Different Circles

Al Steiner Intemperance #5 Different Circles

Chapter 1: Our First Stop

Bogota, Colombia

April 15, 1996

It was Tax Day in the United States of America and Jake Kingsley had left the country in the company of Jill Yamashito, his accountant, but not for reasons of evasion or exile. His taxes were already filed and paid in full, his return accepted by both the state of California and the US Internal Revenue Service, and, as far as the two of them knew, they were still in a state of grace with their monetary obligations. Instead, they were in South America for another reason; a reason that Jake was extremely enthusiastic about but that Jill, who was much more practical and niggardly with Jake’s money than Jake could ever hope to be, was quite dreading. It was time to take a look at the Avanti-180 aircraft that a gentleman named Eduardo Gomez wanted to sell.

Traveling with them was a man by the name of Travis Young. He was forty-three years old and was a supervising aircraft mechanic at the Fly Safe Aircraft Maintenance and Repair facility located at the Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport in Broomfield, Colorado, just outside of Denver. Fly Safe was one of only two facilities in the United States authorized by Piaggio Aerospace, the Italian manufacturer that produced Avanti aircraft, to perform B, C, or D level maintenance checks or major repairs on their products. Greenville, South Carolina, home of the North American Piaggio facility, was the other. Travis had been recruited for this mission with the assistance of Austin Grover, the pilot who had first introduced Jake to the Avanti (and had even let him take the controls for a bit). Austin had given Jake Travis’s phone number. Jake called him up and offered him a little all-inclusive paid vacation to Colombia if he would come along and examine the maintenance records of the Avanti-180 Jake was considering purchasing (as well as the actual aircraft itself). He had even offered to include Travis’s wife in the deal if she wished to come.

Travis’ wife did not wish to come, and Travis himself had been more than a little reluctant to travel to a city that was regularly reported as having one of the highest murder rates per capita in the world and was located in a country that was currently immersed in a decades-long civil war with radical communist guerrilla forces.

“We’re not going to be anywhere near any of that shit,” Jake assured him. “We’ll be in a five-star luxury hotel in the best district of the city. You’ll have your own suite, room service, all meals and drinks paid for by me. We’re not going to go trekking around in the mountains or anything like that. The only place you’ll have to go besides the hotel is this muni airport north of the city where the plane is kept.”

“I don’t know,” Travis replied, still clearly uncomfortable.

“I’ll give you five grand for the job,” Jake offered.

“Five grand? You mean ... five thousand dollars?”

“That’s right,” Jake said. “Cash money. You don’t even have to tell the IRS about it if you don’t want to. Call it a gratuity for a job well done.”

“That is a lot of money,” Travis had to admit, “but still...”

“Seventy-five hundred,” Jake said.

That did the trick. “All right,” Travis said. “I’m in.”

“Good man,” Jake told him. “Do you have your passport?”

“Uh ... no,” Travis said. “Will I need one?”

And so, after going through an expedited passport approval process paid for by Jake, Travis had been flown to Dallas-Fort Worth Airport (first-class) and put up in the airport hotel (one of the luxury suites) where Jake and Jill were already waiting for him. It was here that Jake had met the man in person for the first time. He was a friendly enough guy, though he did not seem to possess much of a sense of humor, and he seemed to be a bit of a worry-wart. He was short and stocky, balding, and had a distinct Midwest accent. He told Jake at dinner that night that he spent twelve years in the United States Navy and had served on two separate aircraft carriers (as well as several shore bases) as an aircraft mechanic, working primarily on F-18 Hornets. He, like Celia’s pilot Suzie, had been offered a healthy discharge bonus during the draw-down of forces following the 1991 Gulf War. These days, he was one of only thirty mechanics in the entirety of North America certified to work on Piaggio aircraft above the level of basic maintenance tasks.