“All due respect, sir. You have the option of making headquarters anywhere. In fact, New Orleans is pretty fucking cool if you ask me. Plenty of international shipping, an international airport, the gulf, close to Mexico, the Caribbean, everything you want.”
Gustav nodded at the man, packing his things in the leather satchel that he always carried with him. It was his life and he made sure it was always within eyesight.
“You might have something there. Can you have the team check out any possible security issues, risks, costs, all of them? It should be cheaper than Florida from a cost perspective but we won’t know without research.”
“What if the rest of the board complains? Most of them are on the East Coast aren’t they?” he asked. Gustav nodded.
“In essence, yes. New York, Philadelphia, D.C. but also those that arrive into the East Coast from global locations. Our friends in Spain risk their lives every time they come into the country. It boggles my mind that the border control and TSA can’t figure out that they’ve been using fake passports for years,” he chuckled.
“And they wonder why we do the things we do,” smirked the other man. He stood, grabbing the folder on the desk and nodded at Gustav. “I’ll take care of all of this and make sure the hotel checks out. New Orleans. Man, I can definitely get the kind of entertainment I need there.”
“Exactly what I was thinking,” smiled Gustav as the man left.
He did a quick conference call with the rest of the board members, telling them they would be moving the board meeting location. No one complained, except of course the man who owned the Royal Flamingo.
“But we’ve always done our meetings there. If you require something different, just tell me. I’ll make sure it’s available.”
“We’re moving locations. My yacht was blown to pieces today in the marina owned by your hotel,” growled Gustav.
“Oh, I see,” he said nervously. “But that didn’t have anything to do with my hotel.”
“Relax,” said another board member. “We’ll come back there eventually. Let’s just try this new location. It should be fun. New Orleans is the Sin City of the south.”
“I’ll see you all there. Be prompt. We hope to test the data that Reginald has received. That will be step one in solving our transportation issues.”
He could only smile, silently congratulating himself for almost being there. Almost. Just a little more testing of the technology, perhaps finding someone with even greater knowledge than Reginald, and he would own the super-power known as America.
He’d been thinking about it for years. If you can’t own the roads, if you can’t own the seas, what can you control? The skies. He started the small airline hoping to expand but that turned out to be more difficult than he imagined.
Controls put in place by the FCC, the FAA, and a hundred other government agencies dragged the process out so long he was certain he would die before it was completed.
The original intent had been to get the technology working in the skies, so that he could turn off communications and flight computers, dropping planes at will. He thought he had his answer with Reginald but even the government’s own geek was proving to have issues getting everything to work properly.
Their first attempt had been flying a satellite on top of a small plane, attempting to get within reach of the jets. That was a complete bust. The difference in air-speed, distance, and altitude proved too much for the technology. When the little nerd came up with the idea of the fibers, he thought it was the answer.
Now, he wasn’t so sure. There were still problems and people were waiting to hear from him. They needed things to get in and out of the country without detection and without interference from civilian or military aircraft.
Then there was the cute little flight attendant. Never mind that her grandfather had been a total asshole. He should have never allowed him to buy into the conglomerate but at the time it felt as though he might have someone close to the issues they were experiencing. Naively he believed that he could convince the old colonel to jump to their side but before he revealed anything, he realized the old man would never turn their way.
Dead and buried, the only person that might have information that could stop him was the flight attendant.
“What was her name again?” he murmured to himself. April. That’s it. Like April rain.
Again, he hired someone to take care of her and failure was reported. He hated incompetence.
No worries, he thought to himself. Another twenty-four hours and he’d be eating, drinking, and enjoying life to the fullest in New Orleans, making the final plans that will make him the most powerful man in the world.
He wouldn’t accept anything less.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
“Everything is set,” said Quinn. “You would think for a man that’s trying to take planes out of the sky, he wouldn’t fly his own airline into the city and let everyone know he was here.”
“It could be a ploy,” said Finn.
“Maybe but several people at the airport saw him and three other men aboard the flight. According to the Monteleone, the top two floors have been booked under the name of Coastal Airways and guards have been placed on the floors and elevators.”
“They’re expecting trouble,” frowned Patrick.
