The Matter of the Deserted Airliner

by Levi, Steve;

  “Not for Unicorn Airlines.”

  “Is Unicorn the only one?”

  “It’s probably the only big airlines coming in here. The smaller, regionals do it too. They don’t pull into the terminal. They park outside the terminal and let the passengers get out and walk into the building.”

  “How far out are we talking about?”

  “20, 30 feet.”

  Noonan walked to the building and paced off twenty feet, the Doberman trying to catch up with him for another series of ear scratches. Noonan obliged. When he finally made the 30 feet, Noonan turned around and looked up at the cameras again.

  “As old as those cameras look, they appear to be doing the job.”

  “They are. Like I said, I watched every running inch of the video tape on all the cameras including those,” he indicated the cameras. “They may be old but they are doing their job. There was no suspicious person, vehicle or activity I or anyone else could spot.”

  Noonan took a long look up and down the terminal. Then he looked across the runway and into the trees on the southern side of the air field.

  “Forget it,” the Dog Handler said.

  “Eh?”

  “I know what you’re thinking.”

  “What am I thinking?”

  “You’re thinking it might be possible for whomever it was flying the plane to have left the airport by heading south, toward those trees. No. I looked at the tapes. No one left the plane headed across the runway. Nothing left the cargo area and went any further than the edge of the runway apron.”

  “So this side of the airport is secure?”

  “We’d like to think so. Even the moose have a hard time getting through. There’s a solid fence over there – expect for some moose gates. Someone walked the length of the fence looking for anything suspicious right after the plane landed. Zip. Nada. Goose egg.”

  “It was a thought.”

  “Since you’ve searched my brain, let me search yours. How did the guy do it?”

  Noonan smiled. “If I knew I’d be in Vegas. The pilot didn’t disappear, she wasn’t abducted by aliens and she’ll be back before this case is closed.”

  “Hear! Hear!” The Dog Man raised his fist twice. The moment he did, the Doberman jumped up and placed his paws on the Dog Man’s chest.

  “He loves you,” Noonan chuckled. “There’s no substitute for the loyalty of a dog.”

  “They don’t have a mother-in-law, get the mumps or force you to go to church.”

  “Ah, the joys of married life!” Noonan smiled. “Is the cargo document handler as approachable as you?”

  “She’s a vicious, unpredictable, disreputable individual whose husband is even worse.”

  “She’s your wife?”

  “You see through me like glass. Yes. She’s actually very nice.” He paused for a moment and then added “most of the time.”

  “I know just what you mean. All wives are nice (pause) most of the time.”

  In fact, she turned out to be exceedingly helpful even though she was under tremendous pressure.

  “Sorry to pull you aside on a busy day like this.”

  Dabney’s wife was as tall as he was. Both had played basketball in college but she was the one who got the scholarship. For biology, not basketball.

  “How did you end up doing cargo?”

  “Have you ever worked in a laboratory?”

  Noonan scratched his head. “I’ve been in and around laboratory, crime labs most of my life but I never worked there.”

  “Don’t,” said Dabney’s wife. “You get to mix chemicals all day come home smelling like formaldehyde. The beakers have more personality than your coworkers and the thrill of the year is naming a new chemical no one will ever use.”

  “Frustrating, eh?”

  “Hey! I’m here. I get to deal with people all day here. Real people. There are some pills but by and large it’s entertaining. Today’s a bit different because I’m telling people they can’t have their cargo. Usually they are telling me they want their cargo.”

  “You look busy.”

  “Busy? I’m not busy. Other than Unicorn 739 it’s a normal day. Cargo in and cargo out. I’m not allowed to move anything off Unicorn 739 so I’m spending my time telling those customers ‘no,’ ‘no,’ and ‘What part of NO don’t you understand?’”

  “Pushy?” asked Noonan.

  “Yeah, but I can understand why,” she said. “Those companies paid a lot of money to have their cargo brought up quickly. Now it’s sitting around the airport for no apparent reason.”

