by Jim Plautz
Carl Lindner called the next day. “Jim, I have George Hunt on the line.”
“Mr. Hunt, it’s a pleasure to hear from you.”
“Jim, Carl tells me your firm rescued us from a small problem in Tampa and then sent us a $450,000 check to boot. That was totally unexpected and I don’t often get surprises like this. I like it.”
“It shouldn’t have been a surprise, Mr. Hunt. Your firm did us the favor by throwing us a great opportunity. It’s only fair that you get reimbursed for the bid-work you did.”
“I know, I know, but it’s still something that isn’t done much anymore. Carl said that 50% would have been fair, but you sent the entire amount. It was a class act. The Europeans would have negotiated us down to nothing and the Japanese, well, I don’t want to get into that. It’s the reason why I like to deal with American owned firms like yours.”
“I appreciate your calling me. That too is a class act.”
“Thank you, and by the way, I just mentioned to Carl that we have another project in Europe that you might be able to help us out with. He will call you. Anyway, thanks again for the check. Good luck.”
“Thank you! Mr. Hunt.”
Later I related the story to Ken and Marco.
“I guess you made the right decision when you paid them the $450,000 without quibbling” Ken observed.
“How is the Tampa job going, Marco? Any problems?
“No problems, boss, everything is on schedule. Next week we implode the old stadium and start clearing the debris. You won’t want to miss that,” Marco said with a gleam in his eye.
“I’ll be there, assuming we get through this weekend,” I replied showing my concern. “Have we done everything the CIA requested?”
“We gave them everything they asked for and just completed a thorough search of the stadium. There is no way we could have missed even a stick of dynamite. If they are going to blow us up, it will be a BYOB party.”
“Bring Your Own Bomb,” Ken interpreted.
The French Open was six weeks away and Ambre couldn’t wait to get back on the practice court. Her victory at the European Open in Paris, earned her a wildcard into the main draw. She was only 15, but had prepared for this day for nine years. She was ready.
Ambre was born in a small town just outside Nice to wealthy parents that made a fortune in shipping and spent most of the time traveling the world. As an only child, she spent her early years with few friends and a plethora of au pairs who never could tolerate the spoiled child for more than a year. Ambre’s escape was tennis and she hit thousands of balls against a backstop erected on the family’s private tennis court. She started taking tennis lessons at age six, and by age eight she won her first tournament. Ambre was on a fast track from that point on. At age 12, she won the French 16-and-under junior title. At 13, she won the 18s. The country couldn’t wait for her to grow up. It had been a long time since the French had a woman champion they could truly call their own.
There have been French Champions. In 2000, Mary Pierce beat Conchita Martinez of Spain 6-2 7-5 and the country celebrated. Pierce’s mother was French and she claimed France as her home country despite the fact that she had been born and raised in the United States. The circumstances are similar to Great Britain claiming Canadian-born Greg Rudinski as their own. It might be legal, but it’s not the same. Every Englishman would prefer Tim Henman to win Wimbledon.
Ambre was born and bred in France and reminded older French fans of Suzanne Lenglen, the greatest French women’s tennis champion of all time. Lenglen dominated women’s tennis from 1920-1926, winning the French women’s singles five times and women’s doubles twice. From 1919 to 1923 and again in 1925 she won the British women’s singles and doubles crowns. In 1920 she took the tennis honors of the Olympic games at Antwerp. Lenglen passed away in 1938 at the age of 39, but center court at Roland Garros is a testament to her greatness.
Ambre had the potential to be the next Suzanne Lenglen and the looks to be the next Anna Kournikova. Ambre appeared on the cover of two fashion magazines before she was 13, the inside layouts making her look like a woman five years older. It appeared nothing could stop her from her destiny with greatness, unless it was her penchant for trouble. At 14 she was caught in bed with a 19-year old tennis instructor who swore that Ambre had been the instigator. Six months later she was caught in a raid on a late-night Paris dance club with a blood alcohol content of .22, well above the legal threshold for sobriety. Just three months later airport security found twenty ounces of marijuana in her purse, just below the limit where she could be charged for drug trafficking. The French Tennis Association managed to bail her out each time, but their patience was wearing thin. Everyone close to her knew she was headed for trouble.
Ambre’s debut at Roland Garros was dramatic center court match against the defending champion Jennifer Capriati, who had beaten favored Kim Clijsters of Belgium, 12-10 in the third set to win last year’ title. Suzanne Lenglen stadium was packed and thousands watched outside the stadium on the Sony Jumbotron scoreboard.
