Chase Baker and the Golden Condor: (A Chase Baker Thriller Series No. 2) (7 page)

For a silent moment, I try to allow the concept of a
one-thousand-plus-year-old flying machine to sink in. Keogh must see the doubt
in my eyes, because he raises his right hand up as if pointing to the sky.

“Is the reality of an ancient flying machine really so hard
to believe?” he begins to explain. “There’s a tremendous amount of knowledge
that has been lost through the ages and the harnessing of flight could very
well be one of them. Ancients like da Vinci recognized that flight was indeed
possible when he engineered his early flying machines back in the fourteen
hundreds. The ancient Asian Indians also believe that flight was not only possible,
but that their Gods were able to travel to and from earth via spaceships called
Vimanas that spewed forth fire and smoke. Great battles between these
spaceships are described in precise detail in ancient Indian Sanskrit texts
dating back six thousand years.”

“But what about the ancient Incans? How is it possible that
a primitive jungle tribe who didn’t even harness the concept of the wheel could
engineer an airplane?”

“They didn’t. Someone else did it for them.”

“Who then?”

“Ancient astronauts.”

The interior of the B-52 falls so silent that we can easily
make out the thrusting of jet engines from the airport’s outbound planes.

Keogh III goes on, “Before you discount the idea, there are
those who believe we are a species with amnesia. That there is a missing link
in humankind’s continuum—a place where the story of our history comes up blank.
Many believe that the ancients were far more technologically advanced than for
which we give them credit. That’s where ancient aliens come into play. These
ancients Gods, if you like, visited the earth many millennia ago and gifted our
rather ignorant and primitive species with incredible gifts of knowledge. Not
the least of which was how to construct an airplane. Problem is, no evidence of
these aircraft has ever existed until my father stumbled upon it in 1939. Only
peripheral evidence has been discovered, such as the Nazca lines which can only
be discerned from high up at a great altitude.”

On the TV monitor now, a video of the Nazca lines is
playing. The lines are being filmed from the cockpit of a modern airplane but
even then, it’s not difficult to gain a sense of how massive the line drawings
are. There’s a spider, a monkey, a snake, and more.

“On the ground, the lines appear to be nothing more than one
rock placed beside another. But from the air they appear in their true form. I
believe, as do many others, that the lines were utilized as landing beacons for
the incoming craft of the ancient astronauts. Indeed, located directly beside
the Nazca lines are long runways that have been smoothed out of the rocky,
gravelly soil. Some of the runways gradually increase in height in proportion
to length, as to assist in the deceleration of landing high-speed aircraft.”

“So what you’re saying, Pete, is that the evidence has
always been there. Just not direct evidence of an aircraft.”

“Exactly,” he says, as the monitor now shows a
hieroglyphic-like stone carving of an ancient Incan native who appears to be
positioned on his back inside some kind of flying capsule. He’s staring out a
small portal window while operating sophisticated controls with his hands and
feet. Then comes another carving of a man who appears to be wearing a
modern-day spacesuit which is remarkably reminiscent to the atmospherically
independent spacesuits that modern astronauts don today during their space
shuttle flights.

I turn back to Keogh.

“So what is it you want from me, Peter?” I say. “Bottom
line.”

“What I would like from you, Chase, is to follow the path of
my father, and to do so on foot.”

“Into uncharted Amazonia territory?”

“I want you to team up with my men, Rodney and Carlos, to
find the cave he drew for us on this map, and I want you to find the aircraft
that is stored inside it. Rodney will be group leader, but once you are in the
jungle, they will follow your lead to the site.”

“Are you assigning specific tasks to Rodney and Carlos?”

“Rodney is not only a trained Navy Seal but he’s flown
everything under the sun and then some. If the craft can be flown by a human
being then he will be the one to do it. Carlos is a trained videographer. He’ll
record the entire expedition.”

“So that you might show it on cable TV later.”

He smiles.

“This is not a commercial expedition, Mr. Baker. If the
aircraft is indeed there in the jungle, and we are able to prove its presence,
it will be the ultimate piece of evidence that proves not only in the existence
of intelligent extraterrestrials who come from inhabited planets located in
both ours and distant galaxies, but it will prove our species interacted with
them in order to vastly improve their culture, their science, and their overall
lives on planet earth.” He pauses for a moment while the digital image of his
father’s map once more appears on the High Def monitor. “It just might also
prove something else.”

“And what’s that, Peter?”

“That humankind evolved not only from monkeys, but also from
extraterrestrials.”

I might have asked Peter Keogh III if I could have a few days
to think the idea over. Maybe talk it over with Leslie, get her thoughts on the
matter. But I’m already aware of how they’d both respond. The former would tell
me he doesn’t have long to live and that time is of the essence. He would also
plant a fat deposit in my hand which would lead to a much fatter payday, and
even a triple fat bonus should I succeed in my quest (fingers crossed).

The latter would tell me that first of all, I need the
money, and second of all, the whole thing, if nothing else, will provide me
with the idea for a new book.

I can’t argue any of these points. It’s official: Taking on
Peter Keogh III’s assignment to locate an ancient aircraft in the uncharted
jungles of the Amazon is a no-brainer for a Renaissance man like me.

I retrieve my pistol from the terminal locker while,
afterwards, both Carlos and Rodney escort me back to my place on Prince Street.

