Jet 04: Reckoning

by Russell Blake

  “And you have a bag of them around your neck. I want to party with you.”

  “I thought you were interested in more than my money.”

  He reached across the table and took her hand. “That’s what I tell people who have a lot of money.”

  She swatted at him playfully, and then closed the browser.

  “How long will it take to get to Tijuana?” he asked.

  “About three and a half hours. We should be there just before three o’clock.”

  “It’s a lot of flying.”

  “Followed by a whole lot of driving. Might as well get used to the idea. It’s going to be a lousy couple of days no matter how we slice it,” she said.

  The flight north was also smooth, and Jet caught another few hours of sleep, reasoning that it might be the last she got for the foreseeable future. When the plane descended on final approach she roused herself and stared out the window at the sprawling city, with San Diego in the near distance, only a few hundred yards separating the seemingly boundless prosperity of the richest nation in the world from its struggling neighbor to the south.

  Once they were in the main terminal, Jet called her contact and he told her to get a taxi from the airport and take it to the port city of Ensenada, an hour and a half south of the border, and to tell the driver to drop her off at the Hotel Coral marina. They quickly located a bank of waiting vehicles and within moments were racing through town to the coast road that ran from Tijuana to the tip of Baja.

  At four-thirty they pulled up to a large hotel on the water, just north of Ensenada, with a prominent sign announcing it as the Coral. The cab pulled around to the side, and once past the security guard, sped down a drive to the marina offices. Jet and Alan exchanged a look, and Jet paid the driver as she withdrew her phone and dialed the contact again. He answered on the third ring, and when she announced that they had arrived, he told her to hang up and look to her left.

  A man in colorful board shorts and a long-sleeved T-shirt waved at her, his baseball cap on backwards, sunglasses perched on his hawkish nose, a three-day growth of graying stubble adorning his face.

  “Welcome to paradise. You got my cash?” he asked by way of greeting, carrying a six-pack of beer in one hand and a paper bag in the other.

  “As agreed. How do you want to do this?”

  “We go to one of the boats down in the marina. You pay me. I start the engines and point the bow north. In less than three hours you’re in San Diego, free as birds, meeting my man Pancho, who has a car lined up for you,” he responded.

  “Just like that?” Alan asked skeptically.

  The man eyed him, then looked back at Jet.

  “We could make it more dramatic, and have you try to crawl through a tunnel in the worst section of TJ, hoping there’s nobody with a gun waiting for you on the other end. But I was thinking maybe a nice boat ride in a sixty-five foot Ocean that will do an easy thirty-knot cruise might be more your speed. Up to you, but I’d opt for the boat ride,” he said easily.

  “I love boat rides. Let’s go,” Jet said, and without further discussion they followed him down to the docks, where he opened the security gate and motioned for them to walk onto the floating concrete slabs. Once they were on the water, he led them to the end of the dock, where a beautiful fishing yacht was docked. A Mexican deck hand lounged on the transom, a blue bandana on his head.

  Jet inspected the back of the boat. “Pipe Dream?” she said, reading the name, noting it was flagged with Dana Point as its home port.

  “That’s right. It’s a U.S. boat. I run it back and forth all the time. Two ways to do this: either you take the dinghy once we’re in the harbor and head to the inspection dock, or we hook up with another boat out at the Coronado islands, you move to that boat, and it takes you in. If we do the dinghy, it’s a little riskier – the customs guys are used to me, and I know their drill cold, but nothing’s a hundred percent. Today, we’ll just do a straightforward switch to one of my buddy’s boats. He’s out fishing, but the fleet will head back by dusk, so we’ll have some privacy. You take that boat in, which doesn’t have to clear customs, and meet my contact for the car. Simple.”

  “You can’t be serious. There are no patrol boats to stop us?”