The crowd wanted a miracle, and Ambre was not about to disappoint them. Surprisingly it was Capriati that felt the pressure. She double faulted the first point and was never in the match. The crowd roared with delight every time Ambre hit a winner, and every time Capriati made a mistake. It was not good sportsmanship, but the crowd was drunk with joy. When the match mercifully ended after only 75 minutes, Capriati had won only three games. Never had a defending champion been beaten so badly in the first round.
French fans cheered for ten minutes while Ambre stood at center court blowing kisses to the crowd. She was enjoying the moment and basking in the crowd’s adulation. The crowd celebrated the dawn of a new tennis era for France.
Ambre won two more matches before a Russian girl beat her in the round of 16. It didn’t matter, the French knew Ambre would be back next year and for many years to come. The crowd thought so and so did Ambre. It was her destiny.
The phone rang and Agbu answered, “hola.”
“Buenas tardes, hermano pequeño, have you been keeping out of trouble, little brother?”
“Is that you, Anton? It’s great to hear your voice again. Where are you? When are you coming home?”
“Soon, little brother, maybe in a week or two. I have so much to tell you, but it’s not good to talk on the phone. Read the papers Sunday, there should be an exciting futball game in Mexico.”
“I will, Anton. I miss you.”
“Goodbye, little brother, I hope to see you soon. ”
“Adiós hermano mayor, yo le perderé (Goodbye big brother, I will miss you).”
“Listen to this,” Ray said as he burst into Chris’ office. “We intercepted this call last night,” he said as he played the tape.
“Who are these guys?” Chris asked.
“The one making the call is Anton Galan, an ETA member from Spain that is a prime suspect in a fatal kidnapping two years ago in France. The CIA in Mexico has been watching him for six months and monitoring his cell phone calls. The other person is his younger brother, Agbu, a high school student in Spain. Here’s a picture we took of him last month.”
“It sounds like Anton is part of whatever is planned for Saturday” Fred offered. “The question is what to do next. Should we pick him up or let him make his move?”
“Let’s give him some room and see if he leads us to anyone else,” Ray said. “I have a hunch that Anton is just a small cog in this weekend’s plans. What do you think Chris?”
“I agree. He has been in Mexico less than two years, there is no way he could be leading an operation this big. Do we have a tail on him?”
“He can’t make a move, much less a phone call, without us listening in.”
“Good. It looks like everything is scheduled for Saturday but we better not relax our guard. There will be a lot of important people at the VIP party Friday night. It would be a perfect target.”
“Fred and I will be on the job,” Ray said with a wink at Fre
d. “Of course we won’t be drinking and dancing with an old boyfriend like someone we know.”
“Congratulations, you two geniuses finally figured it out,” Chris retorted. “Don’t worry about me, this weekend will be all business.” It sounded hollow even to Chris. She couldn’t help but wonder if she had put Ken behind her. Part of her was looking forward to the weekend on a social level. Her job always came first, of course. Wasn’t this what caused the problem in the first place?
Mary, Ken and I had the eight-seat Boeing jet all to ourselves. Chris had taken the additional precaution of reserving first class seats on a Delta commercial flight in case anyone was tracking our scheduled arrival, but insisted on the private jet for security reasons. Mary and I had never flown on a private jet and we all took advantage of the hors d’oeurves and open bar. The co-pilot served Mary a bloody mary and Ken and I joined her just to be courteous.
Chris was waiting at the terminal when the private jet arrived, transportation furnished by an old friend and co-worker in the DEA. Chris greeted them as they taxied to a stop and the co-pilot yanked open the door. “Did you all enjoy the flight?”
“We did, it’s quite a plane. I’m glad to see my tax money is being spent wisely.”
“Don’t ever say the DEA doesn’t fly their guests in style. I wouldn’t mind if we had one of these ourselves. You might thank the Columbian drug smugglers for donating the plane; American tax payers had nothing to do with it.”
“I didn’t know you still had friends in the DEA. You are still full of surprises, my dear,” Ken quipped with a smile. “Do you have any other surprises for us?” Ken asked as he slid his arm around her waist.
“That’s enough, big boy. This is all business, and don’t you forget it,” Chris replied somewhat unconvincingly. “There is a limo waiting outside that will take us to the hotel, and from that point on there will be at least two agents that will be with Jim and Mary at all times.”
“Any possibility of driving past the project site on the way to the hotel? Mary has never seen it and it’s been four weeks for me.”
“No problem, as long as we stay in the car. I don’t want to get out and walk around until we pick up the other agents at the hotel.”
