by Jacob Mesmer
“What the fuck does that mean?” Tommy demanded.
“That just means that when the owner is not using it, this is where they keep it,” she said.
Tommy stepped back, pulled out his phone. Stared at the woman while he made the call.
“Prieto, plane landed and she got off a little less than an hour ago, plane is still here, that’s all we know,” Tommy said, and listened. He nodded and hung up. Then he waited and continued to stare down the girl behind the counter, who looked like she was about to faint. Her phone buzzed. She picked it up and nodded a few times.
“Please wait one moment,” she said to Tommy and Marco. Less than a minute later two security guards arrived.
“Gentlemen, if would follow us please,” the lead guard said deferentially.
“Where are we going?” Marco asked Tommy.
“We, along with Prieto’s guards, are meeting him when he lands. Then we will tear apart the other plane and find out who it belongs to,” Tommy said as they followed airport security.
Thirty Nine
“Ricker?” one of the newly arrived private security guards asked. Tommy nodded. The guard looked at Marco. “Winston?”
“Yep.”
“What are we doing?” the guard asked Tommy.
Tommy nodded toward the plane currently sitting on the tarmac.
“Soon as Prieto lands, we’re going inside that plane, getting whatever information we can, as quickly as we can, and get out.”
The three guards quickly exchanged looks.
“That plane, does it belong to Prieto?”
“It does not,” Tommy replied.
“I don’t feel comfortable going inside. We need a license to operate, and doing things like that makes it hard for guys like me to stay employed,” he said.
“What about opening the door?” Tommy asked.
“So long as it wasn’t me who did it,” he said.
“Fine. You get us inside, and keep anybody else from interfering. Or at least stall them in any way that is legally comfortable for you,” Tommy said.
“We can do that,” the guard answered. The other two guards nodded. They stood waiting, and turned when a private jet came in for a landing about 300 meters away. Two of the guards borrowed a cart from the airport security and met Prieto as he got off a few minutes later.
“Thanks for coming,” Prieto said when he arrived. He handed the phone to Marco.
“This is Marco,” he said, and then listened carefully, nodded a few times. “OK, got it,” he finally said, handing the phone back to Prieto. “Keep the line open, I know what to do.”
Tommy nodded at the lead guard, who moved a rolling ladder up to the entrance of the private jet. Marco walked up and did some work on the door, and after less than a minute it opened.
“All yours,” the guard said. He and the other two guards fanned out around the base of the ladder, ready to deflect any questions or concerns. Tommy and Prieto followed Marco up the ladder. He went in and immediately went into the cockpit.
“OK, now what?” he asked into the phone. He listened, scanning the instruments. He looked at Prieto. “You got a cable or something?” he asked. Prieto reached into his pocket and pulled out a small transfer cable used for transferring data between phones and PCs. Marco took it, plugging one end into the phone. Then he plugged the other end into a receptacle at the bottom of the instrument panel.
“OK, go ahead,” he said into the phone, which he held near the connection. The cable was relatively short. He looked at Tommy. “He said this will take maybe a minute for his guys to get in there and find what we need. He said something about Trojan horse encryption keys or something,” Marco explained.
Prieto looked on nervously. After a minute and a half, the phone chirped twice.
“Yeah?” Marco said to the person on the other end of the phone.
“Yep. Time to boogie,” the voice replied.
“Is that it?” Prieto asked.
“Yep, he said they got all we need from here, unless you want to have a look around?” Marco asked. Tommy went to the door and looked out at the guards. He didn’t see any problems.
“Yeah, we got time,” Tommy said. They went to the cabin. It was clean. Tommy and Marco stood patiently while Prieto looked through all the compartments, restrooms, and holds. They found several magazines aimed at young teenage girls. A few empty cartons of juice. An empty bag of sweets. It appeared to be a very well thought out, highly organized and deeply financed con, one aimed at separating young girls from their families, but none dared to speak the thought out loud. The implications were too terrifying to contemplate.
“I’ll go with you guys,” Prieto said, looking at Tommy. He asked where Tommy was parked and what kind of car he drove. Tommy told him. Prieto instructed the guards to both lead and follow them.
“Where you guys at?” Jamie asked once they were en route.
“About thirty, forty minutes from your place,” Tommy replied. Jamie was on speaker.
“We should have information by then. In the meantime we’re monitoring all FAA traffic for any private flights leaving U.S. airspace,” he said.
“Thank you, I appreciate that,” Prieto said.
“Don’t mention it. I took your reward offer and split it between me and five of the best tech guys I know. Wherever they’re taking her, they can’t do it without leaving a trail. We’ll find her,” Jamie promised.
They drove in silence for several minutes, Tommy following the guard driving in front of him, and periodically checking the guard behind him.
Viviana tried one more time. She’d spent the last two hours on this brush, but every single hair follicle she’d been able to retrieve had been too damaged for a complete DNA sample. The alleles had been too degraded, and she hadn’t found a strand that had enough intact to make a comparison. Ideally, when comparing DNA between two samples, the more genetic markers there were, the higher the confidence interval. But what she had she could only show a high or low probability that the two individuals represented by their DNA on the brush and the gardening tool were equivalent. Not nearly enough to stand up in any court.
