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cutors. That may have been too much for him to take chances with us. I don't know, Maybe he thinks we're CIA."## Swords on the RunwayEl Largo picks up the three passports of Romisio's desk and points them toward the locked door like a baton, "Vamos is all he says."The metal door is unlocked by El Largo, and once again the DISIP cortege appears from nowhere. They escort the reporters down another staircase and cut toward an immigration stall in a large room that is completely isolated. It is a busy part of the day at a major airport, but the DISIP keeps finding these empty halls and empty rooms to stick the reporters in.Something about approaching this immigration stall, which is not attended, and knowing he will pass through it and get on an airplane and not find Letelier's murderer starts to galvanize Branch. There is a tiny passage to go through and El Largo is motioning them to walk on, but Branch is having these visions of the bombed car outside his apartment and he is getting mad. The madder he gets, the slower he walks. "We can't just get on this plane," he says to Rothchild. "We have to at least do something." He and Rothchild, and then Inclán, behind them, go into a stall-not a complete stop, but they are slowing it way down. Morales might have clamped down on this little insurrection in a second, but El Largo seems merely agitated. He is getting in front of the reporters, pleading and begging, pulling with his arms as if they are all connected by an invisible rope.In complete exasperation, he starts sputtering threats. "If you don't move through here, I am going to use the force!" Two guards go running down to the end of the room, apparently to go find the force, which turns out to be four young soldiers in green fatigues and paratrooper boots.With the army behind them, the reporters continue their shuffle. Two move ahead a few feet and one hangs back. Then the members of the armed forces plus the "DISIP" people surround the straggler, prodding him along, while one of the other two breaks away to the same spot the straggler just vacated.Out of a picture window the reporters can see the plane being gassed up. It is VIASA, the Venezuelan airline, and not Pan Am. Inclán, finally expressing some paranoia herself, says, "Well they could blow us up on the plane, but they wouldn't sacrifice a Venezuelan plane. They don't have that many of them."They have been dragging on this walk for almost forty minutes now, and they can see the busloads of tourists being flushed back cut from their vacations. The buses are stopping at the back stairway of the plane. Then Branch gets his idea. "In here where there is nobody to see us we can't do much," he tells Rothchild. "But out there, in front of all those tourists, we can get some help. Let's go." Rothchild and Branch huddle with Inclán. They hatch the plan and agree. Then all abandon their shuffle, to the surprise of the herders, who have been pushing all along. Suddenly they see their quarry running off in front of them. El Largo doesn't catch on right away, but he knows that whatever the reporters want to do, it must be the wrong thing. So he starts running after them, yelling, "Stop!" Branch and Rothchild hit the double glass door with Inclán and El Largo and the army just behind. They all pour out onto the runway to the curious looks of hundreds who are lined up to get on the plane.For the first time since they landed in Venezuela, Inclán is visibly upset. She rushes out to the line of passengers, screaming in Spanish and English that she is a woman reporter whose dignity has been trampled on by the secret police. The police, who are massed behind her in greater numbers than ever before, don't know quite how to deal with this. The passengers don't know whether to accept her as a lunatic traveler whom they don't want with them on the plane, or to believe what she is saying, which would be unpleasant. Most of them pretend that nothing is happening and go on up the ramp.Branch, meanwhile, has planted himself on the stairs that lead to the front cabin of the plane. He is sitting down and his hands are clenched to the rails like a Quaker chained to the White House fence. Rothchild is sitting on the steps just below Branch, and they are being surrounded by a brigade of reinforcements, the sword company. The men in brown uniforms have circled them, and they pull the swords a few inches out of their long scabbards ready to hog-stick Rothchild and Branch into the airplane. Behind them officials and police seem to be pouring out of the doors and official jeeps are screeching up and screeching off, and Rómulo has even showed up again.The captain of the airplane, a Venezuelan, comes down the same ramp on which Branch and Rothchild have been doing their sit-in, and he has a scowl on his face. Venezuela has enough trouble developing tourism and here is his plane being held up and his passengers' last memory of Venezuela will be these goons with swords and blackjacks prodding Americans up the ramp. He steps over Branch and goes right down to the huddle of secret police, where the current brains of the operation, Rómulo and El Largo, are standing. The captain proceeds to chew them out, tell them that they are idiots to pull a show like this and that he will not take passengers on his airplane if they are loaded by force. The security risk, for one thing. If these people are that dangerous, then why should they be flying a'une on his airplane?El Largo and Rómulo don't quite know how to handle this sudden obstacle. They get a let's-talk-this-one-over-buddy look on their faces and go into a huddle with the captain. They also defer to even higher authority, a beefy cop named Camargo, who is wearing a short-sleeve shirt. Camargo arrives in the middle of the scene, looking like the frust director of a runaway cast. There are now dozens of DISIP men in plain clothes, a few representatives from about four different military detachments, frantic jeep drivers, airline authorities, pilots and ground-crew personnel, all crowding around to watch or take part in the action. Camargo looks skyward, thinking under pressure, and gets his idea. "Why don't you let me go with these people?" he asks the pilot. "If I take them to Miami, I guarantee there won't be any funny stuff on your plane." Rothchild thinks this is a little-ironic. The reporters come down to investigate one plane bombing and return under guard so that, they can't pull one off themselves.The pilot doesn't think too much of Camargo's idea. "Do you have a U.S. visa?" he asks Camargo. "No." "Then, do you know what they will do to you when you get to Miami? Much worse than whatever you have done to them here" Camargo doesn't like the way that sounds. He scraps the plan, and the captain returns to the plane.The reporters aren't sure of what they have just done. They have scored a theatrical victory-just look around at all these cars and soldiers and distressed officials-but they don't like the prospect of lunch with Ricardo Morales. Nobody seems to be running to call the American Embassy or any other outside help, so the plan is a qualified failure.The three of them head back to the passenger line, where people are still loading, and start writing phone numbers on little scraps of paper-the numbers are of editors in Miami, friends, and even mothers. They try handing them out to boarding passengers. The reporters are received in this effort like Salvation Army collectors at the race-track. Only a few of the passengers actually take the notes, but just to make sure, the DISIP people are picking them off at the higher end of the line. Some passengers even go out of their way to hand over the notes, with an air of having done their civic duty. It develops into a kind of assembly line, notes in and notes out, the DISIP goons collecting just as fast as Inclán, Branch and Rothchild can scrawl.It is now, with the plane about to close its doors, that Branch comes up with another plan: send one, leave two. Branch still is hoping he can break the Morales logjam and get out into friendly territory, where his contacts are waiting to help him. Inclán speaks the best Spanish and seems the most adept at handling inspectors and bureaucrats. They will stay and Rothchild is chosen to leave. Branch reminds him, in front of the sword brigade, that he is an "expectant father," but Rothchild needs no encouragement. He instantly calls for the captain and explains that he wants to get on the plane. The captain hesitates, then agrees, and Rothchild runs for the stairs, As he passes Branch and Inclán, Branch sticks one page of phone numbers in his pocket and, as a diversionary tactic, clumsily sticks another note in his hand, this one in full10.