clara's face twist in silent pain.
"It's all right, Winston," she said bravely. "You can't do anything, darling. Don't try. Don't risk it-for the others. I don't care what happens to me as long as you and the others are safe."
Tuesta laughed with a cruel, high sound and twisted her arm behind her back. The gun barrel pressed into her spine. He made his way cautiously down the aisle to where there were no seats.
"I have a touchy finger, senor," he said to Ken as he drew within reach.
"Go on by, Tuesta. I won't do anything."
"I will, you stinking bag of shit!" Alva spat. "Come near me, you fucking Indio, and I will tear your rodent's prick from your belly!"
"You'll have your chance, you sharp-tongued witch. I will save you for the last when it will take me a long time to come. I will fuck your big, sloppy pussy until it bleeds!" Clara blushed with outrage-and secret passion. Ravishment from this disgusting creature was exactly what she'd been fantasizing about for days!
"Tuesta, listen," Grovebank whispered insistently. "God, you've got to listen! Let him go to Cuenca, man-I'll pay anything. Anything!"
"You American pigs make me sick!" he spat. "You think your stinking money buys anything. It does not buy Martin Tuesta!" He slammed Grovebank a dizzying blow on the side of the head, timing it, making it quick, so there was no chance to make a grab for him. Grovebank wailed like a kicked hound and dove for the protection of Wendy's body. She pushed him away and swore at him, watching Tuesta go the rest of the way to the back. Her eyes studied him thoughtfully as she reassessed the sudden change in the power structure aboard the plane.
"Let's see it," Tuesta commanded Clara. "Ah, are those the tits your wonderful captain sucked last night? They're big and firm. I like to squeeze them, like this."
Clara lay nude on her back on the hard aisle. Tuesta mounted her, keeping the gun pointed to her head and one eye on the others watching him. He twisted her breasts cruelly, making the nipples go red and big. He mauled her body with his free hand and dug into the auburn-downed meat of her cunt. He jammed his finger into her and made her wince with pain, but she didn't cry out. He made her spread her thighs wide and stared into her crotch. He pushed the barrel of the gun into her pussy and fucked it in and out, laughing all the while. Then his prick speared from his pants. He teased her with it, rubbing the head up and down her slit until he laughed with glee.
"She's growing wet for me, Captain," he crowed. "Your woman can't resist the charms of her Latin lover! Ah, you should come back and see how her pussy flows for the meat of a youthful cock! And the fragrance. Sharp, the perfume! I must give you credit-you have a nice prize here. You should learn to share your good fortune with others without being forced! Ah, her pussy is shaking with impatience. It's too bad you have to fly the plane. But I will fuck her enough for both of us."
"Do it, you vile beast," Clara swore. "Do it and get it over with. Stop torturing him."
"It's you I'm torturing. You like my finger? You'll like my big prick much better. There-ah, yes, your face tells me you like the feel of my prick inside you."
Tuesta lowered his hips and sank into Clara, fucking her slowly, rolling his hips around, teasing her, fingering her clit at the same time. Clara tried to make her mind go blank. She put up a good fight, but Martha could see she wasn't going to win; It had been too long for her. She flung her arm over her face in humiliation and whimpered into it as her hips rose up to meet his degrading plunges. Her nipples swelled outward into his cupping palm, and her soft buttocks rolled under him against her will.
"You should see her face now, Sharp," he gloated. "She-likes a young prick in her. It's too much for her to resist. She's about to come, Sharp. Listen-listen carefully. Watch her!"
Clara rolled her head back and forth. The scent of her oils pierced the cabin. His cock plunged in and out of her cunt with wet sounds. She gasped once and then made a keening sound in the back of her throat. Her hips lifted and took him all the way in, and her arms went reflexively around his back, holding his body tightly to her. Her thighs tangled with his, and she rocked back and came with glorious shudders of pent-up passion. Tuesta gloated and sank into her and shot his load, his buttocks jerking with pump after pump of semen jetting into her pussy.
Clara rolled her head to the side and sobbed in shame when it was over. Tuesta pulled out, and his cock was stiff and wet. The glory of conquest was on his face.
"That was good, Sharp, good. I commend you on your taste, but she didn't satisfy me." His eyes swept over Martha and Alva and Wendy with a reptilian quality, dragging out the drama of the moment and filling his ego with it. "Martha, of course," he smiled wickedly. "The sweet virgin in our midst. I have a taste for blood, unless that Peruvian witch has cheated me of it with her fucking tongue."
"You're going to have to take me first," Ken said, crouching in the aisle, ready to spring. His face was blank with emotion.
Tuesta regarded him contemptuously and twisted Clara's tit until she screamed in pain and sobbed.
"Sit down, hero. You are as stupid over a woman as Sharp. What is it with you gringos that you can't let your woman get fucked without wanting to become dead?" He twisted again.
"Ken, for God's sake, sit down!" Martha cried, covering her ears to blot out Clara's pain. Can't you see he's mad? You can't stop him. He'll kill you. He'll kill all of us if he has to." She cupped his face in her hands, and spoke softly. "Ken, I've been a fool, darling-such a fool. I wasn't mad at you for coming. I wanted you to. Oh, darling, I wish I'd let you be the first the other night, but it's too late for that now. It has to happen sometime, Ken."
"Martha, you can't!" he cried. "Oh, God, not this way!"
She kissed him hard and then pushed him away. She felt brave. She would have preferred it another way, but it didn't matter now. At least this much of her agony would be behind her. She thought of how close it had been in Bogota with Martin, and her fear diminished. She walked toward him and stood over him with her legs spread for balance, letting him look up at her pantied crotch.
"Let her go, Martin, you've made me suffer enough."
