The gear lights went out in sequence, indicating all the wheels were up and locked. Dan glanced to the right as he moved the gear handle to the Off position, drinking in the twinkling lights of ground-bound civilization as they dropped away and the 747 soared over the water, steadily gaining altitude into the night.
CHAPTER 7
Kat Bronsky paused on the front entrance to the American Consulate compound, smelling flowers, watching the flashes of lightning from the approaching storm, and wondering why she was so distracted. She smiled at the consular officer waiting for her in the doorway and went inside, making a mental note to phone customs in Honolulu before going to bed to arrange special handling for Robert MacCabe.
She wondered if the 747 was airborne yet. She could imagine herself comfortably seated in the first-class seat next to Robert MacCabe, and not just for professional reasons. There was a basic attraction there, although his plight was what primarily concerned her. She had a proprietary interest in what he thought he knew, but it would also be nice to get to know him better. Despite a bad initial impression, MacCabe seemed like a truly nice guy.
That’s a dangerous conclusion, she reminded herself. At least bad boys are as advertised. The nice guys can always fool you.
A consular officer had waited up to greet her. They would arrange a 7 A.M. meeting for her on what was a criminal matter involving a staff officer. With luck, she could make a noon departure to L.A.
She thanked him and followed an aide to the guest house, the thought of a soft bed and six hours of sleep a luxury.
“Quite a sight, huh?”
Robert MacCabe turned his head away from the windows to the source of the voice: a well-dressed man in his late thirties, sitting in the opposite row.
Robert managed a smile, slightly irritated at the forced engagement. “Yes.”
“A good view of Kowloon should be coming up on your side as we turn east.”
Robert nodded and looked left again.
“You one of our regular customers?” the man asked.
Once again Robert took his gaze away from the window and looked over at the speaker. “I beg your pardon?”
“One of our regulars? You look very familiar.”
Robert smiled thinly and shook his head. “No. First time on this airline.”
A seat belt clanked open as the man leaned over with his hand extended.
“I’m Rick Barnes, CEO of Meridian Airlines. And you are?”
“Really enjoying this view,” Robert said, trying to hide his displeasure at the interruption. The beauty the man had heralded was sliding past unseen on the left as Robert reluctantly shook Rick Barnes’s hand. “MacCabe. Robert MacCabe.”
“Who’re you with, Robert?”
“The Washington Post.”
“Really? Well, I think we’ve met before somewhere. You look exceedingly familiar. Good to have you with us.”
Robert nodded as he looked left, feeling Barnes’s eyes on the back of his neck.
“Were you in Hong Kong to cover the trade delegation aboard tonight?” Barnes asked.
Robert sighed and looked over, smiling thinly. “Let’s talk a bit later, if you don’t mind, Mr. Barnes. I’d like to take this all in.”
“Oh, sure!” Rick Barnes said, waving Robert back to the window. The young airline president got to his feet and walked back toward the galley, nodding to the couple in the second row of seats.
Dr. Graham Tash nodded back as he squeezed his wife’s arm and spoke softly in her ear. “Great safety example. We’re hardly off and he’s running down the aisle.”
“You recognize him, Honey?” Susan Tash asked.
“Should I?”
“One of the founders of the Costclub warehouse stores. Made about a billion dollars by age thirty and doesn’t really know what to do with it.”
“So he bought an airline?”
“Bought into it, more precisely,” she said. “Forbes magazine had an article on him. He put himself on the board and made himself CEO, even though he knows virtually nothing about aviation. Meridian is his new toy.”
“I’m not envious,” Graham said. “I have my toy.” He squeezed her hand again and felt her pull away slightly, feigning offense.
“Surely you’re not referring to your new wife as a toy, Doctor!”
He looked hurt. “Well, wait a minute. Let me check. You’re incredibly beautiful, perfectly proportioned, sexy beyond Bardot and Monroe, brilliant beyond comprehension, and sexually insatiable. Yep! Definitely my favorite toy.”
She swatted his shoulder, trying to look insulted, but her smile betrayed her.
He smiled back. “Does this mean you won’t meet me in the bathroom in five minutes for meaningless sex?”
“Sh-h-h! Behave yourself!” she whispered. “You’re a professional.”
“Look, seriously, this trip was a wonderful idea, Honey.”
“I thought you’d like Hong Kong.”
“What I like is being with you. Anywhere. I haven’t been happier in decades. Who knew? My own nurse. Right there in the OR all the time. Scrubbed and everything.”
“Yes, isn’t it romantic?” she said, smiling. “I can tell people we flirted over an appendectomy, got serious during a bowel resection, and fell in love in the middle of open-heart surgery.”
He leaned over to kiss her as the 747 rolled sharply to the right, shoving everyone on the upper deck to one side.
“Who in the hell was that?” Dan Wade asked, as Pete Cavanaugh brought the Boeing back to wings-level and punched the Transmit button. “Hong Kong Departure, Meridian Five. Another aircraft just passed from left to right across our flight path, very close, almost a near hit. We’d estimate we missed him only by a quarter mile.”
“Roger, Meridian, there is no known traffic ahead of you.”
“Did you have any a minute ago?” Dan pressed.
“No, Sir. There was no…” There was a pause and another controller’s voice came on frequency, presumably a supervisor.
“Meridian Five. Stand by.”
Thirty seconds went by before the supervisor’s voice returned. “We were apparently getting an intermittent raw radar return in that vicinity a minute ago, Meridian, but our computer did not consider it valid traffic, so we did not call it out to you. We have only an inbound DC-ten and an outbound Global Express out there.”
The controller was pulling on the sleeve of his supervisor. “Two-Two-Zulu has disappeared, Sir. The Global Express.”
The supervisor looked at the controller he’d superseded. “Where was he?”
The controller ran his finger over the glass of the computer-generated radarscope to a spot several miles in front of Meridian Five. “Here. The data block started coasting, then just dropped out.”
The supervisor took a deep breath. A missing airplane in Chinese airspace translated to an instant political problem, especially since mainland China had taken over. Officially, the aircraft couldn’t be missing unless it had crashed.