The Diamond Dust on Dragonfly Wings: A Jeffry Claxton Mystery Novel
Page 95
He nodded his head reluctantly, and clasped my outstretched hand.
“I’ll expect my first communications from you within forty-eight hours.”
“Sounds good. By the way, ask the pilot for a set of earplugs, they all carry spares on a transatlantic Hercules flight. You’ll need them.”
We broke our grip and turned away from each other then. All that had to be said, had been said, and all of the rest didn’t need to be said.
Evie was the last one waiting at the stairs to the Small jet’s door. She was looking like she was on the verge of impatience, so I jogged on over.
“Everyone on board?”
“Yes, sir. All present and accounted for. Gear stowed and take off is set for seven minutes.”
“Fine. Let’s do it then.”
We climbed the stairs, with Evie helping me a bit as we neared the top of the mobile stairway.
As soon as the door was sealed behind us, Ronnie told us all to take our seats and buckle up. Casey went forward to the cockpit area, ostensibly to have a flight plan confab with the pilot & crew. Apparently, it was brief, because he returned and grabbed a seat about two minutes later, and about two minutes after that the engines kicked into life, and we started rolling. The runway lights started rolling by the window faster every moment. It took all of forty-five seconds before I felt the wheels leave the tarmac. Some Jet.
So now we were ‘Bahamas Bound’. Airborne. Once again headed for dangerous ground. Swell.
Everyone was in a strange mood. Ted appeared to be very confused, like he really didn’t want to be there at all, maybe, or maybe not. He was hard to read, that guy. Collette was looking very lonely, maybe even afraid, and Evie was keeping an obvious eye on them both. Loretta was as cool as a cucumber, sitting back reading some sort of tech manual. I flashed on the moments before I’d gone through the door on the crescent street in Paris, and her assertion that she would only need a fraction of a second to do her thing. Then the image of the tiny stars magically appearing at face level in the Citroens windshield, like someone had snapped their fingers and they were just there. Even though I was sure there were several shots fired, it had seemed like they all went through the same hole. Cool as a cucumber. Well, she had backed up her claim, all right.
We were still climbing at a pretty steep angle several minutes later, and the G-Force was still pushing us back into our seats. I started wondering when we were going to level off, and at what altitude. Ronnie must have read my mind, because just then she started telling me about what we were flying.
“This isn’t your average Lear Jet, by the way. We’re able to take extremely high altitudes, and we carry counter-measures as well. In addition, we can spot anything in the air or on the ground that has active radar or communications long before they can see us. It’s expensive, but it’s worth it when you need an advantage. We did, and we got it. Not bad, eh?”
“Not bad at all. How high did you say we were going to fly?”
“I didn’t, but probably up around fifty thousand feet.”
“Uh, forgive my natural inquisitiveness, but don’t we need to have an oxygen feed for everyone at that height?”
“Not in this plane. If we were to decompress the cabin we would, of course, but there are portable mask-tank combo units under each seat. We shouldn’t be needing them this trip though.”
“If you say so, chief. This is one hell of a plane. How come it just happened to be standing by in Holland?”
“That would be telling. Let’s get down to business for a few minutes, shall we? We seem to be leveling off now.”
Sure, enough we were. A minute later we were cruising along comfortably somewhere in the area of near space. The blackness outside of the window was a most amazing shade of black. The kind reserved for fighter pilots. The stars sparkled with a clarity I’d never seen before, but Ronnie seemed to take it all for granted. I figured this wasn’t her first flight on this particular bird. We started going over ‘The Plan’.
Basically, we were going to flush out our Swiss banker lady, with the help of Collette. That was assuming that she was still in the Bahamas. We’d have to trust to luck on that score. There was some consternation on our part about the whereabouts of Enrico. I didn’t think he was in the Bahamas, but Ronnie thought he might be. If he was, we’d have to watch our step, or we’d be in the kind of trouble that would spell the end for the mission and any careers we might have left. That didn’t affect me so much as it did Ronnie and her team, but answering to the brass was my last worry. For any of us. If we screwed it up, we probably wouldn’t get the chance anyway.
I figured Enrico was back in South America, or at least Central America. That would be a safe haven for him, and after the disasters in Zurich and Paris, if I were him, that’s where I would be. Somewhere safe.
Ronnie and I went over the ‘Plan’, until we had it straight and timed. The idea was to spend as little time on the ground as possible, get the information we needed from Heidi Meir without getting her or any of us killed, including Collette, and then move on to preparations for the final phase. That would take me to Taif, in the mountains that edge the Arabian Peninsula’s eastern seaboard, paralleling the Red Sea.
I hoped to take advantage of an old friend there, and I thought we’d need that help. After that, I would be off to the sunny shores of Venezuela. Then it would start to get scary, for everyone. That’s where we’d be meeting up after my visit to the Arabian Heartland. Originally, I had been going to take George with me to Saudi Arabia, as much for his experience as for the opportunity for him to see something that doesn’t get shown to us all in this life. A slice of life that goes back thousands of years has more and better modern amenities than any European capital city, and more culture than Europe and the Far East put together. Of course, many people didn’t see it that way, particularly the Americans and the Europeans, but most of them hadn’t had the chance to experience life in the ‘Heartland’, either. I had. No doubt in my mind. It was awesome. I could think of a lot of things worse than being a Saudi. Most of them would be attractive to your average North American. Strange world. Funny world, strange life.
When we got to the Bahamas, we were going to land quickly and unannounced, out of nowhere, apparently. A trick the crew could pull off easily with this flying avionics shop. Then Casey would stay with the plane, because we had no controls over the airport that we would be using in the Islands. The cockpit crew consisted of two DND Special Ops personnel, both Air Force ranked. Both were Captains, and both had special skills, in addition to jockeying this kind of ‘special unit’. Ronnie mentioned that there were several different types of ‘units’ around, and they tried to keep the pilot list to a minimum. What the extra ‘special skills’ were, was a list that started and didn’t seem to end. Captains Luis Manesco and Philippe DeGascone were replacement and reinforcement, for Wilson, and the mission, respectively. It sounded like they would be a big help, and Ronnie had anticipated very well, because they both were fluent in languages we would need. Spanish and Portuguese, for example. Manesco had Spanish for a mother tongue, and DeGascone had Portuguese. We would need both, and I for one, spoke neither.
The trip to Nassau was a long one from Holland, but at the practically supersonic speeds that we were running, it seemed like one short nap, and two micro-waved meals later, and there we were.
We spotted the island from the windows when we were only about ten minutes out. Our descent had been rather rapid, falling from an odd purple twilight to a brightly lit sunshine sky in mere minutes. As the cloud cover broke, the islands appeared. Jewels of the Caribbean. The landing was swift and uneventful.
Both Collette and Loretta, as well as Casey and Luis, were to stay with the plane. Evie, Ronnie, and one of our two new team mates, Philippe, were going to accompany me to the hotel where Heidi Meir was supposed to be staying. One civilian woman, two military women, one of the Special Ops boys, and little ole me. I felt outnumbered. I was outnumbered. There was a lit
tle voice in my mind that kept reminding me that these people were professionals, and to leave it at that.
Ronnie had passed off Collette’s ticket to someone while I had been recovering, and apparently, the flight that was supposed to have carried her here had landed about twenty minutes before we did. Our landing may have been routine, but our debarkation wasn’t.
A very large black car met us as we came to a stop. It turned out to be a ‘sixty-four caddy limo. Room for all. The changing of outfits took place while we were exiting the airport grounds. Nobody even asked about the people in the back of the Limo as far as I could tell. We appeared to have been expected.
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