Flight Path: A Wright & Tran Novel (25 page)

Finally it hovered millimetres from the end, teasingly, with the tiniest gap of white between it and completion.

“Come on,” he said, more loudly. At his prompt, the line leapt across the gap and completed its journey. There was a confirmatory tone, which sounded like a sigh.

“You’re not wrong,” Jacob said. He returned to the main message screen, swiped left on the message he had just sent and deleted it. Then he pressed the home button and then the on-off button briefly to send the screen back to darkness. He set the phone back on the table and returned to his seat. He was raising a glass of wine to his lips when Kelsey stepped back through the dark-purple door.

Le Bourget Airfield, Paris. Friday 27
th
November.

Toby was aslee
p
when the ping sounded on his phone. He reached for the dim light being given off by the new message notification. The clock on the screen showed 03:23 Central European Time. He read the first line of the message, threw aside the blanket that had been over him and sat up. “Guys!”

In the dim light he saw four blanketed shapes on the other couches around the room, doing much as he had. The door to the small lounge opened and the lights were flicked on. Kara stood in the doorway.

“We’ve got him,” Toby said holding up his phone.

“What’s it say?” Tien asked, wiping sleep from her eyes.

“Safe house is Bali. Dpt HKG 1225 ETA DPS 1735L”

“Bali. Fucking hell, how far away is Bali from here?” Kara asked, walking into the middle of the private passenger lounge. The room and the adjacent dining area, with its own 24-hour catering facility, were complimentary with the hire of the charter jet. Since their arrival on Wednesday night, they had turned the place into a mini operations room. Four laptops and two printers were on tables next to a wall that had a large map of the world stuck up on it.

“Where exactly is Bali,” Sammi asked, rubbing her hands through her hair and yawning.

There was quiet. Kara looked to each in turn. “Seriously, we have lifetimes of operational experience and none of us know where Bali is?” she asked.

“I know it’s a tropical paradise thingy Roberts made a movie about, but we’ve never fought a war there, so nope, I’ve no idea,” Dinger said.

“It’s somewhere in Indonesia,” Tien said, pushing her blanket aside and moving towards the computers. “One of my Mum’s friends went there for a wedding anniversary. That’s all I know.” She sat at a laptop and brought up a map. All of them looked from the screen to the large map on the wall.

Kara picked up a small red sticker and placed it on the tiny island, the shape of which reminded her of a greyhound in full flight. It nestled in the middle of a curving line of other islands. “Guess this is the famed Indonesian Archipelago,” she said and without any more prompting, Chaz and Sammi sat at two of the laptops, Tien walked to the other side of the room with a phone in her hand, Dinger headed to the canteen and Toby went out to a large storage hangar.

“HKG is Hong Kong and DPS is Denpasar,” Sammi called out as she typed into open search boxes. “Time difference is plus seven from us in Paris, so it’s currently 10:26 with him. Given the times he’s told us, he’s on a Hong Kong Air flight scheduled to leave at 12:25 and arrive into Bali, also seven hours ahead of us, at 17:35. Basically seven hours from now, give or take.”

Kara moved behind Chaz and watched him open a Google map and scroll out. Right hand clicking on Le Bourget Airfield he selected ‘measure distance’ then zoomed in and clicked on the airport in Bali. The number that came up was 7699.

“That’s in miles, Kara, so,” he paused and opened a new search window to do the conversion, “6690 nautical miles.”

He and Sammi looked up at her.

“We’re not even close, are we?” she asked.

Tien, her call finished, joined them, “Not even remotely,” she said. “The charter crew are up and on it. They’ll have the necessary flight plan approved in an hour, just like they promised us, but the pilot gave me a choice. The jet can either go at maximum speed but then we’ll need to refuel, or it can go for maximum cruise range and we get there in a single hop, but at a slower speed. Bizarrely, going slower, gets us there quicker because we miss out the fuel stop, but it’s only half an hour’s worth of difference.”

“Do they have any alternatives?” Kara asked.

“No. I picked out the Gulfstream G650 because it was their fastest and longest range jet. Whatever way we try it we get to Bali between twelve and thirteen hours from now. If we get wheels-up in an hour, depending on wind conditions we’ll be on the ground at about 23:00 Bali-time tonight. Jacob will have disappeared Kara. We’ll not be there for him.”

“How big is the place? It looks small,” Kara asked.

