Читать книгу The Icy Fire of Deception - Mike Trial - Страница 5

In the middle of their vacation, Lea walks out on her husband, David. But he races after her and manages to get a ticket on the flight she booked, never guessing the ultimate destination of this unlucky airliner.

Lea Miles sat at the Silk Air departure gate in the Bangkok Airport, bare feet up on her carry-on bag, sipping Jack Daniel’s. Two empty mini-bottles stood on the floor beside her sandals.

She considered the purple sparkle-polish on her toenails. Needs retouching. Like my life. She finished off the bourbon, screwed the cap back on, and placed the empty on the floor beside the other two.

“David.” Her sigh turned unexpectedly to a cough of a sob. She choked it off, anger rising in her at how she’d let him ruin their vacation. And ruin the last five years of her life.

* * *

When they’d planned this vacation to Thailand, their first vacation in three years, he was agreeable—even eager to go—but when they arrived, he decided he was going to do exactly what he pleased regardless of her feelings. “You plan too much. You take all the spontaneity out of life, Lea.”

Lea was still unpacking when he announced that he was off to the casino.

“Now? You can go to a casino in Vegas,” she told him. “This is the evening we were going to take the riverboat tour with dinner.” She looked at her watch. “In an hour. This is our vacation, let’s enjoy it.”

He smiled the smile she hated. “That’s what I intend to do,” he said. “You take the tour. I’m going to the casino.” He closed the door and left her sitting in the hotel room alone, watching the sun’s red ball sinking into the Bangkok smog.

“Travel halfway around the world, but nothing changes,” she muttered. Her anger rose up and she began to pace. “Maybe it’s time I changed.”

She phoned the concierge desk and asked for a reservation on the next available flight to Hong Kong.

She’d visited her friend Karen in Hong Kong six years ago and had the time of her life. Karen had advised her not to marry David.

Lea nodded at her reflection in the mirrored closet doors, “I’ll see Hong Kong instead of Bangkok.” She picked up her phone, then put it down. “No, I’ll surprise her. If she’s out of town, I’ll just put myself up at a hotel and relax until she gets back. Let David wonder where I am.”

She packed a carry-on and started for the door, then paused, pulled open the desk drawer, and wrote a note on the hotel stationery.

Things have not been right between us for a long time. You tell me I plan too much, so I’m leaving you now, with no plan. After all, who knows how much time we have and I’m not going to waste any more of mine with you.

* * *

In the lobby, the concierge desk was crowded with tourists. Lea pushed through the crowd, saw a ticket envelope with her name on it and scooped it up. “This is mine, thank you.”

In the taxi to the airport she noticed it was a Silk Air ticket folder, not Cathay Pacific. The flight number, time, and destination were hand written on the folder in neat English: Silk Air flight 298, departing at 9 P.M. for Penang.

Who cares? It doesn’t matter where I am as long as I’m away from David. I’ll lie around the pool at a hotel in Penang, for a few days, and then go to Hong Kong.

As the taxi dropped Lea at the departures level, David returned to the hotel room, gift shop flowers in hand, prepared to sweet-talk Lea. He read her note, tossed it and the flowers on the bed, and went directly to the concierge desk.

“Mrs. Lea Richardson?” the Thai man at the desk told him. “Yes, booked on Silk Air flight to Penang. Departs in an hour.”

“Sell me a ticket,” David said pulling out his platinum card. In a minute he had a ticket, full fare, to Penang. He sprinted to the taxi station, jumped in a cab and told the driver to get him to the airport as quickly as he could.

Lea snapped back to reality from a pleasant daydream of lying around a calm turquoise pool at a Penang hotel. “Boarding all rows, Silk Air flight 298.” She got to her feet, shouldered her carry-on and shuffled up to the boarding gate. The gate agent slid her boarding pass under the scanner twice, but nothing happened.

The agent examined the boarding pass. “This is not a Silk Air ticket. This ticket is for the Cathay Pacific flight to Hong Kong.”

“The hotel must have made a mistake,” Lea said.

“The Cathay Pacific flight leaves in twenty minutes,” the Silk Air gate agent told Lea, “You have time. The Cathay Pacific gates are right there.” She pointed down the crowded concourse.

Lea thanked her and disappeared into the crowd just as an American man burst through the crowd and thrust his ticket at the Silk Air gate agent.

“Flight 298 to Penang?” he gasped.

“Too late. Flight has already boarded,” said the gate agent.”

“The plane hasn’t pushed back yet,” he said.

The senior gate agent stopped tapping keys on her computer, picked up her microphone and said something in Thai to the plane crew. On board, Captain Aaron Li authorized the agent to allow a late boarding. The gate agent opened the jetway door and scanned David’s boarding pass. “Seat 12 B.”

David ran down the jetway and flopped into his seat.

Made it. Once the fasten seat belt sign goes off I’ll wander down the aisle, find Lea, and sweet-talk her one more time. There are probably good bars and casinos in Penang.

* * *

When the aircraft reached cruising altitude, Captain Aaron Li surreptitiously pulled a letter from Heaven’s Garden Casino out of his jacket pocket and read it again, “ . . . pay immediately your debt of one point two million dollars US, or we will be forced to take further measures.”

Captain Li knew very well that “further measures” meant a discreet visit to his wealthy father, who would pay the debt immediately. He put the letter back in his jacket pocket. “I will not live with that shame,” he said.

“What did you say?” Copilot Henry Cho asked.

Aaron smiled, “I’ll take it for a while. Go stretch your legs.”

After Copilot Cho left, Captain Li locked the cockpit door.

* * *

On September 14, 1997, Silk Air flight 298, carrying seventy-two vacationers and a flight crew of four to Penang, Indonesia, from Bangkok, Thailand, crashed. There was no threatening weather, no apparent mechanical failure, no indication of terrorism. Twenty minutes into the flight, the Boeing 737 inexplicably pitched down and flew straight into the ground, impacting at nearly 600 miles per hour, disintegrating the aircraft and everything it carried.

No cause for the crash was ever determined.