by Tony Lavely
“He’s in the right hand seat.”
“Naturally.” The plane dipped and then rose; Beckie grabbed the door frame to keep from falling. “Okay. Here’s the plan. I go first, and introduce him to the folly of flying uninvited with Air Jamse. Hang here until I call or you feel the plane’s outta control. You can take the left seat, right?”
Mathilde nodded. Beckie reached for the sliding accordion door and shoved it open. She brought the Ruger around before the man in the seat looked back. Bouncing it off his skull fazed him just enough for her to slip in behind him and point the open end of the barrel at his eye from about four inches away.
“¿Hablas Inglés?”
He nodded until Beckie tapped his ear with her sling. “Good. Mathilde, come on in and be careful.” When she reached the seat, Beckie said, “Take the wheel and head due west. I want to get past the two hundred mile limit. Then turn north. You got enough gas to get us home?”
“We’ll talk in a few minutes.”
“Okay. This gentleman is going to get out of his seat now, and I’d like you to be ready in case he tries something stupid and his lifeless body falls into your lap. Okay?”
The man’s shudder echoed Mathilde’s grimace. “Okay, you.” She wiggled the gun just enough to show him the way. “Up and back into the cabin.” I wonder just how we’re gonna be able to get these guys secure with just the two of us. And if there’s anything to tie ‘em up with. “Sit there beside your buddy.”
“Everything okay?”
Yeah, Amy sounds a little better now. “Fine. You see any rope or—”
“You got these guys?” When Beckie nodded in agreement, Amy said, “Here, take the Colt.” She handed the M1911 over. “Mom leaves a kit everywhere she goes. There’ll be tape, good unremovable adhesive tape. You know the kind.” She smirked as she stood and went aft. “Hey, what’d they do to Janice?”
“We’ll see to her in a minute. Right now…”
Amy ran back up the aisle. “How’s best?”
“Hang on.” She handed Amy the Ruger so she could check the M1911. “Okay, four rounds left. Good.” She took the Ruger and shoved it into her back pocket. When she looked at the men this time, she recognized the not-pilot from the car ride to Salvadore’s ranch. A glance at Amy with her head cocked toward him. Amy twisted her lip and nodded, then shrugged. Beckie matched it, then focused. “First, both you guys, put your seat belts on.” The M1911 helped enforce her words. When the belts clicked, she scurried around to the end of the sofa. “If you so much as twitch, the round will go through both your heads. Even if it doesn’t, there’s more behind it. Should you feel the need to even sneeze, holler out first, without moving. Got it?” When they didn’t respond, she racked the slide.
“Yes!” and “¡Si!” rang out loud and clear.
“Okay, Amy, start with the guy farthest away. Since I can get them both with a single shot… Four turns of tape around the seat belt buckles, then pull them as tight as you can.” When that was done, she said, “Now, they’re gonna hold hands and you’re gonna tape their wrists together. And their hands. Then, tape their other hands to the… to the outside seatbelt, I guess.”
Amy showed a welcome flash of ingenuity; instead of the outside seatbelts, she taped their free hands to the other’s opposite knee, which looked awkward, but since they were settled in for a nice seven hour voyage, Beckie was okay with it.
“Hope you got my meds, Amy.” Beckie had just freed Janice. The co-pilot had a headache and a slight cut above her ear, but her pupils were the same size and reacted to light, so based on her lack of experience, Beckie hoped any concussion was light.
Amy pitched a plastic bottle over the seat back; Beckie caught it and found a water bottle. Fortified, she went forward to talk to Mathilde.
Their discussion covered the several problems Mathilde listed: leaving Peru without clearing Customs and Immigration, not allowing Peruvian citizens to leave the plane before departure, carrying a dead citizen around, not following the flight plan, and running closer to maximum range than Mathilde was comfortable with.
“We’d probably make it, but if weather comes up—”
Beckie’s sat phone rang with the team members’ ring tone. She and Mathilde shared a questioning look before she touched Accept.
“Beckie?” Shen’s voice came out of the instrument.
