Jake waited patiently in the driver’s seat of their rental car just outside the Malta International Airport. He had convinced his newfound colleague, Elisa Murici, to contact her office in Rome for some help. There were only a few ways off the island—by air or by sea. And Sara Halsey Jones could not have been that far ahead of them. Now, she could just hang low and hide out in some hotel on Malta, but he didn’t think so. He guessed she was still on the move.
So Jake had enlisted Elisa to contact her office and try to track down any passport use, videos at the airport and ferry terminal, which would take a while, or manifests on airlines and ferries. Although Sara wouldn’t necessarily have to show her passport to the ferry operators, she would have to show some form of ID. And Jake had found in the past that they keep those records for at least 24 hours, just in case a ferry sinks. They liked to know who died and whose family would likely sue them.
Finally, Elisa got off her phone and glanced at him. “I’m glad you’re on my side,” she said. “She’s on the night ferry from here to Catania, Sicily. She used a Texas driver’s license. They’ve got her on video wearing all black with a scarf and dark glasses.”
“Great. So she knows someone is after her.” He checked his watch and figured the crossing time from Malta to Catania. “She should get in there around four a.m.”
Elisa shook her head. “How do you know this?”
“It’s about a hundred and ninety kilometers, or one hundred and fourteen miles from Valletta to Catania,” he surmised. “Based on an average speed of thirty kilometers per hour, that gets them in at four, assuming normal sea conditions.”
She simply stared at him.
“Plus, while you were on the phone with your people, I checked the ferry schedule on my phone.”
Hitting him in the arm, she said, “Not fair.”
“Let’s go,” Jake said.
“Wait. Where?”
“I do understand some Italian,” he said. “They have a plane waiting for you at the private section of the airport.”
Elisa shook her head and followed him toward the non-commercial air section.
This would work perfect, Jake thought. A private plane meant no security, so he could keep the gun he had gotten from the Tunis cultural affairs officer.
It took them just twenty minutes to get to the private airport section, where Elisa gathered a package from a man in his mid-forties who appeared more interested in Elisa’s physical attributes than her identification.
“All right,” she said to Jake. “You might want to go to the bathroom before we take off. Either that or hold it for an hour and a half.”
“What are we flying a biplane?”
She handed him her bag and the folder the man had given her. “Well I’m going to go.” Elisa headed toward the WC and Jake watched the man at the desk eye her fine posterior.
He thought about keeping his contact informed, but immediately brushed that thought from his mind. He wasn’t used to having a babysitter, and never liked it when someone tried to push him too hard for information.
Elisa came out and took her stuff from him and continued on toward the outer door. Jake caught a wide smirk on the man’s face, an approval of his apparent choice of women.
Out on the dark flight line, Jake finally saw the plane they would take to Sicily. It was a single engine Cessna Skyhawk painted white with green stripes. A man was standing by to help them step into the plane. When they got inside, Jake looked toward the cockpit and saw no pilot.
“Let’s hope we have a pilot who knows what he’s doing,” Jake said.
“Why do you assume the pilot will be a man?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Law of averages?”
Elisa shook her head, set her bag on the floor and climbed into the pilot’s seat.
Now he felt like a complete idiot. He sat in the front passenger seat and kept his mouth shut.
Finally, her quick preflight done and her headset on her head, she smiled and turned to Jake. “Are you all right with a woman pilot?”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know you could fly.”
“You didn’t check out my background?”
He shrugged. “Afraid not.”
“I was a pilot in the Italian Air Force in my twenties. I understand you also did some time in the American Air Force. Did you fly?”
“No. I was Intelligence.”
“You think highly of yourself.” She cranked over the engine and it immediately sprung to life and raised the noise level.
“The Intelligence field,” he explained loudly.
She pointed at the second headset, which he put on now.
“I’m messing with you, Jake. Buckle up. It’s been a while since I flew last. But what do they say in America? It’s like riding a bike?” She powered up and let off the brakes, shoving Jake back against the seat.
