Two Planes and a Bomb

Scene: The Aeronaves de Mexico airline office in the sweltering west-coast town of Culiacan. Time: 9 a.m. A nervous man in khaki shoves a heavy drum-shaped package across the counter.

The airline clerk, making out a waybill: "Contents?"

The nervous man: "White lead paint."

"Your name?"

"Jesus Montes . . . Look, this package absolutely must be on the 10:05 direct plane to La Paz in Lower California."

"Sure, sure."

The nervous man walks away quickly.

Airline clerks, however, sometimes have a way of being forgetful. Despite his assurances, the clerk neglects to put the package on the direct plane to La Paz. Instead, he routes it to La Paz via Mazatlan. Accordingly, it is put aboard a DC-3's leaving for Mazatlan at 10:15 and due there at 11:30.

No one among the DC-3's five passengers and three crew members suspects the real contents of the heavy package: high explosive mixed with steel shot and a clock timed to set it off at 11:20.

Stiff tailwinds whip the plane along, unexpectedly clipping minutes off the scheduled flight time. In a fateful contest unknown to the people on the plane, the tailwinds race the ticking bomb. At 11:05, 25 minutes ahead of schedule, the DC-3 touches down at Mazatlan's palm-fringed airport. The heavy package is taken off the plane and, while the DC-3 takes off again, it is placed in a luggage cart. At 11:20 the bomb bursts. It kills three airport employees and wrecks the control tower. At the same moment, the direct plane to La Paz for which the package was meant is high over the Gulf of California, safe.

That was the drama which confronted Mexican police last week. Quickly, the cops had quite a clue thrust at them: one of the passengers, Jose Alfredo del Valle, 44, was found hanging, a belt around his neck, from a tree in a La Paz park. Cut down and revived, he insisted: "I was just trying to enjoy the view from the tree." The cops showed a picture of Del Valle to the airline clerk in Culiacan. "That," said the clerk, "is the man who called himself Jesus Montes."

Del Valle confessed an extraordinary story: deep in debt, he had wanted to commit suicide by blowing up the plane. After first trying to get a dupe to take his place, he decided to kill himself in a way that would look accidental, so that his family could collect $100,000 insurance.

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