Salty Sky

by Seth Coker

  Also, that logic hadn’t exactly stopped the DEA on any assignment before. You might notice ninety percent of individuals arrested for drugs were black or Hispanic. And to be factual, if Escobar wasn’t speaking, you’d have thought he was another white guy with a nice tan. But this wasn’t really a DEA assignment, and everyone knew Escobar spoke Spanish. But Sheila could face country club prison if she was discovered and prosecuted, so he understood her reluctance.

  “I don’t suppose you figure they just wanted to make me think a bit about my past sins and have now gone home?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine, but I don’t think that is what either of us guesses.”

  “True. Anything else?”

  “They haven’t returned their rental yet. We put an asset there once we knew they checked out.”

  “OK. Thanks again, Sheila.”

  “No problem. If we can get them on any infraction to keep them from leaving the area, we’ll do it. I’ll call you Friday afternoon with an update.”

  “Thanks.” To lighten the mood, he added, “Maybe trick me with a phone with a different area code next time.”

  They finished the conversation. Cale walked into the bathroom more pleased with his behavior and less pleased with his predicament.

  BEFORE ENTERING THE small airport, Francisco spoke to his jet’s crew. He told them to stay on the plane and prepare for departure; he had a quick meeting to inspect a King Air he was considering purchasing. He expected the jet to depart within two minutes of his boarding. The ability and desire to follow precise instructions without question was something Francisco had prized above all else when he’d interviewed for these crew positions.

  The three men walked into the FBO. Alberto wore a sport coat over slacks, the Cuban wore a tight polo shirt tucked into tight pants, covered with a tight-fitting sports coat, and Francisco wore a long-sleeved linen shirt over linen pants that were tailored to his frame.

  Francisco had been unable to find a new guayabera in his American shopping excursions but was enjoying the new linen shirt except for the wrinkles. A tall, tanned American Athena wearing a dress and a baseball cap stood in the lobby with a smile, waiting for someone. Her long legs caught Francisco’s attention before he turned his back to her and talked with the Cuban in hushed tones. Alberto motioned that he was going to the restroom.

  CALE DID HIS business. Both legs fell asleep, and he realized he must still be a bit dehydrated from the bachelor party. He read the sports section left in the tray on the back of the stall door. Freaking baseball. He had to keep up hope. Football started soon. He washed his hands and used the folded paper towels out of the tray on the counter to dry them.

  FBO bathrooms were full-service and usually spotless. This one was no exception. It was high quality and low traffic. There were shower stalls with big wooden, louvered doors; oversized fluffy towels; and often a steam room. They catered to a high-end clientele. Actually, they catered to the highest-end clientele.

  Cale gurgled and spit mouthwash, dispensed sunscreen from the pump jug on the counter, and lubed up his face and ears. He usually forgot the ears. He examined himself in the mirror to make certain no white globs remained. Satisfied, he washed his hands to get the oily lotion off and dried them again. If he’d thought to put the lotion on before using the bathroom, he could have saved a hand washing and the world a paper towel. This probably wouldn’t be his biggest mistake of the day.

  AS THE THIRD man disappeared around the corner, Ashley approached the two men standing in the middle of the room. They had their backs to her, facing north out the floor-to-ceiling windows at the tarmac’s loading area. The young man pointed at something outside. It raised the back hem of his jacket, and she glimpsed the black metal in the small of his back. Her brain registered this as a pistol. She stopped her approach.

  Why did he have a gun? Was he the other man’s bodyguard? The customers who can afford private air travel might need—or at least be able to afford—bodyguards. She would tell Cale about it before they took off, in case he had an issue with it.

  She gathered herself and finished her approach. “Mr. Garcia?” she said to their backs.

  FRANCISCO AND THE Cuban turned, responding to the proximity of the comment, not the use of the pseudonym, which didn’t register when coming from an unexpected source. Francisco’s eyes scanned up to the ball cap on her head. He recognized the logo.

