Chapter 16
"Five Little Monkeys"
Acting on the intelligence we had gotten, our objective now was to seek out and capture the five passengers that were supposedly on a dry run for the dry run. To this end, we flew from Pewter City to Cebu in the Philippines and paid a visit to the Philippine Airlines office at the island's airport.
"Yes, what I can for you?" asked a male check in agent as we revealed our credentials to him.
"We just have some questions regarding a group of passengers that flew here from Manila on December 8th."
Confused, the agent picked up the phone and contacted his supervisor. A few moments later, the supervisor arrived.
"Are you the supervisor?" my dad asked, much to the supervisor's confusion.
"And you are…?" he asked back only to be met by our credentials. "Oh, is this about those 5 characters on December 8th?"
"Yes," my dad answered and the supervisor allowed us to come inside to his office in the back of the counter.
…
"A couple of days ago," the Supervisor said as he sat down behind his desk. "Someone contacted us and wanted to complain about a group of passengers on the morning arrival from Manila."
"This complaint came from Osaka, yes?"
"It did come from there. Usually our morning flights from Manila to Cebu are pretty much empty, so I was kind of taken aback by the complaint at first as people usually move around all the time."
"We believe that this may have been a dry run for an attack on Philippine 434 to Tokyo two days ago," my dad replied.
Naturally, the supervisor didn't want to believe it at first, but knowing that the complaint came in a few days before the Flight 434 bombing, he wasn't leaving no stone unturned.
"It's strongly a possibility," remarked the supervisor. "But at the same time, with World Youth Day on the horizon, you can't be too careful with these monkeys."
"Monkeys?" I remarked. "What do you mean, monkeys?"
"I mean that I have a name for people that constantly move around from seat to seat," explained the supervisor, reaching into his desk and pulling out a manifest from the day of the flight. "These five guys in question: they were seated towards the back from rows 45 to 50…then, they moved to 25 to 30 and then back to 45 to 50. Monkeys jump up and down so that's what they did here."
"Did you get a look at them after they got off here in Cebu?" my dad asked. "Did you see their body language, if they were holding anything in their hands like coffee? Speaking of coffee, I'm gonna get some after we're done here."
Of course, using the word monkeys was kind of a turn off, at least for me and Lucy. But if that was the way the supervisor wanted to call the suspicious passengers, that was his call.
"Nope, they all travelled together. Almost like a pack of dogs if you will. I gotta admit that they had something to hide, all of them."
It was then that we all focused our attention on the manifest in the supervisor's hand.
"We're going to need that manifest in your hands to identify the passengers from the Manila-Cebu flight," said my dad. "As evidence."
Not wanting to pick a fight with members of law enforcement, the supervisor complied quickly and gave us the manifest.
"Be sure I get it back when you are done," he warned, but we were going to keep the manifest as evidence by any means necessary, no matter how long it took to get these clowns off the street.
Plus, there was no doubt in any of our minds that the five men travelled under an assumed group of names. Team Rocket agents always did, so why would this be any more different?
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