The Matter of the Deserted Airliner

by Levi, Steve;

  “Look,” said Mittles. “I don’t really know why I’m here. You asked to talk to me. Fine. I’m here. Let’s make this quick.”

  “OK,” said the man in the uniform. “Right now we have to believe what we’re being told. I don’t. I have no way of knowing if this guy is telling us the truth. We’re only good to him as hostages. Once he doesn’t need us, he doesn’t need us, if you know what I mean.”

  “You mean he’d kill us?” The thought crossed Jim’s mind for the first time.

  “For $25 million, yeah. I think it’s a possibility.” The Corporal raised his hands and eyebrows to emphasis the logic of the situation. “A real possibility. If there’s a chance we could recognize him or his people, yeah, I think he’d kill us all for $25 million.”

  “Why am I here?” asked Mittles. “Aren’t you better off dealing with the pilot and crew? They know more than we do about what’s going on.”

  The Corporal shook his head. “I don’t trust them. They could be in on it. Probably are, inside man so to speak. Naw, I don’t think I trust any of them. I trust the passengers more than a pilot and crew.”

  “Even if it’s true, what’s it got to do with me?” Mittles asked.

  “Because,” said the Corporal, “we’d better have a Plan B. Plan A is to go along with this guy. We’d better be thinking about an alternative. Why are you here? A couple of reasons. First, because you’re a woman. We need someone with the women, in their sleeping area, someone who can talk to them, keep the men informed as to what is happening. Second, you don’t just be a weightlifter. You work at it. It takes dedication. You are in it for the long haul. I think it makes you a great candidate for someone who cares.”

  “What makes you think I lift weights? Not that I care?”

  “I’m trained to notice things.”

  “You just like me for my body.”

  “I’m a brains man if it matters. Besides, I don’t see us getting it on in here. All this sex stuff aside, we could be very great danger. We’d better have a team looking for possibilities.”

  “OK,” said Jim, “what should we do now?”

  “First,” said the Corporal. “Talk to as many people as you can. See who we can count on to do something. We need a plan. We need to know who we can trust. You,” he pointed at Mittles, “see if you can find out who the female trouble-makers are. What I mean is, I find it hard to believe these guys are going to stick us in a room for two days to make $25 million and not put a sleeper or two in the group.”

  “So you think there are some traitors in the group, spies so to speak?” Jim looked the Corporal intently. “How do you know I’m not one of them?”

  “I don’t. I’ll find out as the day progresses.”

  “What about me?” asked Mittles.

  Before the Corporal could answer a man wandered into the restroom. When he saw Mittles he stopped suddenly and looked around. When he spotted the urinals, he looked from the urinals to Mittles to the toilets to Mittles to the urinals and then at the group.

  “Can we have a little privacy here,” snapped Jim.

  The man slowly backed out of the restroom, but not before taking a close look at the sign reading MEN on the door.

  “What about me?” said Mittles again. “I want an answer.”

  “I don’t know,” said the Corporal. “I’m taking a chance. I don’t have a crystal ball to tell me the truth. I just know I,” he paused for a moment, “we, don’t have much time. If things don’t go well, we won’t know it. We don’t have a lot of time. Why you two, I don’t know. It was just a feeling you were OK. I could be wrong.”

  “How do we know you aren’t one of them,” snapped Mittles.

  “Good point,” said the Corporal. “You don’t. But if I was, I wouldn’t be plotting on how to escape, would I?”

  “Only if you really were with them and wanted to see what we would try,” said Jim. “Right now I don’t give a hairy rat’s left hind leg. You have said one thing that is true. People will kill you for a lot less than $25 million. If there’s one chance we could monkey up their parade, we’re dead. End of story.”

  “OK,” said Mittles. “For the moment, and just for the moment, I’ll buy off on what you say. Only for the moment. It’s not that I do not trust you, it’s that I just don’t know. Anyway, I’ve got nothing better to do.”

