Green to Go (Buck Reilly Adventure Series) by John H. Cunningham

Author:John H. Cunningham [Cunningham, John H.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Greene Street, LLC
Published: 2012-06-23T04:00:00+00:00

30

I followed him down into the hole. I could smell earth below me, mixed with the scent of tobacco.

“Wait for me!” Ray nearly stepped on my head.

I could hear Señor Maceo below, his feet now on the ground. It was a pitch-black void with only a narrow shaft of light from above, illuminating nothing. I was surprised at the depth of the room and had lost count of the number of rungs I’d taken. The steps were sturdy and wide, more like a ship’s stair than a typical ladder.

“There’s a light switch over here.”

His voice sounded distant and there was a faint echo in the room, as if the sound bounced back off something close by. Instead of another ladder rung, I felt the ground. I moved aside and put a hand on Ray’s back as he approached the end. Just as he stumbled off, caroming into me, a few light bulbs illuminated the cavernous basement.

I saw Ray’s eyes widen and heard his sharp intake of breath before I spun on my heel to behold the most surprising sight I could imagine.

“I don’t believe it!” Ray said.

I couldn’t speak. This was—

“I’ve had this here since April 15, 1961. Early morning of that day, to be exact.”

“Why does that date sound familiar?” Ray said.

“It was the day that galvanized Castro, and the event that led Cuba into the waiting embrace of the Soviet Union,” Señor Maceo said. “You call it the Bay of Pigs invasion.”

“And this—”

“She too streaked across the sky with smoke behind one of the engines and crash landed, not in the water by Puerto Esperanza, but here in the fields of my family’s farm.”

Ray, his eyes lit up like a child’s at Christmas, reached up and put his hand on the plane’s fuselage. It was peppered with holes, much of its port wing was missing, and the port engine cowling was blackened from smoke.

“A Grumman Goose! I can’t freaking believe it. A Grumman Goose!”

The old man nodded his head. He too had a big smile, no doubt happy to share his half-century-old secret with someone who could appreciate it more than a farm worker might.

“Yours was smaller, no?”

“The Widgeon’s the smallest of the Grumman fleet,” I said. “The Goose is the next size up, then the Mallard, then the Albatross.”

The old plane was painted black but covered with thick dust and dirt from being in Señor Maceo’s improvised hanger for so many years. There were no numbers or markings of any kind, anywhere. I walked around her and checked the damage. The plane lay flat on its belly, her wheels still tucked in place. Several holes, rips, and tears were visible on the fuselage, but given that she had crash-landed, she really didn’t look that bad. The tobacco plants must have provided a cushion. I rubbed my hand along the port hatch until I found the handle. I turned to Señor Maceo, who stood just off my left shoulder.

“May I?”

“Of course.”

I pulled the handle and the hatch popped open.

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