Different Circles

He slowed to forty knots and then throttled back the reverse thrusters, returning the props to normal pitch. He turned at the next taxiway and contacted ground control to receive directions to the general aviation terminal. It took about ten minutes to get there. He parked the airplane in the spot he had been assigned and shut it down.

When he opened the door, they looked out on a drizzly, overcast landscape. The tarmac was wet and the mountains could not be seen. The air temperature was warm and muggy. Jake did not see a single thing that impressed him.

But Celia walked off the plane and out into the rain without hesitation. She looked up at the sky, feeling the wetness come down on her and she had a big smile on her face.

“I’m home,” she said happily. “After all this time, I’m finally home.”

And just hearing those words, Jake felt a little more enthusiasm for the place. If Celia loved it this much, it must be a nice place to visit.

Chapter 7: Dreams and Schemes and Circus Crowds

San Diego, California

July 11, 1996

After the two-and-a-half-hour flight from Los Cabos International at the southern tip of the Baja peninsula, the Avanti touched down gently on Lindbergh Field’s Runway 27 at 2:05 PM, three minutes ahead of schedule. Jake was in the pilot’s seat, Suzie in the copilot’s seat, Laura sitting behind Jake. Celia had remained behind in Barquisimeto to continue visiting her family. The approach had been a little harrowing—at least to Jake—with a steeper than normal glideslope, some tricky wind shifts, and the uncomfortably close proximity to the downtown skyscrapers, some of which were higher than the final approach altitude. The slope brought them uncomfortably close to a parking structure located just eight hundred feet from the runway threshold, but Jake had pretty much learned to trust his ILS approach system by this point and had resisted the urge to pull up and go around. They had cleared the garage by more than two hundred feet, though it had certainly looked like less than that.

“Another nice one,” Suzie commented as they rolled out. “It’s almost like you know what you’re doing now.”

“Almost,” he said with a chuckle. He was exceedingly grateful that Suzie had been along for the ride on this trip, was convinced he would not have been able to do it without her. He really had not thought the trip through when he had first planned it, had not really thought about the fact that he would be flying from busy international airport to another busy international airport, usually through legitimate IFR conditions due to the tropical cloud cover, skirting the occasional thunderstorm, and consistently having to choose between making a nearly blind ILS approach or not flying at all. Suzie’s presence had been a last-minute suggestion when Celia offered to meet them in Caracas and he now knew that without her by his side to talk him through the flights and the landings and to gently goad him into working on unfamiliar skills, he likely would have just ended up hiring someone to fly the plane home after all. But now, he had more than fifteen hours of challenging flying and six challenging ILS landings (including two high altitude airports) under his belt. He was much more comfortable with his new airplane and had already decided to embrace all of its capabilities now that he had some experience.

“Now it’s time for the interrogation,” Laura said sourly from her seat. She had slept almost the entire flight and had only awakened when she heard the flaps being lowered for approach. She was still a little groggy and out of sorts.

“Undoubtedly,” Jake said with a sigh as he turned onto the taxiway and started heading for the international terminal, where the general aviation customs checkpoint was waiting for them. The interrogation was something that had happened each time they had crossed an international border: in Caracas, in Panama, in Guatemala City, and in Mexico City. The aircraft they were flying on was flagged in pretty much every nation in the western hemisphere and everyone wanted to give it and its occupants the onceover. They had no reason to believe that San Diego would be any different.

It turned out it was a little different, but not in a good way. Instead of only customs agents and a drug-sniffing dog, there were two additional armed men waiting for them. These men were dressed in tactical gear. They wore baseball caps on their head with the letters DEA on them.

“This is going to be fun,” Jake remarked sourly as he went through the shutdown checklist.