Cargo Trip

The engine of Mateo’s Cessna 208 hummed like a metallic wasp as the blur of the propeller quivered outside the windshield. Far below, 20,000 feet to be exact, the Colombian shore gave way to the gentle lapping of the Atlantic. The turquoise water was calm today and the sky was clear, spotted by the occasional cloud. This was good for Mateo, good for his flight and good for business. His last trip had been plagued by a massive storm coming off the ocean and had rattled his brains along with his cargo. What exactly he had been carrying, Mateo didn’t care. He never asked questions. That’s how someone in his line of work stayed in business and stayed alive. It had been the same procedure with the current shipment, no questions, one drop off, and fifteen percent of the cut was his.

Mateo was a little over an hour into a three-hour flight and his back was starting to ache. He adjusted in his seat, rolling his shoulders and craning his next to each side. His aviator sunglasses rested on his face and painted his surroundings in a dark sepia. Despite the soreness which came from piloting a turboprop plane, flying granted Mateo a serenity and happiness which he had failed to find anywhere else in life. Growing up in Miami, Mateo had gone through life with the conviction that he would fly the fastest plane the United States Air Force had to offer. One physical later and a subject to generations of poor genetics, Mateo was deemed unfit to fly. His eyesight was atrocious (and that was on a good day), paired with scoliosis and bowed legs, he never had a chance. For a time he considered flying commercial airliners, although he wasn’t sure if even they would accept him. But once his mother grew ill in old age, Mateo was forced to return to his native country of Colombia and watch over her in her final years. He found work as a nickel miner at Cerro Matoso and that was that. It wasn’t until years later, two years after his mother passed when his coworker turned him on to this extra work.

Technically, Mateo wasn’t a pilot. He had squeezed every peso out of his nickel paychecks to buy the weathered Cessna for his personal use. Even without a license, Mateo knew his way around a cockpit and offered transportation services to anyone sending cargo to the North. But there was only one export from Colombian which required discreteness and off-the-record pilots; cocaine. Mateo had been doing this (smuggling, if you wanted to be proper about it) long enough to garner multiple returning clients. Those clients spread the word and new clients came calling. It must have been five years since he set foot anywhere near a nickel mine and he couldn’t have been happier.

Was the work he was doing illegal? If he got caught, sure. Was it unethical? Mateo preferred to ignore the question. The money answered for him. He had never been as well-off financially as he was right now and today was just another day on the job. No questions asked.

The current load he carried was on its way to Costa Rica. He was meant to land ten miles outside of Puerto Viejo de Talamanca, drop a GPS pin for his contact, and await the pick-up. Simple, routine, and another quick paycheck would be his. Mateo scanned the array of dials and meters on his dash and everything seemed to check out. It was smooth sailing. A minute later, as if he had jinxed the good fortune of his flight conditions, the engine began to cluck. Mateo rattled in his chair and a labored groan went through the cockpit. He checked the dash instruments again and all signs were nominal. Then his gut leaped into his throat and the plane’s nose tilted downwards, fighting against his pull on the control wheel. The dive steepened and Mateo slipped from his chair, smashing his forehead against the rim of the dash. He pushed himself against the weight of the nosedive and squirmed into the seat as he grasped for the seatbelt. Secured in the pilot’s chair, Mateo wrestled with the controls and pressed the rudder pedals, desperate for any response from the plane. There would be none. He was going down.

The crystalline surface of the water consumed the view outside the cockpit. Mateo’s brain scrambled with desperation and the scraps of knowledge which remained from books and websites. But the Atlantic rose to meet him faster than any solution could. Seconds before impact came, Mateo let go of the control wheel, threw his hands in front of his face, and cried out for whichever God would listen to him. There came the roar of water and the screech of the propeller, then his world went black.

Mateo drifted in and out of consciousness. Each fleeting second of reality brought disrupted visions of shattered glass and swelling ocean. Water touched his foot, or so he thought, but then he went out again. When he finally came around and could stay awake, the water was undoubtedly creeping into his cabin. Mateo was strapped into his seat and the warm, salted water made a lopsided surface around him. But it was he who was lopsided. The Cessna had lost one of its floats in the impact and now dangled in the water, tilting dangerously to one side as the remaining float struggled to support its weight. Mateo coughed and droplets of blood came off his forehead, falling into the water and swirling away in pink tendrils.

Dark clouds crept around his vision and threatened to pull him under again. He fought off the painful stupor, for he feared he would share the same fate as the plane if he passed out again. Mateo fished under water and around his waist for the buckle. Those dark clouds, which had been dancing along his vision like a threatening storm front, now rolled in with new determination and he was gone again.

Mateo lurched forehead in his seat, eyes wide and mouth gaping for air like a fish out of water. The sun poured in through the broken windshield and stung his face. When he turned his head, the skin of his neck felt tight and irritated. Somewhere outside the cabin, a steady knocking rapped against the plane. He pinched his eyes shut and the same, leathered feeling came around his face. It was a feeling he knew all too well, being from the tropical lands of Florida and Colombia; sunburn. But if he had been unconscious long enough to get a sunburn, his plane should be sitting on the bottom of the ocean. The single surviving float should have lost the battle. Mateo shielded his face and opened his eyes again.