She put the brush aside and began doing work on the gardening tool. It looked like a small knife, only the blade wasn’t sharp, and was slightly concave, and slightly pointed at the tip. She suspected it was used to create small holes about an inch in diameter to plant seeds. She carefully inspected the handle under the microscope, looking for rough edges. There were plenty, and on them were flakes of skin. She carefully removed one piece and began preparing for DNA extraction and analysis. Maybe they’d get lucky and whoever’s DNA this was would be in the system, and support Prieto’s theory that he was an imposter who’d wormed his way into the Shea family fortune. She checked the clock, surprised that she’d blown past lunch without feeling hungry. She looked back at her sample, deciding she’d eat after she was finished. Wouldn’t be much longer.
Forty
“Grab whatever you can, coffee machine’s back there, help yourself to whatever you can find, there’s a stack of delivery menus over there,” Jamie said as Prieto entered his office, followed by Tommy and Marco. The three private security guards waited in their vehicles in case they needed to leave in a hurry.
“What they’re doing,” Jamie explained, motioning to a large monitor which showed several small windows showing other individuals, “is looking at all the flights this plane has taken in the last year, and cross-referencing those with any financial transactions, any Internet postings, and any kind of web traffic with certain keywords,” he explained.
“How will that help?” Prieto asked.
“Um,” Jamie said, clearly uncertain, “anybody that uses a private jet to do this has done it a lot, which means they’ve got established patterns, both of, uh, recruiting and payments,” he explained. “There are a lot of ways to track how money flows. You’ve got banks, sending and receiving, many banks are used as simple bouncing points, and there are proxy con
figurations. Usually people set all this up with the idea that somebody is going to look at the individual and try to find out if they’re hiding money. But we’re kind of going backwards, starting with physical points of presence and web postings. It sounds a little haphazard, but my guys are confident,” Jamie said, motioning to the five anonymous faces on his screen, all intently looking at their own screens and furiously typing on their respective keyboards.
Viviana shook her head and read the results again. She had to have made a mistake. She mentally went through the steps she did, trying to identify what could have caused such a wide and obvious error in the methylation measurement. It was a recent development in understanding the genome, and Viviana had incorporated it into every measurement, as it was central to her lab’s function. She was slightly embarrassed to have made such a rookie blunder. Maybe it was because she’d skipped lunch. She didn’t feel hungry, but she decided to run to the kitchen and eat a banana or something before repeating the process. It was times like this that she yearned for a competent lab partner with whom she could share such idiotic goofs.
“We’re getting something,” one of the voices on Jamie’s screen said.
Prieto was beside himself. Felt completely powerless. His mind kept replaying the huge chasm of time between when Molly had sent him the text and when he’d finally called his daughter. What in the world had been more important? Why didn’t he know something was wrong when she said she was going on a private jet?
He was raised religious by his father, who’d believed the Lord blessed those who worked for a living. In a way he’d credited that mindset in how he’d built his fortune. Looking further into the economic data than others. Spending much of his free time trying to understand the unspoken truth between the political lies that polluted the airways. He couldn’t remember the last time he prayed. He feared if he’d prayed now, God would label him as a hypocrite. So he made a vow instead. If only my granddaughter is returned safely, I will do whatever I can to stop it from happening to others. Like Carnegie, he thought. I’ve spent enough time building my fortune, now it is time to give back.
“What?” Jamie said.
“This is,” the voice said, pausing, “unexpected.”
“Explain,” Jamie demanded.
“You were looking at some other proxy clusters?” he asked.
“Yeah, and?” Jamie replied, knowing his every word was being listened to by a billionaire whose granddaughter might already be in some sheik’s harem.
“It’s the same guy,” he said.
“The fuck do you mean?” Jamie asked, standing. He leaned over, looking directly at the image instead of his PC camera.
“The proxy cluster, it’s the same as the other two,” he explained. That didn’t make any goddamn sense.
“You positive?” Jamie asked.
“Yes, so it will make it easier to pin down the individual, kind of like triangulation,” he said.
“Hurry the fuck up then,” Jamie said. He seemed spooked and turned to Prieto, his face ashen.
“What is it?” Prieto asked.
“Don’t know why, but it appears that the, uh, guy who killed Laney Berg and funded Preston Sikes is also responsible for this jet,” Jamie explained.
Viviana went through the procedure a third time. Every single thing she did. She stopped and verified that there were no mistakes. And for the third time, she got the same result. Each one was different by about two percent, but that was expected. That was within the error that other geneticists found. The actual test wasn’t all that exciting, more of a novelty. It couldn’t be used to prove guilt or innocence, only perhaps narrow down the search for an individual.
She spent the next ten minutes researching any potential things she’d missed that would cause such a misreading. She found none. The test was scientifically accurate. The research showed very little reason to suspect it would be misleading. Theoretically, it made perfect sense. She knew because she’d been hired to study this very effect. She knew it inside and out. There was no logical reason to suspect that her test results were invalid. Not any. Yet they made zero sense. For the first time in her adult life, Viviana doubted science itself.