Moments later and they were up in the air and slowly turning over the capital city toward the harbor. Jake glanced down at all the boats until he saw a particularly large yacht moored farther out into the bay. He couldn’t remember ever seeing a personal yacht that big. Once they cleared the outer harbor they climbed fast to their cruising altitude, the lights of Valletta quickly fading beneath them.
Jake glanced at Elisa, who seemed quite comfortable behind the controls. “Good thing we stopped at the first bottle of wine,” he said into the headset mic.
“Actually I fly better after wine.”
He looked for any sign of a smile, but she didn’t seem to be kidding.
A half hour later and they broke through the darkness of cloud cover and into brightness of a near-full moon. Moments later and even the clouds below broke up, allowing them to see the moon shine off the ocean.
“It’s peaceful up here at night,” Elisa said.
She was right. For the first time in a few days, Jake thought he could actually fall asleep. But just as his head was starting to bob down to his chest, he heard a strange sound against the fuselage on his side.
“What the hell was that?” Jake asked.
The sound again, like metal hitting metal.
Elisa pulled her right earmuff off and listened. “I don’t hear anything.”
“It was like something struck us. Twice.” Looking outside the aircraft to his right, Jake finally saw flashing lights from another airplane—a green light on the left wing and a white light at the tail. “There’s another plane.”
Suddenly another flash startled him. This was followed by a thump on the door just in front of him and a bullet hitting the control panel.
“Are they shooting at us?” Elisa yelled.
Jake had his gun out in seconds. “Hell, yes.” He slid open the door window and a rush of air flowed in.
She added power and put the nose down to gain speed.
When Jake saw the other plane make the same move, he took off his seat belt, twisted in his seat to get a better angle, and aimed his gun out the window. He shot twice and thought he saw his bullets strike the metal.
“How fast does this crate go?” Jake asked.
“Not fast enough. From the quick look I got, that’s the Cessna Stationair I saw on the tarmac at the airport. He has thirty knots on us.”
Great. “Can you outmaneuver them?”
Elisa considered that. “For a while. But the faster we go and more vectoring, the more fuel we burn. They will have the same problem, though. We have equal range.”
“Okay. But they might have more weight, which should reduce range.”
“In theory. Their engine can handle the payload.”
All right, Jake thought, so he would have to shoot the pilot or hit the engine. Before they did the same to them. He put the gun out the window and saw two flashes just as he shot his gun twice also. They had at least two shooters, and who knew how many rounds to fire. They had two guns and one shooter. Him.
“Elisa, when I yell stop, let up on the throttle and vector toward them simultaneously.”
“Are you crazy? They’ll run right into us.”
Jake looked back at the aircraft to their right. “Can you get under them?”
“Maybe. Why?”
“I want you to get underneath them and then bank to your left. As you do so I should have a good shot of their belly.”
“That could work,” she said. “You could hit their fuel tanks. They would be forced to turn back.”
“Hang on. Here we go.”
With one smooth motion, she banked down to the right, but she went too far and came out on the other side of them. This could still work, Jake thought. As they went under the other aircraft Jake had a nice view of their belly but no shot.
“Do that again in the other direction,” Jake instructed. “But bank a bit harder.”
Just as she was about to do this a bullet struck through their windscreen and continued through, striking the window next to Jake’s gun hand. “Bank now,” Jake yelled, shoving his gun out the side window.
She did as he said, banking the aircraft at a tight angle. As they passed under the other aircraft, Jake continued to shoot his gun until the slide came back on his weapon. They had been so close that their right wing nearly hit the bottom of the other plane.
Now Elisa settled the Skyhawk into a cruising altitude again, her heading toward the northeast. “Are they still with us?”
Jake craned his neck around the side of the aircraft high and low, then toward the aft windows, but he saw nothing. “Not unless they’re directly above or below us.”
She let out a quick breath of air.
Glancing at Elisa, he noticed both of her hands tightly gripping the yoke. “You all right?” he asked.