  “Sure, there are harbor patrol boats, but they don’t work for customs and immigration. They have to send a guy over from the airport to meet me and sign my forms. But it won’t matter – you’ll be coming into the harbor on a boat that’s not being watched,” he explained, and then grinned. “I’ve done this a few times. Don’t sweat it. I’ve got it down to a science. We can make it really difficult, but it isn’t. They aren’t expecting illegals to be on luxury cruisers. Hell, they don’t even inspect the boat. I could have a hundred kilos of coke in the bilge and they’d never notice. It’s wild. But there it is.”

  “Shall we count your money?” Jet asked, convinced.

  “My favorite part of the day. Watch your step as you board,” he cautioned.

  The deckhand reached out and helped her, taking her hand as she stepped onto the swim step. Alan followed, shrugging off the offer of assistance, and a few minutes later they were sitting in the expansive salon, the air conditioning humming, as the smuggler slurped at his beer and counted hundred dollar bills, the big diesel engines throbbing below them as they warmed up.

  “All right. It’s all there. Pleasure doing business with you. I don’t want to know your names or anything about you. Stay down here, out of sight, in case they’re tracking us on satellite, and when we get close I’ll give you a holler.” Jet gave him a troubled look. “Kidding about the satellite.”

  Jet and Alan exchanged a glance and then nodded.

  The smuggler stood, dropped the money into the paper bag and rolled up one end before walking to the rear door and moving out onto the deck and up the stainless steel stairs to the fly-bridge. The deckhand untied the lines and stowed them inboard, and then they pulled out of the slip and putted the fifty yards to the harbor mouth. Once they had cleared the jetty, their anonymous captain opened the engines up and the bow rose out of the water. Soon they were well clear of land, and they were slicing through the five foot swells like the seas were flat.

  Once they rounded the point, a pair of islands on their left, the seas got larger – six to seven footers with white water on top, but the big boat cut a clean swath through the blue waves, pounding until the captain backed off the throttles a little and they weren’t flying off the top of each swell.

  Jet settled into the leather sofa and closed her eyes, the drone of the diesels a constant, their low rumble and the motion of the boat lulling her into a drowsy state as they fought their way north against the prevailing winds.

  Two hours later the engines dropped in volume and the boat slowed. The captain reappeared and pulled two fishing rods out of a storage locker and set them into rod holders on either side of the boat, then swung the salon door open.

  “We’re here. There are only a couple of boats out. A crap day for fishing – everyone pretty much got skunked. I talked to my buddy Carl on the boat you’ll be taking into San Diego. He’s going to meet up with us on the western side of the biggest island, out of sight of the mainland and the other boats, and we’ll do the transfer. Should be about five minutes. I’ll hang around for an hour so it looks like I’m fishing, then head into San Diego for the night. Anyone tracking me on radar will think I tried to get some hook time before I headed in.” He looked off at the horizon, where a huge Coast Guard cutter sat near the horizon. “He’s looking for drug smugglers. Not respectable white fellahs out for a little south-of-the-border fun on their yachts.”

  “Who’s driving the boat?” Alan asked.

  “Auto-pilot. But I better get back up there. Won’t be long now.” The captain reeked of beer, and Jet cringed inwardly as he leaned towards her. “Lemme know if you need anything else. You got my number. Anything at all I can do for you.”

  “Thanks. I’ll remember that.”
/>   The captain waved and then returned to his station up top, and they watched through the side windows as the big boat approached a smaller fishing boat, a thirty-five-foot Cabo bristling with fishing rods. Cohiba rocked as they approached, the captain of that craft using his engines to hold it stationary, and their boat slid alongside it, a bumper keeping the two hulls from scraping.

  A bear-like man with Oakley sunglasses and a biker beard extended his hand from Cohiba. “Welcome aboard. Throw me your bags, and then the lady comes over first.”

  They did as instructed, and Jet leapt easily onto the deck of the other boat, followed by Alan. The big Ocean pulled nearer to the island, and the captain waved from the fly-bridge as the Cabo got underway.

  “You want a beer?” the big man asked, the captain up top ignoring them, concentrating on piloting the boat.

  “No, thanks. How long will it take to get into port?” Jet asked.

  “About an hour. Just make yourselves at home in the salon. There’s water, soda, and beer in the fridge. And a bag of corn chips. Go wild,” he said, and then handed them their bags and ascended the ladder to the fly-bridge without another word.

