Commercial flights worked just fine ninety percent of the time, but on occasion Hendley and his chief of operations, Sam Granger, needed to move a man or men extremely quickly from the D.C./Baltimore metro area to some far-off point, usually so they could get eyes on a target who might be in place for only a short period of time. Commercial carriers flying from Washington Dulles, Ronald Reagan Washington National, and Baltimore Washington International airports had dozens of daily direct international flights, and hundreds more locations could be accessed from these airports with just a single connection, but occasionally the three to twelve added hours of time needed to get through airport security and customs, wait for delayed flights, make connections, and anything else that every commercial airline passenger is subject to just wasn’t going to allow The Campus to accomplish its mission. So Gerry Hendley began looking for a private jet that would suit the needs of his organization. He established an ad hoc committee of in-house personnel to meet and decide on the exact requirements that would fit the bill. Money was not an object, though it was Hendley’s job to grumble to the aircraft committee to keep it reasonable and to not spend one cent more than was required for them to find what they needed.
The group reported back to Gerry with their findings after several exhaustive weeks of research and meetings. The speed, size, and range they required could be accomplished by several ultra-long-range corporate jets made by Dassault, Bombardier Aerospace, Embraer, and Gulfstream Aerospace. Of these, it was determined the perfect aircraft for their needs would be the new Gulfstream 650.
It was not lost on Hendley that the 650 was also the most expensive aircraft of those in the running, but the statistics in its favor were convincing. Hendley began looking for a 650 but immediately realized the pickings were slim. The Campus wanted to keep the purchase of the jet as quiet and as low-key as possible, and sales of the new 650s were simply generating too much interest in the corporate aircraft community. He reconvened the committee, and they settled, if one could call choosing the second most luxurious and advanced aircraft in that class as settling, on the Gulfstream Aerospace G550, a model that was not yet ten years old and still very much top-of-the-line. Immediately, quiet feelers were sent out into the market by Hendley and other executives in The Campus.
It took nearly two months, but the right aircraft did come along. It was a seven-year-old G550 that had been owned previously by a Texas financier who’d been sent to prison for knowingly working with Mexico’s Juárez Cartel. The government had liquidated the financier’s assets, Gerry had gotten a call from a friend at DOJ who was involved in the auction, and Hendley was delighted to learn he could get the airplane at a price far lower than what the aircraft would have gone for at open sale.
The Campus then arranged the purchase via a shell company based in the Cayman Islands, and the aircraft was delivered to a fixed-base operator at a regional airport near Baltimore.
Once Gerry and his executives went out to see the plane in person for the first time, all agreed they’d gotten a hell of a deal on a hell of a jet.
With a 6,750-nautical-mile range, their G550 could fly anywhere on earth with only a single refueling stop, transporting as many as fourteen people in comfort as the aircraft’s two Rolls-Royce engines propelled them at .85 mach.
Those in the cabin during long-haul flights had access to six leather seats that folded down to turn into beds, a pair of long couches aft of the chairs, and all manner of high-tech communications throughout. There were flat-screen satellite televisions, broadband multi-link coverage over North America, the Atlantic, and Europe, as well as two Honeywell radio systems and a Magnastar C2000 radiotelephone for those in the cabin.
There were even several features built into the craft to reduce jet lag of the passengers, a critical factor for Hendley, considering he might be rushing men into harm’s way without any time whatsoever to acclimate themselves to their new surroundings. The large, high windows delivered much more natural light than regular commercial aircraft or even other high-end commercial jets on the market, and this helped to reduce the physiological effects of a long flight. Further, the Honeywell Avionics environmental systems refreshed one hundred percent of the oxygen every ninety seconds, reducing the risk of airborne bacteria that might slow his men during their missions. The environmental systems also held the pressurization inside the cabin three thousand feet below a commercial aircraft flying at the same altitude, and this reduced jet lag upon arrival, as well.
Hendley’s friend at DOJ had mentioned something else in their conversations about the plane. The original owner, the crooked moneyman, had been flying to Mexico City in his jet, then stuffing bags of U.S. currency into hidden compartments built throughout the craft by Colombian engineers, and then taking everything up, over the border, and into Houston. From there, the cash was distributed to low-level operatives in the Juárez Cartel, who took the cash, minus a small percentage, to Western Unions across the state of Texas. These Mexicans wired the money back down to accounts in Mexican banks, thereby laundering it. The Mexican banks in turn made wire transfers to anywhere in the world the narcos wanted it sent; purchasing drugs from South America, bribing government officials and police throughout the world, buying guns from militaries, and anointing themselves with the finest in luxuries.
Gerry had listened politely to this explanation of the money-laundering process although he understood the movement of world currency, both illegal and legal, better than all but a few. But what really got his attention was the existence of these secret stash compartments in his new jet. Once the aircraft was delivered to the fixed-base operator at BWI, a dozen employees of The Campus and a maintenance team at the FBO spent a day and a half looking for the secret hides.
They found several stashes of different sizes throughout the airplane. Although most people assume the cargo area of all jets is below the floor, on most smaller private aircraft like the Gulfstream G550, the cargo compartment is actually in the rear below the tail. Below the floor of the cabin was a large space that was partially taken up by wiring, but the Colombian engineers had created hidden compartments under the inspection panels in the floor that were large enough to hide as many as four small backpacks full of gear. Another vacant space was found in the lavatory, under the top panel that held the toilet seat. With sixty seconds and a screwdriver, one could remove the panel to reveal a large square empty space. The Colombians had added a small tube for waste to pass through, leaving a hide large enough for a single backpack, thankfully without affecting the function of the lav itself. Maintenance also found another ten smaller spaces hidden behind inspection panels and servicing access doors throughout the aircraft. Some of these hides would allow for the stowage of nothing more than a pistol; others were bigger, maybe the size of a submachine gun with a folded stock and a few extra magazines.
All in all, maintenance crew found nearly ten cubic feet of nearly perfect hiding places, enough to transport a fair amount of gear covertly wherever and whenever The Campus needed to move items surreptitiously. Pistols, rifles, explosives, surveillance equipment that would have sent foreign customs agents into seizures, documents, money. Anything that Gerry Hendley’s men needed to do their work.
Hendley hired a flight crew of three, all ex-military and vetted for Campus operations. The lead pilot was from the Air Force, which would have surprised no one. The fact that she was female should not have surprised anyone, either. She was fifty-year-old Captain Helen Reid, a former B1-B pilot who had made the jump into corporate jets by taking a job with Gulfstream. She had been on the G650 project as a test pilot, but she didn’t seem to mind “slumming” by flying the G550 instead. Her first officer was Chester Hicks, but everyone still called him by his call sign of “Country” because of his pronounced southern drawl. He was an ex — Marine Corps aviator from Kentucky who’d flown rotary and fixed-wing aircraft in the Corps. He spent the last six years of his career training young pilots at Naval Air Station, Corpus Christi, piloting B-12 Huron multi-engine aircraft, before retiring and going into business aviation. He’d flown G500s and G550s for a decade.