  “Which brings me to why I’m here. Can you look over this list of customers and tell me which ones are trying to get their cargo out now?”

  She looked at Dabney the Dog Man. “He’s with the Police,” he said authoritatively. “Out of North Carolina but working with the locals. Working on the Unicorn 739 case.”

  Assured, she looked over the list. “What exactly are you looking for?”

  “I don’t know,” Noonan responded. “Anything unusual, out of the ordinary.”

  “This is Alaska during the summer. There isn’t anything ordinary about the cargo we get. I’ve off-loaded an elephant, sent cows to bush villages, medevac’d a Santa Clause and spent half a day getting a swarm of bees back in a hive. What exactly do you think is unusual?”

  Noonan smiled. “I’m thinking too much like an Outside detective. I forgot I was in Alaska. OK, let’s do this backwards.” He handed her the cargo manifest print out. “Which of these names are regulars?”

  “Do you want me to mark them?”

  “Please.”

  She went down the list meticulously, checking off customers. As she handed him the list back, she asked “What do you know about the air cargo business?”

  “Air planes carry it.” Noonan smiled.

  Dabney the Dog Man’s wife smiled. “It’s a good start. I don’t know what you are looking for but it might help if you knew some of the basics.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “You might be making a mistake concentrating on the cargo. There are all kinds of cargo but there are only a few kinds of customers.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Before 9/11 anyone could ship anything anywhere with no problem. 9/11 changed the way everyone does business. Cargo restrictions came out of Washington D. C. in a river.”

  “All for the better, of course,” Noonan said.

  “In this case,” she replied, “yes. Cargo regulations before 9/11 were worthless. The new regulations make the skies a lot safer. The restrictions are a lot tighter, particularly at the big airports.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “OK. Right now, if you want to ship something from, say, San Francisco to Denver by air, no one is going to take the cargo unless you are an established customer. If you are a new business starting out, you have to jump through a lot of hoops to get your cargo onto the plane. If you can’t meet every single requirement – and I mean every single requirement – your cargo does not fly.”

  “If it doesn’t fly, how does it go?”

  “Truck, train, boat. It just doesn’t fly.”

  “That must make it hard for the rural airlines and places like bush Alaska.”

  “There’s a bit of discretion allowed with the new regulations but actually the new regulations didn’t change much of what was actually happening. Alaska has bypass mail so a lot of cargo came – and is coming – through as mail. We don’t process the mail. The Post Office does. The only thing I can tell you about the mail on Unicorn 739 was it weighed,” she paused for a moment and then flicked through some paperwork on her desk, “1,865 pounds.”

  “You don’t know what’s in the mail?”

  “No. I’m not allowed, we’re not allowed, to touch it. Privacy act. Only the Postman knows for sure.”

  “So, excluding the mail, or what the United States Post Office calls mail in Alaska, what are we talking about in terms of cargo?”

  “This,”
she replied as she held up the cargo manifest. “This is a list of everything which came in on Unicorn 739 including the mail. Taking out the mail and regular customers you have six, no seven, unusual customers.” She tapped the paper five times. “Here and here and here and here and here. Five of them. The other two I’ve seen before. They are erratic shippers. Erratic as in not regular, not erotic as pornographic.”

  “What makes them erratic?” Noonan asked.

  “They are not regularly scheduled clients. They might get six crates in one month and then nothing for three months, a crate one week and then five crates the next week but then nothing for six months. It’s unusual considering the usual, regular customers get a crate a week, for instance, but these guys have been doing it for as long as I’ve been here.”

  “How long has that been?”

  “Five years.”

  “This one,” she tapped on the paper, “is unusual because of the product. It’s a meat packaging plant, wild game, kind of product. Usually his heavy weights are going out, not coming in. So it’s unusual in that sense. I’ve seen him before.”

  “OK.” Noonan looked over her shoulder at the five remaining names on the list. “These are absolutely new people.”