  The trip in was routine, as expected, nobody stopping them, and when they eased into a slip on Shelter Island, a wiry Vietnamese man approached and helped them off the boat.

  “Pancho?” Jet asked, her face a blank.

  “Yeah. That’s the captain’s idea of a funny. Name’s Mike. Welcome to the land of the free and all that shit. You wanna see your new car?” he asked in rapid-fire English with a surfer-dude accent.

  “Sure.” Jet didn’t see any point in elaborating.

  They walked up the dock and onto land, and Mike led them to a newer Ford Focus. It was the perfect car for their needs: completely invisible, millions like it on the roads all over the country. He held out the keys to Alan.

  “Plates are legal. Pink slip’s in the glove compartment. Won’t be listed as sold for a few weeks – I get forgetful sometimes. You’ve got another month on the tags. Full tank, runs like a charm, only forty-six thousand miles on it. This baby will take you to the moon and back, no problem,” Mike assured them, looking every bit like a swindling used car salesman.

  “Is this yours?” Alan asked.

  “Sort of. I buy and sell them. A little sideline when I’m not doing charity work at the orphanage,” Mike quipped with a grin.

  “Nice. Anything we need to know?”

  “Nah. It really is a good car. If you run into any trouble, my cell number is on the registration. Have whoever call me if there are any questions about the sale. I don’t know you, you gave me cash, end of story. Work for you?”

  “Perfect.” Alan moved to the back seat and peered in through the windows, then opened the driver’s door and popped the trunk before dropping his and Jet’s bags in and slamming it closed. Without a word, Jet held her hand out for the keys, and he tossed them to her as he rounded the front fender and got into the passenger side.

  The engine started with a purr, and soon they were pulling onto the freeway that ran just south of Los Angeles and then east across the U.S..

  “At least it’ll get good gas mileage,” Alan said, trying to get comfortable in the seat.

  “We trade off six-hour shifts. I’ll take the first one. We should be able to make it to Las Vegas before we switch. We can get fast food on the way. A bathroom break every three hours or so. If you want, climb into the back seat and get some shut-eye. You’re on the midnight shift,” Jet said, hitting her turn signal to get over a lane.

  “I’ll wait until after our gourmet dinner at McCrap or whatever. You got a map?”

  “Don’t need one. It’s all in my phone. But we can pick one up if you want.”

  “Any time. We’re not in any rush. Probably be plenty of opportunities.”

  “Maybe in Colorado. It’s pretty straightforward. Keep going east until we hit Washington. If we run into the Atlantic Ocean, we went too far.”

  The Ford’s engine hummed reassuringly as the little car sped down the freeway. They were both silent, lost in their thoughts as the sun sank into the ocean, creating a kaleidoscope of color in the evening sky, the second phase of their long journey finally begun.

  Chapter 23

  “We have to kidnap him. It’s the quickest way to learn the truth.”

  Jet was driving, dawn breaking as they crossed the Rocky Mountains, Grand Junction, Colorado just south of them. So far the trek had been smooth, no snow, Las Vegas come and gone in a blur, the road across Utah well-maintained and empty other than trucks carrying the nation’s necessities across the mountains.

  “You recognize that won’t be as easy as it sounds, right? I mean, the man is the head of a powerful security force – his own private army,” Alan countered.

  “Doesn’t matter. And what do you want to bet that the very last thing that ever occurred to him would be that someone would come after him? I researched him on the web. Very low profile guy. You could mention his name or his company to a thousand people and nobody would know either. And he’s not a spook. He’s a businessman.”

  “Whose main product is exporting death. I know. ‘Security.’” Alan held up his hands.

  “You got any better ideas?”

  “Not really. But it just seems that’s the most radical possible approach.”

  “Exactly. We take him, we extract the information, and then we pursue whoever he’s working for.”

  “And what do we do with him once we’re done?” Alan asked as he flipped the sun visor down to shield his eyes from the morning rays.

  “I think you know the answer to that.”

