wide- bodied jumbos, which looked like modern-day dinosaurs and fire-farting dragons.
While Eriq had been catching some sleep in the rear. Jessica had asked Don to tell her more about himself. He’d gone directly from high school into the military and had done a stint as a pilot in Desert Storm, he told her. She was once again impressed.
“ What kind of planes?”
“ Nothing too romantic. ARFs-Aerial Reconnaissance Flights. Photographing-low-level spying, I guess you’d call it. I didn’t see any real action, although my plane took a couple of flak hits.”
“ So, are you sorry you didn’t get to drop any bombs?”
“ No… not really… Managed to get back with a fairly clean conscience and a healthy respect for life…”
“ So, why isn’t a good-looking young man like yourself married?” she asked him.
“ Guess that’d be my fault. I keep running from any kind of real commitment, I guess. Don’t ever feel ready, mature enough, secure enough, you know, in myself.”
She nodded her understanding.
“ But there is this one girl,” he confided. “If ever I’m going to take the plunge…”
She smiled knowingly, and they heard Eriq groan as he shook himself awake, terribly uncomfortable in the tiny space they all occupied.
Once on the ground, they all had jobs to do. Don refueled and filed their flight plan. Eriq contacted the Miami bureau of the FBI to let people there know their plans, and he also gathered drinks and sandwiches for the three of them, while Jessica contacted the MPD, leaving word with the chief of police and talking to Dr. Andrew Coudriet, who had information from Moyler in England. One of Allain’s prints which earlier had been sent to Moyler had found a match with one taken for an insurance policy in England for a schoolboy named Warren Tauman. Moyler’s fax, according to Andrew Coudriet, was most definite: Allain and Tauman were one and the same.
“ Jackpot,” said Jessica over the phone to Dr. Coudriet. “Now if we can only corner the bastard.”
“ I have a feeling that if anyone can, you will. Dr. Coran.” Now, a little over an hour out of Miami International, Jessica watched Cuba appear and dissolve below them, as they had to fly above Cuban airspace in order to safely avert any problems there. Once across Cuban airspace, they descended. All of this gave Jessica a great opportunity at the controls, and Lansing seemed pleased to allow her to enjoy herself.
Below them sprawled the glittering, sun-dappled east Caribbean Sea on their southward tack for the three British islands which together formed a crown colony.
They’d stayed on this course for an additional few hours when suddenly the lush islands came into view. They were as breathtaking as when last Jessica had seen them in the company of a past love, Captain Alan Rych- man, now Commissioner Rychman of the NYPD. She recalled their having dived the crystal-blue waters off Grand Cayman, a twenty-two-mile-long island, eight miles at its widest point, located some two hundred miles northwest of the west end of Jamaica and a hundred miles south of Cuba.
Still, even the gorgeous sight of the Caymans below couldn’t dispel the fact that Jessica had become frustrated, as had Eriq, who remained silent in the rear. She could sense his seething. They had seen nothing whatever of the fleeing Tau Cross and their fugitive. Lansing, too, had gone silent, sensing that the mood inside the small space they occupied had soured considerably.
With the wind at their backs, they had made good time and fuel consumption had not been a problem. Their having had to fly over Cuban airspace at a safe distance had, however, presented one problem: It had taken them to such altitudes that their eyes were for a time useless in attempting to spot Patric Allain’s boat, if it was down there. By the time they were able to return to eye level, hundreds upon hundreds of nautical miles had gone un- searched.
There had been so much to cover the man’s tracks; so much in nature had conspired against Jessica that it angered her. The other two islands here, located approximately eighty miles northeast of Grand Cayman, were Little Cayman at ten miles long and two miles wide, and Cayman Brae, twelve miles long and one and a quarter miles wide. The islands looked like jewels spread across the satin-blue water from this distance up; created of coral, the soil was fertile, and Jessica recalled a people of grace and good cheer and beautiful features.