  “Yup. Never seen ‘em before.”

  “Can you tell me anything about the five?”

  “Let’s see,” she pulled open a drawer and searched for, and found, five folders. She read through the first one and set it down, “this one is for magazines coming in. It must be a news service or publisher or a similar business.”

  “Why didn’t they send the magazine through the Post Office and save on the cargo bill.

  “Because bypass mail is only mail that is mailed in Alaska for Alaskans in Alaska. This company had no choice but to send it Anchorage as cargo. There’s a street address meaning the publisher will probably break apart the pallet and distribute the magazines. Some will be sent out as bypass mail.”

  “The others?”

  “Four to go.” She picked up another folder. “This one is for a church and it’s an organ part. Weighs about 30 pounds. I’ve got another for a motorcycle for a man by the name of George Sampson in Talkeetna. Supposedly the motorcycle is an antique and had to be shipped as a motorcycle and not crated. It’s unusual, first because it’s a private individual, second because it’s expensive and third, he’s a newbie.”

  “Do you have a name and phone number for him?”

  “Yeah, here.” She handed him the file.

  Noonan wrote down the name and phone number and returned the file. “How about the other two?”

  “One is a ten-pound box of some medicine and,” she looked at the last folder. “The last is a strange one too. It’s an igloo – do you know what an igloo is?”

  “If it’s not a barabara it’s a cargo container shaped like an igloo.”

  “Right. I don’t know what’s in the igloo, just that it’s been inspected. Weighs 136 pounds and was transferred from New Orleans and before that New York.”

  “New Orleans and New York? Sounds odd to me. Sounds like it’s been bouncing across the country.”

  “Let’s see what we can come up with. Humm, it’s also been losing weight as it crossed the country. It was 200 pounds in New York and 163 in New Orleans.”

  Noonan shook his head. “Does that mean people have been taking things out of it as it went along?”

  “No. Once cargo is put on the plane, no one can get into it. The definition of cargo is a package loaded at Point A and offloaded at Point B. In this case, the on load was in New York and the offload was Anchorage. It went through New Orleans because, because,” she stalled as she pulled up her computer and slipped through the maze of numbers. “It went through New Orleans because the shipper wanted it to go there originally. Once it arrived, the shipper changed his mind and sent it on to Anchorage.”

  “Who’s the customer?”

  “Harrison, Johnson, McDonagle. A firm in New York.”

  “Great. Just what we need is a pack of lawyers involved.”

  “Then you’re in luck,” she said. “According to this they’re not lawyers. They’re a cargo forwarding company.” She punched a button and the printer next to the computer came to life. “Let’s give them a call. I want to know why the cargo is losing weight.”

  “How do you know it’s losing weight? Do you weigh everything as it goes onto a plane?”

  “Yes we do. It’s too easy to overload a plane. Had the crate gone from New York to Anchorage directly, it would have only been weighed once. In New York. Even if it was transferred a few times along the way it would have only have been weighed once. The difference here is the crate was sent with New Orleans as its final destination. When the crate arrived and was re-routed, new paperwork had to be issued. So it was weighed again.”

  “Why didn’t someone in New Orleans notice the weight difference?”

  “No reason to,” she said as he stared at the screen. “It was offloaded and sitting on the warehouse floor. When it was re-routed, the airlines treated it like a new, incoming crate. The paper work was filled out and the crate was weighed just as if it had come through the front door in New Orleans. There was no reason to compare the weights. In fact, if we hadn’t had this problem with Unicorn 739, it would have made it out the door here in Anchorage with no one asking at all. It’s only by chance I caught it. You did, actually. If you hadn’t asked, I wouldn’t have checked.”

  “Let’s get those guys on the phone.”

  Chapter 23

  It took Mittles less than a heartbeat to snap the bolt on the warehouse bay door. It wasn’t really hard because the Corporal and Jim and been working on it for three hours. Somehow the Corporal had scrounged up a sturdy piece of wire. Then he and Jim had gone to work on the bolt. They had chosen the warehouse bay door bolt because it was on the only doorway partially hidden from the security cameras. The fume hood for the smokers was in front of it.

