P X Duke

When you don't have a plan, you can end up doing something called flying by the seat of your pants. In the world of aviation, that's known as Dead Reckoning, and for good reason. If you reckon wrong, you can end up dead.Harry Delaney and Mike Williams have always had a plan. In East Africa, it involved running guns and transporting mercenaries. When Harry and his plane get shot up in a hot-zone landing, an overland trek aided by two mercenaries ends up in a border firefight on the road to Nairobi. With their merc rescuers believed dead and Harry injured, a hospital stay forces the pair to evaluate their options. They head off to North Africa and Spain before making the jump to mainland Mexico. Their Mexico plan involves misappropriated cartel cash, a stolen airplane, and a load of drugs. Not to worry, though. They're well on their way from mainland Mexico to Baja sur over 200 miles of open water in a Piper Cub on tundra tires. The plan works, until they encounter two women with a plan of their own and a vehicle filled with drugs. Everyone thinks it's a great idea to team up and head north. When the plane crashes and Mike is kidnapped, Harry is forced to depend on the women to help him rescue his friend from the clutches of the cartel.Years later, Harry leaves Africa behind and ends up working for his old friend Mike in his oil patch charter business. He finds himself happily settling in until a late-night phone call forces him to confront his past and return to East Africa. He's forced to steal an airplane to continue the adventure that started ten years before. Mike isn't far behind. He's hot on the trail of a missing Twin Otter, and he has suspicions that he knows the guilty party.

Frank would collect his final paycheck from the last bike rally of the riding season, pack up, and ride south in late fall. He liked to spend the winter months down on the Baja, a refugee from the freezing cold of a northern winter. Come spring, he'd head north and begin the bike rally work-cycle all over again.He had a rude awakening early in the spring when his ride broke down 70 miles north of the Mexican border. He ended up stranded in a small, desolate town by the Salton Sea. Following a chance meet-up in a motel parking lot, a woman took pity on Frank. Kailey invited him into her home for a dose of welcome home cooking that turned into some old-fashioned loving.When his hostess pointed a loaded gun at his back and cocked the hammer, Frank knew he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. The woman took exception to the fact he had discovered five keys of cartel coca stashed in her closet. It put her on edge when she thought he was stealing it.Frank stayed around only long enough to witness the cartel sicarios hard-hitting double tap response to their missing drugs. He double-timed it out of town with a reformed pole dancer named Tammi riding bitch on the back of his motorcycle. The woman had been Kailey's friend and neighbor. When she learned Kailey was into the cartel for five keys, she decided to join Frank in his hasty exit. A wise decision on her part made for bad karma for Frank, and now he was on the run with a woman intent on keeping her own secrets.By the time the pair arrived in El Lay, Frank had just about given up hope of surviving, thanks to a Molotov tossed in his direction on the freeway. The fiery cocktail missed its mark, and Frank and his passenger rode on, only to become embroiled in multiple attempts at discovering who was out to kill them.After a second firebombing failed to do its job, and following a murder committed by his girl of the minute, Frank knew he had to blow town in a hurry. He made good his escape for a third time, and now he's back on the road, in a brand-new town, looking for work and a woman, not necessarily in that order.

Jim Nash wants to put his past behind him, but in order to do that, he has to remove himself from the present. His quick trip down the Baja is beginning to look like he overstayed his welcome on a vacay from hell. He's riding around in an armor-plated van when a teenage stowaway jumps on board. He can't get rid of her, and now he's stuck babysitting, too.If that isn't enough, the go-fast panga he borrowed in Todos Santos is on the hot sheet with the cartels. He has a remedy for that tucked away on board that involves an RPG and someone who knows how to use it.He discovers his teenage ward hanging upside-down in a Cabo San Lucas bar. She was supposed to be homeward-bound on an airplane, but her "I leave with the one that brought me" makes it sound like he's at a high school prom. Not to be outdone, the teenager discovers Jim in flagrante delicto with a cartel woman intent on stealing every dollar he has amassed in Cabo banks over the years.With the banks closed and nowhere to turn, he's forced to rely on his own devices and those of his young ward. He's resolved to get her home safely, even if she doesn't want to go on her own. She is insisting on leaving with the one that brought her, and that's Jim Nash.A cartel gunfight on a Cabo pier has made the news back home, and now Maddie Spence, his partner, is itching to get her hands on Jim, too. She recognized him as one of the stars in the video with two other women. The only trouble is, until he made the news, she had no idea where he was.That's not a pressing problem for Jim, though. At least, not yet. Jim still has to make his way north by sea and by land to the border and home.