I find them scuffling with six bangers outside a bar on a street they have visited before. I fly in to break it up, the bad guys quickly unconscious on the sidewalk. Dumbass though I am, I forget to keep my eye on the bar, and I look up just in time to raise my right hand and catch two 9 millimeter rounds heading straight for me, fired by two dudes standing just outside the door.
Shaking my head at the assholes who fired at me, I open my hand to show them their bullets, drop the shells onto the concrete and take a half a step toward them. They run into the bar, and if me ears are telling me the story correctly from the screaming, everyone inside is running for the back exit into the alley. I'm fine with that, though I make a mental note to harass Fog Dude again for the lack of x-ray vision.
By the time I remember why I am there in the first place, Joshua and Marcus are gone. I'm sure I could find them, they can't be more than a mile away in that short amount of time, but odds are they are going home. I kill some concrete molecules, pop straight up and a little to the south, keep an eye on the quickly dispersing crowd in the alley behind the bar, then rocket off to Joshua's house.
He must have taken another round about path to get home, because it takes him a half hour to appear. Quick stop at Marcus' to confirm he's home too, then I loop around LA looking for trouble.
There's a fight at a country bar that I decide not to stop, but just to watch. There's a couple accidents on the freeway, but I don't feel like making the vehicle owners rich by touching their cars, so I pass on those as well. I hear random gun fire a couple times in different neighborhoods, but can't locate anything quick enough to do anything. Maybe I should give the LAPD a fucking Bat signal.
I get home in time to run a double loop, then get to the airport early so I can visit with my favorite dispatcher. The weather is miserable again, which does not mean I am going to get wet inside my jet, but means I have to plan a take off to the east, adjust my speeds for the wet runway, add some extra fuel, and do a pre-flight walk around in the wind and rain. It is an excuse for extra Taylor time, so not all bad.
That is, until Don the Perfectionist shows up to be my captain of the day. I do what I think is a fine job of navigating the weather, with ATC handing out lots of unusual requests to us as they keep the aircraft spaced further apart than normal, but Don finds enough wrong with me to fill the entire five hours to Kona. Even my perfectly smooth landing is apparently a couple inches off of the center line.
I want to go play golf after we get in, but so does Don, so I take the flight attendants body surfing and treat them to lunch at the shrimp place on the ocean.
When darkness falls, I use the bad weather in LA as an excuse to avoid going home, and fly to Korea. First, and most important, I locate a couple of golf courses. I want to play as him, and this seems like the logical place to do it.
Second, I go back to my nuclear site, which is already being reassembled. The main building is almost back together, the side buildings are back together, and there are a swarm of workers building bigger fences and new guard towers, adding a second set of electrical cables from the outside, and framing out a couple of new buildings near the reconstructed ones.
All in all, it looks almost functional, though the web gurus insist that the actual apparatus inside cannot be replaced for years. I am suddenly not believing them. There are two other, supposedly less important, nuclear facilities connected by a set of special purpose railroad tracks, within 10 miles. They too appear to be busy. So much for grinding this operation to a stop. Might be time to revisit.
The next morning dawns to find that Don has mild food poisoning from eating something he shouldn't have, which makes for a thankfully quiet flight home. He leaves quickly once we land, leaving me to do the paperwork. I don't mind at all.
I should go out looking for the MMM's, but instead I just go home. The paper has no mention of them from yesterday, thank the rain, and I'm hoping that maybe the trouble they were in the other night will make them see the light. My light does not think that I know what I am talking about.
Sunday I go to the gym, then head over to mom and dad's. My grandparents (mom's side) are in town for the weekend from Ohio, and they get to meet Perez, who really is just part of the family now. She has "her" seat at the table, has her chores to do as part of dinner, and is the one that Bruno the boxer licks first when we walk into the house.
She has worked out the details of the plan we created during our bike ride. All three of the drug shipments we've intercepted left their respective airports, either Dallas or Houston, between 4 and 6 a.m. on a Monday or Tuesday. She asks me to go to Dallas, hands me a list of the four flights departing DFW between those hours headed for LAX or SFO, and asks that I make a scan of them and their cargo. We haven't found anything at our end, this will be a test to see if that's because something's changed at the front end.
I haven't felt anything on the ground the last four weeks, and she thinks it would be suspicious if she put me on a leash and had me sniff the cargo on incoming flights. I am flying out on another mission tomorrow morning, also planned by Perez, but she's given me time to extend the courtesy of the Dallas stopover.
The flight numbers are easy to find online. Three 767s and a 737, American, United, PSA, and Southwest. They all take off within 20 minutes of each other, and only two other flights are sandwiched inside them, none heading west.
I go into my airport charts, dig out the departure routes for DFW, and get a mental picture of the initial route of flight they will take.
We say goodnight to my parents and grandparents and walk to our cars. I follow Perez to Upland, where I park Starbuck in the hotel lot, she tells me to be careful, I do my best imitation of Simba laughing in the face of danger, she tries to hit me on the arm, but I am too far away, so we exchange a final set of smiles and she is on her way home and I jog behind the restaurant and stuff my stuff in a safe spot.
From there I rocket east, naked, to Dallas. DFW is easy to spot, it is as bright as daylight even in the middle of the night. I can't get comfortably close enough to remain hidden and get a feel for the flights, but that's not a problem.
I barbeque some Texas molecules, and climb up to what I think is 30,000 feet, due west of the airport, and wait. There are high clouds this morning, remnants of a storm system that just moved through. They, along with the darkness before sunrise, will provide cover.
The American is first. I see it on the runway, normal takeoff roll, climbing out and heading for its first navigation point. I stay higher, swing east of it, and then approach from the rear. Two minutes of hanging off its tail and I think it's clean.
