by Glen Robins
Penh sprang around the table like a cat pouncing on prey. “Belize? What is he doing there?”
“I can’t confirm yet that it is him, sir. The report simply says there is a request for an emergency landing. It is a small plane requesting permission to land there to refuel.”
“Then why do you mention it?” Penh barked. “Why is this relevant if you are not sure it’s him?”
Still unfazed, the foreman continued, his voice even and unrushed. “This aircraft is unregistered and has no flight plan. It has been off the radar for an indeterminable amount of time. They have been flying very low so that no one has been able to spot them.”
“So, what has this to do with anything?”
“My men and I have reasoned among ourselves, trying to determine Mr. Cook’s next move. We came to the assumption that Cook is making his way north. Perhaps he is trying to return to his home. After what happened, he must be very concerned about his mother and girlfriend. Our theory is that he will contact them soon, but more likely, he will attempt to visit them, like he did in Chicago, perhaps in disguise.”
Penh inclined his head, then curled his lips upward and nodded. “Your theory makes sense.”
“Based on our assumptions and knowing something about his history, this conclusion seems logical. He would seem to us to be a man who would be concerned about his family. So we have been tracking airfields along the coastline, hoping something like this would show up.”
Penh continued to nod his head slowly. “We must verify first before we act.”
“Of course, sir.”
“There must be closed-circuit TVs in the area.”
“We are patched in, but there is nothing to see yet.” The foreman leaned down to place his hand on his keyboard. He toggled to a different screen and pointed at the video feed showing a corporate jet taxiing on a nearly empty runway. “Obviously, this is not the plane we suspect Mr. Cook to be on.” Bringing up another screen, he added, “This more closely resembles the kind of plane the witnesses on the boat described.” Penh nodded again, so the foreman continued his narrative. “This is the most common float plane used in the region. Equipped with this type of float”—he pointed to the fixed landing gear—“allows the plane to land on either land or water. It is an amphibious float.”
“What type of plane did your contact say was looking to make the emergency landing?”
Pointing at the plane on the screen, the foreman said, “A Cessna similar to this one.”
Penh put both palms flat on the table next to the foreman’s keyboard and exhaled as he stared at the image on the screen. “The chances Cook is on board that plane are very slim, are they not?”
“Granted, but I have sent a request to the fueling service to send me pictures of the occupants of that plane when it lands. If Cook is as smart as we think he is, he will stay very close to the plane and the plane will not stay long on the ground.”
“What makes you think the ground crew will cooperate with your requests?”
“Because,” said the foreman with a wry smile, “I hacked the email server of the Ministry of National Security of Belize. He thinks I am one of the undersecretaries.”
“Well done,” said Penh, mirroring the man’s mischievous look of triumph. “Report to me immediately when you receive a response.”
“Yes, sir.”
****
Over the coastline of Belize
June 17, 8:39 a.m. Local Time; 7:39 a.m. Pacific Time
They were in trouble. Indicator lights flashed while a buzzer alarm shrieked. A monotoned, machine-like voice repeated “fuel levels are low” every ten seconds.
“Come on, baby, just a few more miles. Come on,” shouted the pilot as he banged the dashboard with his fist.
Collin’s hands trembled as he tapped the screen on his phone to answer Lukas’s incoming call.
“Looks like you guys slowed down. Something wrong?” Lukas asked.
“We’re low on fuel. Trying to conserve to make sure we get there is all,” said Collin. “Plus, we’re waiting for the go-ahead to land. We requested an emergency landing, but have to wait for another plane to clear out first. You’ve requested our dark landing already, haven’t you?”
Collin could hear him pounding on his keyboard. “Yeah, it was all set up, but that window has passed. Now they’ve got that other jet on approach, so they tell us we have to wait until it’s at the gate.”
“Um . . . that’s not going to work. We don’t have enough fuel to circle and wait. We’ve got to come down ASAP,” said Collin.
“I’ll alert them to your situation, remind them what’s going on.”
“We’re four miles out from the municipal airport,” the pilot announced. “We can stay in the air another three minutes max, so we need to have clearance to land—soon.”
“I’m on it. Call you right back,” Lukas said. As always, he was cool under pressure. The reassurance in his voice gave Collin hope.
Turning to the pilot, Collin said, “The only question now is if we can make it to the airport.”
“Luckily, the alarms go off when there is still about five gallons of fuel left. We’ll make it. We just need him to handle the logistics so we can leave again as soon as we refuel.” Seeing Collin’s face, he grinned and added, “Welcome to the exciting world of covert bush piloting in Central America.”
****
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
June 17, 10:40 p.m. Local Time; 7:40 a.m. Pacific Time
Pho Nam Penh leaned one shoulder against the wall next to the window, one leg crossed over the other at the ankles, and stared out over the darkened and empty marketplace. It was silent outside except for the occasional barking dog or honking horn in the distance. He blew smoke upward toward the ceiling and watched it spiral as it climbed. His face was a mask of cool indifference. Every movement was calculated to display the image of a general in total control. The men in the room needed to see that, needed to believe in him as their leader. One battle had been lost, but the war was still on, and the next battle would be theirs. Of this he was supremely confident. The nonchalance of his body language conveyed that.