“I’m fine. But that was close on our last pass. Our right wing tip nearly clipped their landing gear. I think you must have done some damage to them.”
He was thinking the same thing. The biggest question he had, though, was how in the hell they had found them. He had told no one of their intent to fly to Catania. And only Elisa’s agency knew of their plans. “What kind of flight plan was issued for us?”
Elisa stared at him, an expression of incredulity. “Are you serious? You think this is my fault?”
“That’s not what I said.” Yet, he was asking without asking.
Finally she said, “It was a bogus flight plan for a husband and wife named Conidi. Tourists. No passport or visa required. There’s no way they could have traced us through that.”
“Then how?”
They both sat quietly now, only the engine and wind to distract their concentration. Jake thought about the items he had been given by Rob Pierce, the Tunis cultural affairs officer, but it would make no sense for him to be tracking him or turning his GPS information over to anyone. Yet, that was their only option from his point of view.
●
Zendo sat at the stern deck of the massive yacht owned by billionaire Petros Caras, who was barely awake in the chair next to his. They had spent the evening drinking heavily to help Zendo soften the blow of his men failing to capture the American woman at the professor’s apartment earlier. But where they had first failed, they had also gotten a break finding out about the flight that Jake Adams and that Italian woman had taken from Malta to Sicily.
The night air had cooled somewhat but was still nice enough for shorts and a light shirt. Zendo’s phone rang and he looked at the number. It was their satellite phone. He didn’t expect to hear from his men until they got to Catania.
“Zendo,” he said after pressing the screen on his phone. He listened to the noisy call and simply shook his head. Finally he said, “I specifically told you to simply follow them in your plane. Was I not clear?”
Petros Caras leaned forward in his chair. “What’s going on?”
“Just a minute.” Zendo put the phone to his chest and said to Petros, “A little incident in the air over the ocean. Nothing important.” He went back on the phone and said, “Are you still behind them?” He listened and tried not to look at his boss, who didn’t tolerate mistakes well. “Good, good. Better yet, your aircraft is much faster than theirs. Can you get there before them?” Now he shook his head as he smiled and looked at his boss to bring relief. “Do that then. Pick up a car and keep track of them once they land. I’ll be flying there commercial and will catch up with you.” Zendo left it at that, turning off his phone. He had considered flying to Italy with them, and that would have been better all around, except he hated flying anywhere on small planes. He had crashed in them twice while with the Greek army, barely surviving each incident.
“What happened?” Petros Caras asked.
Zeno explained the incident, not mentioning who had taken the first shot. “But they are clear now and will make it to Catania before Adams and the woman.”
“Did you get an ID on her yet?” Petros asked him.
“No. But my men say she’s one helluva pilot. Nearly as hot as that Czech woman you have inside.” He was hoping to get a shot at Svetla Kalina after seeing her in Santorini. It was he who had done the background check on the former model, reviewing countless nudes along the way.
“Is everyone all right?”
Zendo thought about lying, but he guessed his boss would find out eventually. “Niko took a minor bullet injury after one shot came through the bottom of the fuselage, through his seat, and about an inch into his right butt cheek.”
Petros laughed aloud. “It serves that idiot right for not following orders. I’m guessing he was the one who took the shot in retaliation for his cousin’s death this evening.”
Simply shrugging, Zendo lied, “I don’t know. But they’re on the right track now. After talking with the Malta professor, they think they know where the American woman is going.”
Finishing off the last of his drink, Petros got up and said, “You need to get off the boat. Unless you want to cruise with us to Sicily.”
Not likely, and Petros Caras knew this about him. Zendo hated to fly in small planes, but absolutely refused to travel anywhere by boat. Trains, cars and big jets were just fine, though.
“I will catch the first flight to Catania in the morning,” Zendo said. “When do you leave?”
“As soon as our launch drops you off at the pier and gets back here.”
With that, Zendo nodded and got onto the waiting launch. Just like his men on the airplane, he had also dodged a bullet tonight. Somehow he had managed to not get his ass chewed by Petros Caras.