PROLOGUE
Doctor Leighton Wheeler suppressed a yawn as he arched his back and stretched his arms. With nearly two hours to go in the cockpit of the Beech King Air, he fought the urge to sleep. Mercifully, a half-moon high above kept him company and provided a horizon out in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, but he lightly slapped his face to stay awake. He knew he was now, at this 1:00 am hour, in the trough of human performance, and he had to concentrate on his gyro horizon and altimeter. Five hundred feet — even with altitude hold engaged, it was unnerving to be so low over the black water underneath. He figured it didn’t make much of a difference. One hundred feet or one thousand feet; it looked the same over a dark ocean. He was tired, and the energy drink he had downed before take-off was now wearing off. He considered another one, but the physician in him rejected the idea. He twisted off the top of a plastic water bottle instead and took a long swig. He carefully replaced the top, and as he put the bottle back in the cup holder, he glanced at his fuel… a little over 2,200 pounds with 453 miles to go and fifteen knots of wind in his face. He would make it, but barely.
Wheeler twisted the heading select switch to 324, and the aircraft rolled gently right as it steadied up on course. Nothing out here, he thought, unlike the Yucatan Channel some forty minutes earlier. He had not been able to avoid flying right over a half-dozen lights below him. Not knowing what they were had bothered him, but they were most likely fishing boats, Cuban and Mexican. He knew it was too early for the motor and sailing yachts, most of which spent the winters in and around the Virgin Islands, and the Belize yacht traffic was another month away at least.
The moon illuminated the low scattered clouds, so typical above Caribbean waters. They cast splotchy shadows on the surface below. Wheeler knew the next hour would be boring, so to pass the time, he thought of his favorite subject… himself.
A youthful forty-seven years old, Wheeler owned, with three partners, the Women’s Cosmetic Center, the top plastic surgery clinic in Birmingham, Alabama. They offered everything from rhinoplasty to Botox… the whole gamut of services, many on an outpatient basis. The overwhelming majority of the procedures were boob jobs, with augmentation surgeries leading the way. For nearly two decades the Women’s Cosmetic Center had offered hope and delivered results, with the ladies (and their men) gladly paying top dollar for their services. It was a gold mine.
Just last month two of Wheeler’s clients had brought in their teenage daughters for consults. Cullen, his own teenage daughter, wanted him to perform an augmentation for her 16th birthday — to a tasteful C-cup that would “allow her clothes to fit better,” an argument that was part of the tried and true cover story. He certainly wasn’t about to let his lecherous partners touch her. Cullen would go to Atlanta with her mother, Tammy, for the procedure, allowing time to recuperate before her birthday party next month.
Tammy. A former homecoming queen at Alabama, Tammy had never allowed anyone to augment her—not even her husband, despite how much he had wanted to add some strategic curves to her tall and leggy figure. She was all for her husband performing plastic surgery for other women, and Wheeler had done work on several of her girlfriends. He had even had an affair with one of them that Tammy probably knew about but didn’t press him on. No, all was perfect with Tammy: hair, makeup, body, clothes, house, kid, husband… in that order. Between the Garden Club, the Tri-Delt national vice-presidency and innumerable shopping trips to Atlanta and Nashville, Tammy had little time for her husband. That was all the excuse he needed.
Ten years ago he had taken up flying and now was the instrument-rated owner of a King Air twin. He used the plane for trips to South America to perform pro bono reconstructive surgery on cleft palates for Doctors without Borders, giving deformed kids a chance for a normal life. Yes, the guys at the Club admired him for it, giving back to underprivileged third-world kids and all that.
He accepted their kind words with aw-shucks modesty, never letting on for a minute about his other motive: holding heavenly bodies in Bogotá and Cartagena and watching what the owners of those bodies could do with them. The coke, the money, the nightlife, and the girls — always the girls. I’m an American surgeon, here to help children. He would say it with a shy smile, looking down at his drink. And the girls crumbled before his eyes; leaning in, grateful, fawning, buying it, cooing in English or Spanish. It didn’t matter. Within the hour, they would lead him out of the hotel lounge and to their rooms or apartments — rich European girls on holiday, local gold-diggers, sophisticated American businesswomen, Asian flight attendants on layover, ages ranging from 22 to 50. A citizen of the world like Doctor Leighton Wheeler believed in diversity.
The first year he flew to South America twice, and now he was on his fourth trip in the past 12 months. Surely Tammy suspected something, but his altruistic alibi provided cover for both of them. She took advantage of his absences with shopping outings with her girlfriends to Atlanta or New York. Both felt entitled.
Yes, the coke! How it felt when it entered his nostrils, the euphoric explosion of his senses. The girls fed it to him! They carried it in their purses and formed neat lines for him on their creamy thighs. And the guys at the airport loved to look at the plane, crawl around inside, talk flying. Señor Doctor, want a blow before you take off? And he would take a hit and fly hundreds of miles to the Caymans in what seemed like minutes, alert like he had never been before, feeling like he could fly on to Alaska if he had the fuel. Cocaine just didn’t seem to be a big deal south of the U.S. border.
One day a guy he had befriended during a previous trip was at the airport and asked if he could take a package of “product” with him back to Birmingham. “C’mon, man. No one is going to suspect you, Mister Save-the-Children Surgeon!”
The guy tossed a worn duffel bag in back with his other luggage and handed him a black zipped-up folder. Wheeler glanced inside and quickly closed it, but once he got airborne with the autopilot engaged, he laid the contents out on the seat next to him and counted: five hundred Ben Franklins and one typed note.
“Mike” met him at the FBO in Birmingham to park him and to service the aircraft, just like the note said. He smiled as he pulled the bags from the compartment, placed the duffel in his tractor, and helped Wheeler button up the airplane. Chatting away, he was a really friendly guy, one of the nicest guys Wheeler had ever met. When they were finished, Mike offered his hand, just as a golf partner would coming off the 18th green. “Enjoyed it!” he said.
Wheeler had found yet another double life to lead, one that paid very, very well, more than enough to cover any of Tammy’s activities. Sure, Honey, go to Lenox Square Mall in Buckhead. Take Cullen. Anything you want. Have fun!
Tonight Wheeler was on his fourth “mission,” and it was a big one. He had told Tammy he was going to spend a couple of nights in the Caymans and rest — and get something nice for Cullen — before he took off for home. Once he arrived at George Town and parked his plane, “Luis” met him and led him to a different King Air, one loaded with product worth over $100 million on the street. With a box lunch and a five-hour energy drink, he set off in the aircraft for a dirt strip along the Mississippi coast called Goombay Smash Field. He would abandon the airplane there — the cost of doing business — and “Rich” would pick him up, drive him to Diamond Head, and put him in a G5 for a sprint back to the Caymans. The morning sun would still be low in the sky by the time they landed back at George Town.