Chaz turned back to the keyboard, “Population four odd million. Land size is…,” he scribbled down some numbers on a pad next to the laptop, then brought up a list of English counties on Wikipedia, “…between the size of Devon and Somerset.”

“We’ve lost him,” Tien said and put the phone down on the table. She walked away and sat down on one of the couches. Sammi and Chaz went across to her.

Kara could hear them talking but she was staring at the large map on the wall. She was vaguely aware of Dinger calling that the chef had breakfast on the go and of Toby saying that he had all their kit ready for loading on the aircraft. She felt Sammi’s hand on her arm.

“We’re still going, aren’t we?”

“Yes, of course. It doesn’t matter how long it takes, we’ll go out there and find him.”

“Good. Come and get something to eat.”

“Yeah, I’ll be there in a minute. You guys go ahead.”

Kara continued to stare at the map and then sat down at one of the PCs. She opened a search engine and after a few minutes she reached for her mobile phone.

The number took an age to connect, but, eventually, she heard it ringing.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Dan?”

“Kara?”

“Yep, it’s me. How’s things?”

“Umm, good… Kara, you do know wh-”

“Yeah, I know exactly where I’m ringing.”

“This is going to cost you a fortune.”

“Not important. Tell me, how was the wedding?”

“Eh, great. Yeah fantastic.”

“Did Aisling look the part?”

“Yeah, she was beautiful. It was a great day, thanks for asking. But Kara, there’s no way you’re calling me all the way over here to talk about my big sister’s wedding. What’s going on?”

“I’m just wondering, where you are at the minute?”

“Right now, I’m sitting on a grass mound, in a place called Kings Park, looking out over a magnificent view of Perth and waiting for my brother to come back with a couple of coffees. Why?”

“What are you and Eugene up to for the next few days?”

“Bit of brotherly bonding. We’re thinking of hiring a four-wheel drive and going native in the Australian Bush. We’ve still got two weeks out here and now the wedding’s done and dusted we thought we’d try and see some stuff.”

“Do you fancy seeing Bali?”

“When?”

“Your flight leaves in just under three hours.”

Ngurah Rai International Airport, Bali. Friday 27
th
November.

Dan and Eugen
e
O’Neill had been adopted from Nigeria by an Irish couple living in Mill Hill, London. The effect of the disconnect between their names and their appearance was evident on the faces of everyone they met and had been a source of amusement for them throughout their lives. It was also the reason they had learned to box at an early age. Their dad had told them that if they were going to get into fights because of their skin colour or their adopted heritage, then the least they could do was to win, and win quickly. The brothers had taken to the task with relish.

Eugene, the younger but bigger of the two, won the Under-16 British schoolboys heavyweight title and Dan, the English ABA Middleweight Championship. Surprisingly, their promising amateur careers were given up, as first Eugene, quickly followed by Dan, joined the British Parachute Regiment.

Nine years later, with a wealth of operational experience behind them, they left and established a private security firm. Kara, who had served with Eugene in Basra at the same time as she had met Tien, used them as her first choice for security back-up. It was through Dan that Jacob and Toby Harrop had been introduced to ‘Wright & Tran Investigations’.

The flight from Perth touched down into Ngurah Rai International Airport, just outside Kuta, Bali, slightly ahead of schedule. As the aircraft gates stretched out in a single line for half a kilometre on either side of a newly extended terminal building, it took the brothers a brisk five minute walk just to reach passport control. There, the queue for the four desks that had immigration officials in attendance was a bizarre zig-zag that funnelled all arriving passengers into a single stream. The resultant line, herded into the middle of a huge arrivals hall, stretched back at least one hundred metres.

“This is the single worst use of space I think I’ve ever seen,” Dan said and checked his watch. “How does that happen? We landed five minutes early and we’ve spent fifteen minutes just getting this far.”

“Landing doesn’t mean arrived,” Eugene said, looking down at his iPad.

“Thanks, that’s helpful. Where is he?”

Eugene looked up from the flight tracker app that showed a small, red, aircraft-shaped icon representing Jacob’s flight. It was heading in an almost straight line from north to south on the screen and had already cleared the southern tip of Borneo. “He’s still in the air, still set for a scheduled arrival of 17:35. Assuming worst case and his aircraft taxis straight to a gate that is closer than ours was and they open the doors as soon as possible, then I reckon he’ll be standing where we are now in forty minutes.”

“That doesn’t give us a lot of time to hook up transport options.”

