Son of a bitch.
“Hello, Señor,” he said mockingly. “Fancy meeting you here.”
“What’s the problem?” I asked. I had no patience for this.
“Just a standard check of your aircraft. You filed your flight plan at the last minute. We’re just making sure that there aren’t any drugs on board. We wouldn’t want any cocaine going to the United States, now, would we?”
I gritted my teeth.
“Be my guest.” I gestured with my
arm at my jet.
“You’re welcome to check it out.”
“Thank you,” he said, as if he weren’t a government official getting off on all this.
He went up the steps, and I followed him into my jet.
Naelle looked at him drowsily.
“Who’s he?” she said in a voice which meant that she was half-asleep.
“Just someone who wants do a quick check of the plane.”
“Mmm, okay?” Naelle said, her eyes shutting quickly.
The government asshole was crawling around the floor of my jet. I wasn’t sure what he was looking for. It wasn’t as if I would bring a shipment of our main product on my personal jet. It wasn’t worth the risk. I paid a lot of mules and super-mules to bring things to market.
He crawled under a seat.
“What’s this?”
What did he find, a bottle? I stopped myself from rolling my eyes. This “check” was a waste of time.
When he got to his feet, he had a very small baggie of white powder in his hand. There was a simple symbol on the bag, a big Greek omega.
I thought that he expected me to be more surprised, but I wasn’t.
“This is a setup.”
“I’m sorry, Señor, we’ll have to take you and this lady into custody.”
Naelle was awake now.
“What?”
“You were obviously snorting cocaine on this jet…one or both of you.”
“That’s preposterous,” Naelle sputtered. “I’ve been mostly asleep the whole time. I haven’t snorted anything in my entire life.”
“Neither have I.” But I shook my head at Naelle, and behind the official’s back, I put a finger to my lips.
“But we’re willing to come with you as we get this sorted out.”
“Excellent.”
He whipped out two pairs of handcuffs and put them on too tight.