They turned the radio off and Merrill went through what he was going to do when they rolled out to the end of the runway. The map showed a perimeter fence six feet high, topped with barbed wire. O’Malley had been in and out of this airport more times than he could count. He was going to position the plane so the tower could not see the door, and then Merrill was going to get out and head for the fence. The land around the airport was what Merrill could expect, underutilized scrub. Once he got clear of the airport, he was on his own to make his way into town as well as he could. He had the address and the phone number of a man on the Bocagrande peninsula O’Malley had worked with years ago, one who shared O’Malley’s views about Chino.

Additionally, Merrill had the general location, if not the street address, of the American Consulate. There was nothing about Amy Merrill’s abduction on the radio so far, but it was only a matter of time before the story would be faxed to every American embassy. Whether that was good or bad was something Merrill was going to have to decide for himself, O’Malley said. “I have a criminal’s attitude, man. These people only want you under their thumb so they can fuck with you.”

As soon as Merrill was out of the plane O’Malley was going to ask for permission to take off again – - and if he didn’t get it, he was going to take off anyway. In Panama or the United States he would say he’d made a navigation error, and had thought that the best way to correct it was to take off again. Pilots did dumber things every day. At worst, he might have to hire a lawyer to protect his pilot’s license. “I’ll bomb lawyers on them if I have to. I know how to do that. That’s what I mean about the criminal attitude. Nobody gives you the upper hand. I could tell you stories about the DEA.”

“I could tell you.”

“The point being, you have to take power and make them fight you for it. And down here, old Chino is as much the law as he is a criminal. Figure out where that puts you.”

O’Malley had the little jet up to five thousand feet as the city came into view, the Bocagrande peninsula a string of lights twinkling in the deepening gloom, lights spreading to the left and distantly behind it. O’Malley didn’t want the tower asking why he had been flying so low. He opened the mike and identified the plane to the tower. A voice speaking in English with a Spanish accent gave him the weather and visibility and cleared them for landing.