“Yes? Shen? What—”
“Else was right. She was monitoring the surveillance system on the Gulfstream—”
“Our Gulfstream? The one I’m… the one I’m sitting in right now?”
“That very one. She spent several minutes trying to reach Ian once the attackers made their move on Janice and Mathilde. I thought I saw Janice up and about?”
“Right. So all our exploits are captured on video, huh?” Mathilde was very focused on the uninteresting view out the cockpit windscreen. “Hold on a second, Shen.” She touched Mathilde’s shoulder. “Did you know that?”
“Not till the phone rang. Or… I guess I knew, but didn’t think about it. We never turn it off, since your experience going to Egypt. But I’d never have thought Else would be watching it…”
“Oh. Yeah, of course. I guess if I’d thought about it…” She spoke to the phone again. “So, Shen, did she get hold of Ian? Or anyone?”
“We did. The message, which he’ll convey directly as soon as we finish, is that you should proceed directly to Lima per Mathilde’s flight plan. The police will board and remove the two men and the body. They’ve already seen the video; they will not be interested in you beyond routine questioning.”
The plane was already in a turn back to the east.
“Good news, Shen. Thank Else for us, please! And did she say why she happened to be watching us this morning?”
“She had nothing else to do, she says. And she may have been testing some minor enhancements to the system.”
“Hmm.” She muted the phone and laughed. “Serves us right, I guess, giving a brilliant engineer near complete freedom!” Mathilde chuckled along with her as she unmuted the phone. “Okay, Shen, we’re headed back to Lima. As if you didn’t know that already. Thanks again, to everyone! See you soon.”
Ian’s call came seconds after she disconnected; she had great pleasure in the conversation even though it contained no new information.
The stop in Lima took three hours instead of one, but once they’d pointed out Amy’s single shot from the Ruger had ended in one of the tables in the plane rather than a person, the small revolver’s existence seemed to fade away. Mathilde landed them safely on the Nest before ten that night.
Chapter Sixteen
Coral Gables
FRIDAY AFTER NEW YEAR’S, AMY grabbed her bag and Beckie’s from the cab that had brought them from Fort Lauderdale airport to Beckie’s house in Coral Gables. While Beckie had had the metal thing removed from her arm—“A wonderful Christmas present,” she’d admitted—it had been replaced by a fiberglass cast, so carrying things was still problematic.
Amy said, “I can get all this stuff. You go open the door.”
The house was empty; the others hadn’t returned from their holidays yet, since the University’s classes began on the twentieth.
Unlike mine, she thought. I have till Monday. She shivered a little, but when Beckie asked if she was okay, she lied, “Just the air in here. Maybe I’ll open the window in my room.” The expression on Beckie’s face argued she’d been seen through. Do I want to get better at lying? Probably be convenient.
Still, she was scared. I haven’t been in public school since second grade.
She dropped Beckie’s bag on her bed and went on down the hall to the room she would live in for the next couple years, maybe. If she lasted that long. She fell to the bed, face up, staring at nothing. “Hey,” she heard Beckie call, “in an hour or so, we’ll go get pizza, okay?”
“Fine, Mom.” She heard Beckie’s answering laugh and closed her eyes.
The past week had been great fun;
if it hadn’t been she wasn’t sure she could go through with this… whatever it was Beckie was promoting. She and Dylan had talked, a lot, even his sister had talked to her about schools and such.
But second only to Dylan was the talk Eilís had had with her and Beckie, who, since Mr. Jamse was still in Peru, had flown up from the Nest for New Year’s and the trip back to Fort Lauderdale. Lying on the bed with eyes closed, she could see and hear it all again.
“I’ve talked to a friend in New York,” Eilís had told them. “After Pella’s testimony—”
“Who’s Pella?” Amy asked.