“OK, we’re getting closer, I’ll send you what we’ve found,” one of the voices said.
Jamie waited and opened his email.
“Shit,” he said.
“Please,” Prieto said.
“Sorry,” Jamie said. “I’m looking at his military record. He’s highly intelligent. Special forces. Worked for a few private military defense contractors, then about ten years ago dropped off the map. We have tertiary links to several offshore accounts, guy’s got a couple million saved up. He’s apparently some kind of intelligent, military-trained assassin, licensed pilot, and I would assume a very dangerous sociopath. This military record is dated, so I doubt he’s using the same name,” Jamie said.
“What’s the name on the record, we’ll go from there,” Prieto demanded.
“Maxwell Emerson,” Jamie said.
“Let me see that,” Tommy said, moving next to Jamie. His eyes widened, his hand flew to his mouth.
“Max,” he said, looking at Marco. “That’s the fucker who pointed a gun at me earlier today. He works for Shea. Shea is behind all of this,” he said. Then it hit him. “I know where Molly is, follow me,” he said, leaving the building. As Tommy started his car, he wondered how he would tell Viviana. As he was driving, his phone buzzed. He pulled it out. It was her.
“Hey,” he said. “I’ve got some terrible news, but I can’t really talk now, don’t know when I can,” he said. But then he realized that with where they were going, and what they were going to try to do, he might not ever talk to her again.
“Vivi, I just, uh—” he started.
“Tommy, shut up and listen to me,” she said.
“Vivi, wait, I—”
“Tommy, something is majorly fucked up,” she said. Her tone caused Tommy to pause. She sounded angry.
“It’s Shea,” she said. How did she know?
“Listen, I’m going to tell you something. You won’t believe it. But trust me as a scientist, it has to be true,” she said. What the hell?
“Go ahead,” he said. Prieto and Marco were also listening intently.
“I’ve done the DNA test several times. There is no mistake. Shea, or whoever’s DNA was on that gardening tool, is at least five hundred years old.”
Forty One
The three of them sat in stunned silence as Tommy made the last turn down the small road behind the back of Shea’s property. Tommy flashed his lights at the car in front, and slowed to stop about a hundred meters from the entrance.
“Say that again?” Tommy asked. Prieto was in the back, leaning forward.
“Look, I don’t know how, I don’t know why, but the DNA is conclusive. Those flowers, you said he has some kind of world-class gardener?”
“Yeah.”
“And he’s growing genetically altered plants in some underground facility?”
“Uh-huh.”
“That’s got to be it. Almost all medications are concentrated and synthesized chemicals that are originally found in various plants. It kind of makes sense, I mean if I could talk to him, we could—”
Tommy cut her off. “Vivi, listen to me very carefully, OK?”
“What?”
“Shea killed Laney. And he’s kidnapped Prieto’s granddaughter for some reason,” Tommy said. She was silent. Tommy felt terrible for instantly destroying what she clearly thought was the scientific discovery of a lifetime.
“Are you sure?” she asked, her voice soft and fragile.
“Dr. Berg, please remain in the lab, my men will not let anything happen to you,” Prieto said. Tommy realized that the life of his granddaughter was still at stake.
“Vivi, we’ll talk later. Shea’s got Prieto’s granddaughter and we’re going to get her, I’ll see you later, OK?”
“Be careful, Tommy,” she said. Tommy
ended the call. He flashed his lights and the car ahead continued forward. He motioned out the window at the gate. One guard jumped out of the car ahead; two guards jumped out behind.
“My granddaughter is in there. This is private property and I’m asking you to break the law to help me get her. I promise you will be compensated. You’ll never need employment again,” Prieto said, nearly begging them.
“Roger that,” the lead guard said. He approached the gate and quickly made his way through the lock.
“Down that ramp is a slide-up door, another kind of remote access lock,” Tommy said.
The three guards carefully made their way down the ramp. Prieto, Tommy, and Marco followed at a close but safe distance. They arrived at the bottom, and the guard knocked loudly on the door.
“We want Molly Phillips, let her out and we’ll leave. Don’t, and we’ll kill every motherfucker in there!” the lead guard shouted. He turned his head, heard no response. He turned back to his two partners, who both nodded. He stood to the side and put two bullets into the lock, surprised how easily it was destroyed. He looked back again, nodded to his partners, and quickly lifted the gate. The two rushed in, quickly sweeping right and left. Prieto followed in close behind. Tommy and Marco followed. Inside was a small area similar to a private parking garage. There was an elevator straight ahead, and a doorway to a stairwell on the left. One of the guards pushed the elevator button. When the door opened, he looked inside.
“One up, one down,” he said.
The other guard opened the doorway to the stairwell, listening carefully. Shook his head. He motioned upstairs, and the other two guards nodded. He motioned for Prieto to wait, pointed at his watch, and then held up two fingers. Then motioned with his hand as if he were making a phone call. Prieto took it to mean to call for backup if they hadn’t returned in two minutes, and nodded. A quick minute passed and they came back down.