“Seriously, I think transport’s going to be the least of it.” Eugene looked about the massive hall that formed only a tiny corner of the terminal complex. He and Dan had spent the three and a half hour flight studying every file that Tien had managed to email through before she and the rest of the team had boarded their own jet and left from Paris.

“Given the size of this place and where the hire cars are, I reckon it’s a miracle if we get to follow him. We’ve got to assume he’s being met and they’ll have a car waiting nearby. If they’re smart it would be right outside in the pick-up area and that will knacker us. I’d have said a cab would have been the best option, but from the Trip Advisor file Tien sent through, you have to go to a counter and get a ticket, then you wait for the driver to bring the cab round. Or, you go with one of the guys that hang about outside and walk with them to a parking area. Neither one lends itself to jumping in and yelling, ‘follow that car’ does it?”

“I guess not. But we’re it matey boy. We have no fall back and if we lose him, he’s in the wind.”

“Shame we didn’t have more time, or the chance to get any clever kit from Tien.”

The line to the passport desks shuffled forward a few steps. Dan turned around and watched the latest gaggle of passengers join the queue. He stepped to the side of his brother and saw that the line now zigzagged at least another fifty metres back. Some people, a mother with a couple of small children, an older couple and a group of four young guys, had decided to drop out. They were sitting on the floor, to the side of the hall, obviously deciding to rest and wait for the queue to die down.

The line moved forward again.

“How many desks are open now?” Dan asked.

Eugene, at six foot three, peered over the crowd and said, “Five, out of a possible ten. Seems they think this is only half busy.”

“How many people between them and us?”

“About… sixty.”

If it takes three minutes per check that’s about half an hour before we get through. He’ll be landed by then.”

“Yeah, but then he has to do all this too. He’s still half an hour behind us.”

“Unless all the desks open and things speed up a bit.”

“Always the optimist Daniel,” Eugene said.

“I’m not the one saying we’ve no chance of getting a car in time.”

“True.”

The line moved forward again.

Dan pondered their circumstances. Eugene went back to looking at his iPad. The little red icon was moving closer.

ɸ

Twenty minutes later Dan and Eugene were within touching distance of the front of the queue.

“Hey?” Dan asked quietly.

“What?” Eugene answered, his head down, looking again at the red icon, now almost on top of the airport.

“Do you have your phone on you?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“Is it linked to your iPad?”

“How’d you mean?”

“Do you have ‘find-my-phone’ activated?”

“Yeah, of cours-” Eugene stopped and looked up. “Oh, that’s clever. Do you think it’s possible?”

“I do, maybe. Depends. Kara said he’d have minders in tow, but it might be possible. Jacob’s sharp on the uptake and a drop is easier than a pick.”

“Puts him at risk.”

“Losing him puts him at more.”

“True,” Eugene said and took another two steps forward.

“It means one of us has to drop out of this line and go all the way to the back,” Dan said.

Eugene looked over the crowd to the end of a line that had increased, not decreased, in length. “Paper, rock, scissors?”

“Nah. It’s okay bro. I’ll do it. I’m less conspicuous. See if you can get some wheels sorted, but I’ll Facebook message you when we’re almost out. Here, give me that.” Dan held his hand out and took the iPad.

In turn, Eugene took his iPhone out and disabled a few settings. After less than a minute, he handed it to Dan and took his iPad back, “That should be safe enough. Good luck.”

Dan pocketed the phone and, apologising to those in his way, made it to the belted-barrier. Ducking under, he crossed the hall and sat down on the floor, his back against the wall. He positioned himself not quite next to, but near enough to give a false impression of association with, a group of ten teenagers and what he assumed were their three teachers. He looked at the group without staring and wondered if the adults were, in fact, teachers, or maybe scout leaders, or youth coordinators. He couldn’t be sure, but all the kids had similar tops on. Not an actual uniform, but the same colour and general appearance. He saw they all wore pin-sticks with ‘WYIFC 15’ on them. He had no clue what it meant, but as he looked across to the slowly moving queue he noticed distinct groups of young people with adult supervisors. Their happiness and enthusiasm for whatever it was they were attending was infectious and he couldn’t help but smile along with their smiles and laughter. Looking closer he identified at least twelve separate groups, some with more adults than others, but all with ten young people. They were a broad range of ethnicities. He picked out African, Asian, Indian sub-continent and Latino groups. There was a group that he guessed were from the Middle East or perhaps North Africa, the girls in it wearing a range of dress, from simple veils to full burqas, and a few groups of mixed ethnicity, that Dan thought might have been European or North American.