Jessica knew from her previous visit that fishing, shipbuilding and stock raising were the chief industries here. The place was also good for thatch rope, mahogany, turtle shells, green turtles, shark skins, cattle and ponies. She’d done a bit of research back then, learning that Genoese- born navigator Christopher Columbus had discovered the islands in 1503 and had named them the Tortugas-Spanish for Turtle Islands. The place still literally “crawled” with turtles.
The Cayman Islands were colonized sometime around 1734 by the British, the records not being exact, and before becoming a separate British colony in 1959, the island government was a dependency of the Jamaican colony, and as recently as 1962, it had maintained status as part of the Federation of the West Indies.
With but a hundred square miles of land, the island population was crowded at twelve hundred permanent residents, and during peak holiday seasons, when the big cruise ships brought in the tourists and the grandiose sea-hugging hotels were full to bursting, the island could hardly bear the burden of people.
Jessica was disappointed that they’d seen no sailing vessel that might approximate the one they were looking for, but it made sense. They were a day ahead of the sailing vessel now, despite its having had a six-hour head start on them. Then again, perhaps nature had taken its vengeance on Tauman; perhaps he was floating hundreds of feet below the surface somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico where his ship had gone down in bad weather. One could only hope, but such a death was too good for the man. Perhaps, Jessica mused, there was no death other men could design that was not too good for him.
She would inquire when she arrived at George Town, the capital of the Cayman Islands, if there had been any reports of ships in distress in the Caribbean Sea, the Yucatan Channel or the great Gulf.
They were within sight of George Town now and she saw banners strung across one port, perhaps there to welcome an incoming cruise ship that they’d witnessed easing toward the island at what appeared to be the pace of a snail. Yet the floating building with its Norwegian markings had moved surprisingly far by the time they’d turned into the wind to make their final approach, Lansing having studied the air currents to make his determination.
He was a good pilot; Jessica silently congratulated herself at having found him back in Tampa, but she was too busy admiring the island below to verbalize her good fortune. From up here, the entire island blinked with white houses and orange-tiled roofs.
Earlier, Jessica had asked Don Lansing to radio ahead to have authorities meet them at the airport, specifically Ja Okinleye, if possible. The tower at the quaint little airstrip below had radioed back that their message had been forwarded to the “correct Royal authorities.” Now aligned with the airport in the distance, one single, long black strip and a small building in typical British Isles architecture, they quickly descended under the assault of the wind at the nose of the ship.
Jessica asked Lansing to again radio ahead to ask for the chief investigatory officer, Ja Okinleye, to meet them at the airport, and it was relayed back to them that Okinleye had been contacted. Now Lansing told them to ready for landing as he got his final clearance, although at such a late moment in the landing that he could only laugh and wryly reply, “Thanks, guys!”
The approach was smooth and effortless, despite a brisk, buffeting wind which threatened havoc. Lansing laughingly said, “The wind’s a funny animal, like Huey, Dewey and Louie: You never know what they’re going to give you.”
“ Sounds like a Gumpism to me,” said Santiva in the rear.
“ Call it a Donism,” Lansing replied.
Out her small side portal, Jessica could see an official- looking vehicle with a Cayman Island flag on each front bumper and two officers in dress whites-which amounted to long pants in this subtropical heat-standing nearby. One appeared to be Okinleye. In a moment the tiger-striped plane bounced shakily on and along the runway, their speed decreased to nil and they turned to taxi onto a side strip.
Moments later, they deployed from the plane directly onto the asphalt, where Ja Okinleye personally met them, his hand extended in a warm gesture of greeting. “Dr. Coran! It is a wonderment to see you, and we are so pleased to have you back with us again in our paradise.”
“ I wish we were just here to enjoy your paradise, my friend.” Jessica saw that Okinleye’s man had gone directly to the plane, ostensibly to see to their bags but with an obvious eye to any cargo aboard. Finding neither cargo nor bags, he was stumped, so he raised both shoulders to his smiling boss.
Jessica turned to Santiva, who had weathered the trip well by sleeping much of the way, and added for Ja’s
