Vuelo al Valle del Miedo

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Clark Carrados, 1981 This action-thriller opens with pilot Berney Shallon transporting a passenger from Miami to El Paso when his partner Hank Carmody radios that the passenger, P.R. Simmons, is a counterfeiter paying with forged bills. Simmons hijacks the aircraft at gunpoint, killing copilot Dave Harris, and forces Shallon toward Cuba. Shallon executes evasive maneuvers—sharp climbs, barrel rolls, and spiraling dives—that send Simmons tumbling through the cabin until he grasps the emergency door handle. The door opens; Simmons is ejected into the Gulf of Mexico. Two months later, a woman named Laurie Sullivan, secretary to wealthy Joan Vernon, proposes a lucrative rescue mission: Richard Vernon, a renowned explorer-anthropologist missing five years, has been discovered alive in Faxawatl valley in the Yucatan, held captive by an indigenous tribe. For fifty thousand dollars, Shallon and his partner Carmody must fly a small expedition to retrieve him. The team includes Joan Vernon, a doctor, an anthropologist, a journalist, and a professional hunter named Denloe Cattush. Financially desperate, Shallon accepts. The excerpt ends mysteriously when he visits Laurie's apartment and finds her naked and kneeling in peculiar circumstances.