“Barely a system at all,” Sonora said. “Held together by promises from the Assembly. Bigger budget every year, but the money never quite makes it out of the administration building.” Her fingers clicked rapidly over the keyboard. She frowned, pounded on the “enter” key with more force than was strictly necessary, and frowned more.
Finally, she shook her head. “No flight from Canada landed here in the last few hours, except for a US government plane,” she said.
“That was ours,” Brock said. “Can you search by departure point?”
“Si,” Sonora said. More typing.
Sam’s weariness returned in force. How tough can this be? It’s the twenty-first century, and there’s a robot on Mars right now. She felt Brock’s arm around her waist. He kissed her neck. He had a knack for sensing her tension, and for releasing it.
“No,” Sonora said after a few million more mouse clicks. “Several from the States, one from the other side of Canada. Nothing left British Columbia for anywhere further south than Mexico today.”
Sonuvabitch. “Can you search by aircraft tail number?”
Sonora checked her watch, and a small sigh escaped. “Si, but then I am off shift.”
Sam focused on her breathing while Sonora worked the computer. Moments later, a printer next to Sonora’s computer came to life. It spit out a single page. Brock recognized it as a VFR flight plan. Visual Flight Rules plans were almost never used in the commercial aviation business, and definitely not for international travel with paying passengers.
But there it was, clear as day. The Obsidian Air tail number in question was flown VFR to Tucson, Arizona, with six souls on board. The flight plan was opened just a few moments before their own aircraft departed Canada, and it was closed out hours ago.
“The aircraft took off from Pitt Regional in Canada and landed at Tucson International,” Sonora summarized.
“We’ve been screwed.” Sam said.
Brock nodded. “Hard.”
Then a thought struck. “Can you print a list of everything that left Tucson International in the past, say, eight hours?”
Sonora began to look thoroughly put upon, and glanced pointedly at her watch.
“I’m very sorry,” Sam said. “It’s just very important that we catch this person. He could be extremely dangerous, and he’s doing a great deal of damage to a lot of people right now.”
Sonora pursed her lips, then nodded. “I am happy to help you with this one last thing,” she said. More sarcasm? Sam wasn’t sure.
It took far more time than Sam anticipated, and she began to see why Sonora was none too happy about the request. “Next year, retirement,” the clerk said with a sigh. “But I am still younger than this system.” She pounded the “enter” key several more times, and the printer began spewing pages.
Sonora collected the papers, stapled them, and handed them to Sam. “It has been my pleasure serving you this morning,” she lied.
Morning. Sam looked at her watch. It was definitely three hours past midnight. I’ve got to get some sleep at some point.
“Thank you very much for your help,” Brock said. “We really do appreciate it.”
They took the report and sat down in the waiting area to study the Tucson departures. They weren’t sure what they were looking for, and it was entirely possible that Sabot Mondragon was sleeping peacefully in a Tucson hotel at the moment, or on an overnight flight to Anyplace Else.
Sam’s phone rang. “Hi, Dan. Good news, please.”
“Sorry, boss. Not much of that right now. There’s huge demand for my favorite satellite.”
Balls. The Zip Line system was backed up with requests, and Dan evidently wasn’t able to use it to locate the cell phone belonging to the driver who had taken Trojan and Harv.
Something struck her as odd. Who’s pinging cell phones by the hundreds at three in the morning? “Who has access to the system?” she asked.
“Well, we do, obviously, but I can’t imagine anyone at Homeland is burning the midnight oil. Then there’s NSA — it’s their bird, actually — and the Agency as well. And the Bureau, of course, but they’re pretty anal about jumping through all the legal hoops.”
“All my favorites,” Sam said glumly. “Do you think it would be possible for someone with access to the system to artificially bog it down?”
“On purpose? Sure.”
Sam pondered. Perhaps the Agency angle wasn’t so implausible after all.
“You’re hatching a conspiracy theory, aren’t you?” Dan asked.
