dropped his overnighter on the floor and eased his laptop down beside it as he surveyed the room. Except for the two of them it seemed to be empty of people, the atmosphere rendered only slightly more tolerable than the outdoors due to the valiant efforts of a rackety fan sitting on a wooden countertop. The counter divided the room roughly in half. Furnishings in the half Cory and Tony occupied consisted of a wooden bench to the left of the entrance and a soft-drink vending machine on the right. Beyond the bench was a door marked with the universal male and female symbols indicating toilets. On the wall next to the door was a cork bulletin board sporting faded pictures of tropical resorts and sunset beaches, and above that, black letters individually pinned in an arch spelling out, WELCOME TO SEA CHARTERS.
On the countertop, a stack of brochures fluttered intermittently in the breeze from the oscillating fan. Behind the counter, a computer monitor sat atop a gunmetal-gray desk, its screen turned discreetly away from public view in the manner of airline ticket counters everywhere. Beyond that, through a bank of windows partly obscured by bamboo blinds, Cory could see an expanse of sunbaked earth interrupted by splashes of yellow-and-brown grass. Beyond the grass, before a backdrop of distant palm trees, a large twin-engine plane sat waiting on a hard-packed dirt runway.
In the shade of one low-slung wing, a slim figure wearing a dark blue baseball cap and khaki cargo pants belted over a white T-shirt lounged against the slanting fuselage. Nearby, moveable steps waited below an open doorway located in the rear of the plane, between the wing and the tail.
“Holy Mary, Mother of God,” said Tony—who hadn’t been a practicing Catholic in years—as he came to stare past Cory’s shoulder. “S’pose that’s ours?”
“Pretty much has to be, since it appears to be the only thing out there with wings,” Cory said absently, his attention distracted, for the moment, by that distant figure under the aircraft’s wing. Something about her…
“That’s a damn Gooneybird,” Tony said as if Cory hadn’t spoken, his voice hushed. “I didn’t think those tail-draggers were still flying.”
“Gooneybird?” Cory glanced over at him, laughing a little. “Come on. That would be Second World War, right?”
Tony was staring reverently out the windows. “Yup. Douglas DC-3. They were the workhorse aircraft during World War Two. Commercial airlines flew ’em after the war—hell, they pretty much started commercial passenger service. That’s a damned antique out there.”
“Didn’t know you were an airplane buff.”
“Not me—my dad. His dad—my granddad, never knew him myself, he was in the Navy, in the Pacific. The Cee Bees—you know, the construction battalions? Anyway, before he got killed—Guadalcanal, I think it was—he helped build quite a few landing strips for those things. They used ’em for troop transport back then. Dad used to build models of all those World War Two planes—tried to interest me in doing it when I was a kid, but I was more into Nintendo.” He threw Cory a look, grinning. “Guess more of that stuff soaked in than I thought.”
He looked back at the plane, then did a double take. “Damn. I think that’s a woman.” He launched into a string of his favorite cheerful profanities before adding in an exaggeratedly ominous tone, “That wouldn’t be our pilot, would it?”
“Sexist pig,” Cory said with a lopsided grin. Coincidence, he thought. An odd little twist of fate. “Women have been known to fly airplanes. Does the name Amelia Earhart ring any bells?”
What surprised him—shocked him, actually—was the twisting he still felt in his guts when her name…her image…flashed through his mind. Not Amelia’s, of course.
Samantha.
Before Tony could reply, the door to the left of the windows opened and a man bustled in, showing tobacco-stained teeth in a wide, welcoming smile shaped like a lying-down half moon. He was of indeterminate age and ethnicity, with long salt-and-pepper hair pulled loosely back in a clubbed ponytail that left a halo of loose frizz around his broad, swarthy face. He wore rumpled light tan slacks and a Hawaiian-print shirt that hung unbuttoned over a dirty vest-type undershirt and a solid-looking mound of belly.
“Welcome to SEA Charters,” he said, slightly out of breath, in an accent that sounded vaguely Australian, adding, “Sounds like a boat business, dun’it? Stands for South East Asia. We pretty much cover the islands from here to New Zealand…Indonesia…anywhere you want to go. That’s our motto. Anywhere you want to go, we can get you there. I’m Will, by the way.” In what appeared to be a habitual gesture, and probably explained most of the dirt on the undershirt, he brushed his hand across his belly before thrusting it over the counter to shake first Cory’s hand, then Tony’s.
“I’m guessing you’re the reporters, right? Going to…” Still bustling, muttering under his breath, he dodged back behind the computer monitor, tapped some keys and bent over to peer at the screen. “Let’s see…” He glanced up, shaking his head as he whistled softly. “Not too many people going in there these days. Government warnings, you know. That province is in rebel hands. Well—off and on, anyways. Been a lot of government activity goin’ on up in those hills lately. ‘Government activity’—that’s a euphemism for fightin’, you know. They been warnin’ foreigners to stay away.”
“I was told you could fly us in.” Cory was fishing in his shirt pocket for the folded paper that contained his e-mail confirmation.
The other man waved it away with a fatalistic shrug. “Oh, yeah, we can get you there, that’s no problem.” His lips quirked and his eyes gleamed. “Getting you back could be, though.” Then the smile broadened into the half moon again, and his eyes narrowed into cheery little upside-down half moons to match. “Just kidding. Government always tends to exaggerate these things—you know how it goes.” He tilted his head toward the windows. “That’s your ride, right there, all gassed up and ready to go. So…lemme see…that was Visa, right? I’m just gonna need your card for a minute….”
While Cory was hauling out his wallet and extracting the plastic, Will pushed a sheet of paper across the counter toward him. “And if the two of you’ll just sign this waiver…” The half moons came out again. “Just a formality—since there is a government caution in effect. Nothin’ to it, really.”
Nothing to it, Cory thought as he scrawled his signature on the appropriate line at the bottom of the paper, except several hundred terrorists, a few-dozen tourist kidnappings, an occasional car bombing and a couple of missionaries held hostage for over a year.
He shoved the paper and pen toward Tony, who poked at them and tried not to look nervous.
“So, that’s our pilot?” Tony asked with a casual nod toward the windows as he pretended to study the paper. Cory cleared his throat and nudged him with his elbow.
Will looked up from making an old-fashioned slide impression of Cory’s credit card to beam at him. “Yep—she’s one of our best.”
“Wow, a woman, huh?” Tony was still fingering the pen.
Cory elbowed him in the ribs again and muttered, “Sign the damn thing, already. What’s the matter with you?”
“Like I said, one of our best.” Will brought the credit card slip to the counter and waited for Cory to sign it, after which he tore off and handed him his copy and tossed the other onto the cluttered desk.
“Okay, if you’ll come right this way, please.” He unhooked and folded up a section of countertop