“Sir,” said the foreman from across the room. “The CCTV feed just went blank.” His fingers danced across his keyboard as he spoke.
“What? How?” said Penh, as he pushed off the wall with an elbow to stand straight.
“My contact at the fueling station said that surely we at the Ministry of National Security should know since it was at our command. He also said that only select personnel are allowed on the airfield at this time and he is not one of them, as I should well know.”
“Ask him who gave the orders,” Penh demanded.
A whir of key tapping in a message window. “Sir, he says it was General Duarte.”
“Good. Then find this General Duarte and ask for more information about the situation,” instructed Penh. “I assume the name and email account you’re using is an authentic one and of high enough rank.”
“Yes, sir,” said the foreman as he opened another chat window and typed furiously.
Both the foreman and Penh stared at the screen, silently awaiting the general’s reply.
When the message popped up on the screen, there was a simple answer. No queries, no probing, no verification of identity. “The American NSA,” it said.
Penh straightened up. He scratched his chin as he began a slow pace toward the window. His jaw muscles quivered and his nostrils flared. Sharp, audible intakes of breath punctuated every other click of his loafers on the concrete floor. “Belize is a member of the Commonwealth of Nations. So, being under British control, they are allies of the United States. It makes sense that they would cooperate so readily.” A pause as he turned on his heels and headed back to the wall opposite the window. “Now we know that Mr. Cook has help from someone in the NSA.”
Another pause, another sharp breath. “That explains a lot.” Penh curled his upper lip as his head nodded. “Mr. Chao,” he sna
pped his finger shot and shot a look across the table to an older man with a few wrinkles around his eyes and a few gray hairs in his facial stubble. The older gentleman stood. “What have we learned from Mr. Cook’s cloned hard drive?”
“Well, sir, we know that there are unusual security protocols and verification scripts that run upon start up. We know there is biometric ID verification and a register that indicates past access to the United States government’s national secured database. We have tried to replicate the access point, but it requires interaction with another drive, which we believe has been walled off.”
Penh listened carefully as he turned and paced back toward the window. “Are we talking about a drive that can be accessed online?”
“It does not appear to be, sir. There is no IP address for the drive, only a drive code. From what we can tell, it’s a neighboring drive on the same machine.”
“So you’re telling me that Mr. Cook’s laptop may provide us access to top-secret US government databases?”
“I cannot guarantee that, sir, but that may be the case.”
“Thank you, Mr. Chao. It appears that Mr. Cook continues to surprise us with his hidden secrets, no? Well, this will just make our meeting that much sweeter. However, it also makes it that much more urgent. We need to draw him out and catch him off guard. Unlocking the secrets on that computer may pay enormous dividends,” Penh said, almost to himself. He pointed across the table to a young technician who wore a black T-shirt and a perpetual sneer. “Have we accomplished our first step?”
“Yes, sir,” answered the young man sitting next to Mr. Chao. “Mission accomplished. The package is secured. Mr. Howell will be crossing the border into Mexico with our team members shortly. They are preparing him for the border crossing, taking all precautions, as instructed.”
“Very good. We don’t want any mishaps. He is too valuable an asset to lose and one mistake with him could jeopardize our whole operation.”
Chapter Six
Belize Municipal Airport, Belize City, Belize
June 17, 8:42 a.m. Local Time; 7:42 Pacific Time
The tower confirmed their clearance to land just before the engines started to sputter. They were over water, heading toward land, but the pilot was veering away from the main runway, heading to the northwest. The plane was losing power. Collin could feel the thrust from the engine fading. It felt like they were merely gliding, though he could see the propeller continuing to spin.
Collin gripped the handle in front of him, squeezed his eyes shut, and prayed. His lips moved but nothing came out. He opened his eyes, looked up toward the sky, and said, “Please, God, help us.”
“Do I get the sense that you don’t trust me?” asked the pilot, grinning.
Collin looked at him blankly.
“I’ve done this before, you know. You really don’t need to worry so much.”
“But we’re almost out of gas, aren’t we?”
“We’ve got plenty to land here. We just can’t go much farther.”
“Oh, right. I feel much better,” said Collin, his sarcasm on full display.
The pilot fiddled with some buttons on his control panel. “Look here,” he said, pointing at the in-dash monitor in front of Collin. It had been showing a map of the ground around them with a blue dot indicating their position. “I’ve configured your MFD—that’s a multi-functional display—to mirror the one on my side. See?” He indicated with his finger that the two screens were now identical. “I’ll have you watch everything I’m doing to keep your mind off the blasted alarm bells.”
The pilot scanned the horizon. “See out there in the distance? That’s our runway. We’re coming in perpendicular,” he said as he thumbed his controls and began speaking to the tower, announcing their approach and asking which runway to use. Once he got the information he needed, he pulled out a small booklet and showed it to Collin. “See here? They’re sending us out to this runway. It’s the northernmost one, built out into the water. But that won’t be a problem. I’ve landed here before.”
The pilot continued his preparations for landing, explaining to Collin what he was doing at each step and showing him what each dial and reading meant. He pointed out and explained the functions of the throttle, flaps, airspeed indicator, altimeter, and the horizon indicator.