  The Corporal turned off the water faucets. “For the moment, just listen to what people have to say. See if you can find people who will work with us, quietly. We need sharp people, clever people, not gung-hos who will charge the machine gun nest types.”

  “That’s odd coming from you, a man in a uniform,” said Mittles. “I would have figured you’d want heroes.” Mittles kind of liked this guy.

  “Heroes are for Hollywood. They get killed. The people who survive are the clever ones. We don’t need heroes. We need survivors. That takes guile and craftiness. No, look for the quiet clever ones.”

  Mittles really liked this guy so she said “I don’t know how I’m supposed to find them but I’ll look. When should we meet again?”

  “Whenever,” said the Corporal. “When the time is right, we’ll know.”

  The three started to leave when an evil thought crossed Mittles’ mind. As the other two walked out the door, Mittles stalled for a moment and then flushed both toilets and both urinals. When she came out, the man who was waiting to go in gave her a confused look.

  “It’s OK now,” she said as passed the man. “I’m the urinal inspector.”

  Giving her an indescribable look, the man entered the restroom watching her over his shoulder out of the corner of his eye.

  Just before the three parted, Mittles asked the Corporal. “Why’d you really ask for the radios?”

  The Corporal smiled. “Because we can’t keep meeting in the toilet room. With a radio we can meet anywhere. Playing the radio is like running the water. It screws up the recordings.”

  “Where’d you learn that,” ask Jim. “Spy school?”

  “I spent a year in the Mideast,” said the Corporal. “You can learn a lot when you’re forced to.”

  “A year?” Mittles looked at him strangely and then at his rank. “You’re a corporal.”

  “I am not always a good boy,” he said slyly. “It makes some people very unhappy.”

  “Kissing butt ain’t all it’s cracked up to be either,” said Jim. “It can be profitable. When the two of you get older and have kids you’ll find out just how much fun it is.”

  Chapter 19

  “Well, what do we do now? Ayanna scratched a brassiere strap beneath her blouse unconsciously. “I’m not used to this kind of a thing. Waiting and all.”

  “No one is,” replied Noonan. “It comes with the territory.”

  The two were sitting at the end of a solid oak table in the Command Center. The table top was littered with used coffee cups, plates with half-eaten sandwiches, some doughnuts and empty pop cans. There were several piles of napkins, most of them unused, and a heap of plastic silverware at the far end of the end of the expanse. The AIC was speaking quietly to a covey of law enforcement personnel near the window overlooking the runway.

  “At least he knows what he’s doing,” Ayanna said and indicated the AIC with an inclination of her shoulder.

  “He doesn’t have a clue,” said Noonan quietly. “Not a clue. Hasn’t had since the gems were picked up. He’s just trying to look like he’s in charge.”

  “If he doesn’t know, who does?” Ayanna looked concerned.

  Noonan smiled at her. “Ayanna. No one knows. This isn’t usual police type business. That’s exactly why the thieves are doing it this way. They have all the cards. They won’t make a move until they’re ready. We’re the ones who have to sit and wait.”

  “So we sit and wait?”

  “For the moment, yes. We should be gathering those gems as slowly as possible. There are still a few things we can do. We just have to be careful how we go about doing them.”

&nbs
p; “Why be careful?”

  “Because,” said Noonan said quietly, “we are not all on the same team.”

  Ayanna immediately went from concerned to conspiratorial. “We’re not all on the same team? You mean. . .”

  Noonan cut her off before she finished her statement. “What I mean is, the thieves have a pipeline into what we are doing. They know what we are doing. Which means they have someone on the inside. Their movements are too confident not to have an inside source.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “For $25 million I’d be sure. This is a tight knit group, these extortionists. They know airports, they know police procedure, and they know terrorism-prevention procedures. They didn’t just pick unique knowledge up by reading Time and Newsweek. Nope, they’ve got an inside man. Or woman.”

  “It could be someone in this room, right?”

  “Could be but I don’t think so. See, everyone is this room is working so close with everyone else if there was leak, everyone would know where it came from. No, I think it’s one level down. Probably within the Police Department. Police know airport procedures. Airport people do not know police procedures.”

