The five of them walked across the concrete floor and met Jake and the others halfway across. Sebastian stepped forward and made the introductions.
“Jefe,” he greeted the man in the jeans, “may I present Señor Kingsley to you. Jake, this is Señor Gomez, the current owner of the aircraft you are interested in.”
Gomez held out his hand. And then, in a moderately accented English, he said, “Jake Kingsley! May I call you Jake?”
“Of course, Señor Gomez,” Jake replied, shaking with him.
“Call me Eddie,” Gomez said, “like a parcero! It’s an honor to make your acquaintance. My children are great admirers of your music. And I’m a fan as well, mostly of your newer, solo material.”
“Thank you ... uh ... Eddie,” Jake said, feeling decidedly strange to be calling the man that.
“And this,” Eddie said, pulling the slight member of the suit brigade forward, “is Nicolas Sanchez. Nick is my primary personal finance account manager. It is he who has been speaking to your accountant about your possible acquisition of the Avanti.”
Jake shook with him—his grip was weak and effeminate—and then introduced Jill to Nick and Eddie both.
“It’s nice to meet you, Señor Gomez,” Jill told the man. “And it’s nice to finally speak to you in person, Nick.”
“You as well,” Nick returned, his eyes looking everywhere but Jill’s face. It reminded Jake of Eric the violinist.
The rest of the introductions were made. The man in the overalls was Samuel Lopez, the primary mechanic who took care of the routine maintenance on the aircraft and who arranged for it to be delivered to Cali—where the Colombian Piaggio maintenance facility was located—when it needed its B checks or C checks. So far, according to Lopez, the plane had required no repairs that could not be done here in the hangar. Eddie introduced him to first Jake and then to Travis. Fortunately, Samuel spoke pretty good English.
The two large men in the suits were not introduced, not by name anyway. “They’re just my security staff,” Eddie said dismissively. “You know how it is. Just pretend they’re not there.”
“Will do,” Jake said, hiding his nervousness. He was pretty sure that both of the “security staff” were packing guns under their suit jackets. He had seen the bulges when they had turned their bodies to check the entrances on what seemed routine scans. And they definitely both had those little earpiece communication devices in their ears—just like those the Secret Service agents protecting Slick Willie wore. It was going to be very hard to pretend they weren’t there.
“All right then,” Eddie said. “Now that we all know each other, how about we go take a look at the plane? That’s why you’re here, right, Jake?”
“That’s right,” Jake said, his nervousness easing a bit. “I can’t wait to see it.”
“Let us wait no longer then,” Eddie said. He waved toward the aircraft.
Jake took it in once again as they walked over to it, getting a good, long look at it this time. It was a twin-engine turboprop propellor-driven aircraft, the fastest, most fuel efficient propellor-driven business-class plane in existence. It could climb at up to three thousand feet per minute to an altitude of up to forty-one thousand feet, could cruise at over three hundred knots, and had a range of more than fifteen hundred miles. The engines were mounted on the wings near the back of the aircraft and the propellors faced backwards instead of forward, making it a “pusher” not a “puller” like most prop-driven airplanes. This equaled increased cabin room and a much quieter ride. In order to offset the weight imbalance caused by mounting the primary wings, with their heavy engines and their internal fuel tanks, further aft than on a standard aircraft, the entire fuselage itself was shaped like an airfoil and actually provided a sizable portion of the lift. As a final balancing and control measure, there were two small wings attached just behind the nose, giving the front of the plane an appearance similar to a hammerhead shark. Jake had thought the nose wings looked incredibly cool ever since he had first seen them in Phoenix, but it was not until the flight to Bogota and a discussion about the aircraft with Travis did he come to understand the actual purpose of them.
“The main reason is for stall protection,” the mechanic had explained. “If you get the aircraft in a stall situation with the weight of the engines and the fuel that far aft, the nose will want to go up. You can’t recover from the stall if the nose goes up. The nose wings, however, change that equation. They’re designed in the weight/balance algorithm to support the weight of the nose and the cockpit just enough to keep it balanced in flight. If you stall, they will stop producing lift before the main wings do. That ensures that your nose will drop down as you approach stall conditions, thus allowing you to recover.”
“That makes sense,” Jake said, impressed by the man’s knowledge of and enthusiasm for the aircraft.
That enthusiasm was showing quite plainly now.
“I work on fifteen or twenty of these a year,” he said, “and I never get tired of looking at them. It’s an engineering marvel.”
“Indeed, it is,” agreed Eddie with a smile and a nod. “I fell in love with the aircraft the first time I looked at one. I knew I had to have it for myself.”
“I know what you’re saying,” Jake said, reaching out and caressing the silver five-bladed propellor on the left-hand side.
Eddie patted Jake on the back—a pat that was hard enough to qualify as a pound. “It’s a good thing to be in a position in life in which we are able to go out and get the toys we desire, isn’t it, Jake?”
Jake looked at the man and nodded meaningfully. “You got that right, Eddie,” he told him. “It’s a very good thing.”
Eddie chuckled—drug lord or not, he was a very jovial man. “It’s been a good plane,” he said. “I’ve gone on many adventures in her. I am saddened to let her go, but ... well ... the Citation is a little bigger and a little faster than the Avanti. It was time to make the change.” He looked sharply at Jake. “If I agree to sell her to you, you’ll take care of her like you would a lady? Make sure she is maintained and that you take her out on a regular basis?”
“Absolutely,” Jake promised, now caressing the empennage as they made their way around it in a circle. “She’ll be flown almost daily when I’m working, making the commute between my home in San Luis Obispo and Los Angeles and then back again at the end of the day.”
“Very nice,” Eddie said approvingly. “How long of a flight is that?”
“In this thing ... about twenty-five minutes or so each way, from wheels-up to touchdown. Of course, that is not all we will be using it for. With the speed and range of this beauty—and the fact that it has a bano—my wife and I can take weekend hops all over the western US just for the hell of it. And when we fly up to Oregon for recording sessions, we can hop up into Canada, over to Glacier Park, or go skiing at Schweitzer.”
“I didn’t know you skied, Jake,” Jill said.
“I don’t,” Jake said. “But this might be a good time to learn.”
“It is a rather expensive hobby, I understand,” said Nicolas, clear disapproval in his tone.