“What in the hell was that?” she screamed, her blue eyes wide as saucers.
Knowing that Zoe would be furious if she even suspected he’d done it on purpose, Hayes spent a few seconds making a big show of regaining control of the aircraft, waiting until he’d leveled out before pointing to the headset over his ears.
“Can’t hear you.”
Zoe took a few ragged breaths and, seeing that he was in control of the plane, nodded, pulled her headset over her ears, and repeated the question.
“What was that?”
“Must have hit a thermal,” Hayes said. “These older planes don’t have the engines to climb above the weather.”
“You think it will happen again?”
“Not sure, but if it does, the only way I can talk to you is if you keep your headset on.”
“Okay . . . okay . . .” she panted over the radio.
“Just take a few deep breaths, in through your nose, out through your mouth,” Hayes said.
Zoe followed his instructions, matching him breath for breath until she’d regained her composure.
“How old is this plane?” she asked, studying the interior as if seeing it for the first time.
“She was built in the late sixties, but her last official flight was in 1986.”
“And it’s safe to fly something this old?”
“Well, she wasn’t in the best shape when I found her, but it wasn’t anything a few months of hard work couldn’t fix. Did most of the repairs myself.”
“So, you’re a mechanic?”
“Not really.”
“But you’ve worked on planes before . . . right?”
“Uh, maybe we should talk about something else,” he said, not liking where the conversation was going.
“Fine . . . so how long have you been a drug smuggler?” she asked.
The question caught him off guard and left him stammering for a reply.
“Drug smuggler . . . ? Who told you that I was a drug smuggler?”
“Mallory did,” Zoe shrugged. “She said that’s why you have such a big plane. But if you don’t want to talk about it, that’s cool.”
Hayes was desperate to keep the conversation going and threw out a number at random, “It’s been . . . let me see . . . five years.”
“How does it work?”
“Uh . . . you know, pick up the drugs here, smuggling them there . . .”
“You’re full of shit,” she grinned.
So far the conversation was not going as planned and Hayes found himself wishing that he’d paid more attention during the asset recruitment class he’d attended at Harvey Point—the Agency’s covert training facility located near Hertford, North Carolina.
Recruiting foreign nationals, gaining their trust, and then getting them to turn on their government was a CIA case officer’s bread and butter. It was a subtle and long-studied art that revolved around MICE: an acronym that stood for Money, Ideology, Coercion, and Ego.
Knuckle draggers like Hayes, on the other hand, got a three-hour CliffsNotes version: a down-and-dirty how-to that ended with the cadre saying, “The best way to get a foreign national to not turn you over to the authorities is to give them something they need.”
Back at Harvey Point, the concept had seemed straightforward enough, but sitting behind the controls while Zoe turned his cover story into Swiss cheese, Hayes realized it was time to change the subject—again.
“So . . . you ever been to Grand-Bassam?” he asked.
Real smooth. Why don’t you just ask her about the weather, dumbass?
“Quite a few times, actually,” she said with a smile.
“Seriously?”
“Yep. In fact, my father taught me to surf in Grand-Bassam . . . but that was years ago. Back when he actually wanted to spend time with me.”
Hayes watched her as she spoke and noticed the change in her eyes when she mentioned her father. He wasn’t sure if it was sadness or regret, but there was something there—a vulnerability to be exploited.
Keep her talking.
“You know, when I was a kid, I didn’t get to see much of my old man.”
“Really?” she asked.
“Yep.”
“Why?”
“Well, we didn’t have a lot of money growing up and when my mom got sick my dad had to pick up a second job. Sometimes if he got off early, I might see him at the breakfast table, but usually he came home and went right to bed. He was working his ass off to make sure we had everything we needed but I . . . I . . .”
He trailed off, the emotions that came with the memories making him uncomfortable.
Why the hell am I telling her all of this?
The last time Hayes had talked about his childhood was with the shrink in Tacoma, and even then he’d done so grudgingly. He thought by keeping the details light and his responses to her questions vague, the doc might move on.
But all his avoidance did was pique her curiosity and no matter how far he tried to steer the conversation away from those formidable years, she always found a way to steer it back.
“Let’s go back to how you felt about you father not being around,” she’d say. “Did you resent his absences?”
“Shit, lady, that was twenty-four years ago,” he finally snapped. “How the hell am I supposed to remember how I felt when I was ten years old?”
It was a lie. Hayes remembered exactly how he’d felt, because unlike bullet holes and broken bones, the wounds passed from father to son never healed.
“But you what?” Zoe asked, her face showing real interest in his words.
“Well, I treated him like a real asshole,” Hayes said. “Swore that if I ever had a kid, I’d never be like him.”
“Do you have children?” she asked.
“Yeah.” He nodded.
“And?”
“Let’s just say the apple didn’t fall far from the tree,” he said, his voice barely audible.
Zoe frowned, but before she could follow up on his answer a tiny beep drew her attention to her waistband.
“Oh, crap,” she said, inching up her shirt, revealing a black box the size of a deck of cards.
“Everything okay?” Hayes asked.
“Yeah, it’s . . . my insulin pump. I’ve got to change the cartridge.”