Sam chuckled. “Dan, there’s obviously a conspiracy. I’m just trying to figure out who’s playing along.”
“Good point. While you do that, I’ll go to work on Harv’s private cell phone account, and maybe Trojan’s. Maybe we’ll be able to use the ‘locate my phone’ function to get a bead on one or both of them.”
“You’re so much more than just a pretty face,” Sam teased. “Someone should give you a raise.”
“If only my boss cared about me,” Dan quipped before hanging up.
Sam turned back to the list of departing flights out of Tucson. “Find anything?”
Brock shrugged. “Great big pile of bupkis. I mean, he could be on any of these flights, or none of them. We have no clue where he was headed.”
Sam frowned. “Yeah, we’re pretty much grabbing at straws here, until we can get our hands on passenger manifests for all of those flights.”
“How can you do that?”
Sam smiled. “We are Big Brother. But there’s some serious bureaucracy involved and it ain’t gonna happen at three in the morning.”
“Wait a sec,” Brock said, holding up a sheet full of flight plans. “Here’s one with a Canadian dip code.”
“Dip code?”
“A code identifying the passengers as being under Canadian diplomatic protection. It’s supposed to minimize air traffic delays, but mostly it’s just there to avoid customs.”
“Headed where?”
“Macedonia.”
“From Tucson?”
“Via Charlotte, then Heathrow, then Rome, then Zagreb, and winding up in Skopje.”
“Sounds terrible.”
“Tell me about it. I’d prefer to sleep on gravel than spend that much time in a metal tube.” This from the fighter pilot of twenty years.
“How tough would it be to buy yourself a diplomatic code?” Sam asked, mind churning.
“I have no idea. In the third world, probably pretty easy. All you’d probably need is a fat roll of cash. But in Canada?”
Sam nodded. “Probably not terribly corrupt up there.”
“Anyway, why would our guy want to go to Macedonia?”
“No extradition treaty with Uncle Sugar.”
Brock’s eyebrows arched. “Pretty good reason, if you’re the guy who just ripped off a few zillion dollars.”
“Except that he didn’t just steal from US citizens,” Sam realized. “Those accounts belonged to people all over the world.”
“Hmm.” Brock smiled. “I doubt there’s any good place to hide.”
Sam chuckled. “Some places are better than others. Bring a giant fortune to a poor country, and you could keep the local politicians on your side for a very long time.”
“I like his odds in Central America,” Brock said.
Sam nodded. “I agree. Let’s not race off to Europe just yet.”
“But we’re kind of dead in the water here.”
“And our posse is short by two,” Sam reminded him.
“Right. I’d hate to leave that annoying Harv behind.”
“Be nice.”
Sam’s phone dinged with a text message from Dan: “Pay dirt. I love cell phones.”
“Looks like Dan located their phones,” she said, rising from her seat in the aviation authority’s lobby and grabbing Brock’s hand.
Brock smiled. “How many assholes have you caught that way?”
“Too many to count,” Sam said as they made their w
ay out of the aviation administration building.
“You think people would catch on.”
“There are surprisingly few other options,” Sam said, supporting Brock’s weight as he hobbled on his wounded leg. “I think there are maybe a dozen pay phones left on the planet. The key is keeping your cell number anonymous, and that’s actually pretty easy to do by using disposable phones. But once we get ahold of a number, it’s pretty much over.”
“That’s not all bad,” Brock said. “I know one guy who’s pretty happy about your ability to locate people.” He squeezed her arm.
“I know one girl who’s very, very happy as well.” Sam would never have been able to rescue Brock from his kidnappers without manipulating the cell phone system. She shuddered to think what the outcome of the previous weekend’s nightmare might have been without that capability. And without her willingness to abuse it.
“I’m sure Harv and Trojan won’t mind your snooping, either,” Brock said.
Sam smiled. “Let’s not get cocky. Knowing where they are is one thing, but springing them loose from a foreign intelligence agency on its home turf is quite another.”
