Chapter 9

“I tried to call you yesterday,” Garcia complained. “Why didn’t you call me back?”

“I did call you back,” she said. “You didn’t pick up.” She turned to the man called Carlis. “How did Avilla’s nephew, Peno, find out where I really live?”

Carlis shrugged. “I don’t know. He’s very secretive, but probably from his uncle.”

“I didn’t give Avilla my address,” she objected.

“No, but Avilla has the machinery for investigating people he wants information on. He might even have entered the Private Plane Pilots Association computer network illegally or something.”

“PPPA doesn’t have a network,” Helen said. “The organization isn’t that sophisticated. They have a database, of course, but it isn’t online. I wanted to access the files remotely but was told that I couldn’t.”

She pointed at her own computer. “I’m online,” she told them. “You have to be to do investigations.” Not that she was in the investigations business, exactly.

“Okay,” agreed Carlis. “Then he found out another way. What information did you give Avilla?”

She thought. “I told him I used to fly for the Air Force,” she said slowly. Carlis raised his eyebrows. “But I also wrote down my home address when I flew into Roanoke Regional. If the nephew—Peno, you said—and his uncle were able to alter the FAA log there, they must have an associate at the airport who could have looked up my own sign-in.”

“We don’t know that Avilla is actually involved with Peno’s activities,” Garcia backtracked.

“What are Peno’s activities that you’re aware of?” Helen wanted to know. She was poised to take mental notes.

Carlis and Garcia looked at one another and didn’t answer her. “Oh, so this is an all-boys club,” she snarled.

“This is a government matter,” said Garcia. “A government investigation.”

“But you’re even keeping secrets from the FAA,” she charged.

“How would you know what the FAA knows about this?” Garcia asked.

This time, she was the one who didn’t respond, but he did have a point. She knew what her pal Dennis knew, she was pretty sure, but he was only a mid-level investigator. Maybe those at the top had kept information from him as well. Probably.

That’s why they were trying to shut Dennis down. Who knows, maybe they even were aware that Dennis refused to fly and that’s why they had handed him the investigation. They were counting on him not to come up with anything. Poor Dennis. Well, he would show them. He was going to solve this thing—with her help, of course. And he was going to fly wherever he needed to in order to do it. If it killed him. But it was hardly going to do that.

Exactly what did she know about the treatment of phobias? she wondered. She went to the bookcase where she (silly her) had carefully shelved a few of her ancient college texts.

“Are we intruding on your private time?” inquired Garcia.

“Sorry. Can I offer you another cup of coffee? Those cookies were all the food we had in the house.”

“Funny, I don’t picture Eric as much of a junk food eater. And where is he, anyway?”

“Oh,” she said vaguely. “Cuba, I guess.”

“Cuba,” repeated Garcia, astonished. “That’s where my family is from. That’s where I was born. What the heck is Eric doing in communist Cuba?”

She waylaid Dennis as he was coming up the walk to the FAA offices and pulled him aside. She took off her sunglasses, as if to be sure he would be able to recognize her. “A lot is going on,” she told him. “I know who the skyjacker is. He tried to kill me. Twice, really. I’m flying to Miami. Want to come?”

He looked around nervously, which told her that she was right about his having been warned to stay away from her. “No, of course I don’t want to,” he said. “Here, let’s not stand out in the open like this. I’ll meet you in twenty minutes at the restaurant where we ate lunch that time. Can you find it?”

She nodded, put her sunglasses on, and strode rapidly away in the wrong direction. That was deliberate, of course. She was relieved that Dennis wasn’t angry at her, that he was still willing to be her partner. She glanced back over her shoulder, making sure she wasn’t being followed.

Twenty minutes later, she was waiting at “their” table in Yin-Yang. She had ordered two wheat-free oatmeal muffins with apple butter and two bancha teas. Dennis entered and stood for a minute looking out the window before he sat down to join her.

“What the hell is going on?” he asked. “They’re putting a tight lid on it. They all but took the case away from me. That is, I’m still investigating, but in name only. I’m not to go anywhere or talk to anyone outside of people at the FAA or other government agencies. I ask you, what kind of investigation is that supposed to be? I hate working for the government. I just hate it. I’m only a pawn. I’m not a thinking, feeling human being. What’s this?” he asked when the muffins came.