“Okay, grab your luggage and let’s get going. Let me go first,” she directed as she led our small group through the terminal. “Unless someone needs to use the facilities, I suggest we catch our ride.”
“Ladies first,” Ken said as he opened the terminal door leading to the parking lot.
The limo was parked about 30 feet from the front door. Chris took just two steps before coming to an abrupt stop. “Get back inside,” she said firmly as she drew her gun. There was no mistaking the serious tone in her voice. Something was up.
Two men rose up from behind the limo brandishing semi-automatic weapons and all hell broke loose. Gunfire erupted and the noise was deafening. Mary and I were in the doorway when the first shots were fired, and I managed to pull her roughly back into the terminal. The pilot and co-pilot shouted for us to get down as they raced past us to help Chris. Our “waiter” who had served us drinks only an hour earlier now had a semi-automatic pistol in his hand and was firing rapidly through the doorway.
Moments later the co-pilot staggered backwards as blood spread across his chest. While Mary stemmed the flow of blood I carefully retrieved the co-pilot’s pistol from the open doorway. I fiddled with a couple switches but had no idea if there was a safety or button that you needed to release before firing. I had never fired a gun in my life.
The gunfire stopped abruptly. “Chris, are you okay?” the pilot whispered. There was no response. “Chris, talk to me,” he yelled a little louder. There was no response. I was starting to worry when Chris’ voice broke the silence.
“Drop your weapons or you’re dead, scumbags.” Chris was apparently alive and well as we heard her authoritative voice coming from behind our attackers.
The gunmen wheeled at the sound and opened fire in the direction of her voice. Ten seconds later the shooting stopped. “All clear, Bill,” she yelled to the pilot. Come on out.”
Chris had managed to reach the limo and sneak around behind the two men. One gunman was dead and the other severely wounded, but still holding his gun. The man wisely threw it down on Chris’ command.
The pilot was helping Mary staunch the flow of blood from the co-pilot’s wounds, so I walked out to see if I could help Chris who was handcuffing their prisoner. I stopped abruptly when I saw a third gunman appear from the side of the building. Chris’ back was turned to the new threat.
“Usted muere,” he shouted and extended his right arm with his automatic pistol pointing at Chris’ back.
Everything seemed to move in slow motion as I watched the gunman slowly tighten his finger on the trigger. “It was pure reflex,” I told Chris later. I wasn’t even aware that I was still holding the co-pilot’s gun. “I just pointed and pulled the trigger. I was more scared than anyone when the bullets started flying. I must have accidentally set it on automatic.” I’ll never forget the perplexed look on the man’s face as my bullets tore into his chest and he realized he was dying, nor the look in his eyes as he stared at me as he fell to the ground. It was pure hatred.
Chris had wheeled around to confront the new threat, and immediately grasped that she would have been too late. “I owe you one, Jim. There is no way he would have missed me at that range,” she said as she gripped my arm. “Are you all right?”
I nodded, and a moment later she was all business again. “Is everybody okay in there?”
“Mary is fine,” I responded. “The co-pilot is hurt pretty bad. I didn’t see Ken.”
“Get an ambulance,” the pilot shouted from the terminal, “Ken’s been shot.”
“Oh no,” Chris uttered as she raced to Ken’s side, leaving me to watch the prisoner. Ken was unconscious and losing a lot of blood. There was nothing they could do until the ambulance arrived except to hold towels over the two bullet holes in his chest. Chris held Ken’s head in her lap until the ambulance arrived. “Don’t you dare die on me,” she implored. “I’ll make it up do you, just don’t die on me.”
Three days later Ken regained consciousness, and a day later he was strong enough to talk. Chris, Mary and Jim had taken turns sitting by his bedside although Chris had taken most of the turns. She was there when Ken awoke Tuesday morning and looked up into Chris’ eyes. “Am I dead? If I am, this must be heaven. What are you doing here? You should be at the VIP party with Jim.”
Tears of relief welled up in Chris’ eyes. “I was just passing by,” Chris answered, “and by the way, it’s Tuesday. The VIP party was four days ago.”
Ken let this sink in and he struggled to remember what had happened. “The last thing I remember is holding the door open for you and Mary just when you started screaming at us and people started shooting. What happened? Are Jim and Mary okay?”
“Jim and Mary are fine and should be back here any minute. They stayed with you last night and had just left when you started to wake up.”
“Did the party and grand opening go okay?”
“Everything is fine. The terrorists had big plans, but we managed to stop them before they got started. Everything went smoothly.”