She got out her phone and dialed. It rang four times, then a familiar voice answered. “McClane.” It was four a.m. on the East Coast, but it didn’t sound to Sam like her boss had been asleep.
“Hi, Mace,” Sam said. “Up all night at a rave?” She placed one finger in her other ear to drown out the high-pitched whine of a power cart on the airport ramp.
“Funny. No,” Mason McClane said. He’d occupied the Division Chief role for a little over a year. It had taken DHS a while to fill the position, due in no small measure to the fact that McClane’s two predecessors had both died violent deaths. Job description: answer email, sit in boring meetings, eat a bullet. Who wouldn’t sign up?
“Where are you?” McClane asked.
Sam filled him in on the previous day’s fun: her time at the Lost Man Lake Ranch, hideout and de facto headquarters of the conspiracy that had successfully crushed the banking system, and her mad dash to Seattle, Canada, and then Costa Rica in pursuit of the Bitcoin thief Sabot Mondragon.
“Costa Rica?” McClane asked when she finished her update.
“But not for long,” Sam said. “Doesn’t look like Mondragon ever landed here. So I’d like you to summarily execute the Obsidian Air clerk who lied to me, and get the passenger manifest for every flight that left Tucson International yesterday after four p.m.”
McClane chuckled. “The first request would actually be much easier than the second. Could take a while to convince a judge to release all those names. Hell, it could take a while to even find a federal judge.”
Sam had expected a bit of resistance. “Can you think of a more high-profile fugitive than the richest man in the world?”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“And Harv’s been kidnapped, I forgot to mention.”
“Jesus, Sam.”
“And I shot a couple of DIS goons.”
Silence.
“I didn’t kill them. I’m hoping to exchange prisoners, but I’m not sure how tight their connection might be to the guy who’s actually holding Harv.” And Trojan, the hacker, who was also a hostage, but Sam didn’t want to needlessly complicate the conversation.
“Jesus,” McClane said again.
“So, there’s going to be a bit of a thing in about thirty minutes. I’ll let you know how it goes.”
More silence.
“Mace, get some sleep. Normally you’d have some bullshit bureaucratic platitude about being smart and safe, but you’re too tired even for that.”
“I need to get the op approved, Sam. You’re on foreign soil. Stand down until you hear from me.”
“Understood.” Not on your life. “I need something else. A Canadian diplomatic flight left Tucson yesterday afternoon for Skopje, Macedonia. The passenger manifest won’t be in the regular system. We need to know who was on that flight.”
“I don’t see the connection,” McClane said.
“There might not be one,” Sam said. “Then again, we might just find a lead on whoever is controlling Mondragon.”
A long pause. “I’ll get our people to work on the manifests.”
Sam read him the diplomatic code from the flight plan. McClane read back the code, then added, “I meant what I said, Sam. You are to stand down awaiting further guidance from myself or the Director. The last thing we need is another gunfight in a friendly country.”
“They nabbed our guy, Mace, and nearly had all of us in the bag. How friendly can they be?”
“I need to hear you say it, Sam.”
Sam’s jaw clenched. “I acknowledge your directive, Mace.” Which wasn’t the same thing as agreeing to obey, a subtlety she hoped wasn’t obvious to McClane in his current sleep-deprived condition.
“Good. You’ll hear from me soon,” McClane said, confirming Sam’s suspicions about his mental state.
“Mace, I need those manifests,” Sam said, both to remind McClane and to change the subject.
“Got it. Meantime, find a place to set up a mobile command center and keep your phone charged.”
Which was a perfectly asinine process-oriented bureaucratic non-solution, Sam thought. Meanwhile, here in the real world, two hostages need rescuing.
“It was actually pretty easy,” Dan explained after Sam and Brock had made their way back to the US government airplane parked across the tarmac at Juan Santamaria International.
“You used the Homeland trapdoor?” Uncle Sugar had thrown his weight around, and the telecommunications industry had done the smart thing: granted permanent access to all users’ accounts, with some vague stipulations about warrants, necessity, or the capricious whims of the feds, who were obviously on the side of goodness and truth.