Looking to his right he saw another group of teens embedded in the middle of the latest flock of passengers streaming into the hall. This new contingent were easy to identify and also gave the answer to what was going on. A young man Dan guessed was about fifteen, tall, broad, with a shock of red hair above golden tanned skin, had a green flag draped over his shoulders. He turned to talk to his fellow travellers and the flag revealed a cartoon kangaroo with a speech bubble coming from its mouth that said
‘G’day from Australia’.
The roo held a gold balloon on which was written
‘World Youth Interfaith Convention 2015’.

Dan stood and walked further along, keeping in rough line with the end of the queue. Off to his left he saw a number of immigration officials come out from a side door. They walked with no haste but after a few minutes they had opened the remainder of the passport desks. He also caught a glimpse of Eugene’s back as he exited to the next hall.

A few minutes later he received a Facebook message notification on his own phone. ‘Baggage reclaim smoother than passport control. All bags, including carryon have to go through a security scan. But not people. Plan still good to go. Queues not too bad. Bottle neck is passports.’

Five minutes passed before another message arrived. ‘Am through. Massive crowds of people waiting out here. Seems a youth church thing going on. Marginal chance of keeping tabs on Jacob before he leaves building let alone in a car. Lot of armed police and army in attendance. Maybe aftermath of Paris, maybe protecting church crowd.’

Dan sent back, ‘Okay. Get the paperwork done on a hire car, then wait.’

The passport line was moving a lot more swiftly now and a number of people who had been sitting to the sides of the hall began to re-join it. Dan watched the first group of WYIFC15 teenagers he had been sitting near make their way across. To his right, the latest group of passengers appeared at the broad entrance to the arrivals hall. Third into sight was Jacob Harrop.

Dan swung his small carryon case over his shoulder and in a couple of strides had fallen in at the back of the WYIFC group. He cast a casual glance to his right and saw the recognition in Jacob’s eyes.

Jacob didn’t alter his gait, but he raised both hands and gripped the shoulder straps of his backpack. His put his left index finger flat against the left strap and at the same time pointed with his right index finger at the blonde woman who was walking just ahead of him. The actions were swift and to anyone other than Dan, would have looked like he was simply adjusting the lie of the straps on his shoulders.

Dan raised his right hand to his face and quickly wiped his mouth from left to right.

Jacob glanced down at the ground and back up. The movement, once more looking like nothing in particular, provided confirmation that although Jacob knew of no other minders in his vicinity, there might be undisclosed, silent assets tracking him.

Dan paused, swung his case down and knelt as if checking an external compartment. The ten teenagers and their adult chaperones were at the side of the queue and beginning to filter into the zigzag. The newly arrived passengers slowed to allow them in. Dan, still checking his case, waited.

The flustered looking Asian business man, who had been the first through from Jacob’s aircraft, stepped closer and as soon as the last of the youth group straightened out into the queue, he tagged onto the end. Dan stood up and slung his bag back over his shoulder.

The blonde woman covered the last few steps and joined the line. Dan stepped forward and allowed Jacob to pass him, before he swung into the queue ahead of a young couple.

The line was twisting forward steadily now. At the fourth turn, Jacob leant forward and said something quietly to the blonde woman. So quietly that Dan, only three steps back from him, didn’t hear it. She shook her head in response. Jacob moved his hand behind his leg and gave Dan a quick hand signal to wait.

After ten more minutes the line zigged into the last leg before the passport desks. Dan saw what he hadn’t noticed the last time he had gotten this far. The person at the head of the queue stood behind a yellow line. When a desk became free, the incumbent immigration official would signal for them to step forward. It meant a few seconds delay until either the person saw the gesture, or the person behind them in the queue drew their attention to it and pointed them on their way. Dan couldn’t understand why they wouldn’t just have separate lanes going to each desk, but was grateful they didn’t.

The flustered business man, who seemed even more flustered now than he had on arrival, gained the yellow line. He scanned his head back and forth like a Wimbledon spectator, and when a hand went up he was away like a greyhound out of the traps. The blonde stepped forward. Jacob held his place, as did Dan.

The seconds stretched out into minutes. Dan shuffled a step forward. A hand went up on the far right. The blonde saw it and walked towards it. Jacob stepped up to the line. Dan stepped closer and using Eugene’s iPhone simulated making a call. It allowed him to talk quietly without drawing attention.