Salty Sky (38 page)

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.