“Get a good night’s sleep,” Rodney says while pulling over
to the curb in front of my building. He turns to me, grins. “Looking forward to
getting some jungle time with you, Chase man. Word up is that you fancy
yourself a tough guy.” The grin turns into a smile, revealing a solid gold cap
that covers a fang-like incisor. “Can’t wait to see if it’s the truth or
another one of your fictions.”

Reaching into his chest pocket he pulls out a business card,
hands it to me from across the seatback. I take a quick glance at it. There’s
no name on it. No physical street address or website address. Just a phone
number. I stuff the card into my chest pocket along with the card Carlos gave
me earlier.

“Thanks,” I say. “I’ll call you if I get lonely.”

Carlos takes hold of my arm.

“Don’t let him worry you,” he says, in his soft tone. “As
you can see, Rodney likes to show his muscles.”

“Muscles are one thing, Carlos,” I say with my eyes still
locked on Rodney’s eyes. “But real strength is an entirely different story
altogether.”

Opening the door, I get out.

“See you in the morning, gentlemen,” I say, sticking my head
back inside. “I assume you’ll retrieve me at dark thirty?”

“If not sooner,” Rodney says.

I close the car door without saying goodbye.

My bags are shoved up against the wood door to my second-floor
apartment. Maybe it’s a relief they’ve showed up, but what’s not a relief is
knowing I have just enough time to wash and dry their contents before I have to
repack it all, then get some much needed rest.

“Oh well,” I say to my three-year-old black pit bull, Lulu,
as I fill her food bowl with dry food, “out of the jungle and into the frying
pan.”

“Jeez, Chase,” she says, with a full mouth. “You just
freakin’ got home. Now I gotta depend on that seedy old Italian pizza maker to
feed me twice a day and let me out to poop.”

“I thought you liked Vincenzo.”

“I do. He plays with me and sometimes brings me pizza crusts
… Oops, you weren’t supposed to know that … But nothing beats a dog and his
master.”

“You rock, Lu,” I say. “Don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“And don’t forget your baby girl, Chase.”

“You don’t have to remind me, Lu. But on a good note, she
doesn’t even know I’m home yet, which means she’s not missing me nearly as much
as I’m missing her. Soon as I get back, I’ll take her upstate for some
camping.”

“That’s a good dad.”

I undress down to my boxers and toss everything else in the
small apartment-sized washing machine. While the clothes enter into their first
wash cycle, I pull out my laptop and go immediately to the Google search
engine.

Typing in the name Peter Keogh III, I come up with over
three hundred thousand hits, which tells me Keogh III is a pretty popular guy.
As logic would dictate, I click on the first selection. It’s the website for
Keogh Commodities. The home page shows the exterior of a skyscraper in midtown
Manhattan from the point of view of the ground-floor exterior. There’s a big
American flag that’s flying from a metal post which is embedded horizontally
into the metal and glass exterior wall. The flag is blowing in the wind on a
brilliant sunny day, probably in the early fall. Makes me want to go for a walk
and buy some commodities.

My eyes focused on the site’s menu, I click onto a page
called Bios. Keogh’s is the first to come up since he’s the commodity commander
in chief. The short of it is that he was born in 1939 (the year his father
disappeared in the Amazon jungle), educated in a Catholic prep school in
Manhattan, then sent off to Providence College in Rhode Island, where he
exceeded at rugby and something else: flying. From Providence he went straight
to the Air Force Academy and from there Vietnam, where he became an ace, having
shot down twenty-two Chinese flown MiGs. At the end of the war, he was
decorated for bravery in the skies by then President Johnson, and from there,
attended Harvard Business School. Upon graduation he began his commodities firm
which, through the years, has amassed enough personal wealth for him to become
a serious aviation collector.

Serious as a coronary that is.

From what his bio, and the accompanying full-color digital
glossies, clearly indicate, Keogh III just might be in possession of the
greatest private aeronautical collection in the world. He owns one of the three
Wright brothers Kitty Hawk airplanes ever known to have existed (one is
missing, one is housed in the Smithsonian, and the third in Keogh’s Oyster Bay
Long Island hangar). He also owns a 1917 Fokker DR-1 Triplane like the Red
Baron flew, a 1929 Travel Air 4000 biplane, a 1944 North American P- 47G
Mustang, a 1944 Fieseler V-1 Buzz Bomb which terrorized London during the
Blitz, a 1953 Bell 51C “MASH” chopper, a 1959 Boeing VC-137 Stratoliner, a
mid-1970s-era MiG, and even a Gulf War–era Stealth fighter jet, or what’s more
commonly known in aviation circles as a YF-23 Black Widow II.

I lean back in my chair, attempting to comprehend how much a
collection like that might be worth. In my head, I’m not seeing millions of
George Washingtons flashing through my brain, but billions. How much is Keogh
III paying me to find that ancient airplane for him? I think we forgot to
discuss price, which is not entirely untypical for me. That’s the reason I’m
usually half broke and guys like Keogh are wealthier than the gross national
product of some small island nations.

I push down the lid on the laptop and get up. Time to turn
over the laundry. But before that, it’s time to pop a beer. Heading into the
small galley kitchen, I pull a can from the fridge, take it back out to the
combination living room/dining room with me, and pop the top.

The first swig has yet to descend the length of my esophagus
when I hear the noise coming from the bedroom.