This story is part of a continuation of my
Road Trip
series (see the end of 'Road Trip -- California' for a list of the chapters of that series, in order to be read). You need not read that series to enjoy this one. Although real places and celebrity names are used for realism, this story is fiction. Please 'read, enjoy, vote, and comment.'
Synopsis of This Story So Far
: After a cross-country road trip laced with grief, love, incest, and sex, Jim moved in with country music star Crystal Lee and her sister in Nashville. Thanks to Crystal, Jim also became a top country music sensation. Crystal posed for Playboy in a sex-filled weekend photo shoot. Jim, his sister, sister-in-law, and friends enjoyed a New Years holiday orgy on a Caribbean isle. Crystal and Jim head in different directions to make two movies. On the west coast for his movie, Jim reconnects with a love interest from his road trip, participates in an orgy with his leading lady, and finds a new love interest.
Chapter 07
Nicaragua, movie making, kidnapping, rescue, and sex
A machine gun fired at us from an overhead helicopter. Along the ground, the pock marks each bullet made exploded in line closely parallel to where we were running in a zig-zap pattern. I thought of all the training I'd had when I joined the Special Forces, much of it training for just a situation such as this.
Barry Peters and I had just grabbed Jill Dane's hands and raced for cover in a dilapidated adobe hut. Just as we neared the building, the front door disintegrated in an explosive hail of bullets from the gunship as it made another sweep towards us. We veered away from the hut.
I turned away from Jill and Barry and let them keep running; I raised the automatic weapon I had slung over my body, took careful aim, and fired round after round at the helicopter -- defying death as their bullets rained down around me. I could see the long tongues of flame sprouting from the muzzle of my weapon as I fired.
Almost immediately a burst of smoke started to emerge from the aircraft's engine compartment, and the flight path got erratic. I kept firing as the bird turned and fled away from us. Just over the tree line, the helicopter sank out of sight into the trees. Seconds later a huge fireball rose into the sky, indicative of a fiery crash from which no one on the helicopter could survive.
I lowered the rifle just as Jill flowed into my arms and passionately kissed me. We had one of our little make out sessions that we loved so much. Jill was really getting into it, driving her tongue deep into my mouth, and for that matter I enjoyed her expression of joy too much because I could feel the quickening in my fatigues. Finally, Jill pulled away, and looked at me with tears in her eyes -- tears of joy at being saved from death. We held the position for several seconds.
"CUT!"
Mark Ang came racing across the clearing to Barry, Jill, and me with a smile on his face from ear to ear. "That was some of the best acting I've ever seen. I think we got perfect shots on every camera." He turned to a telephoto camera hidden in a palm tree that had been focused on my face and my defensive fire at the helicopter. The cameraman gave Mark a thumbs-up and a big smile. So did the cameraman on an elevated hoist just off the edge of the clearing.
Mark grabbed a walkie-talkie off his belt and spoke into it; "That's it, Ronaldo. We're through with the helicopter for today. I think our footage is superb."
In the distance, where the helicopter supposedly crashed, we could hear the whap-whap-whap of the rotors as the bird started to rise, like the Phoenix, into the skies again. After achieving a safe altitude over the trees, the aircraft did a low pass over our clearing. We could see the 'gun men' in the open door merrily waving at us. The rented helicopter turned and headed north to the Agusto Cesar Sandino International Airport -- the airport serving Managua, Masaya, and Granada in Nicaragua. The cast, film crew, extras, and equipment vans were all parked nearby but out of site, including the luxurious motorhomes some of us used as our temporary homes at the remote film location. We were in a field surrounded by trees on a set the crew had built a month earlier near the small Nicaraguan town of Los Campos -- a picturesque village with fruit orchards nearby. In the background in every direction lay the remnants of volcanos, a staple of the Nicaraguan landscape.
Our movie,
Pressure Limit,
had entered its fourth month of shooting under the direction of Mark Ang, one of Sony Studios up and coming directors. We were ahead of plan and below budget, something that would score big points for us, particularly Ang.
Jill flowed into my arms and kissed me again, a habit she'd adopted several months ago; "My hero. You saved me from all those nasty men in that whirlybird machine." She used her falsetto and innocent woman voice more likely heard in an 1880's play than in our movie; she played the role well. We all laughed, and I waved my rifle in the air; a rifle rigged to only shoot blanks -- it couldn't even be loaded with real ammunition.
Mark looked around and said, "The sun's getting a little low in the sky. We could shoot some of the interior shots in the hut where you discover the drugs, but our outdoor shots are done for the day."
I shrugged and said, "OK, let's do it." Jill and Barry looked ready too. We liked to be busy doing filming instead of standing around rehearsing lines, doing makeup, or anything else. Our 'Let's work' attitude contributed to our ahead of schedule and budget status. For the next two hours, we did various shots inside the fake adobe building; part of each side of the building could be folded away for camera access.
In one scene inside the hut, I happen to kick a chair out of the way in frustration at not finding 'the goods.' Beneath the chair, I spotted a metal ring that when pulled opened to a burial pit full of bales of cocaine. Of course, the bales were actually flour carefully bricked in clear wrap by the stage crew to look like what everyone now assumed a kilo of uncut cocaine would look like. I would use a knife to stab one of the bales, dampen a finger, and put a slight taste of the white powder to my tongue, thereby confirming to my colleagues that we had found the mother load of cocaine and had closed off a major drug highway out of South America to North America. The crash of the helicopter had sealed the deal. Good guys win; bad guys lose.