“Our breakfast,” said Helen. “Listen, the ATF had at least one undercover agent with this skyjacker. The skyjacker’s name is Peno by the way, Ernesto Peno. Ernest. That’s a horrible name, enough to turn anyone to a life of crime. But I told you before, he’s a revolutionary. A very ersatz revolutionary, in my opinion, though. You know, an angry kind of a guy, but very middle class. Anyway, he’s Avilla’s nephew. And Avilla may or may not be involved, but whether he is or not, he’s kind of a shady character in his own right. He uses his security team at Beaumont in a very high-handed, actually illegal, way. He has all his employees’ home phones bugged, not to mention monitoring the office phones and having employees followed. It’s unusual for big business, that’s all I can say, but not unheard of. There’s one toothpaste company in Cincinnati, I read a book about…”

She took a breath but didn’t stop. “Well anyway, I think the ATF is leaning on the FAA to put a halt to your investigation. What you have to do is take a few days off and come with me. Plus I may have to stay at your place for a while because Peno knows where I live and he’s trying to kill me. The ATF is going to have to put a guard on my future sister-in-law because of all this. Why does bread have to be wheat-free, anyway? And why don’t they have any regular butter in this restaurant?”

“Have you been drinking coffee this morning?” Dennis asked. “You’re talking like you’re on some kind of a high.” He yawned and spread some apple butter on his muffin.

“What about the man found on U.S. 79 in West Virginia?” she asked him in the cab. Dennis didn’t appear to hear her at first. He seemed to be wondering what he was doing on his way to National and not on his way to work. But he had heard; he simply took a while to process the question.

“He wasn’t the owner of the plane,” Dennis said. “He was the pilot. Craig Klein. They called him Hawk. He was in the Air Force for a few years. Know him?” She shook her head. She was glad she hadn’t. “The plane was a corporate jet, owned by Curtis Cookies, whatever that is. The pattern was sort of typical. The jet landed as scheduled in Pennsylvania, then took off an hour later.”

Dennis was quiet a minute, then smiled. “I bet Peno was in a hurry to get out of there, after the body somehow dropped onto a pretty well-traveled highway. He knew they weren’t going to take them too long to find it.”

“If the perp was Peno, I don’t think he was overly concerned about their finding the body. If the skyjacker was Peno, he deliberately dropped the body onto U.S. 79. His idea of flaunting it,” she guessed.

“The skyjacker filed a flight plan for New Orleans, landed there, refueled, and set out for Bolivia. Did the plane land in Bolivia? Did the others land at their supposed destinations? Believe me I’m still in the middle of tracking these things down. Or I was.”

“Don’t worry,” Helen said. She stared out the window at a group of pear trees along the road decked out in white spring flowers. “We’ll start with Miami.” She looked at him. He seemed preoccupied. “What are you thinking about?” she asked.

“I’m not thinking about anything. I’m just scared.”

She reached over and squeezed his arm. “Don’t worry, buddy, I’ve flown everything, but the F-16.”

“Why wouldn’t they let you fly the F-16?” he asked, alarmed. “Didn’t they trust you?”

She laughed. He was joking—a good sign.

Helen was happy to see that he sat in his seat during the flight to Miami. True, his head was down between his legs for most of the trip, but she thought the upright posture was a vast improvement. Her therapy must be working.

Landing at MIA took a while, but the weather was wonderful. To her, flying lazy circles around the sunny southern sky was a pleasure. The delay didn’t make much difference to Dennis, either he was so convinced the flight was going to be endless—or end in disaster—anyway.

They went into the airport proper and after she had completed the paperwork appropriate to the situation, they tried to find the airport administrator. “He’s addressing the Fear of Flying seminar in the Ramada across the highway,” one of the women in the office said.

Helen’s eyes lit up. “Perfect,” she exclaimed. She grabbed Dennis’s arm. “I’ll be back,” she told the woman and dragged Dennis out the door. “This is your chance,” she insisted. “I know I’m helping you, but these people might be able to help you more. I’m sure they’ll let you sit in. And if they want some money, we can pay them—that’ll be my treat. See, our trip is fate. This is your good karma that we flew down on this very day.”

They crossed the concourse. Helen had her mind on finding the Ramada Inn and was busy planning her speech on Dennis’s behalf, so she almost missed him. She looked up to find him stopped stock still and staring at her intently, in astonishment. Neither one of them seemed to know what to say.

“Eric,” she gasped.

He looked at her, looked at Dennis, then looked at her again. He put down his duffel bag. “Where are you going?” he inquired, hesitantly, pained to find her here, she supposed, where he least expected her.

“I’m helping out my friend Dennis,” Helen said, pointing. “He’s with the FAA.” She stood there blushing to her toes, mostly struck by the reality of him, his powerful physical presence which radiated insistently in her direction.

“Why don’t you fly back to New York with me now,” he asked. He looked at his watch. “Let’s see if we can get you on this flight.”

“That would be awkward,” she responded. She felt weak, dizzy, very unsure of herself, abashed. Still, she came toward him as if propelled by that magnetic force he broadcast.

He took her in his arms and held her so tightly that she felt he wanted, not to crush her, but to enter into her, displace her very cells with his own. His lips groped for hers and he kissed her with intense longing, profound love, and bottomless despair. She was touched to the core or her being, and that indefinable feeling shook her.

