Researching next episodes to the Corey Pearson- CIA Spymaster spy series. I'm in the Dutch side of St. Martin (St. Maarten). Drove to the French
side, St. Martin, to Maho Beach and ate breakfast at the Sunset Bar & Grill
and watched the 747's land, the wheels about 18 feet away above my head, the
landing gear almost touching the car tops! Ate eggs Benedict, and I think it
was the best I've ever had. I told the waitress that and she was so excited she
called the chef out (her brother) and the owner. They thanked me.
The Princess Juliana International Airport in St. Maarten is one of the world’s most dangerous airports. A perfect spot for a scene in my PENUMBRA DATABASE spy thriller! Here’s a snippet from it:
Seated in the cockpit on the tarmac of the Cleveland Hopkins Airport, the pilot watched the eight vans speed away with police escort. He knew this mission had something to do with the huge explosion on I-90 just outside Cleveland and the evacuation of Progressive Field.
Just like with the Saba mission, he and his five crew members would keep their mouths shut. Follow orders and keep quiet about every aspect of the mission. He thought back to Saba…taking off from Saint Marteen’s airport with an empty cargo hold, leaving the special op warriors, armored vehicles, and Apache’s behind. The next day, CNN reported that a narco-terrorist leader was shot and killed on Saba and several dozen of his lieutenants were arrested and sent to Guantanamo. It also reported that the U.S. gave the Saba government four amphibious armored vehicles to help them battle future narco-terrorist intrusions. The news reported that the DEA had conducted the raid, but no DEA agents ever boarded his plane.
The
pilot knew that the extemporaneous assistance missions he undertook involved deep
secrets… dark secrets…that was the nature of the organization he worked for. Follow orders and keep your mouth shut.
End
of snippet.
Couldn’t
resist writing about this airport in my spy thriller! I drove back to the Dutch
side of the island and had my friend "Hymen" (yes, that's his name)
make me a mango passion drink. The Netherlands Navy had several war ships and
assorted military watercraft conducting training exercises offshore.
Interesting, I thought the U.S. Atlantic navy fleet and Coast Guard were the
only ones prowling around in the Caribbean. I guess not so, especially here in
the Netherlands Antilles Island chain.
Think
I might go down to the Buccaneer Beach Bar and get a cheese pizza to go and
have it for dinner tonight and breakfast tomorrow. Their cheese pizza is whole
goat milk cheese, mozzarella cheese, parmesan cheese, blue cheese and some
other kind of cheese made from some mammal's milk that roams this island. I
don't think my hometown pizza hangout, the Depot's cheese pizza, will ever
taste the same.
Well,
got to go. My knees ache just a little, did a good bit of walking, but I can
hobble down to the Topper's Beach Bar a few hundred feet away for a nightcap
and dinner- spiny lobster, land crab, calamari meat stuffed in a dressing
inside chicken. By the way, the chicken meat here is great. No Tyson's CAFO
chicken with steroids and anti-biotics on this island. All roaming wild. I see
hundreds of them along the road and in yards, roaming freely, eating insects
and anything crawling on the grounds. Water here is all cistern and tastes
wonderful, no chlorine or fluorides or filtration chemicals. Straight off the
roof from the rains.
Here’s a neat video of planes landing and taking off from the Princess
Juliana International Airport in St. Maarten by Maho Beach. Enjoy!
Robert Morton is a member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO), enjoys writing about the U.S. Intelligence Community, and relishes traveling to the Florida Keys and Key West, the Bahamas and Caribbean. He combines both passions in his CoreyPearson- CIA Spymaster series. Check out his latest spy thriller: MISSION OF VENGEANCE.
No comments:
Post a Comment