  “Oh, yes. Are you our pilot for today? I thought I saw a man’s name as our pilot on the paperwork. A Mr. Coleman, I believe.”

  “My name is Ashley Walker, and I am only your copilot today,” the woman responded, with a small stage curtsy. “Truthfully, I’m in the early stages of training, so I will be mostly observing. You are correct: Mr. Coleman will be our pilot today. He is very experienced. He has been a professional pilot for twenty-five years, so we are all in good hands.”

  “Wonderful. Is our plane ready?”

  “Yes. If you’re ready, I will take you out and return for your friend. Do you have any luggage other than these small bags?”

  “No, this is all we will bring, and yes, we are ready to board the plane.”

  CALE STARTED TO leave, and as he reached for the door, it opened inward. He stepped back slightly, startled because the older man entering was slightly startled too. Cale said, “Excuse me.”

  The older man responded with an accented “Pardon.”

  They looked in each other’s faces. The older man recognized Cale. Cale recognized him without knowing his name. He was the largest of the three men who’d visited his house. The older man recognized Cale’s recognition of him. Cale had never been good at cards.

  The older man reached behind his back. Cale lunged for the man’s throat and both hands grabbed it. His thumbs dug into the Adam’s apple. The older man tried to peel the hands off his throat. A SEAL would have possessed the mental toughness to ignore the choking, grab the gun, and shoot Cale. But this was a goon past his expiration date, and Cale wondered how he got so lucky. The older man pulled at Cale’s hands. He swung his knee toward Cale’s balls. Cale angled his hips in the way. The kneeing didn’t feel good, but it didn’t crumple him.

  He pushed the older man against the closed door. He was worried the man would start banging the door and wall to get attention, but he was too focused on the oxygen restriction. Cale never appreciated all that survival training. It always seemed so intuitive. Watching these mistakes, he appreciated it now. It was kind of how Fort Benning had to teach soldiers to return fire. You wouldn’t think that people would need to be taught to shoot back at people who were shooting at them, but apparently they did.

  Cale’s thumbnails punctured the skin of the man’s neck; a trickle of blood dripped down under the man’s collar. Cale didn’t want to create a hole to his trachea that might keep him functioning longer but still kept squeezing as hard as he could. The wingspan difference between the men was enough that the older man’s hands couldn’t reach Cale’s face, so the frantic clawing was contained to the back of Cale’s hands and triceps, where blood was beginning to drip. The protests were frenzied as the man fought for oxygen. Then he weakened, but before he passed out, Cale released his throat. The man slouched forward drunkenly into Cale’s arm and gasped for air. Cale wrapped his arms in counter directions around the man’s head. There was no resistance. A quick twist, with a pivot of the hips, and the neck snapped.

  The body went limp, Cale wrapped his arm around the waist, leaned slightly backward, and took on the body’s weight while keeping the dead man’s lower body still pushed against the door. Cale searched with his free hand, found the thumb latch, and locked the door. He reached into the man’s back pocket and removed his wallet. Nice to meet you, Alberto. He laid the body down and took a good look at him. Mid-sixties, he guessed. Strong frame gone soft. Slight nicotine discoloration of the mustache, the same discoloration on the left hand’s middle and index fingers.

  When he frisked the corpse, he found—as he’d suspected
—a gun in the small of the back. Wouldn’t that have been a pisser if he was reaching for a handkerchief? He left the gun alone. Alberto’s passport was in his front shirt pocket, a cell phone in his front pants pocket. Cale took all identification from the wallet, the man’s passport, and his cell phone and put them in his own pockets, then slipped the wallet back into Alberto’s.

  Bending at the knees, he picked Alberto up and carried him to a stall. Dead people were amazingly heavy, especially their floppy heads. Cale propped him inside on the commode, locked the stall door, and scaled over it. He scrolled through the cell phone. There were group text messages in Spanish to two numbers. Those were the only numbers used in the phone. They were both 919 area codes, for phones obviously bought recently. Cale’s conversational Spanish was sufficient if someone was speaking to him, but if he was watching two Spanish speakers talk to each other, he was lost. He could comprehend written Spanish even better, because he had more time to figure it out before the next set of words needed comprehending. His written Spanish, however, no es muy bueno. But he wanted an advantage. So he gave it a shot. Texting language wasn’t particularly proper anyway, between the phone’s autocorrect function, typing shortcuts, and fat fingering.