He released her, but she grabbed his arm to steady herself. She had forgotten the directness of his communication, the physical solidness of him.

“I guess you shouldn’t go to our apartment,” she said with a forced nonchalance. “Someone’s been trying to kill me, although I doubt they’ll mistake you for me. But it might be better if you went to stay with Katherine for a while. Someone may be trying to kill her, too. Although an ATF agent is looking after her.” She felt she had explained that well and succinctly, but how would he take it?

“I see,” he said. He didn’t seem to want to remove his eyes from her.

“Your car’s in the shop,” she went on in the same vein of apparent disregard of his possible reaction. “It’ll be ready tomorrow.” She pulled the invoice out of her purse. “I’ll pay you back,” she promised.

“You’ve been busy.”

She pulled away, but he grabbed her arm as she did so, before letting her go. They were both still in place, but mentally moving away from one another.

“August 6th,” he said. “Boston. Your father’s church. You’ll be there, right?”

She laughed. “Oh, okay.”

He picked up his bag. “My flight,” he explained. He nodded at them both. “Dennis,” he acknowledged, his hand coming up in a gesture of farewell. He turned and walked off. She watched him. A few yards away, he swiveled his head to look back at her and smiled.

“What do you think?” she asked Dennis, starting to hurry him away again.

“I’m envious,” Dennis responded.

“I’m flattered,” she told him. “I didn’t imagine you fancied me.”

“It’s not that. I’m jealous of what you two have together.”

“He’s great.” She sighed. “But I really shouldn’t marry him. He’s so wild.”

“If someone like you thinks he’s wild, my God.”

“Yeah, that’s what I mean.”

After settling Dennis in his class, she went back to the administrator’s office where she hoped eventually to find Sofer Kialla, the man who ran Miami International. Was the name Arab, or was it Spanish?

Kialla wasn’t in yet, although she knew he was no longer at the Fear of Flying seminar. She had asked. Kialla’s secretary grilled Helen as to what she wanted.

Helen displayed her credentials, such as they were, and explained that she was trying to track some missing aircraft that had gone through MIA.

The secretary pointed at a seat and proceeded to ignore Helen.

A stocky young man, sweating despite the air conditioning, emerged from an adjacent office and said something in Spanish to the secretary, returning to his lair. In a moment the woman retrieved her purse from a desk drawer and was gone. The young man came out of his office again and glanced around, as if checking to make sure no one else was there.

“I’m Mr. Kialla’s assistant, Hernando Diega,” he told Helen in a heavily accented English. “I’d like to speak to you. Will you come into my office?”

Helen followed him in, and he offered her a chair, then closed the door. He sat down, looked at her intently, and asked for her ID, which she quickly offered for his examination. “I need to tell someone this,” said Diega hesitantly. “I had hoped the FAA investigator would show up.”

“He did show up,” Helen told him carefully. “That is, he’s here with me. But he wasn’t feeling too well. He’ll be back later. In the meantime, why don’t you tell me what you know? He and I are working together.”

“This is dangerous information.” Diega’s eyes met hers. They told her that what he had to say was a matter of the gravest importance. She nodded, indicating that she could be discreet.

“I was almost a flyer,” he began. “I very badly wanted to be a flyer. That’s how I know airplanes. I’ve been interested in planes since I was a little boy and I know a great deal about them. I was born and grew up in Mexico. My father is a pharmacist, and my mother was a nurse. I joined the Mexican Air Force and started to train as a pilot, but my mother became sick, and I was granted leave to go home to be with her. I stayed for several weeks, until she died. I couldn’t complete my flight class when I returned, so they taught me something about administering an airfield instead.”

Helen was sympathetic to his tale, but eager to learn what Diega knew about the missing airplanes. He must have sensed her impatience. “I go home to see my father at least three or four times a year. I can always catch a ride to Guadalajara. We’re from Culiacan, near the Sierras. The area’s a bit wild, bandits and such, especially toward the mountains, but I take my father’s jeep and go up to that country to visit my cousins. I drive during the day, and I carry a gun. I was there in December, and I saw that someone was building an airstrip. But not just an airstrip for little propeller planes. One runway already smoothed out was at least four-thousand feet, something that could accommodate a business jet. The construction seemed funny to me at the time, of course, because the area is so remote, but I put it out of my mind.”

“Yes,” murmured Helen, excited.

“I went back in March because I had a few days. When I went up to visit my cousins, I stopped by to see what had become of the field. It wasn’t just a single runway anymore. Two had been finished, and they were perfectly asphalted. Then I saw a bandit patrolling with a machine gun, so I took off.”

“Ah,” interjected his listener. “So you think possibly…”

“No,” insisted Diega. “I don’t think anything. I know. I saw one of the planes. I saw a beautiful Beechjet that the FAA described as one they were looking for. The bandits didn’t purchase that piece of equipment, I can tell you that. That plane was stolen from an owner in the U.S. and, if the rumors I’m hearing are correct, some pilot was killed for it. Such a thing isn’t right. Someone has to stop this, catch these people.”

