Wings Over Brazil

First published in Thrilling Adventures, November 1943. Reprinted in the collections May There Be A Road and The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Vol 4.
"At a party at the estate of Don Pedro Norden Jim receives an offer for his plane, the amphibian he took from Count Kull. When he refuses he is threatened and discovers that he has stumbled on a plot by a powerful group of land owners and industrialists to take control of Brazil away from it’s pro-allies government and deliver it to the Axis. [After his plane is stolen] The search for his missing ship and an attempt to stop the junta being planned in northern Brazil takes him from the lakes and sand hills near Don Pedro’s estate to the Acarau River and the, one time, Pan Am field outside of Natal. Stopping the plotters will require a desperate struggle on land, on the sea, and in the air."