Mary and I burst into the room. “Ken, what a relief,” Mary cried as she gave Ken a gentle hug and peck on the cheek.
“We didn’t think you were going to make it for a couple days,” I added. “I was wondering who I was going to golf with next week.”
“You can’t get rid of me that easy,” Ken smiled. “And thanks to both of you. Chris told me you have been keeping me company for the last few days while I pretended to sleep. I appreciate it.”
“Don’t thank us,” I said. “You need to thank the lady sitting next to you. She refused to let you die.”
Ken smiled up at Chris. “I hope she gives me another chance to thank her for the rest of our lives.”
“I do,” Chris whispered.<
br />
“Jim, let’s go downstairs for some coffee,” Mary suggested.
“But, I don’t want any more coffee,” I was saying as she pulled me out the door.
Chris joined them in the cafeteria fifteen minutes later. Ken was weak and fell asleep soon after they left.
Mary noticed immediately. “Is that what I think it is?”
“Yeah,” she replied holding out her left hand for inspection as tears welled up in her eyes. “Apparently Ken had brought it with him on the trip. He just proposed to me, or re-proposed I guess. I’m not going to let him get away again.”
“Congratulations,” I said sincerely, “sometimes it takes things like this to bring people together.”
“I knew how I felt when I saw him lying there bleeding,” Chris said emotionally. “I felt like it was part of me that was dying.” Mary reached over and hugged Chris for several moments; women have a better sense of when hugs are needed.
“By the way, Chris, what did happen out there?” I said changing the subject. “What tipped you off? How did they know we would be at the terminal?”
“We assumed they wouldn’t try to kidnap you until after the attack on the Stadium; that’s why we didn’t have more people at the airport. Besides, there was no way they could have known about you arriving on a private jet.”
“What went wrong?”
“This isn’t public knowledge, but it will eventually get out. Keep it to yourselves for a while. The ETA had planned to load explosives into two private airplanes and fly them into the skyboxes during the Soccer match. It would have been the first time they used suicide bombers and the first time they had used airplanes. The airspace over the stadium during the ceremony was restricted, but it might have worked. They planned on grabbing Jim and you too, Mary, during the confusion.”
“Wow,” Mary exclaimed, “so what made them change their plan?”
“They got lucky; at least they thought they did. They kept the planes at the airport we flew into and happened to spot our limo. One of their pilots knew the flight controller and found out the jet was coming in from Tampa with you aboard. We had filed a flight plan and passenger list which is required on all international flights.”
“So they decided to change their plans at the last minute,” I guessed.
“That’s right, they couldn’t resist the opportunity. All they saw was a limo driver and a woman and figured it would be easy.”
“That was their mistake wasn’t it? They didn’t know who you were. But how did you spot them?”
“Well, I was caught off guard, but fortunately I had worked out a signal with the limo driver. I told him to flash his lights when we came out the door if everything was okay. When I didn’t see the signal, I reacted. Unfortunately for Ken, I was a little slow.”
“Not from what we saw, Chris. You looked like Annie Oakley. By the way, how is the limo driver?”
“He is fine. As soon as the shooting started he hit the floor and stayed there.”
“How did you find out about the suicide planes?”
“It was a combination of luck and good police work. We were lucky that the second gunman told us a few things before we took him to the hospital,” Chris said with a wink. “Once we learned that the attempt at the airport wasn’t preplanned, we figured there had to be a reason they were there in the first place. We surrounded the private terminal and searched the hangers until we found them. The planes were already loaded with explosives and ready to go.”
“Did the second kidnapper recover?” Mary asked.
“No, he died of his wounds. The doctor said he might have made it if they had operated on him a little sooner. He had lost too much blood.” Mary and I did not vocalize what we were both thinking. This sounded similar to a situation in Cabo San Lucas three years ago.
“What happened to the guy you suspected, the one from Spain that you showed us the pictures of?” Mary asked. “Was he captured?”
Chris glanced at me before answering. “I thought you knew. That’s the man that Jim shot, Anton Galan from Basque country.” I wired his picture to the Spanish and French authorities. They confirmed he is the same man that they were after for the fatal kidnapping of an American tourist, Bill Peterson. Peterson was killed during a rescue attempt a year ago in a small village in Southern France. Anton’s brother, Raul, was also killed, but Anton escaped and made his way here to Mexico.”
“Well, I don’t think many civilized people will miss him,” Mary commented, squeezing my hand for support.
Mary was not completely correct. Agbu was devastated when he heard the news.
Chapter 14
National Clay Court Championships