Chapter 4 - THE INTERCEPTION OVER THE SIERRAThe twin-engine turbo-prop shuddered violently as it hit an air pocket over the jagged, sun-bleached peaks of the Sierra Madre Oriental.
Inside the cramped, vibrating cabin, Mauricio Del Valle didn't look like the immaculate, unflappable corporate aristocrat who had calmly swung a leather belt in front of five hundred guests just hours before. His custom tuxedo jacket was discarded on the floor, his silk shirt was drenched in nervous sweat, and his hair was plastered in damp clumps across his forehead.
His hands shook uncontrollably as he punched numbers into a heavily encrypted satellite phone.
"Pick up, damn you, pick up!" Mauricio muttered furiously under his breath, glaring at the endless static hissing through the earpiece.
"Sir," the pilot called out from the cockpit, his voice tight with anxiety over the radio headset. "We are twenty minutes out from the private airstrip at El Rayo. But we’ve got a visual problem on our six."
Mauricio whipped his head around, scrambling over the cramped rows of seats to peer through the small, circular rear window.
Cutting through the thick, gray bank of mountain clouds was not a civilian aircraft. It was a matte-black Gulfstream G650ER, customized with military-grade anti-radar shielding and bearing no civil registration numbers. Its twin high-bypass turbofan engines roared with an aggressive, deafening power that made the smaller turbo-prop rattle down to its rivets.
"What is that?!" Mauricio shrieked, panic cracking his voice. "Is it federal intercept? Is it the National Guard?!"
"Negative!" the pilot shouted back, wrestling with the control yoke as turbulence buffeted the wings. "The aircraft doesn't have government transponders! It’s moving too fast—it’s private corporate heavy aviation! They’re locking radar targeting on our tail!"
Bip. Bip. Bip.
A high-pitched warning alarm began to shriek inside the cockpit.
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"They’re painting us!" the pilot screamed. "They’re forcing us down! They want us to land at the abandoned mining strip five miles south of our coordinates!"
"Do not land!" Mauricio lunged forward, grabbing the pilot’s shoulder with terrifying desperation. "If we land there, Guillermo’s men will tear us apart! Keep
