Flying Too Close to the Sun by George Jehn (novels for beginners .txt) 📕

“That was good info. Where are you living now?”

“We own a home in Parsippany, New Jersey. I thought it would make Ingrid happy, but now she wants a new car. I feel like telling her to go get a job like lots of women do today. The entire goddamn world’s changing fast, with mothers working and all, but the bottom line is I’m here for the bottom line.”

His last comment afforded the needed opening. “You have enough?” she asked, hoping her question came across as spontaneous.

“Well. Yeah, we’re not starving.”

By now Christina was pushing the food around on her plate like she was shoveling snow.

Woody changed the subject. “Like I mentioned the other day, my father’s been real sick and the doctors diagnosed him with a chronic heart condition due to high job-related stress. I visited him practically every day while he was in the hospital.”

“What kind of job stressed him out so bad?”

“He owned a couple of businesses, with one a travel agency. That’s how I got interested in flying. He used to bring home brochures showing all these exotic places. I figured if I could get paid for flying there, why not? But he wouldn’t cough up the dough for private lessons so the military was my only option.”

“How’s he doing?”

“He’s out of the hospital now, but is all shriveled and pathetic-looking. I don’t think he’s gonna make it? My mother passed a while back and it looks like this might be it for him.”

“Sorry to hear that.” Christina got up after hardly even touching her daily fat requirement. Woody seemed evasive and after this conversation she trusted him even less, certainly not enough to bring him into her plan. When she returned to the cockpit, Erik was there and approximately ten minutes before departure the gate agent said there would be a short delay awaiting a connecting passenger. Neither Erik nor Woody took special note of the tall, dark-haired male passenger who boarded about ten minutes later and Christina simply grinned.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Christopher Norton plopped down in his reserved window seat, directly above the 727’s forward cargo bin. Glancing at his wristwatch, he saw it was past nine. The handsome, dark-haired U.S. Treasury agent wanted to get tonight’s Federal Reserve “Fortune Flight” as he’d dubbed it, over with. He was the sole armed guard overseeing one aspect of a lengthy process; the shipment of worn-out United States paper currency called fatigued bills in US Treasury jargon, to their final destination. Norton had signed on for this one-year tour of guard duty approximately seven months ago, but some unknown Homeland Security bureaucrat with the terrorism fight on his mind twenty-four, seven, after 9/11 subsequently decided Norton should be cross-trained as a sky marshal. In typical government fashion he was ordered to undergo eight weeks of intensive physical and psychological training at the William J. Hughes Technical Center in Atlantic City, NJ where the instructors were fixated on the various Muslim terrorist factions, including Al Qaeda. For eight seemingly never-ending weeks all the gruesome details of what these terrorists believed was a holy war, a jihad, against western values was constantly driven home. But thank God, or Allah, or whoever, so far both jobs had been simply boring.

Not withstanding the sky marshal training, his chief task remained overseeing the transport of the old currency from downtown Boston to LaGuardia airport. The bills were carried in locked satchels closely resembling green army duffel bags in the forward cargo hold of Shuttle Air’s final evening flight, right below his assigned seat. Four days per week he flew from Manhattan, where he lived in a trendy one-bedroom apartment to Boston on either the two or three o’clock shuttle flight, depending on the weather. Like most government functions there were overly complex and seemingly endless crosschecks used to ensure the money wasn’t miscounted, lost or stolen.

The mechanism was set in motion when a New England bank received mutilated or worn-out paper money in ten, twenty, fifty or larger denominations. The bill was flagged and sent to a commercial depository designated as a Federal Reserve collection agent. The agent bank would then verify the poor condition and amount and send replacement bills. The bills and receipts from banks throughout the New England area were then transported to the Boston central Federal Reserve location where government workers under the ever-watchful eye of Big Brother’s video recorders, verified the amounts and packed the bills into satchels equipped with tracking devices attached to them for dispatch to their final New York City resting place.

Norton’s job officially began when the tattered money was ready for transport to the airport. He would ride from downtown Boston to Logan along with a supervisor and several guards and the satchels were loaded into the forward cargo bin. Just before the cargo door was secured, Norton removed the heavy plastic fasteners holding the GPS tracking devices in place and gave them to the supervisor, who would sign a paper attesting to the proper loading. Norton would then assume responsibility until the shipment was met at LaGuardia by another contingent, where he would oversee the off-loading and reattachment of other tracking devices. His job finished, he’d then drive home while the money was transported to the New York City Treasury building where it was recounted and the serial numbers scanned, officially removing the bills from circulation. The amounts were verified against the receipts in Boston and the currency was then fed directly into a giant shredder. Official Treasury estimates were ten percent of United States’ paper currency was destroyed annually in this manner. Norton often mused about how nice it would be if he could lay his hands on those fatigued bills as spending them would be just as easy as the new and maybe even easier?

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Following five straight days of shuttle flights, Erik arose early on Saturday to work his flight instructing job. During breakfast his mother stated, “You look tired.”

He didn’t want to tell her