“Actually, even easier. I guessed Harv’s password.”
“You’re kidding,” Sam said.
“Nope. Remember that personalized license plate on his penis extender?”
“That giant Super Maxi-Douche diesel truck of his? ‘Banger’ or something stupid like that?”
“Exactly. I added his birth year to the end. Got right in.”
Brock shook his head. “Holy shit. I thought you feds were supposed to be smarter than that.”
Dan chuckled. “There isn’t a system on the earth that can’t be broken into, but most of the time you don’t have to break in. People are the biggest security risk by far.” He handed a set of handwritten coordinates to Sam. “They’re in a warehouse twenty minutes away, and they haven’t moved in the last hour.”
“How inventive.” Sam glanced at the three Costa Rican security service agents tied up and bleeding in the back of the airplane. “How are our guests?”
Dan cocked his head and put a worried expression on his face. “Our two wounded warriors need to get to a hospital. Shock is setting in.”
Sam shook her head. “We still need the leverage. Think we can stabilize them?”
“Worth a try. Any luck with the flight manifests?”
“Maybe, but we’ll have to wait until the pencil pushers in DC can pull a few strings.”
Dan smiled. “I take it you’ve talked to Mace?”
“Could you tell by the frown on my face?”
“So we’re supposed to be smart and play it safe, right?”
Sam smiled. “How’d you guess?”
“I’m glad ‘smart’ and ‘safe’ are open to interpretation,” Dan said. Sam didn’t bother to tell him about the part of the conversation that was clearly not open to interpretation. Dan understood very well that it was a long way from the Beltway to reality, but he had a wife and a kid to think about. Sam didn’t want him to worry about getting fired for disobeying orders. That would be all on her.
Dan called up the map of Alajuela. It was a big city, just a bit smaller than San José. Traffic would undoubtedly get heavy after dawn. A blue dot depicted the location of Harv’s cell phone. Sam hoped it al
so depicted the location of Harv’s fat self, and the skinny hacker as well.
They conversed briefly about their tactical options, none of which were entirely satisfactory. Then Sam mulled quietly, lips pursed, hands steepled on her chin. Dan resisted the temptation to whistle a game show tune.
After a few moments, Sam had made up her mind. She briefed them on her plan.
When she had finished, Dan shook his head and chuckled. “You’ve got brass balls, woman,” he said.
Sam smiled. “Fortune hates pussies.”
“I don’t think you quoted it right.”
“I’m sure that’s what they meant.” She turned to the government passenger plane’s pilot. “File three different flight plans. Make sure we’re ready to leave on a moment’s notice.”
“No prob. Where should I file to?” he asked.
She told him.
“You’re kidding me, right? You know how much work that will take?”
“No. But feel free to file a union grievance later. Meantime, chop-chop.”
She looked at Dan and Brock. “Bullshit flags? Emotional outbursts? Now’s the time.”
They both shook their heads. “Gutsy plan,” Dan said, “and I reserve the right to blame you if it all goes to hell.”
17
Sabot Mondragon awoke. His head felt clear. He felt comfortable, well-rested, awake, alive. He’d dreamt vivid, strange, disconcerting dreams, but they seemed distant, inconsequential in the warm light of dawn.
He threw back the covers on the bed. High thread count. Expensive and luxurious. Down comforter, also top-end.
He lifted his head from the feather pillow, sat up on the edge of the bed, rubbed the sleep from his eyes, then padded to the bathroom. He relieved himself. He felt and smelled lingering sex on his body. It excited him.
He climbed back in bed, and moved up against Angie’s warm, naked body. She was asleep next to him, facing away.
She awoke, stirred, moved her hips against his. He felt her wetness, slipped inside her, sighed, bit her neck. Angie. He smelled the familiar perfume, pulled her hair back from her face to kiss her lips.
The Essential Sam Jameson / Peter Kittredge Box Set: SEVEN bestsellers from international sensation Lars Emmerich Page 172