“Frankie Pella. One of Goldfarb’s minions. The one picked up in Peru with Salvadore’s mistress. Anyway, after he talked down there and then in New York, Talos’ sentence is being reviewed. But wait,” she said as Amy clutched at Dylan and Beckie smiled, “that’s not the good part. Well, maybe good’s not the right thing to say. Goldfarb was being investigated enroute to being disbarred, but he was run over outside his office. Hit and run.” She gave Beckie a long stare; so did Amy. That’s kind of a contented look. I wonder… No. Not going to go there. “He died at the hospital. It was a stolen car, and the driver hasn’t been found.” Eilís got a thoughtful look on her face. “I suppose it could have been Talos…”
“Why’s that?” Beckie asked.
Amy sat up in Dylan’s arms. Wait! Why’s Beckie surprised?
“I was reviewing the sale documents from Brewster, getting ready to add the deed restriction for Jo’s marker. Anyway, turns out Goldfarb executed all of the documents transferring the Brewster property to Maria Talos’ sole ownership. Given what you found, I can’t imagine Talos would have agreed if he’d been asked.
“Anyway, with that, and the arrests of Talos’ other men, well, we’ll keep watch, but it looks like you don’t need to worry about them.” She raised her flute. “Here’s to that!”
Amy glanced at Beckie, who was now gazing at her. “How about…” Amy choked on the name.
“Flores,” Beckie finished, patting her on the arm. “Silvio—”
“Yeah. Mr. Flores remains in Nassau. When the Bahamian proceedings against him are complete, my friend in the DA’s office in New York says they’ve already filed papers to bring him back.”
“Excellent!” Amy said as she high-fived with Beckie.
An hour later, Beckie’d finished unpacking and walked down to Amy’s room. She gave the sleeping girl a glance, then picked the footie sock off the bed. A little yank on the bare foot roused sleeping beauty. “Here,” she said. “Supposed to rain later; you might want this.” She tossed the sock over.
“Yeah, I guess.” Amy rubbed sleep from her eyes. “Everything okay?”
“Everything’s wonderful!”
Amy laughed as she sat up. “That’s your I-just-talked-to-Ian smile. Is he headed back?”
Beckie’s smiled faded a little. “No, not yet.” Her face brightened again, and Amy smiled. “But maybe in a couple months. Time to get some education in!” She reached with her right hand to pull Amy off the bed. “Let’s go. It’s time to meet Willie and his family for dinner.”
Amy followed Beckie down to the garage. “Miata or MINI?” Beckie said.
Amy studied them both; she took a deep breath. “Miata.” From the door, she finished, “With the top down, of course!”
Beckie laughed. “Of course!”
She dropped into the driver’s seat; as she reached for the shifter, Amy reached over the console to touch her hand. “Thanks, sister.”
Yeah. Ian’ll be back soon. And Willie’s just down the road a bit.
“Thank you, sister.”
Time to get on with my life. And Amy’ll do the same.
End Of
Connections
Beckie and Ian return in
Coda?
Read an excerpt here.
Buy Coda? here.
Appendix
Text of Notes
LEÓN’S FAKED ABBY EMAIL TO begin Amy’s lark:
Amy, can’t wait to see you again! The work’s going well here, and I can get away for a week or maybe ten days. If you want to get away too, well, I set it up. If you miss the flight, the whole thing will fall apart by itself, so you don’t have to worry if you can’t for whatever reason. Like your mom or Mr. Jamse object.
You can be my sister, Amy Rochambeau, ‘cause then you can be eighteen, and ok to be traveling by yourself. That passport’s in the care package I sent a day ago—I hope you got it!
I remembered about your open-water sailing, and figured Shen might have less influence in the Turks and Caicos than at Mayaguana, so if you can sail there and park your boat someplace, you’ll be booked on American Airlines from Providenciales to Miami at 3:30 the afternoon of September 3.
When you get to Miami, clear Customs as a citizen Miss Rochambeau! and wait outside the exit from arrivals in the North Terminal. I’ll send a big white limo for you; it’ll meet you there and I’ll see you later, down at Key West.