“We’re going to stop them,” Helen swore. “Do you have a map of Mexico? Can you tell me where the airfield is?” Helen glanced around the office, seeking out a set of aviation route maps.

“How was the class?” she asked Dennis.

“The seminar was helpful,” he acknowledged grudgingly. “That guy was good. I liked him. He flew for Delta for thirty years or something. I bought the audio cassettes. His wife’s a therapist, too, an extremely lovely woman. I’ll listen to the tapes when I’m back in Washington. Actually, I was thinking of taking the train back. I called Amtrak. They have a train to Washington tomorrow morning.”

“We’re not going back just yet,” Helen advised him. “We have one more trip to make before we return. I’ve booked us a room at the Ramada tonight. We’re too late to fly out for our next leg of the journey.” She smiled.

“Where were you thinking of going?” he asked suspiciously.

She grinned. “South of the Border.”

He looked relieved. “I can’t go with you then. I don’t have a passport.”

“That’s okay, you just say you lost it.”

“No, I haven’t had a passport in years. I don’t leave the country anymore.”

“Don’t worry about anything,” she reassured him. “We won’t be going through customs when we arrive.”

She insisted on their sharing a single room. They’d save money, she claimed. What she was really worried about was letting Dennis out of her sight. If Peno knew where they were—and anything was possible—she needed to be right there in order to protect him. She did give him an hour alone to do his yoga, an urgent demand on Dennis’s part. He had to do his yoga every day, he told her. He had to.

Later, she heard him breathing funny as she lay in her bed trying to sleep. “What are you doing?” she asked, annoyed.

“I’m anxious. I’m doing the breathing exercise from the Fear of Flying class.”

“Great,” she approved. “Does it work?”

“It’s making me dizzy so it makes me think that it’s working,” he guessed.

“Good,” she said. “Goodnight.”

In the morning, showering, she had the sudden, certain insight that she was doing the wrong thing. She erred in taking Dennis with her, especially without even telling him what was happening. She’d send him home and go on to Mexico herself. Doing so might be foolhardy, but she couldn’t envision turning back at this point.

What would Eric do in her place? He would fly straight into the bandoleros’ stronghold. That’s how she saw him, anyway. He was always willing to defy the odds.

What was her plan? You had to have a plan, in case. Pre-planning was the first thing she had been taught as a pilot. Prepare for each “what if” scenario. Maybe such an approach sounded neurotic, but that was how it was done.

What if what? She wouldn’t have any problem landing on a four-thousand-foot airstrip, if the strip was clear. If the tarmac was occupied, she had plenty of fuel and would be able to fly on to Mexico city, maybe Los Angeles.

But what if she landed and was met by a bad guy or two? Helen doubted that more would be posted—why would they have more than two guards staked out at the airstrip? She had a gun, she had her wits, and she was a trained fighter. Next question.

But she considered another kind of “what.” That was, what did she hope to accomplish? She needed to see the installation for herself, that was all. She was the investigator. She had to uncover more details. She had to be sure. She had to do her job, as she had promised Viscotti she would. She dressed in the damp bathroom and emerged fully clothed. Dennis lay on the floor, stretching.

“Good grief, I thought you did your yoga last night,” Helen complained.

“Youth doesn’t last forever. What you have you ought to try to preserve.”

“Dennis, I hate to tell you this, but neither you nor I are going to live eternally.”

He sat up. “Tell me that again when you’re ninety and can’t walk anymore, while I’m still doing laps around the track.”

“I’m flying on to Mexico and you’re going back to Washington,” Helen told him abruptly. “You can take the train if you want.”

“I can do what I want? Thanks. That’s unduly kind. But I might as well go with you, I guess. I can try my new techniques to fight the fear.” Dennis blinked rapidly.

“The flying’s the safe part in this equation,” Helen told her “partner” bluntly. “There’s the other stuff I didn’t tell you about. We’ll be flying into a secret airfield that the bandits have been building in the mountains. That’s where they’ve been stashing the planes we’re looking for, and one or two bad guys are sure to be hanging around with machine guns, like in the movies.”

“Well, that’s crazy. We ought to go back to Washington and tell the…Let’s see, what agency…Actually, the State Department, I guess. State’s our best bet.”

“It might be,” she agreed. “If you and I had seen the airstrip and the planes with our own eyes. Otherwise, the information is only a rumor.”

“I’m going to lose my job,” Dennis wailed. “I’m not supposed to do anything like this.”

“The real problem is much more serious than that,” she pointed out. “Losing our jobs wouldn’t be all that horrible. What I’m worried about is that we might lose our lives.”