See Part 1 and Part 2

In the summer of 1996, a Miami lawyer named Tom Spencer was hired to defend a man accused of ordering the bribery of a U.S. Customs official. His client was in a Swiss jail, and so Spencer flew there to meet with him. When he arrived, the Warden and prison staffers urged Spencer to delay the extradition for as long as he could. When he asked them why, they explained that their prisoner was having gourmet meals flown in for them from Paris every night, and they would hate to see him go.

This was the first sign that the case of the United States Government vs. Foutanga Babani Sissoko was not going to be a normal trial.

To the dismay of his guards, Sissoko was soon back in the U.S. where he was arraigned and, over the objections of the government, granted bail. After posting $20 million bail, Sissoko was turned loose in Miami, and quickly got to work.

...and then I let it age. Like cheese.

About five years ago - remember that? There was no Covid. Tony Stark and Steve Rogers were still alive. So was Daniel Craig's James Bond. Those were the days.

But also, about five years ago, I was messing around with Facebook one day when I realized I could make my very own group. That sounded interesting, so I did. And then I didn't do anything with it. I didn't post to it. I didn't even tell anyone about it. Things came up. It was forgotten.

Time passed. The Avengers saved the world at great cost. Covid happened. James Bond died. But Facebook never forgets, and that group was still sitting there. Until one day I was thinking about rebuilding my reader platform, and I realized that a Facebook Group would be a good way to connect with my readers and - better yet - let them connect with each other. About a minute later I realized, wait, I already have one.

Okay, imagine this scenario: You are a bank manager, and one day a customer walks into your bank seeking a car loan. He's a charismatic guy, handsome, outgoing. So, you enjoy chatting with him while you're doing the paperwork. And at one point he happens to mention that he has magical powers to call on spirits and djinn - and specifically that he can take any amount of physical cash and magically double it, just like that. How do you react to that?

Now we can't truly know how we would respond in a given situation until we face it. But I'd like to think that my first question would be something like, "Why, that being the case, do you need to come to me for a car loan?"

But in 1995, the reaction of Dubai Islamic Bank manager Mohammad Ayoub was more like, "That is fascinating, and I would love to hear more."

The customer here was, of course, Foutanga Babani Sissoko, the larger-than-life hero of our story. (See Part 1 here.) He invited Ayoub the bank manager to come around for dinner one night, bring some money, and he could see for himself.

Work In Progress (WIP) Reports are quick updates on what I'm working on. They're meant to give you a hint of what's coming down the pipeline, and hopefully pique your interest in reading the finished work.

So what I'm working on right now is Crossover, which is very cleverly named because it's a...crossover featuring John Crane and Jessie Diamond. Jessie has shown up in Crane's stories before, of course. But in this one, Jessie has her own story going on, Crane has his, and they... cross over. Get it? I am so clever sometimes!

It really shouldn't come as a surprise though. Given who Jessie typically works for, and who Crane and Josh are typically going after, it was just a matter of time until their different jobs got tangled up and they found themselves working at cross purposes. Crossover is where it happens.

It's been a fun piece to work on. It's letting me work more on the relationship between Jessie and her sidekick/bodyguard, Niall Beaton. And Jessie and Niall are flying a de Haviland Otter float plane in this one, so that's fun. Any time I can put an airplane on water, I'm happy!

I have to talk about this; I have to tell you about this guy, because I absolutely have to base a character on him at some point. But I need to dial that character way back because if I put him in a book as he really is, I'd get laughed off the page. Unlike reality, fiction has to make sense.

I found out about Mr. Sissoko in an odd way - in a piece online that was tracing the history of an airplane. Specifically, a Boeing 747 belonging to United Airlines. In 1989 this airplane was flying out of Honolulu when its forward cargo door blew off, ripping a large hole in the fuselage. The resulting explosive decompression blew out several rows of seats in business class, killing nine passengers. Through some rather heroic flying, the crew managed to return to Honolulu on the two surviving engines and land the plane.

The investigation into the incident went on for some time. But in the meantime, while the hole in the fuselage looked pretty scary, the damage to the 747 itself wasn't all that severe. And a 747 costs a whole lot of money. So the plane was repaired, re-registered, and returned to service.

It was 18 1/2 years old at the time of the Honolulu incident with more than 58,000 flight hours. It was getting old, and minor problems continued to crop up, though thankfully nothing as severe as the 1989 decompression. United flew it until 1997 before retiring it.