Hope you can do it! Love, Abby
Abby’s note to Ian, in the package with her passport:
Dewey, Cheatum and Howe JD
Samuel Goldfarb
León’s email to Abby:
Jolene, you haven’t answered any of your mail. That’s very naughty of you, and we need to find an adequate punishment. While we consider what that should be, enjoy the show at our favorite file-sharing site. You know what to do to free this girl and make us go away forever. If your memory needs jogged, just watch it again. I’m sure something will occur to you.
Amy’s note to Beckie:
Hi, Beckie! I don’t really expect you’ll ever read this unless I tell you about it first, but just in case. Mom’ll never look in my room, so something’ll have to really be wrong for you to see it, in which case, I want you to know what’s happened.
I got a little package from Abby the other day, but it said wait to open it, so I tucked it away in my underwear drawer. Then early today, Monday, I got an email from Abby.
She said she was able to take a week off, and if I wanted to join her, I should open the package. If I didn’t, or couldn’t, just leave the package alone. Ha-ha! You know I wasn’t going to pass up the chance!
You were flying, I guess, so I couldn’t talk to you. I ripped the package open and in it was a passport with my picture in it, and Amy Rochambeau’s name. She’s eighteen, or I am, I guess, with it! Inside the passport, there’s a plane ticket from Providenciales, that’s in the Turks and Caicos you know. She said she remembered when I told her about sailing there a couple years ago. My butt’s still sore from that ha-ha!
The ticket is from Providenciales to Miami, where she’s gonna send a limo to pick me up! A big white one, she said!
This will be such fun! I can’t wait!
Anyway, I expect I’ll be back in about a week, and then we can laugh about this letter before I burn it ha-ha.
Hope you and Mr. Jamse work your thing out. Thanks for helping out Shalin with Alisha; I really like both of them.
Your friend, ARA.
Abby’s letter to Amy:
A Rose,
I figure you’ll never see this, so whatever I write is safe. And, better safe than sorry.
I’ve really missed you the past few days. First, finding out you were being rap… [unreadable; smeared] account of me. Then I hear you’re dead, drowned somewhere. You’ll have to tell me about getting out of that; I am so happy! I was really happy to get your message that you were back home! I jumped up and about hit Eilís, I was so happy!
Eilís and I—I want you to meet her, she’s great! Anyway, we talked about me going home, but I decided, just me! that I’d keep on after those guys. From the instant I saw what they were doing to you, I promised myself that if they were gonna punish you because I was in the wrong place, I was gonna punish them for attacking the girl I love instead of me directly.
You’re smart enough to know better, so that’s all I’ll say. When I get back, it won’t m
atter. If I don’t get back, it won’t matter, except I’ll have tried to make sure those guys will never do that again.
Gotta get going now. This’ll be my last stop before I head home, probably with Mr. Jamse and anyone he brings to help me fight my fight. Not sure I want the help, but I finally accepted that I shouldn’t turn help down when it’s offered.
No matter what, I love you—finally figured that out! Can’t wait to see you again, hold you and kiss you—and make sure all your good parts are still in working order!
Bye till tomorrow, Jolene.
PS: It’s cool I’ll be able to use my name again! JAR
PPS: In the event, everything is yours. This is my will: it’s all yours. Signed Sep 16, Jolene Abigail Rochambeau.
Love you, girl!
The Nest
THE NEST IS A FICTITIOUS archipelago sited in the Commonwealth of the Bahamas. It is described by the map in the front matter, as well as here.
Cartography based on “Eastern Caribbean.” 21.680164° N and 73.463645° W. Google Earth. Image date not given. Accessed April 7, 2013.
There are seven islands, listed in order of decreasing size.
Port Cay: 11050 feet by 4050 feet (largest dimensions in two orthogonal directions). Average elevation is 15 feet, and the maximum elevation is 50 feet, both above mean high water (mhw). Port Cay houses the team’s airfield (8000’ by 200’ asphalt runway, heading east-west, east end is 18’ elevation, dropping to 12’ at the west end.). The island was artificially extended to accommodate the runway. To support aircraft operations, the island also has a hangar. The Nest’s communication and radar facilities are adjacent to the hangar.