At Lambert International, Remo’s TSA clearance allowed him unfettered access to the tarmac, where the Maidenhead Industries jet, an Embraer Phenom 300 with Dick Joplin’s smiling mug painted on the tail fin, sat waiting.
The pilot, Bill Lambright, formerly with the National Guard, leaned against the fuselage, smoking a cigarette. He watched with curiosity as the thin man in the black t-shirt and chinos approached. He didn’t have an identification lanyard displayed like the rest of the airport workers, which instantly made him a suspicious-looking person, although not nearly as suspicious-looking as the old Asian fellow who followed him in the flowing kimono.
“Home, Jeeves,” Remo said, rapping his palm against the side of the plane.
Bill rolled his eyes. “Yeah, you keep dreaming, buddy,” he said. “Unless you’ve got a few million lying around…” He left the sentence hanging out there, not for any dramatic effect, but more because of the middle and index finger of the skinny guy suddenly supported his larynx in a position a half-inch higher than was comfortable. The cigarette fell from his mouth.
“You fly for Dick Joplin?” Remo asked. “Blink once for yes, twice for yes.”
Bill blinked once. Then he blinked once again because he was not sure he blinked loudly enough.
“You’re going to take the two of us back to your boss, you understand?” He raised the Adam’s apple imperceptibly higher, forcing the pilot to stand on his toes.
“Remo, stop this foolishness,” Chiun hissed. “This man has done nothing wrong but work for the wrong person.”
Bill Lambright saw the thin man cut his eyes at the old Asian guy, then cut back to bore into his own. He thought he had cheated death once before when he flew missions over Kuraq. He was certain now that Death was staring him in the face right now.
Suddenly he was flat-footed on the ground, gasping for air and trying to swallow.
“Any questions?” Remo asked.
“No sir,” Lambright replied in a squeak that would persist for the next several days. As he readied the plane, he saw the man take out a phone and make a call, but was unable to overhear any of the details. When the thin man saw him staring, he saw those eyes go cold once more, and he returned to filing the return flight path and preparing to taxi onto the runway.
When they were airborne, Bill waited until he was certain neither of his passengers was watching, and then flipped the switches on the plane’s transponder to squawk 7500.
· · ·
Joaquin Ramirez was having the most exciting day of his career. When he had completed his training to work as an air traffic controller, he had visions of himself as the hero central to preventing mid-air collisions, or making a call that would prevent a 747 from nose-diving into the side of a mountain.
The reality of the job, particularly at an out-of-the-way air strip like Perry Stokes, was one of absolute boredom—he could not even relieve it by playing Jewel Smash on his phone, because the airport was too cheap to install public Wi-Fi, and he could no longer afford to go over his monthly data allowance.
No flights were scheduled to arrive until the next morning. His coffee was cold, the pot was empty, and he did not feel like making any more. His board contained the signals of flights that passed within range, indicating bigger planes with bigger people that had bigger places to go than Trinidad, Colorado.
And then he saw it. Flight MDN0001’s transponder was squawking 7500, the code to indicate a hijacking in progress.
He scrambled for his microphone, found it, and dialed in the plane’s frequency.
“Flight MDN0001, this is Perry Stokes base. Please respond.”
He awaited a response, which did not come, because Bill Lambright had turned off his receiver in case his passengers overheard any responses to his call for help.
“Repeat, Flight MDN0001, this is Perry Stokes base,” he said urgently. “Your transponder is sending 7500. Please confirm.”
When again he received no response, he turned to the phone and dialed the number from the training manual. The number was also printed on a sticker and displayed next to the phone, just in case he ever really needed it.
He needed it now.
A message chain that began at Perry Stokes with Joaquin Ramirez trickled up the line until it reached a man in a mountain whose sole job was to monitor air traffic for just such a signal and order jets to scramble, either to escort the plane down, or to blow it out of the sky.
Major Gary Sheffield knew exactly what to do when the call came in. He had fielded calls like this far too often in his career. However, the call to make on this one was different than anything he had ever done before.
Because Major Gary Sheffield also had another job, one he had been given years ago and which he had never had to perform. On a monthly basis he received a stipend check from a special task force within the Joint Chiefs, with the understanding that when he was called on a special phone he must always carry and keep charged, he would obey the orders received without question. Major Sheffield was a patriot, and knew that sometimes the security of the country came with the price of making decisions he did not understand or agree with.
Thirty minutes prior, the phone had rung, and dutifully he had answered. The man at the other end did not identify his branch of the service, but announced himself only as Colonel Smith. He told him that it was a matter of utmost national security that a certain plane would transmit a certain signal, and that it was imperative that this plane’s call history be ignored, erased, and forgotten.