  He group texted the two numbers. “En el baño—diez y seis minutos.” He wanted to say fifteen minutes, but couldn’t remember if the word for fifteen started with a “c” or a “q.”

  AS THE TWO men followed Ashley out of the lobby, a text pinged in both men’s pockets. The men stopped and looked at the news. They discussed it in frustrated tones.

  She wondered how she’d lived near Mexico her entire life and only had an elementary understanding of Spanish. She did understand when the young man said, laughing, “¡Dios mío, el viejo necesita diez y seis minutos!”

  She waited while Mr. Garcia typed in his reply.

  ONE OF THE numbers texted back. “Hay un copiloto. Estamos en el avión.”

  Cale texted back, “Claro.”

  For the first time, he regretted the decision to bring Ashley. Was it hubris to think he wouldn’t put her in harm’s way? Maybe this would be a story to share and laugh about years later, in the old folks’ home. Remember the first time you went flying with me, got taken hostage, and I killed those three guys? What a hoot!

  It probably wouldn’t go that way. She wouldn’t be ready for the old folks’ home until Cale was long dead. He hoped she wasn’t a hostage, but just part of the scenery. This reminded him again that hope was not a strategy. He’d find an excuse to get her out of the plane before the violence started.

  He popped Alberto’s phone open, took out the memory card, washed the phone in the sink, dropped it into the trash, and covered it with paper towels. The memory card, he flushed down the toilet. Cale removed the Beretta from his ankle and slipped it in his back pocket to make it easier to reach. He untucked his shirt and covered the handle sticking out of the pocket. Not a very professional look, but he was no longer interested in having this client as a repeat customer, and he doubted they’d post a review to his website. A trip booked for three guys? He should have figured this out sooner. Nice work, detective.

  Was it time to get the authorities? And charge what? No, there was no charge sufficient to hold them—maybe enough to hold Cale, though. He had significantly upped the stakes. The Escobars’ pride gave them no choice but to finish Cale off, while they’d given Cale no good choice but to finish them. If they left, they’d come back at a time and in a manner of their choosing. But if he went the authorities route, it was safer for Ashley.

  He decided he’d see whether he could get her out of the plane first, before there was any confrontation. If he could get her out, he’d finish this. If he couldn’t, he’d bring in the police—at least, that is what he told himself.

  Taking paper towels, Cale dabbed the blood off. Thankfully, his navy blue shirt and blue jeans hid stains well. His sunglasses hanging on their Croakies and ball cap somehow never got displaced in the tussle. Cale unlocked the bathroom and started the walk toward the plane. He scanned the FBO terminal for people; there was still only the shift manager behind the desk, staring at a computer screen.

  THE THREE WALKED outside in the sunshine. Enjoying her role as concierge, Ashley made small talk.

  “Did you have any trouble with the hurricane?”

  “No. Only we did not get to work on our suntans as much as we had hoped.”

  As they walked, she pointed out the different types of prop planes and mentioned interesting trivia about them. She waved at the jets and regurgitated the information she’d digested this morning from her tour with Cale. Standing in front of the twin-engine turbo prop, she explained the King Air’s features, it’s flying altitude parameters, the speed range, the odds of turbulence in the wake of the hurricane, the deviations from the direct route that air traffic control would assign them.

  CALE SAW ASHLEY standing on the tarmac speaking with their passengers. He gathered she was in copilot character, pointing out physical characteristics of the plane and contrasting those with neighboring planes. These were things she’d heard just once from him. She was a quick study.