  In actuality Mittles was proud of the fact she had been the one to snap the bolt. Working with weights did count for something. Only she could have done it. The Corporal might have been good with his brains but brawn was not his strong point. Brawn was her strong point because she worked at it. It didn’t mean she was stupid because she was strong. It just meant she was in good shape. The Corporal noticed such things.

  It was too bad he was in the Army, Mittles mused.

  Then she snapped the lock.

  The Corporal was impressed.

  There had been quite a bit of complaining when the Corporal and Jim had told all of their growing ranks of escapees-to-be everyone was going to have to take a turn in the smoking area. There had only been six smokers on the plane but the three conspirators needed a wall of flesh between themselves and the security cameras. The ex-smokers were the worst. Even just standing under the fume hood with a cigarette and pretending to smoke caused them to shake.

  “I gave up smoking so I could live to see my grandchildren grow up,” snapped an older woman. “Now I’ve got to start smoking to see my grandchildren at all?”

  “Could be the size of it,” Mittles had whispered. “Right now there are no guarantees. We don’t know what’s going to happen.”

  “Let me tell you, young lady,” the old woman leaned forward conspiratorially, “I’ll tell you one thing that will happen. If we don’t take care of ourselves no one else is going to do it.”

  It seemed to be the attitude of just about everyone else in the warehouse. It was like a prisoner-of-war camp coming together complete with the speaking out of the side of the mouth and distractions. The airline crew immediately established itself as the liaison for the hostages. Mittles dealt with the women; Jim with the men. The Corporal was the scavenger.

  Of the 89 passengers, only a dozen were excluded.

  “What do you mean I can’t get involved?” snapped Jennifer when she was told she could not join in the ranks. “I’m good enough?”

  “That’s not it,” Jim told her. �
�You’re not the problem. Your kid is. We don’t want anyone with kids involved.”

  “You don’t like kids?”

  “Love ‘em. Too much, as a matter of fact. No. Kids talk. We don’t want anything to get blown because a kid doesn’t know to keep quiet. Second, if we make a break for it, the women and children, in this case, go last. The best chance of survival we have is to get people out and running. If we can get a dozen people out, one of them is going to find a phone. Kids will slow us down. Besides, we’ve got more important things for you to do.”

  “Like what?” Ayanna said suspiciously.

  “Keep the main man busy. Off balance. Ask for things. Diapers. Medicine. Tampons. Whatever. Start a Women-With-Children’s group and keep him busy. Give us time to try something.”

  “I guess I create some problems.”

  “Good. Get the other mothers to help you. Have the kids upset an apple cart here and there. Kids are good at screwing things up. Provide a distraction. Many of them. All the time.”

  “If there is any one thing Jason is good at,” said Jennifer with the voice of exasperation, “it’s being a distraction.”

  As it had worked out, the WWC group, Women-With-Children, had done better than expected. It included six women and two men. They encourage the kids to knock over a trash can in the kitchen scattering used food all over the floor. Another child skinned a knee allowing his mother to stand in front of a security camera with blood all over her hands. A father encouraged his son to jerk the phone out of the wall while the extortionist was speaking and then stood with a KIDS!-what-are-theygoing-to-do-next? look on his face.

  All the while, the Corporal and Jim were working on the bolt to the combination lock.

  “What do you think we’ll see when the door comes up?” asked Sam.

  “I don’t know,” replied the Corporal. “All I want to see is five or six people through the door and running by the time the alarm sounds.”

  “You think there is an alarm?”

  “It would surprise me if there wasn’t.”

  When the bolt almost severed, Mittles took a look at it. She didn’t like being in the smoker’s area but liked what she saw with regard to the bolt. “You guys did a good job. I’m impressed,” she gave the bolt a pull.