Major Sheffield nodded as he was told of flight MDN0001’s distress squawk. “Yes, I’m aware,” he said. “We’ve already received a call on it. It’s a transponder failure. Pilot’s a newbie. He’ll get chewed out on landing so that he never screws up like this again. Yes, thank you for letting us know. Good job.”
The Major then set about entering commands into his keyboard. On screen, a list of flights and their transponder statuses scrolled past. In red among all the green was MDN0001 and its 7500 status. He tapped a few more keys. MDN0001 went green.
Major Sheffield then stood up and headed off for a smoke break, to look at some blue sky, and to forget the last hour of his life. God bless America, he thought to himself, not caring that in Trinidad, Colorado, a young air traffic controller was suffering profound disappointment.
· · ·
Bill Lambright looked down at the private airstrip behind Maidenhead’s California headquarters, in shock that the landing strip was not a sea of flashing red and blue lights. He flipped on his radio and signaled his approach.
“Roger that, MDN0001,” came the response. “Welcome home.”
Bill’s worries increased as the plane touched down and taxied onto the tarmac. He expected at any moment that a squadron of security guards would flank the plane, guns drawn, and he wanted to be sure he was not in the way of any of their bullets.
He heard the door open behind him, as the thin man in the t-shirt and chinos popped the latch. He did not even bother to give him a look before departing the plane. The little old guy who travelled with him gave him a brief smile. “Thank you for the flight,” he said. “Sleep now.” The wrinkled Asian gnome gently patted Bill Lambright on the shoulder, and Bill found that it was a good idea to take a nap for the next several hours.
· · ·
“Hi, I’m looking for Dick Joplin.”
The pretty blonde secretary with the large and immovable bosom looked up from her desk with red-rimmed eyes, and her wastebasket was threatening to overflow with wadded tissues.
Despite her inner turmoil, her heart skipped a beat at the sight of the slender man. The black t-shirt clung to a wiry frame, and his muscular arms seemed to disappear into his hands, which were currently planted on the surface of her desk.
“Can I help you?” she asked, dazedly.
Remo Williams rolled his eyes. “We’re doing this backwards,” he said. “My fault. I apologize. I’m looking for Dick Joplin.”
At the mention of the Maidenhead CEO’s name, the pretty blonde began to blubber once more. Remo looked back at Chiun, exasperated. “Did I say it wrong?” he asked.
“Who can say?” Chiun replied. “I would first have to hear you say something right so that I might know how to tell the difference.”
“Okay, I walked into that one,” Remo muttered as Chiun chuckled.
“If you’re looking for Mr. Joplin, you just missed him,” said a young man pushing a mail cart. He seemed to be in a similar mood to the secretary, but with a steady control of his histrionics.
“Missed him?” Remo asked.
The young man nodded gravely. “He’s on a plane to Tibet. To Mount Everest,” he added.
“You think he knew we were coming, Little Father?” Remo asked.
“No mountain is high enough to escape the reach of Sinanju,” said Chiun. “But why else would he retreat to Sagarmatha?”
“Because that’s where he died,” the young man said.
Remo did a double take. “Come again?” he asked. “He died on Mount Everest, so now he’s got to go there? What is it about this place that makes people lose their grip on the concept of cause and effect?”
The mail carrier looked around the atrium. Seeing no one other than the weeping secretary who was too deep in her grief to pay attention, he motioned Remo and Chiun to the corner of the room. “Okay,” he whispered conspiratorially. “Officially, Mr. Joplin died on an expedition to Mount Everest. He collapsed after reaching the top.”
“And unofficially?” Remo asked.
“Unofficially, he died in our recording studio where he was shooting the scenes of his climb.”
Remo closed his eyes. “Let me get this straight,” he said. “He was climbing Mount Everest on a film set?”
The man nodded. “According to a guy I know in the editing room, Mr. Joplin had just fired some guy and sent them all out. Then he must have fallen off the scaffolding. They found him after the weekend. One guy said he broke every bone in his body, but another guy said it was just his arms and legs.”
“So they’re flying his body to Mount Everest.”
“And back,” the man said.
“Why?”
“Because that’s where…”
“Because that’s where he died,” Remo interrupted, nodding. “And they can’t retrieve the body till they drop off the body. Got it.” He stalked toward the exit. “You know, Little Father, every time I think I’ve seen the nuttiest thing ever, there’s always someone a little nuttier.”
Chiun shrugged. “I should think you would be used to it,” he said. “Look where we are.”
“Yep. California,” Remo said.
“No,” Chiun replied. “America.”