Back around, the United is already airborne, so I climb and roll over the clouds until I am comfortably behind it, then I put on a little extra thrust, and do station keeping for a minute or so. Clean.
The PSA is screaming at me while it's still in its takeoff roll. I find a nearby cloud and float on top of it until the aircraft has climbed well above me, then I circle around and follow. It's in the rear cargo compartment. The feeling of it bothers me so much I have to break formation. Climbing away, I get several miles above it and hit my thrusters until I am close to the speed of sound.
I beat the PSA to LA by 45 minutes, landing quietly behind my favorite Ralph's on Santa Monica, Perez there in her Mustang to pick me up. I climb into the passenger seat, me in my underwear she stashed for me behind the store, close the door, start to reach into the back for my bag, and get whacked really hard on the arm.
"PSA 1292, rear cargo compartment." I get it out between laughing. My bag and I are halfway out the door before she speaks.
"Thanks for the help, Air Force."
"Anything for you, Officer Perez."
"Don't do anything stupid. See you Thursday."
And with that vote of confidence, I head back behind the store to fly out, while she makes the hyperlight jump to her office.
Chapter 9
The second adventure of the day has been equally carefully laid out by Perez, down to some language I should use. I give her endless crap for knowing so much about counterfeiters.
My backpack has clothes in his size in it, the green contacts and wetting solution, money, and pictures of what I want. I get naked, get in the air, and get myself south to Columbia. I brought my MP3 player this time strapped to my arm, music and an audio book loaded.
Perez knows everything, including where in Bogota to find the best counterfeit ID's. It's still dark when I land behind one of the major hotels, get dressed in the clothes I brought, and head into the restroom to put in the contacts. I buy breakfast in the hotel café, then down the street and hang out in an outdoor café until the market opens for business.
Kiana's directions to a side street are perfect. There are three sleazy men to chose from, and I pick one whose work seems remarkably good to me. It takes him 15 minutes to put a picture of him on a California driver's license with the name Robert Omar Bradley on it, another 15 to produce an Ecuadorian passport for Jesus Bolivar, same picture, and a half hour to copy the military ID I photographed clipped to Colonel O'Connor's shirt and produce one for Colonel Robert Omar Bradley. All for $300.
The artist suggests that I take the alley to get back to the main street, since the police often check foreigners wandering back from this particular neighborhood. Forgetting not to be stupid, I thank him for helping me and head off as he suggests.
I'm halfway down the alley when three teenagers come running up from behind, two stopping in front of me, their friend on my rear. Fuck me. I don't want to hurt anyone. No guns, but a knife in one hand, and another hand on top of a knife still in its sheath.
They ask for my money. I tell them I spent it all. They point out that they saw I had many Benjamin Franklins that I did not need. They are willing to let me keep my purchases if I will pay them for safe transit, perhaps $700? I suggest that they should leave now, or they might not be able to walk normally in the future. Not what they taught me to say in Patrol Procedure and Community Relations.
The young man at my back is the largest of the group, and he comes up from behind attempting to pin my arms at my sides. I raise a fist and drop him to the ground. His friends are less friendly than they were a second ago. Both knives are pointed at me. I laugh. The light laughs. They hear me, but not it.
The quiet one strikes first, I grab his wrist and squeeze a little too hard. It's broken, and the knife falls to the ground. I backhand him in the jaw, and he joins it. The last man jabs, I step aside and hit him. He falls to earth, silent. They are all still breathing, and I have everything I came into the alley with except my calm.
I walk back to the hotel where I started, grab some lunch, read, and wait until dark. Then I slip out of the hotel, undress, put everything into my backpack except my MP3 player, strap it on, and punch molecules to take me home.
Halloween is happy to see me, then pissed when I leave 15 minutes later so I can get in to work early, visit Taylor at dispatch with my flight plan. I open my bag and show her my latest acquisition, my FAA weapons permit and my SIG Sauer. Not really sure why I needed the permit, but I got it anyway, and since it was in my mailbox when I got home, I thought I would try it out. She's not impressed by the weapon, but she thinks it's cute that I wanted to impress her. I walk out to catch the shuttle to the terminal with a movie date for Saturday night.
Captain Amos and I have an uneventful flight to Kona, then he and I take the flight attendants up to Waikaloa to play golf and eat near the ocean. Eventually, we are back at our hotel, and I sneak out to the coast in my underwear, change into my golf outfit, say the magic word "golf" which definitely has intention, and fly off at mach speed for Korea.
I burn for the golf course at the resort outside of town I found the other day, land hidden in the forest surrounding it, make sure I'm properly dressed, and walk to the pro shop. Fake driver's license in hand, I rent a driver, a five iron, and two buckets of balls.
Then it's the best time I have ever had on a golf course, yes, maybe even better than playing with Taylor (both in the golf and non-golf sense). My first drive goes 375 yards, which is the furthest marker on the range. Then it's about 500 yards each for the rest of the bucket.
The five iron is good for 375 yards without stress too. I try hitting it harder, and it probably does go 500 yards, but no where near straight. It ends up in the forest. I drive some of the balls in that last bucket 700 or 800 yards (a half mile roughly), but they too end up with wicked hooks and slices.
I do this being careful not to show off, just hitting smoothly, no where near my real strength. Then I'm down to my last ball. I have no idea where it lands, but its well into town. Aside from my buddy Alan Shepard on the moon, that is a world record that will never be broken. Unfortunately, no one will ever know.
I return my clubs, retrieve my fake ID, walk back into the woods, turn molecules into kimchi, and rocket back to Hawai'i, arriving maybe an hour before sunrise, and landing on the roof of the hotel.
