An Excerpt by Robert Fischer
Yes! Grinning to herself, she entered the cabin and closed the door behind her. She flipped on the main switch and saw that the fuel tanks were full and the batteries completely charged. She clicked her handheld walkie-talkie to signal Martinez who was flying overhead, then hit the starter. The Rolls Royce engines whirred to life, but instead of moving in a forward fashion, the Gulfstream rocked back and forth. Moron! Forgot to remove the chocks from the wheels. With engines running, Mary raced outside, removed the blocks that held the wheels in place and rushed back to the pilot’s seat soaking in sweat. She screamed, “Full goddamn throttle——go, you little sweetheart——go, go!” The plane roared down the dark runway with lights out, racing blindly toward the directional radio beacon she had placed at the end of the runway, reaching eighty-five knots before rising into the moonlight sky.
The walkie-talkie crackled. “Sister Mary, this is Jesus. You have sinned——again. Say ten Hail Mary’s and I’ll see you in El Paso .”
THE Mexican caper was just another day at the office for their growing company, Charter Aircraft Leasing Ltd., or CALL, as it was known in the trade. CALL was the outfit you contacted if your firm leased an airplane to a client who decided not to make any more payments and disappeared into the fog of phony registrations and repainted tail numbers. Someone had to find and repossess those aircraft, often from criminals, deadbeats and modern-day pirates willing to go to extreme lengths to hide and disguise their booty. Mary, who liked to refer to herself as a CALL girl, and her partner, Jesus Martinez, often took on the repo jobs no one else could handle. The risks had paid off handsomely: in just three years CALL was bringing in more than $10 million in annual revenue. But it hadn’t been easy in the beginning.
CHAPTER ONE
BADSherif, the South Gate in the stone wall that surrounds Jeddah’s Old City , was the coolest place that Air Force Captain Jesus Martinez could find in the muggy February humidity. He sat at a corner table by a thick wooden façade, called a roshan, which permitted ventilation and deflected the sun. Praying for a breeze, Jesus ordered a hookah pipe and a glass of thick sweet tea. He would have preferred a snifter of good brandy, but in Saudi Arabia that was out of the question. The tea was good, stimulating and strong, but the burnt smell of the smoke he sucked in from the pipe unsettled his stomach. He gazed lazily out through the roshan at the parade of goats, street vendors, Mercedes Benz sedans and heavily veiled women. Who would have thought that at forty-two I would be sitting in the middle of Arabia wondering if my career is finished,
Plane Jane is more than an fast-paced action adventure novel. It is a movie in the making. Not the usual villans or cookie cutter heroine, Plane Jane’s plot is captivating. I was fascinated by the way the author wove the story around the two cultures and made it flow almost seemlessly. A true adventure, you never know what will happen next! Plane Jane is definitely a must read!
You can order an advance copy at Martin Pearl Publishing or Amazon.com .