  They rode in silence for another half hour, admiring the mountain scenery, and then they stopped at a convenience store in the tiny berg of Parachute and bought coffee and rolls.

  “At least we have the element of surprise. That’s a big advantage.” Alan continued the conversation as though they’d only taken a pause. Jet was happy to see that as he thought about it, he was beginning to see the wisdom of her approach. “The question is what kind of safeguards he has in place.”

  “That’s just logistics. All targets are vulnerable. We’ll watch him until we see his weak spot. We may actually be overthinking this. It’s entirely possible that he has minimal security, because he’s just a simple businessman earning a living the American way. I mean, we know that he sends murderers to other countries to kill on contract, but I bet he doesn’t advertise it. Probably goes to church, pets dogs, takes the kids to soccer on Saturdays.”

  “He doesn’t have any kids. I checked,” Alan observed. “No wife, either.”

  “Whatever. You know what I mean.”

  They left the store and Alan stretched by the car. “My back is already killing me from sitting in that seat,” he complained.

  “I told you – sleep on the back seat. Might be more comfortable.”

  “How do you manage to stay so perky? You slept in the damned thing, too.”

  “All my clean living. That, and I’m almost a foot shorter than you. I think they built this model for us smaller people, not you towering circus freaks.”

  He grinned at Jet. “I’m pretty average height.”

  “If you’re on a basketball team, maybe.”

  The rest of the day was spent traversing the mountains and then descending into the flatland of the Great Plains, finally stopping in Omaha for dinner and to stretch their legs.

  “You know the whole story about Omaha, right?” Jet asked once they were seated in the restaurant and had ordered.

  “The CIA goon who helped David with Hannah wound up trying to kill you after you completed a mission he’d blackmailed you into doing. Hannah was hidden here,” Alan confirmed.

  “It’s a little more complicated than that, but yes, that’s the gist.”

  “Can’t be a lot of fond memories of the place. You okay?”

  “Truthfully, I was only here for a short time, so I have almost no memory of it. Just tha
t it was flat, the people were big-boned, and all the houses look the same.”

  They plowed through their meal with relish, and then packed back into the car for the second night of cross-country driving. Much of the route was familiar to Jet from her adventure with Hannah in the motor home, but she was still amazed by how different the various areas were. The U.S. was a huge place, with incredible diversity, and everything she had seen so far was better maintained than most of the rest of the world. The roads were smooth and they had made good time, averaging sixty-five miles per hour since they’d started. The Ford was running like a top and sipping gas, extending their range, although they still filled up each time they changed drivers in case they ran across a dry patch.

  The drive wore on, but by the following nightfall they were almost at their destination. When they were within fifty miles of Washington, Jet began looking for hotels.

  “We’re too late to do surveillance on Sloan tonight. Doubtful he’ll be at work, and I couldn’t find where he lives. We’ll need to take this up tomorrow and put his offices under surveillance. For which we’ll need at least one more car. Last time I was here, I bought one. I don’t think it makes any sense to steal one – subjects us to unnecessary risk. So let’s get a place to stay, look at car ads, and get a pair of disposable cell phones to stay in contact with each other. I don’t want to use mine here,” she said.

  “Makes sense. You have any preferences for hotels?”

  “Not really. I’d say let’s find a business suites place somewhere near Sloan’s building and then look for vehicles. Might as well get something done tonight.”

  Jet pulled over when she passed a superstore at a strip mall. They got two phones and two pairs of binoculars, as well as a couple of baseball caps and some cheap tops so they could easily change the color of their outfits on the fly, and then drove the rest of the way to Washington, choosing a motel near Lincolnia, Virginia, only two miles from the Nordhaver building.

  Alan scoured the newspaper he’d bought while she checked in, and found a few good candidates for cars – several Fords and three Dodge sedans. He called the ads while Jet unpacked and took a fast shower. He made appointments for the following morning to see them – nobody wanted to show their car at night, and Alan wasn’t in a mood to look at any after two days in a Focus. He rinsed off next, and then they went in search of a restaurant.