  As he neared shouting distance, she motioned everyone inside. Cale waved but she didn’t see him. He cupped his hands into a megaphone and called to her, but a rumbling engine drowned his voice out, and she followed her clients into the aircraft. As he drew near the plane, Cale repeatedly and fruitlessly tried to beckon her out.

  FRANCISCO WAS ONLY half listening to the information the pretty copilot was providing. He smiled, thinking how jealous Estella would be if he brought this one aboard his plane. But it was not to be, and it was a shame that one so beautiful would have to die, but he saw no choice.

  Francisco scanned the tarmac before boarding the plane, looking for Mr. Coleman. He saw the man starting the two hundred yard walk across the tarmac to the plane. It would not be long now. He wondered where Alberto was. He nudged the Cuban, who turned and saw Coleman in the distance.

  INSIDE THE CABIN, Ashley asked, “Can I fix you a drink? Leaded or unleaded?”

  She winked with her sales pitch. It was a habit that her patients seemed to love. She originally picked it up waitressing, where it kept her average tips over 25 percent.

  Both men declined the drink, so she showed where the refreshments were stored, pointed out the pee tube in back with a modest giggle. With the men settled in their seats, she stepped past them into the cockpit and slid over and down into shotgun position.

  A minute later, she watched Cale moving across the tarmac and involuntarily wondered, if he really needed that much time in the bathroom, what day-to-day life with him would be like on this trip. Despite his exterior form, had his interior become viejo? She giggled like a girl with a crush, which felt good, and realized he was covering the distance very quickly, without looking like it took him any effort. His face appeared stern, and she wondered why he had let his shirt come untucked right before meeting his clients. Then she lost sight of him as he got too close to the plane to see out the cockpit window.

  34

  THE KING AIR’S steps were located on the copilot side of the plane. (Cale was always tempted to say starboard, but that was just for boats.) The pilot—and in this case, the copilot—entered the cabin and then turned right, passed the front-row seats that faced the back of the plane, and stepped through into the cockpit. It was not an easy step to navigate and a hard location from which to get quickly in or out. If there was a run on parachutes (if the plane actually contained parachutes), the passengers would have a distinct advantage. Given the narrowness between the pilot and the copilot seats, the console between the seats, the fact that you didn’t want to kick any expensive instruments on the dash, and the low ceiling height, it took effort getting in and out.

  Cale tried to look into the cockpit to see if he could make eye contact with Ashley, but the reflection of the sun off the glass kept him from seeing inside. He walked faster until he drew abreast of the plane, paus
ed to look around, and stepped in. The two passengers sat talking softly with each other in Spanish. Ashley wasn’t visible.

  “Ashley?”

  “Yes, sir?” She responded. From the sound, he figured she must have been seated in the cockpit.

  The “sir” was a nice touch. Excellent role-playing—he hoped they could revisit that later. Although, given the age difference, maybe “sir” wasn’t exactly the role he wanted to play.

  At the top of the three steps, Cale poked his upper half inside the plane and asked, “Can you come out and help me with something?”

  “Sure, just give me a minute to unstrap.”

  Escobar and the young hit man turned toward Cale in greeting. Cale went into captain mode and provided a confident smile. The two men sat in the front seats, Escobar on the far side of the cabin with his hands resting innocently on his knees. The smaller, more dangerous man on the door side had his hands pushed together in his lap, knuckles up, possibly hiding something in his palms. They were between Ashley and Cale. Escobar half stood, reached in front of the other man, and extended a hand. Always the boss.

  He said in accented English, “Forgive our third traveler, Captain, as he is delayed. I believe the saying is, ‘He is answering the nature’s call.’”

  Under other circumstances, the near miss on the colloquialism would be endearing, Cale thought as he hunched over and took the proffered hand. Escobar placed his left hand warmly on top of Cale’s right in the manner politicians used to express connection and to secure votes from barbecue-eating constituents. Cale’s ears registered the sound of Ashley’s buckle clicking open. As they clasped hands, Escobar made strong eye contact, which Cale did his best to return without menace. Before they had released hands, Cale started backing out of the plane to create space for Ashley to walk through.