The Espionage Effect(92)

Cold air whipped around me, battering my face until my eyes teared so badly, I had to retreat from the opening. Careful to grip handholds and secure my footing lest I be tossed out the side with a jerk of unexpected turbulence, I worked my way back up to the cockpit.

Through the side window, I noticed a distant trail of cruise ships ahead to our starboard, a total of five in a line. We flew parallel to them, heading north as we surpassed them one by one.

“Killed a soldier,” I admitted. Not that I needed counseling about it. Only to alert my fellow operative of the situation.

He glanced sideways and pinned me with an assessing look. A quick nod followed.

Guess I looked okay with it.

“Won’t matter,” he replied. “With the captain and crew working in concert with Escobar, they’ll want to hide the body quickly before a passenger trips over it.”

I refastened my shoulder harness, clicking it into place as we continued to fly northward. “And we’ve stolen Escobar’s only means of chase.”

“Exactly.” He pulled left on the cyclic stick between his legs and the helicopter tilted in the same direction. “Grab the map and light from the storage on your left?”

Between our seats, a metal console was built into the fuselage. I pulled opened the top and did as he asked.

“Ready to earn your supper, copilot?” he asked.

I gave a quick nod.

“Estimate Escobar’s time of arrival versus ours. Their ship is cruising at blistering pace of thirty-two knots with the Florida Current, which has an additional velocity of almost four knots. We’re flying at one hundred fifty knots. We’re both heading to the Port of Miami and we’ve just flown past Key West.”

My mind spun with his spouted factoids. “You know the velocity of the ocean’s currents? And how do you know the ship’s speed?” I recalled he’d mentioned how fast the ship cruised as we’d fled up the companionway.

Without shifting his gaze from the darkness beyond the windshield, his lips curled into a smug grin. “I casually toured the bridge under the guise of curiosity.”

“On behalf of Escobar, naturally.”

He tipped his head my direction. “Naturally.”

“And as soon as you suspected the cruise ships as a means of smuggling,” he continued, “I researched and studied their routes and the ocean currents.”

Impressed with his research, I clamped the penlight between my teeth, reached down to fish out a pencil I’d encountered in the console, then examined the map. I folded its dog-eared paper to expose only the section I planned to chart, then leaned forward and scribbled a few calculations on the pale-blue section depicting open ocean.

“You sure we have enough gas in this to get us to Miami?”

“How far do we have to go?” he asked.

I double-checked my calculations. “Assuming the cruise ship keeps her current speed, and she slows as she approaches the port, she should reach Miami in just under four hours.”

“And us?” he asked.

“We should pass into Miami airspace within forty-five minutes,” I replied, confident. “Assuming we aren’t headed off by the coastguard or shot down by scrambled fighter pilots, we should beat them by a good three hours.”

“Shot down?” The corners of his lips twitched. “You do realize I’ve got connections.” His calm words flattened into statement-of-fact as he leaned forward and flicked a metal switch upward, then turned a dial. “And we’ve got enough gas. Per Escobar’s specifications, we amped up the range of his custom Eurocopter to fly from his house to Miami.”

Several clicks sounded in my headset, then low static, followed by brief silence.

“Echo Sierra this is Oscar. Mother Hen, do you read?” Alec called out into the silence.

A field of light static played before another click.

After a piercing squelch, the low tone of a female voice filled my ears. “Mother Hen reads you, Oscar.”

“We need a flight plan filed from Cancun International to show us departing there two hours ago in route to Miami. We’ve just left the Phoenician Sun.” Alec gave her a bullet-point briefing of the situation.

“Current position and bearing?” The woman asked.

Alec provided our coordinates to her. “We’re skirting US airspace bearing northeast. We’d like to land in one piece.”

“Roger, Oscar. Stand by.”

Static resumed.

“Roger, Oscar?” I asked.

He chuckled. “Regina’s sense of humor.”

“And you’re Oscar?”

“I’m One.”

“EtherSphere One,” I connected, mulling over what he meant, after the obvious phonetic alphabet Oscar for O meant One to Alec. So the agents were independent operatives? Was that why Anna mentioned she had no idea about anything else? Had Alec not known about…

Another squelch interrupted my train of thought. “Flight plan registered retroactively. We’ve got you on satellite. Continue your bearing for another ten minutes to avoid a plane crash investigation in progress. Stay below ceiling once you reach mainland coastline.”

“Below ceiling?” I wondered aloud.

“For stealth,” he clarified. “Even though we now look legit, we still need to be ghosts. No need to attract notice.”