A long silence answered her question.
Scott took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. “I’d like to have a chat with that guy, if he lives long enough.”
“Maybe we’ll run into him later,” Jackie said with clenched teeth. “No pun intended.”
Scott nodded grimly as he turned the plane back toward the secluded home. “We’ll look for him along the way.”
Wide-eyed with anger, Jackie slowly shook her head. “We’re lit up like a Christmas tree, and he didn’t even see us.”
“Asleep at the wheel,” Scott said as he began another circle around the island home.
“I wouldn’t doubt it.”
Dalton set up for a low pass along the starboard side of the yacht. “Bon Vivant. I want to check the name and see where the ship is registered.”
“I’ll work on it,” Jackie said as she reached for her new satellite-phone. “I don’t know what it is, but something seems amiss.”
“I have the same feeling,” Scott said as he pulled up to make one more circle around the plush estate. “We’ll press on to Key West, see what we find, then head back this way.”
After a second’s hesitation, she glanced at him. “We’ll have to wait until the photo shops open.”
“Not this morning,” he said with a fleeting smile. “I have a friend who’ll process our film and deliver eight-by-tens in less than an hour.”
“You know,” Jackie said as she studied the yacht and the helicopter. “You amaze me at times.”
“Well”—he laughed aloud—“that’s a start.”
After investigating the area around Bahia Honda State Park, Scott pointed his finger toward the northern shores of the lower Keys. “That entire area is a refuge for the great white heron.”
“It’s beautiful,” Jackie remarked as she folded the sectional chart into a smaller rectangle. “There’s an unmarked balloon cable off to the right.”
“I see it.”
“The cable goes up to fourteen thousand feet,” she warned.
“Castrovision,” Scott said as he flew toward Pine Island. “We’ll check out these smaller Keys, then cross the highway and fly around the south side of Key West.” He banked to the right to pass north of the treacherous aerostat location.
Skirting the balloon cable, they looked for anything that might resemble a remote base for terrorist operations.
Jackie reached for the sat-phone when it rang, then signed off after a brief conversation.
“The yacht is registered in Liberia, of all places,” she announced, and watched him give her a questioning look.
His reaction was tempered with doubt. “I have a strange feeling, but I don’t want to set off any alarms yet.”
“Let’s head for Key West,” she said decisively, and glanced at the fine mist of aviation gasoline venting over the right wing. “We need to get some fuel and head back to that island.”
Scott glanced at the gauges. “Yeah, there aren’t too many places to get fuel out here. If you’ll take it for a minute, I’ll call Cindy. She’ll take our film to her shop while we get some fuel and grab a quick bite of breakfast.”
Jackie gave him a sly smile as she took the controls. ‘That’s what I’d call concierge service.”
“Hey, she’s a special friend.”
“I can only imagine.”
Passing close to the private airport on Sugarloaf Key, Scott took control of the Maule and contacted Naval Air Station Key West for VFR traffic advisories. With no reported traffic, he made contact with the tower at Key West International while he circumnavigated the southwestern end of the Key and returned to land at the international airport.
“You want to make the landing?” Scott asked as he lowered the landing gear out of the floats.
“Sure, talk me through it.”
“Slow to eighty, and ease the power back to 1,700 rpm.”
Jackie made a smooth transition as Dalton calmly coached her.
“Flaps to twenty-four,” Scott said as he looked in vain for the red floatplane they had encountered near Marathon. “I guess the Cessna driver must have gone on to the Dry Tortugas.”
“Just as well,” Jackie said as she concentrated on flying the approach. “We have enough on our plate.”
“Flaps to forty,” Scott said as he scanned the area for other air traffic. “Slow to seventy-five.”
“I’m a little high and fast.”
“You’re doing just fine,” Scott advised as they reached a point approximately ten feet above the runway. “Start an easy flare.”
“I’m not sure about this,” Jackie protested.
“Ease the power back, ease the power, bring it to idle, and hold the attitude you have. Lookin’ good, stay with it.”
“I’m trying.”
The wheels touched down with a surprising softness.
“I have it,” Scott said with a wide smile. “Great job.”
“Thanks.”
Dalton changed the subject when he saw a petite, blond-haired young woman waving at them.
“That’s Cindy Simmons,” Scott said as he returned the greeting. “She’s a real conch.”
“A what?”
“She’s a local — a native,” he explained. “Born and raised here.”
Looking at the attractive, softly feminine woman, Jackie suddenly felt embarrassed about her own appearance. “I hope we’re not going anywhere fancy for breakfast.”
“Fancy?” Scott asked, managing to keep a straight face. “I was thinking about Marriott’s Casa Marina Resort, if you think we’re not too overdressed.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
32
After Khaliq Farkas ordered breakfast from the room service menu, he glanced out his twelfth-floor window at the dense fog and then dialed a telephone number in Washington, D.C. Identifying himself as a current member of the Warehouse Discount Club, Farkas scribbled a few notes while his contact with the carefully modulated voice gave him an update on the flight schedule for Air Force One.
The sequence of confidential information, including the estimated time of arrival in Atlanta, was delivered to Farkas in the form of a brief sales pitch for outdoor furniture and garden tools. The lavishly appointed blue, white, and silver jumbo jet was due to land precisely on schedule.
When his room-service order arrived, Farkas quickly polished off the poached eggs and orange juice, then called Ha-med Yahyavi. Over coffee and dry toast, they studied the latest weather forecast for the Atlanta area. Although the atmospheric conditions were creating dense fog, which was perfect for their plan, they fervently hoped it wouldn’t cause a problem for the arrival of Air Force One.
Next, they opened the two custom-crafted plywood-and-steel containers. The trunks housed twelve Bendix/King VHF aircraft radios, six military UHF radios, and three fully charged aircraft batteries. The radios were capable of receiving or transmitting on any military or civilian/general aviation frequencies.
Farkas would be able to listen to transmissions from any aircraft approaching or departing the Atlanta area. He could simply change the frequencies to listen to the Atlanta control tower, clearance delivery, ground control, approach control, departure control, and the Atlanta air-route traffic controllers, including the en route, feeder, and final controllers.
The radio package allowed them to transmit to the pilots on any of the frequencies, or block transmissions on any frequency by pressing and holding the transmit button. Yahyavi had built the special containers to enable them to close the prongs on the side of the boxes to press and hold the transmit buttons, thus freeing them to operate unused radios while the other transceivers disrupted important radio calls between pilots and controllers.
With eighteen radios tuned to a variety of extremely critical frequencies, they could transmit bogus orders to many flights while they blocked all communications on the other sensitive channels. The situation would not be disastrous in clear weather during the daytime because the pilots could visually confirm other conflicting traffic and take corrective measures to avoid midair collisions.