The Greatest of These by Greg Wendleton (booksvooks txt) 📕

grinning Chad Wilhite as Jamie leaned into him and planted a big kiss right on his still moving lips.

“Excuse us kids, we’ve got to hang up right now!” exclaimed a very animated Jamie Wilhite.

I think the Wilhite’s had some “none of our business” to take care of.

CHAPTER EIGHT

After the ‘none of your business’ activities were complete, Chad and Jamie both fell sound asleep and didn’t awaken until the next morning. They quickly showered, grabbed a hearty breakfast and jumped into their rental car to go into Paia to do some sightseeing and pick up a few essentials for their cottage. After a few hours they headed west, not making the mistake of heading east toward Hana on the Hana Highway. Chad called it the ‘Highway to Hell’ and Jamie was just fine with not making that drive again. Instead, they headed up to the Ocean’s Distillery in the mountains of central Maui.

They had toured the distillery before and enjoyed the magnificent point of view offered from the grassy, open area where they sometimes held wedding ceremonies. You could see the north shore and the western shore of Maui from the overlook. Luckily, today, there was a wedding taking place and they decided to sit in the back row of seats that had been set up and witness the ceremony.

After the ceremony and having sampled several varieties of sugar cane vodka, Chad and Jamie purchased a few of their uniquely shaped bottles to be shipped home. They then made a stop at the Kula fire station to say hello to the firefighters that they had met on a previous trip. The fire department had been selling tee shirts as a fund raiser and Jamie, never having met a stranger, struck up a conversation with a few of the boys. After a little bit, names and numbers were exchanged with promises of stopping in on their next visit. Chad was pulling their rental car into the station parking lot to drop in for the third visit since that initial trip.

“Hey, it’s the haole and his beautiful bride!” exclaimed Tommy, one of the firefighters we had come to know over the years. “Howz it hangin’ bro?”

“It’s all good, we’re hangin’ loose. How are you fellas?”

“This COVID sucks bro. But we’re all stayin’ safe. Anything new with you guys?”

Before Chad could reply, Jamie jumped in. “We’re going to look for a vacation home, here on Maui, tomorrow!”

“Oh, wow, that’s great. You know, you’ll still be the haole and his beautiful bride. Right?”

Chad laughed out loud and said, “Always. I love it Tommy.”

Just then the alarm sounded and the firefighters went into action. No longer the playful boys, but now highly trained, experienced men in action. Jamie and Chad slid out the door and waited in their car as the firefighters pulled away heading down the hill. The same way they were headed. Slowly and carefully, Chad drove down the hill and back toward Mama’s and their cottage. They would have time for some lying on the beach, watching sea turtles and surfers before getting ready for dinner.

As Chad and Jamie were getting ready for dinner that evening, the confirmation email he had been waiting for arrived. The first shipment of 50 million doses of a new, single dose COVID vaccine destined for Southeast Asia had been awarded by the United Nations to the shipping service that Chad’s logistics team had arranged. The doses, valued at over one billion dollars would net his team more than five million dollars in bonus money, of which half would go directly to Chad. The balance would be shared by his team. The payday he had dreamt of was now going to be a reality and so was the dream of having a home on Maui.

Dinner in Mama’s restaurant would be a celebration followed by several hours of work that Chad would have to complete before the payment could be made. There were ‘i’s to dot and t’s to cross’ as well as some misdirection to arrange in order to safeguard the shipment.

With dinner over, Chad and Jamie were back in their cottage before Maui midnight, 9:00pm, and as Jamie slipped away to snuggle into their luxurious bed, Chad settled behind his laptop computer to make the final arrangements. Not expecting any of his team to be up and working at 1:00am, he dove into the task alone. What he didn’t know was that his activity was being monitored through a simple hack into Mama’s WiFi network. While Chad was very good at what he did, he was neither a computer expert or a skilled operator like his watchers were.

As per his submitted logistic plan, the shipment would be flown from Chicago O’Hare International airport to LAX via a FedEx jumbo jet scheduled for mid-afternoon that very day. From LAX, the more than 52,000 crates would be transported to the Port of Los Angeles loaded into seven frozen cargo containers reinforced with added insulation as a backup to the freezer units. Once loaded, the ship would leave the port and head southwest across the Pacific Ocean.

This is where the deception came into play. Which ship would they be on and which port would they be headed to? Chad felt this was a necessary diversion to protect the cargo that was not only valuable in financial terms, but in human value. Lives were at stake. So, manifests had been created for departure on three separate ships. One destined for Manila Harbor in the Philippines, one for the Port of Singapore and the third for the Port of Laem Chabang in Thailand. To further mask the identity of the destination, two identical sets of empty freezer containers would be transported from LAX to the Port of Los Angeles and loaded onto the other two cargo ships. This way, if word leaked out about the shipment, which it inevitably would, potential pirates would have to cover three routes and three harbors. Only he would know, on Monday, when