DYLAN
I’m studying the map and trying to figure out whether Keegan might head for Cuba or down into Mexico, when a Raymond police officer calls me. “Thought you might be interested in this,” he says. “Jake Gibbons’s wife mentioned that the Cessna Keegan stole has some problems. It’s burning fuel faster than it should, which is why they’ve had a hard time selling it.”
“So he has to stop earlier than we thought to refuel.”
“Sounds like it.”
As I get off the phone, I look at my map. If Keegan is headed for Cuba, he would have to stop in Florida to refuel. If he’s going down to Mexico, he would have to go by way of Texas. He would probably have to stop somewhere in the southern part of Texas to refuel.
There are a couple of FBI special agents here now, working with us to get up to speed. Special Agent Griffin has been on the phone. He clicks it off, then steps toward me. “We’ve contacted the Air Route Traffic Control Centers for Class B Airspace to let them know to look for a plane that might not have contacted the tower and might have its transponder off.”
“That’s not narrow enough,” I tell him. “There are planes that don’t even have transponders. If I were Keegan, I’d be looking for a small airport that doesn’t have a tower and has self-fueling. That way he doesn’t risk having to talk to somebody who might recognize him.”
Agent Griffin gets back on his phone and puts out an alert to private airports in all the Gulf states. He also calls other agents working this case and orders them to put in calls to the private airports in case they don’t see the alerts, starting with Texas and Florida.
The other agent, named Bilao, yells across the room, “We just got a ping on Keegan’s phone! The number he called Gibbons from this morning.”
“Where is he?” I ask.
“He’s just west of New Orleans.”
“He must be going toward Texas.” I hustle back to my desk and open the aviation chart I’ve pulled up on my computer for south Texas. I try to figure out where he might have to land to refuel.
There are small airports all over southern Texas. Dillinger, one of the detectives in the unit, looks over my shoulder and I show him how to identify the small airports.
“There are a lot of them,” he says. “How will we narrow it down?”
“He would choose one that’s self-announcing.”
“Meaning?”
“It means there’s no one there watching him land. No tower to talk to. Pilots have to announce their landing on the radio in case there are other aircraft in the area about to land on the same runway. And an airport that small usually has self-fueling pumps. He might never have to interact with anyone.” I print out the map on my screen, jerk it off the printer tray, and, with a red pen, circle all the small airports that fit that criteria.
“This one,” I say. “I would choose this one, just outside Corpus Christi. If he’s burning fuel as fast as we hope he is, he wouldn’t try to make it all the way into Mexico. He’d have to stop around Corpus. This airport is perfect. This is the one I’d choose.”
The FBI agents get on the phone with Houston Center, the tower that tracks the planes in that region. With their radar, they locate a plane that hasn’t contacted them and doesn’t have its transponder on, in the vicinity where the phone pinged off the tower.
“I think we’ve got him,” Bilao says.