  “You seem pretty sure of yourself.”

  “Nope. Just a guess. I don’t have the slightest idea what I’m doing. I’m just waiting for events to offer me an opening to try to solve this crime. Until the hostages get released, I have to play it cool. There’s always time to track down a thief after the crime but you can never bring a dead man back alive.”

  “Kind of makes us a secret team, doesn’t it?”

  “Always was. It just took you until now to realize it. Just you and me.”

  “OK, partner. What do we do now?”

  “Now, partner, while we have time, we track down the loose ends. I don’t trust the police to do it. I don’t want the police doing it. For the moment, let’s just keep what we are doing as our little secret.”

  “Fine with me.” She leaned forward conspiratorially, “What are we doing?”

  “First we talk. What are the loose ends we can play with? I think we’ve got four solid threads to follow. First, we have the names of the passengers and crew. Every one of those names should be run through NCIC, the national crime data base. Who knows what we might find?”

  “I’m pretty sure that’s already been done.”

  “I am too. I just haven’t seen the read-out. Second, some of those passengers had lap tops and cell phones. I doubt the perps let them keep the electronic equipment but, who knows, we might get lucky. We need the cell phone numbers for the passengers. With them we can find the issuing company and then locate the phones using GPS.”

  “Too late. The AIC has already done it.”

  “Nope,” said Noonan as he pulled out a sheet of paper. “He only did it for the passengers who have relatives in Anchorage. Not for the passengers who have no relatives here. This is a list of the cell phones of Seattle residents who were on the plane. There is probably some crossover, but the AIC doesn’t have this list.”

  “Where do you get it,” whispered Ayanna quite impressed.

  “No matter what business you are in, my dear lady,” Noonan said in an avuncular manner, “you should always be thinking ahead. As soon as the ransom demand came in, I called my office. They traced all the passengers they could and called every contact number in Seattle. We got six cell phone numbers. Six are still in Seattle.”

  “Fantastic! Where are the other six?”

  “The other six are why,” Noonan said sadly, “I didn’t bother to bring this up before. The six cell phones were on the plane with the passengers. Two of them were located here, in Anchorage, probably in the carry-on luggage or in the luggage compartment.”

  “The other four?”

  “These guys are really good, Ayanna. They are really good. One is on an Hawaiian-bound flight. It took off an hour after Unicorn 739 landed here in Anchorage. Another is in Juneau. The third is moving north slowly, probably on a ferry, somewhere on the Inside Passage. The last one, and this is rich, was actually located in Seattle. It was in a Special Delivery package to the President of Unicorn Airlines.”

  “The President of the Airlines? Brutal. Had it been sent from Seattle?”

  “We assume so but we don’t know. It was delivered to the front door just like a regular delivery. A temp signed for it and opened it. She passed the phone along upstairs. By the time anyone realized whose phone it was, the delivery man was long gone. All the temp could say was he was ‘not white.’ In Seattle that can mean anything.”

  “How about the. . .”

  “Envelope.” Noonan cut her off. “You’re getting good at this. Yes, there was an envelope. It was an Air Rapid Delivery envelope from Nome, Alaska.”

  “Nome? Do they have a. . .”

  “No. Nome doesn’t have an Air Rapid Delivery office. The label was a fake. The phone had a note on it: ‘Don’t lose this. You’ll never know who’s calling.”

  “I hope someone dusted for prints?”

  “The whole forensic ball of wax. Inside and out of the envelope. No fingerprints. No hairs, just some fibers.”

  “I’m afraid to ask.”

  “Walrus whiskers.”

  “How the. . .”

  “The Seattle PD has some Alaskans. One of them is a Native. He recognized the whiskers. Everyone thought he was kidding but they compared them anyway. They were walrus whiskers.”

  “So what’s it all mean?”

  Noonan shook his head. “The same thing we knew when we started this case. The thieves are very, very clever people. So far they have thought of everything.”

