‘So?’

‘So, the dough goes out four times a year, by plane to Europe. This flight’ll be the heaviest because it’s just after the season. Cute, hey?’

‘Very thoughtful.’ My breath was bated enough to strangle me. I might get it this time: that’s why I’d taken the chance and needled her again.

‘Flight LH713, Benning to Frankfurt non-stop.’ She checked her watch. ‘Takes off in less than an hour. But it’ll never make it to Frankfurt.’

‘You’re going to hijack it?’

‘Sure. Why not? Philips and my old man will be aboard. They’ll take over the controls and then dive real fast down to sea level to get under the radar. In less than two hours, they’ll be landing old LH713 right here at El Cerco.’

‘They’ll never get away with that,’ I said disgustedly. ‘There have been too many hijackings. How the hell are they going to get their guns aboard? They’ll need guns, you know.’

‘They won’t have guns when they go aboard. They’ll just walk past that tricksy magnetometer and it won’t give a cheep because they’ll be clean. I told you this was planned, Kemp. The guns are on board already – have been since two this afternoon. And hidden real well. You’d be surprised what a couple of flyers who have made friends at an airport can get done.’

My heart sank. It might just work. Stash the guns well before take-off, and those two wouldn’t have any trouble getting aboard. And they were both pilots, which the average hijacker is not. I couldn’t recall a case where a plane had been hijacked by someone who could fly it. This one could work.

‘Of course, there aren’t just two of them,’ she said. ‘Someone has to keep the passengers quiet.’

I felt my skin crawl. ‘This is a routine passenger flight?’ Even though we had been talking about Haslam and Philips going aboard, it hadn’t sunk in that there would be other passengers.

‘Sure. I think they figured no one would suspect all that dough being aboard a standard flight. It cost me plenty to get that information.’

‘So the plane lands here. What happens to the passengers?’

‘Nothing. What the hell do I care about the passengers? It’s the dough I want.’

That was what was troubling me: what did she care about the passengers? Anyone trigger-happy enough to shoot Negrini the way she had was not too sane, and ever since she had done little to convince me she was stable. The palms of my hands began to sweat.

‘Hold on. You’ve got a plane full of people and cash parked on a remote airstrip in the middle of the Caribbean. What can you possibly do with that?’