Clara rolled to her knees. His semen leaked from her cunt and smeared her thighs. She looked at Martha, and there was pity in her eyes-pity that she couldn't do more for Tuesta so that none of the rest of them would have to suffer it. Martha wanted to cry for her goodness.
"Go to Winston, Clara," she said gently. "Go to your man. He will still love you."
Clara gathered her clothes. She walked up the aisle, carrying them. It didn't matter that she was naked. Not after what the others had watched her shamelessly do. She paused and then nearly cried when Winston hugged her tightly the way her husband used to do.
Martha lay down on the floor and slid her panties over hips. She knew Ken was watching her with distress, and she felt a perverse thrill go through her. She knew she shouldn't feel that way. She knew she shouldn't be punishing Ken but some other man, someone who-
She stared at Tuesta's glistening prick and nearly saw him again in the back of her mind. She reached for the image but couldn't grasp it.
"Now, you'll pay for the other night," Tuesta was saying, crawling over her body. His cock speared into her belly, and his fingers played in the flesh of her silken cunt. "It's still there! I'm going to take it! I'm going to fuck a virgin and be the first! The most important!" He cackled with a strange sound and fingered her hymen.
Martha lay passively beneath him. She heard an eerie growling in her mind, and a luminous strand of her old fears twisted through her. It snaked and broadened and brought her an image of wavering cypress trunk-the white, stalk-like reflection of one against dark water. She struggled to augment the image and remembered waves-small ripples over the surface of the water that broke the image of the standing trunk, as of something thrashing in the black depths near her. The thick smell of musk came to her in choking waves, and she knew it was the alligators again. And there was a man, some man.. .
"No!" she cried harshly. "No, no, it hurts!"
She twisted and fought, flailing her arms wildly. She felt the tip of Tuesta's cock at her pussy mouth and thrashed her legs, rolling her hips and fighting hysterically to keep him out.
"You gringo bitch!" he shouted, slapping her hard.
It didn't stop her. She kept on and on, finding strength and will from the depths of her memories to resist him, even when he was using all his strength to keep her down.
"Get back! Sit down!" Tuesta was shouting.
Martha stopped struggling at the release of force, and looked up, fearing that Ken was coming at Tuesta to be killed. But it was Wendy. She was peeling out of her blouse, revealing big, plump breasts. Grovebank whined for her to come back with him.
"Wendy, what are you doing! You're offering yourself to him!"
She looked at him with contempt. "I follow the winners, Bobby," she sneered. "Right now you're nothing but a fat, ugly dud. Mr. Tuesta has the power now, and he'll soon have your money. You're worth absolutely nothing to me right now."
"But you love me!"
She cackled viciously. "Shit!" she said. "Just shit! Go look in a mirror, you slob! I don't know how I stood your greasy pawing as long as I did!" She dismissed him when he began to whimper and smiled at Tuesta, making a proposition as obvious and old as her eyes. "Let her up, Martin. She doesn't want it. I do. I want you. I'll be yours completely now. You won't be sorry. I can fuck any way you want me to and love it." She stripped out of the rest of her clothes, revealing plump hips and thighs and meaty labia. She spread them for him with her fingers and showed him the red gash of her cunt. "It's tight in there, Martin. So tight you'll think I'm a virgin every time. But I know what I'm doing. I know how to make you squirt your cock like it was the first time for both of us every time. Let her up, and I'll show you."
Tuesta hesitated. He looked at the pale pubes, nearly invisible around her cunt, and he licked his lips. She wasn't slim and frail but solid. She had the plumpness he could pound his hips against. And she was a gringa bitch; that would put him in favor with Manolo when he shared her around in the guerilla camp with the others.
Martha watched the subtle play of expressions over his face as if she could read the thoughts that produced them. She inched her way from under him hopefully.
"All right, stinking virgin-out! I'll see what kind of woman this is who approaches Martin Tuesta so bravely."
He reached for Wendy, and they began fucking immediately. The gun at Wendy's head didn't bother her. She wallowed under Tuesta and sucked his prick into her cunt greedily, doing things inside her knowledgeable pussy that made him whine in startled passion and explode in her twice.
Martha crawled back to Ken and felt his arms go about her with love. She cuddled against him and felt transported back in time to when her father had cuddled her in this way. She closed her eyes and cried silently.
Winston Sharp strained to see through the gray-white vapor of thick clouds swirling past the windshield. He felt the vertical drafts of air that threatened to suck the plane into the mountains and blow it over the top at alternate moments. The clouds thinned for a moment, and he saw a dark shape loom frighteningly in front of him. He made an instinctive swerve to the right and pulled the nose up steeply, feeding power to the engines. He watched the hulk veer away from his window and felt sweat tickle his armpit.
It was no go. He couldn't fly through that. He'd have to go over it, oxygen or not. He circled back and gained altitude, trying to shake the increasing dizziness from his head. He couldn't understand what was happening to him. He'd been this high before-even higher-in the Hindu Kush. The Inca and the Quenchua lived their lives at this altitude. Surely he could stand it for a few minutes.
When the altimeter read eighteen thousand, the side of his head began to pound with streaks of pain. The area around the knotted bump began to throb. He felt a need to pant and gripped the wheel. He knew it was ridiculous. Had to get hold of himself. Had to make it. Had to show the long-hair punk that he was still tougher by far, despite his age. Had to keep from going down.
At twenty thousand feet, he headed east again, knowing he would clear the range. The turbulence stopped. The cloud cover broke, and the sun blazed strongly at him from an indigo sky like a great white light from space. He locked in the autopilot with tingling fingers and then sat back. The whiteness engulfed him and slowly faded to blackness as perceptions drifted from his mind.