Chapter 1 -- Flight 2298
International Flight 2298 already was an hour late to its destination in Frankfurt when the aircraft was rocked by a nasty band of turbulence. The plane dropped into a wind shear, shuddered upwards, and then dropped again. The pilot, who already had ordered all passengers to return to their seats, ominously ordered the fight attendants to immediately sit down as well. The passengers watched with increasing anxiety as the cabin crewmembers swayed in the aisles towards the dubious safely of their landing seats.
Again the plane shuddered upwards and dropped. Outside bands of thick clouds alternated with gray sky as the aircraft banked to avoid the worst of the storm. The worst of the storm, however, already had begun moving into northern Germany, which meant that a landing in Frankfurt was becoming increasingly unlikely.
Air travel that evening would be a mess throughout northwestern Europe, as flights had to be diverted away from a string of cities extending from Paris to Warsaw. The storm showed no promise of letting up, thus forcing controllers to make the difficult decision to land planes in airports far away from their intended destinations.
As alternate airports filled up, controllers decided to divert International Flight 2298 eastward to the King Vladik International Airport in Danúbikt Móskt, the Danubian Republic's only international airport. Yes, that primitive airport was very far out of the way, but Flight 2298 still had enough fuel to make it, whereas many other planes competing for landing slots did not. So the crew and passengers, already exhausted from a grueling flight from Panama City to Europe, now would fly an extra hour to get to Danúbikt Móskt. Unless the weather cleared, the plane's occupants could expect to stay well into the following day before they could fly out.
As the plane banked right to turn eastward, it was buffeted by still more sickening turbulence. The pilot announced that, regrettably, the flight would end in the Danubian Republic, not Germany. Not that it really mattered. Most of the passengers simply wanted to get on the ground and be done with the horrible journey. Anywhere, even Danúbikt Móskt, was just fine, as long it was out of that storm. They could deal with getting to Germany tomorrow, but now all that mattered was returning to solid ground.
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As the plane began its final descent into Danubian airspace, Maria Elena Rodriguez-Torres felt waves of nausea surging through her body. What the young Colombian felt was not simple air sickness, but rather the rebellion of her body against what she was carrying inside her stomach. A full kilo of cocaine, divided into grape-sized plastic packages, was the young woman's reason for being on the flight. Now she knew those packages, (or "pellets", as they were called in the world of drug traffickers) were not going to stay down much longer. Sweat poured down the passenger's face as she tried to keep them down.
Por favor...por favor...o Dios mio...por favor...que llegue al aeropuerto sin...
It was not to be. Maria Elena surged forward, covering her mouth as it filled with vomit and three round grape-sized objects. She flailed about with her free hand while the man in the seat next to her frantically pulled out an air sickness bag, opened it, and handed it to her. She vomited, and to her horror felt more pellets working their way up her esophagus in a desperate attempt to escape through her mouth. It seemed that not only was her body rejecting the presence of those unnatural objects inside her, but the pellets themselves did not want to be there either and were determined to get out.
Over and over Maria Elena threw up into the bag, as sweat and tears poured down her face. She rudely waved off the efforts of her neighbor to comfort her as pellets passed upwards and gagged her, making her want to throw up all that much more. Within seconds the bag was completely full of the contents of her stomach, which included nearly thirty bluish-gray ovals, about a third of the cocaine that her handler had entrusted to her for delivery to Germany.
Panic and total despair swept over the unhappy courier, because not only her freedom, but her very life now was in grave danger. Maria Elena knew that the cost of losing any of the cocaine that her handlers had entrusted to her would be her life. She had been given 100 pellets to swallow, and she would deliver 100 pellets to her contact in Frankfurt. In exchange for her efforts she would be given 15,000 Euros. To deliver anything less than 100 pellets would cost her life, or at the very least enslavement in a brothel to pay off her debt.
La plata o el plomo...as they always said. Silver for success...lead for failure.
The man sitting next to Maria Elena tried to take her air-sickness bag, but she violently snatched it away.
"Look, lady...I'm just gonna give it to the attendant. I'll get you another bag."
The young woman struggled with her very limited English.
"You no take...you no say me nothin'!"
"You need to get rid of that...come on now...hand it over..."
"You no take me!"