Before Collin knew it, the pilot was adjusting the flaps and trim to gain speed by dropping at a steeper angle than Collin had ever experienced. Barking over the din in the cabin, the pilot said with a smile, “Watch and learn, boy. This is Bush Piloting one-oh-one. We need to increase our airspeed without power before landing so we don’t nosedive.”
Collin’s mind flashed back to the landing on a grass strip in the mountains of Colombia just a few weeks earlier. The thought simultaneously brought hope and terror. That landing strip, hidden in the midst of a forest, was a target smaller even than this one. He remembered the dive through the trees and said to himself, This one ought to be easier.
“Don’t worry. I’ve done this before,” shouted the pilot into his microphone over the commotion of the wind and the alarms. “I’m adjusting the flaps now.” Collin watched him push in the blue-handled knob one notch.
Collin looked out the forward window. When he saw what they were aiming for and factored in their airspeed, his mouth opened in horror and his grip on the dashboard handle tightened. He quickly shut his mouth and forced back a sickening feeling. The airstrip looked like a dock or a pier floating in the water, attached by two perpendicular roads and some grass to the main body of the airport. It was narrow and short and crisscrossed with cracks and seams.
“We’ve been relegated to the outer runway—the short one, surrounded by water on three sides. They tell me it’s much easier to cut the cameras to this runway so we can come in undetected.”
But Collin worried more about hitting the rocky sea wall at the near end of the runway than coming in undetected. They were headed right for it. The pilot pulled up and increased power to the engine just in time, nosing up just enough for the wheels to touch a spot not more than ten feet beyond the rocks, causing the plane to bounce once, then twice. By the time the plane settled, they were traveling faster than Collin had ever experienced upon landing. The tires squealed and the airframe shuddered as the pilot applied all the force he could on the brakes. The Cessna came to an abrupt halt when the front wheel dropped over the edge of the pavement.
Sweat rolled down the pilot’s temple and forehead. He grinned and wiped it off on the shoulders of his shirt, then turned to Collin and said, “Remind me to thank your friend for securing a driveway for us to land on.”
They jumped out of the plane and physically pulled and pushed with all their strength until the front wheel was back on the cracked pavement. Airport employees loaded in the back of an ancient pickup truck rushed toward them. The pilot wasted no time and asked as politely as possible where he could buy fuel. A negotiation took place, during which the pilot produced a small bundle of hundred-dollar bills and peeled off three of them to hasten the transaction and secure an escort to a private fueling station next to a small hanger at the far end of the tiny airfield.
Twenty-nine minutes after their miraculous landing, Collin and the pilot were once again airborne. Next destination: Villahermosa, Mexico.
****
Scripps Cancer Research Patient Clinic, La Jolla, California
June 17, 9:09 a.m. Pacific Time
Emily turned toward the rustling sound to her right where Sarah was stirring in her bed, struggling to open her eyes. When she finally did, Emily greeted her with as cheery a “Good morning” as she could muster.
“I guess you could call it that,” said Sarah. Her tone did not carry its customary upbeat tenor.
“You don’t sound like your usual self over there, Sarah. What’s the matter?”
“I would much rather be in my own bed at home. I’m not a big fan of hospitals, you know. They’re too noisy; it’s too hard to sleep here,” said Sarah, rubbing h
er eyes. “What time is it, anyway?”
Emily chuckled. “Well, it’s after nine o’clock. You seem to have slept pretty well, all things considered.”
Sarah looked embarrassed. “Is it really? Aren’t I a lazy mutt?”
This made Emily smile. For such an elegant and classy lady, Emily found Sarah to be refreshingly candid and self-deprecating when they were one-on-one. She held no pretenses nor false images. She was what she was and cared little what others thought of her. Sarah Cook was her own woman and was comfortable being who she was.
“I thought Rob said he was bringing coffee this morning. Shouldn’t he here by now?” asked Emily.
“Robert has never been terribly punctual, so I wouldn’t worry too much about him just yet. But if he said he’s bringing coffee this morning, maybe he could bring me one of those croissants or coffee cakes they sell at the coffee shops. I’m starving.”
Emily smiled even wider. “I’ll check your diet chart first to make sure it’s approved,” she said, with an exaggerated teacher-like wag of the finger. She scrolled to his number quickly and placed the phone to her ear. She turned to Sarah, pulling her brows together and twisting her lips in disappointment. “Rob, this is Emily. Hey, on your way in, assuming you’re on your way to visit us, could you also get some croissants and coffee cakes for me and Sarah? Thanks, amigo. See you soon.”
As Emily hung up, a puzzled look still on her face, the door burst open and a jolly “Good morning, ladies” boomed forth. It was Henry. He held a bouquet of flowers in each hand and an ear-to-ear grin on his face. Megan and Richard, Collin’s sister and brother, followed closely behind. Megan carried a bag with the logo of a popular bagel shop on it while Richard carried a drink holder with four cups of coffee. The fifth cup he held out for his mother. Everyone wore smiles and giggled, doing their best to chase out the fears and worries and pain of the last several days.