  “So there’s nothing for us to do? Sounds like you’ve done it all.”

  “No. I’ve only done the easy part. I just made a phone call and let loose the hounds. The hard part is what’s next. Here’s where you can do your fair share. What I need you to do. . .”

  Chapter 20

  To say the fire alarm took the extortionist by surprise was an understatement. He made it from his cot to the bank of monitors still naked, trying to pull on his underwear. When he remembered he was alone, he didn’t bother to try.

  The first thing he did was cut the power to the alarm. Then he scanned every inch of the warehouse he could see with the cameras. Other than the fact everyone was milling around wondering what was happening, he could not see a puff of smoke. Flicking on the microphone he asked if everyone was all right. He actually didn’t have to ask. Just by looking at them there was no a sign of panic.

  “The alarm must have cut in because of a short in the wiring,” he said into the microphone and then re-started the movie.

  Then the phone rang.

  Looking up at the screen display of the area in front of the screen, he saw the Corporal on the phone. He let the tape run and watched the lips of the Corporal trying to guess what he was saying. When the Corporal hung up, the extortionist replayed the tape. The message was short: “What about those radios?”

  Something gnawed at the extortionist. The fire alarm should not have gone off. Those wires had been disconnected to avoid an unexpected alarm. What had made it go off? He scanned the interior of the warehouse through the lenses of the six security cameras and did not see anything out of place. Strange.

  When the alarm went off a second time an hour later, he was sure there was something amiss. Why had the alarm gone off again? Weren’t the wires disconnected? What was going on here? He’d have to spend a lot more time watching the monitors. This was rapidly turning into a two-man job but until his partner got back with the medicine, it would have to be a one-man job.

  It was not starting out as a great day.

  Chapter 21

  Gerry didn’t think it was such a great day either. She knew who Medusa was. After all, she did have a college education. A good college education. Not one of those you get by taking Mickey Mouse classes. She was a journalism/English major. No Mickey Mouse classes for her. If you wanted to be the best, nothing but the best educa
tion was necessary. So it was San Jose State? So what? A quality education doesn’t depend on where you went to school; it’s what you forced yourself to learn.

  She punched up Medusa on the Internet and read everything she could. There were lots of links to earth, air and water. There were lots of links but none appeared meaningful. She did discover Medusa was not a standalone demon–if that was the term the Greeks would have used to describe her. Actually she had two sisters, known as the gorgons, the root of the word “gorgon.” Of the three sisters, only Medusa was mortal. Perseus, the man with the winged sandals, killed her.

  Winged sandals? Was this the answer to the ‘air’ part of the riddle? It seemed a good bet until she read a little further. Since whomever looked in the face of the Medusa turned to stone, Perseus had slain the Gorgon with a trick. He had buffed up the inside of his shield until it shown like a mirror. Then he slew Medusa by guiding his sword toward the death blow by looking in the mirror located on inner face of his shield. She also learned Perseus slew Medusa while she was sleeping. Gerry hadn’t known that before. She also hadn’t known that when the gorgon was slain, Pegasus and a man whose name she could not pronounce leapt out of Medusa’s severed neck. They were both children of Poseidon.

  There was another air reference. Even from her rudimentary knowledge of Greek mythology, she knew Perseus didn’t ride the winged horse. He got away by making himself invisible with a kibisis, a helmet giving invisibility. He didn’t need to ride Pegasus to get away.

  Who rode Pegasus? A few clicks of the keyboard and she discovered it was Bellerophon. Bellerophon tamed Pegasus and used the winged horse to kill the Chimera – a beast part lion, goat and dragon – and then had tried to ride to the top of Mt. Olympus. This apparently pissed off Zeus to no end so he put an end to Bellerophon. Zeus sent a lightning bolt to knock the headstrong mortal off his mount. The fall didn’t kill him but it left him crippled and blind for the rest of his life.

  “Another Greek mythological consistency,” she mused. “Everyone who ticks off the gods ends up wandering the countryside alone, blind and crippled.”