Chapter One

Trish Bousquet quietly stared through the airplane window of her first-class seat at the calm Caribbean waters below. The colors she saw were truly special, unique to that part of the world ... the brilliant turquoise water punctuated with ragged reefs and dotted with dark green islands. She reflected that she had been in so many places, but there was nothing like the Caribbean, with its beach resorts, diving, party scene and raves ... which combined heat and luscious beauty with a hint of ever-present risk and danger. To the woman's restless soul, the Caribbean offered so much more than the comparatively dull social scene in Europe. She always thought about going back to the tropics ... always in search of new adventure.

Trish smiled as she thought about all the things in her life that she had gotten away with. She was not grateful for her narrow escapes, but instead bored thinking about the past and looking forward to new adrenaline rushes. 24 years on the planet had not taught her much common sense. She was a trust-fund heiress who had never had to deal with any responsibilities. In her private school she was considered one of the worst students, but a couple of generous donations from her trust fund manager to the institution ensured she stayed enrolled no matter what. Same thing in college ... funny how a girl who doesn't go to class can still get through ... with the right kind of persuasion to the right people. Then there were the DUI's. Yep ... Trish had plenty of those under her belt as well ... but you know ... campaign contributions smooth over plenty of those problems on top of everything else. Up to that point money had made Trish Bousquet untouchable.

At that very moment Trish was having a new adventure. She may have done plenty of bizarre things in the past, but most of it paled compared to what she was doing on the plane. If she were caught, she'd face serious legal problems, and very likely a jail sentence. Inside her body she was carrying cocaine, a full kilo divided into pellets that she had swallowed before going to the airport and boarding her flight. She was doing it not because she needed to, but simply because she never said "no" to doing something crazy: never said "no" to doing something that would leave her friends gasping with amazement. As for what she was doing at that moment; two weeks earlier she made a bet with her friends in Baton Rouge that she could smuggle a kilo of cocaine into the US from a foreign location. The agreement was that she had to fly, alone, to the country of her choice, figure out the best way to smuggle the cocaine, return to the US, and then, in front of her friends, present the evidence.

So ... why the cocaine? Hell ... Trish could buy a kilo of cocaine, no problem. Ten kilos ... maybe even 20. She was doing this dare because her spoiled life had addicted her to being outrageous. She loved putting herself into dangerous situations ... the more bizarre the better. She loved it when people looked at her and said "Oh my God! Do you see what's she's doing?" So ... for nothing more than bragging rights over doing something that her party friends would never dare do themselves ... and for having the satisfaction of watching a room full of people get high on cocaine that she herself had delivered, Trish had decided to make the trip.

Her boyfriend's drug source was the one who set Trish up with a contact in Panama. At first she thought that she was going to carry the cocaine in a concealed suitcase, but the Panamanian told her that she'd be better off swallowing the cocaine in pellets ... much less likely to get caught. When the rich girl showed a hint of reluctance the dealer noted:

"I thought you wanted to have the real drug smuggling experience. This is it muchacha: it's the way we move drugs in our organization."

So ... Trish spent a couple of days in Panama City getting ready for her adventure. She practiced swallowing whole grapes and hotdog pieces until she could overcome her gagging reflex. Finally she was ready ... she swallowed 90 grape-sized pellets of cocaine, all of them wrapped in bluish plastic and tightly sealed on the ends. She headed to the airport and boarded her flight, thinking how great it would be to see everyone's faces when they realized how she had brought them their coke.

Nope... 24 years on the planet had not taught Trish Bousquet any common sense whatsoever.

Trish' pleasant thoughts were interrupted when suddenly the plane jerked. Then there was a strange series of clicks. The warning lights came on. Then came a loud whooshing sound. The aircraft began rocking from side to side as the cabin filled with the frightened murmurings of the passengers.

The pilots managed to get the rocking under control after a few minutes, but everyone could see that the aircraft was losing altitude. The plane approached the ocean, then leveled off only a few hundred feet above the water. The pilot finally announced the obvious: the aircraft was having mechanical difficulties and would have to make an emergency landing.