The Cessna was skewed at an upward angle and all he could see was blue sky. The propeller was a tattered mess. Two of the fins he could see were snapped clean in half and the others were chipped and falling apart. From his seat, Mateo could feel the rise and fall of the current, coming as steady as the thumping sound from outside. He noticed some of the water had drained away and now he was only ankle deep. Summoning what strength he had left, Mateo crawled from his seat and drug himself outside using the shattered windshield as an exit. Shared of glass scraped his forearms and stomach, but he was hardly aware of the stinging cuts. What Mateo saw, sitting on the hood of his plane, made his mouth fall open.

Somehow, during his stretch of unconsciousness, the Cessna had drifted against a deserted shoreline. The thumping he heard was the hull of the plane as it bumped against a cluster of rocks jutting from the current. It was impossible to believe it could be Costa Rica or even the far more plausible Panama coast. No, he was nowhere, some unmapped and unknown island in the middle of absolutely nowhere. Mateo reached up to brush the salty clumps of hair from his face and flecks of dried blood came off in the palm of his hand.

Beyond the ridge of rocks which had trapped his plane, Mateo looked across a long sandy shore. The dunes were spotted with masses of seaweed, rotted driftwood, and scavenging crabs. A healthy tree line of lush palms and waist-high grass held the rest of the island contents in secret, like a portal to some alien world. Mateo dropped his head and began to chuckle. At first, a soft thudding laugh from his gut, then a whooping hysteria of cackles. He was dead. As sure as the day was day and the night was night, he was dead. There was nothing funny about, but he couldn’t stop himself from laughing. His stomach grew sore and tears streamed down his sunburnt cheeks. He thought of Costello, who would be eagerly awaiting a call from their mutual friend, the same friend which would be awaiting Mateo’s arrival with the cargo. He thought of their growing anger with every minute which passed without contact, until one of them grew impatient enough to call the other. They would discover Mateo had never arrived and, most likely, assume he had hi-jacked the shipment for his own personal revenue. Mateo laughed even harder. Oh, what little did they know.

Mateo flinched in his perch. His grew wide. He looked at the impossible sight which had appeared on the shore in front of him, shook his head and looked again. Roughly fifty yards up the shore, a line of human bodies stood in the sand. It was a mirage, had to be one. Mateo rubbed his eyes once more, but the ghostly bodies remained in their places, still and silent. They observed him from their statue-like stances, holding long sticks (oh god, were they spears?) and garbed skirts of grass and hide. Their torsos were bare, showing off caramelized skin and faint white markings. Mateo could only stare. It made no sense, but who was he to say? Why was he so sure that all of humanity existed in the deranged, little world they had been compartmentalized to? The ocean was massive. There were entire stretches of water, miles and miles long which would hold no significance to any explorer or researcher. But that didn’t mean nothing existed there.

As the group stared at him and he stared back, a man standing in the middle of the group raised one hand, fingers together and palm outward. He stood there, waiting. Mateo’s hand drifted upwards and copied the gesture, also offering a little wave. The man beckoned him forward. Mateo looked left, looked right, and back to them. The man continued to wave him towards the group. Whatever humor Mateo had found in the situation was now gone. In fact, he felt terrified. Yet he didn’t exactly have a load of options. He blew out a hard breath and began to work his way off the hood of the plane, shimmying his way down the decline and into warm water.

Mateo submerged for a second and when he broke the surface, the island people stood atop of the surrounding rocks and peered down at him like a SeaWorld exhibit. He tried to ignore the absent stares and swam for the nearest rock, but they were all smooth and weathered from the current. He had no proper holds to pull himself up and his hands slapped the rocks, useless. A splash beside his head made him flinch and kick away from the noise. The island people made a collective sound, like a farmer trying to steady a new colt.

Woo, Woo, Woo.

Mateo saw they had dropped some type of rope into the water. It was made from long grass blades and woven into tight braids. He looked at the rope and looked up to the man holding the other end. He nodded down at Mateo. Wrapping the grass braids around one wrist and placing his feet against the rocks, Mateo began a slippery climb upwards as the island man gave him gentle tugs of assistance. When he was within arm’s reach, two others came around and helped him on top of the rocks, tugging him under his arms. They backed away as Mateo shook himself out.

Mateo looked up, squinting in the sun and said, “Thanks.” His throat was deathly dry and it came out as a rasping croak.

One man offered a hand. Mateo hesitated, though it was clear he had already cast his lot with these people, so he let the man hoist him to his feet. They looked at each other and the man regarded him with no real emotion. Then they began to leave, hopping down the rocks and onto the shore without bothering to see if Mateo was following. But Mateo followed. What else was he going to do? The island people made their way towards the tree line, never once looking back at him.

“Hey!” He shouted, not sure why. They stopped and turned. Would they even understand him? “What do I do?” he asked.

The group looked at each other, but they all seemed to be looking towards one man. This man regarded Mateo with the same, emotionless stare and began to come towards him. He stopped in front of Mateo and his hand reached down to his own waist. There, a cupped seashell was tasseled to his grass skirt and he dipped two fingers into it. The tips of his fingers came out covered in a white paste, which Mateo guessed to be the source of the markings on their body. The man reached towards Mateo’s face and he flinched back.

Woo, woo, woo. Came the gentle sound again.

Mateo eased forward, on guard. The man placed the tips of his whitened fingers on Mateo’s forehead and made two streaks with the paste. Once done, he stepped to the side and held his arm out, a gesture which transcended any language barriers; this way. The others were disappearing in the grass, jumping into the depths of the island foliage. Mateo looked back at his broken plane, looked to the man with his arm out, and followed into the uncharted wilderness.