Bo had become my rock during some dangerous and trying times. I trusted him with my life.
He moved us onto the strip and pulled back the throttle on the 675-horsepower engine. The fourteen-passenger plane rose easily in the cold morning air. He banked us to the right, taking us away from the airport and its flight traffic. When we were out of Anchorage airspace, Bo took us up to about fifteen thousand feet.
We had our headsets on, and I turned and looked at him. His long handlebar mustache was solid gray and covered the whole lower half of his face. His mouth was obscured. I tried to read his thoughts by his eyes since he hadn’t put on his mirrored aviators yet.
I saw a sadness that I had only seen once before when he and I and Ann Hoffman put the ashes of my dad and Ann’s husband, Brian Hoffman, into the clear cold water of the Kvichak River.
I spoke up, “I couldn’t ask for a better friend. Bo, I really appreciate all you have done for me. And what you are doing now, flying me all this way.”
Bo looked my way.
“Son, I need to be thanking you. You in my life gave me purpose again. Adventure, excitement, and you brought Dave up here, a blessing, son, a blessing.”
“I’m going to miss all of you, the whole team, a damn good one too.” I tried not to get emotional, but my voice cracked. It gave me away. Then I added, “I know you’ll look after everyone. If there is any sign of Lehan’s people, you’ll call me right away?”
“Yep, first thing. Now that Ann”—whose new name is Janice Moore—“has Friend”—whose new name is Fred Rogers—“in her life, I can breathe easier for her sake. I know Friend can hold his own. They got a good future together. You know I’ll treat Dave like my son. We got plans, and they’re all good.”
“I know, Bo. If I felt you didn’t have a good handle on things, I wouldn’t be leaving.”
“Dang, son, maybe I should give you somethin’ to worry ’bout.”
I could tell he was grinning because his rising cheeks brought deeper creases around his eyes.
We flew in silence most of this first leg to Sitka. There was fog along most of the coast, so we flew about eighteen thousand feet. The ceiling on the Cessna was twenty thousand feet. Bo was instrument-rated, and his newest plane was equipped with the most modern navigation system available. Bo would need it when we finally had to break through the cover to land in Sitka.
For three minutes, we were flying blind through the dense cover that hung at six thousand feet. Bo had radioed the Rocky Gutierrez Airport tower in Sitka and was informed that the RVR (runway visual range) would be in the proper, operating Minima when he broke below five thousand feet.
After hearing the towers response, he looked at me and said, “We’re all good, son. How come you’re so white?”
“You know I don’t scare easy, but this pea soup is not soup. It’s like cotton candy,” I responded.
“Son, this is exactly why I bought this plane. When we take off from Sitka, I’m going to autopilot and then take a nap. You good with that?”
As I looked his way, we both started laughing.
The Sitka fuel stop went without incident. We got out of the plane and walked around stretching, taking advantage of the break. We had been in the air for three hours and forty minutes, running a little behind schedule because of the fog.
The next leg would be over Queen Charlotte Sound, moving into a warmer airstream with a possible front moving in from the mid Pacific. In my mind, rain was better than fog, and I told that to Bo.
“I’m an Alaskan bush pilot, son. I fly it all. You just sit back and let me get you to Port Hardy and Port Angeles.
“I have no doubts about that, my friend.”
“There was only a slight drizzle coming down on us at Port Hardy again after landing a chance to stretch and get two large cups of bad coffee from the vending machine in the terminal lobby.”
“At least it’s caffeine,” I told Bo as I sipped it.
He took a drink, just like in Nam. “You weren’t fussy, just grateful.”
“Next stop, the William R. Fairchild International Airport, 331 miles away, in one of the most northern locations in the lower forty-eight.”
At Port Angeles, Bo’s friend Eddie Mize, a vet buddy from Nam was going to put us up for the night. He also had a 2014 Toyota Four Runner that he was willing to sell me, cash.
I was looking forward to being on the ground. My body was stiff from sitting so long, and old injuries were telling me they had had enough.
Chapter 3
It was early October, and Andre had been missing for about three months. There had been no ransom demands, and all the contacts Joseph Lehan knew globally heard nothing about his location or his demise.
The last three people who had seen him alive, Andre’s new Russian Security team, were immobilized in the attack when he disappeared. They could give no helpful information or even indicate the basics of what had happened, let alone where Andre may be. Fortunately for them, after questioning by the county sheriff in Alaska and the intervention by William Patrick, they were allowed to leave the country and return to Moscow the next day.
The vehicle they were in when the attack occurred belonged to Andre’s good friend William Patrick, a wealthy Alaskan investor. Andre was en route to a meeting at Patrick’s hunting lodge on Lake Louise about the Blue Boulder Mining project at the time of the kidnap.
Andre’s disappearance was kept private and out of the media. The county sheriff didn’t even know a person was abducted out of the Humvee. All he was told was that three Russians, who had enemies, seeking revenge, made an unsuccessful attempt on their lives. The Humvee was towed to Patrick’s grounds and was searched by a private investigative team that Patrick had brought in.
Under the hood, they found three spent canisters that had residue of chloroform inside. They had been remotely discharged into the cab of the vehicle. The automatic door locks had also been bypassed to be controlled remotely. Whoever perpetrated the crime were professionals and caught the four occupants completely off guard, one of them never to be heard from again.
Since then, security had become a top priority for Lehan. He had taken steps after Andre’s disappearance to make sure the fate that befell his boss and friend would not be repeated on him.
He wanted to expand the Sarnev Security apparatus to cover all the companies offices globally. He had tasked Maria Simpson, his new personal assistant, with the project.
Prior to Andre’s disappearance, each division had their own security structure; if he put it all under one umbrella, it would give it unity, and more important to Lehan, he would have a better opportunity to track down the man he felt was responsible for Andre vanishing off the face of the earth, Jason Orr.
Maria spoke to and interviewed many heads of global security groups. After much consideration and discussions with Lehan, they both concurred to create their own security company. Not only would they save on the fees these companies would charge them, but they would be able to sell the services they developed
