One day in the early spring of 1976 I received a call from John Stuart-Jervis, who was a top exec with Caribbean Air Services. His tone was urgent and to the point. “We have a plane stranded in the Dominican Republic. Can you fly a part over to them so we can get it out of there?”

I figured Clipper Air could always use the money. Besides, that’s what we were in business for—to fly people and cargo to any destination in the Caribbean. “Sure, we’ll go,” I said.

“Good show. Meet me at the airport in two hours,” John said in his perfect English accent.

“We’ll be there,” I answered, in my perfect New York accent.

I called Edie Seranno, Clipper’s chief pilot, and told him we had a hot charter, and to get 43 Delta ready. She was my favorite airplane, a twin Beech D-18, green and white, with a tri-gear conversion. Very fast and friendly.

At the airport, John told us that all the international clearances had been taken care of, and that the whole trip would be routine. There was nothing to be concerned about. He handed us the replacement part, and we took off, heading West, St. Croix’s Alexander Hamilton Airport receding behind us. As we neared San Juan, Puerto Rico, we advised San Juan Center that our destination was the Dominican Republic. Center replied that if we did not have clearance it was best not to continue the flight. “Roger, understand,” Eddie said. I looked at him, and shrugged. Hey, didn’t John say all the bases were covered? Eddie knew what I was thinking, and nodded.

About an hour later, we touched down at our destination,. We opened the door and discovered that our welcoming party was a squad of well-armed soldiers toting automatic weapons. My Spanish is poor, but I got the message. We’d better stay seated on the floor of the airplane, or else.

Eventually, an army colonel arrived, and had us moved from the sun-baked airplane to a shady bench on the other side of the field. That was a very welcome change, except the casual presence of our armed captors left little doubt that we were under arrest, big time.

The army colonel was on the telephone, evidently explaining to his superiors that he had captured two crazy Americans who had violated Dominican airspace. I figured we were going to spend the next two years in the slammer, dining on rice and beans once a day. Rice and beans, that is, if we were lucky. The conversation in animated Spanish went on for a long two hours, and it slowly dawned on me that we were, in effect, a big pain in the neck. In fact, we were probably an international incident at this point. Finally, the official decision came down.

The colonel spoke in excellent English. He said we had to fly to Las Americas Airport, the main airport in the Dominican Republic, and apologize to the Dominican aviation officials. Eddie and I were overjoyed to bid our captors farewell. We quickly cranked up 43 Delta and we were much relieved to be on our way. The hop to Las Americas was reasonably short, and we landed uneventfully. We found the main aviation headquarters with no trouble, and went inside to offer our official apologies. Of course, we didn’t speak Spanish, and none of the Dominican aviation officials spoke English. We just looked at each other and mutually shrugged shoulders. So we decided to leave, because we just weren’t getting anywhere, so we quickly hied it back to the airplane.

Eddie had just finished starting both engines on 43 Delta when we saw a jeep speeding very quickly in our direction. It seemed to have army officials on board, and they were waiving at us. Iron bars became my instant vision.

“Let’s get heck out of here I yelled.” I might have used a stronger expletive, but I don’t really remember. Eddie got the message instantly, and he had 43 Delta at takeoff power and rolling down the runway in record time. This was like something you’d see in a Bond movie, I thought. Wow, did it feel good to break ground and start climbing. Then an awful thought popped into mind. Did the Dominican Republic have an air force? I asked Eddie, he didn’t know, but I could see he was thinking hard about what might happen if they did.

We played it safe, and flew close to the big cumulous clouds that filled the tropical sky, just in case we had to do an instant disappearing act. With radar, the clouds wouldn’t do us much good, but they sure made us feel a lot better.

An hour and a half later we were back on St. Croix, marveling at our good fortune. We went into Skyway Inn and bellied up to the bar. Eddie didn’t drink, so he ordered a Coke. “Gimme a double scotch straight up,” I said. Then, in retrospect, I wondered why I didn’t order two of those.