Big Trouble (28 page)

“Take it outta there,” he said.

Sheila gathered up the wad, feeling the heft of it, this
big
bunch of money being carried around by this guy who didn't even know how to count it. Sheila peeled off $360. Then, after glancing at Snake, who was looking around nervously, she peeled off another $480, which was what she needed to get her transmission fixed, and then another $140, which was roughly what she owed the baby-sitter for the past week. She put the rest of the wad back on the counter. Snake looked at it. He almost said something, but he didn't want any trouble here. Plus he figured he had plenty of money left. Plus a suitcase full of drugs. Maybe emeralds.

“I need the names of the passengers,” said Sheila, tapping on her terminal.

Snake hesitated, then said, “John Smith.”

Sheila looked up for a second, then went back to tapping.

“And the other passengers?” she said.

“John Smith,” said Snake.

Sheila looked up again, at Eddie, Puggy, Snake, and Jenny. “You're all John Smith?” she asked.

“Everybody,” said Snake.

“I need to see photo IDs,” said Sheila.

Snake grabbed a handful of bills and dropped them on her keyboard.

“Here you go,” he said.

Sheila looked at the bills. It looked to be at least two hundred.

“OK, then, Mr. Smith,” she said.

MONICA, leaning on the horn, swerved the Kia past a car-rental courtesy shuttle on the airport access road.

“OK, listen,” she said. “We're looking for the police car. You see it, you yell, OK?”

“OK,” said Matt and Eliot. Anna was quiet. Nina was praying.

“Once we see the car,” said Monica—who was thinking,
Jesus, I hope we see the car
—“if they're not in it, we go into the terminal and we look for them. There will be police officers at the airport to help us. It's gonna be OK, Mrs. Herk.”

In the back, Anna said nothing.

Monica gunned the Kia up the ramp under the Departures sign. They were approaching the terminal building now, Monica, Matt, and Eliot scanning the mass of cars ahead. It was Matt who saw the cruiser in the unfinished garage.

“Over there,” he said, pointing.

Monica swerved left into the garage, screeching to a stop behind the cruiser. She was out of the Kia before it stopped rocking. She saw that the cruiser was empty, slammed her hand on the trunk, spun around, and raced, dodging traffic, across the roadway into the terminal. Matt was right behind her, followed by Eliot, holding Anna's hand.

“THIS ain't gonna work,” said Seitz, looking at the string of unmoving brake lights disappearing into the distance northbound on Le Jeune.

“If you can make a right up there,” said Baker, “you can swing over to Douglas, go up that way.”

“See if that guy'll let me squeeze in front of him,” said Seitz, nodding toward a Humvee in the right-hand lane next to their rental. Humvees are a common sight in Miami. They're especially popular with wealthy trend-followers who like to cruise the streets in these large, impractical pseudomilitary vehicles, as though awaiting orders to proceed to Baghdad. The Humvee next to the FBI rental car was occupied by three young males whose buzz-cut heads bobbed simultaneously to the whomping, churning bass notes blasting from a speaker the size of a doghouse filling the entire rear of the vehicle. The driver had received the car two days earlier as a nineteenth-birthday present from his father, a prosperous and respected local cocaine importer.

The Humvee occupants didn't hear Seitz honk his horn, so Greer lowered his window and waved to get the driver's attention. When the Humvee driver looked over, Greer made a cranking signal with his hand. The driver lowered his window; Greer, Seitz, and Baker winced as they were pounded by the music.

Greer, squinting into the howling gale of sound, made a gesture to the Humvee driver asking him to let the rental car squeeze in front. The Humvee driver made a gesture indicating that Greer should go fuck himself. The driver raised his window; he and his friends were laughing.

“Ah, youth,” said Greer.

“You want me to show 'em my badge?” asked Baker.

“Nah,” said Greer, opening the door and getting out.

“You ever hear of Special Executive Order 768 dash 4?” Seitz asked Baker.

“No,” said Baker. “What's that?”

“Powerful law-enforcement tool,” said Seitz.

Greer rapped his knuckles on the Humvee window. The driver glanced sideways, then again flipped Greer the bird. He and his buddies laughed. They stopped when Greer drove the butt of his revolver through the window with his right hand, then reached in with his left, grabbed the driver by the front of his Tommy Hilfiger shirt, and yanked him out the window and onto the street. The driver broke his fall with his hands, scrambled to his feet, and ran ahead into the mass of traffic without looking back. The other two young males exited on the passenger side without being asked. Greer climbed into the driver's seat, ejected the CD, turned off the sound system, and drove the Humvee up over the sidewalk and into a Burger King parking lot, clearing a path for Seitz to move over. Then he climbed out of the Humvee, dropped the CD onto the pavement, stepped on it, and got back in the rental.

“I could've just showed 'em my badge,” said Baker.

“Nah,” said Greer.

Seitz, aided by the helpful maneuvers of surrounding drivers who had watched Greer in action and did not wish to be viewed as uncooperative, was able to squeeze around to the right and onto a cross street, heading east to Douglas. When they were northbound again, Baker said, “What do you think this guy's gonna do? I mean, why's he going to the airport?”

“My guess,” said Greer, “based on crime-fighter deductions, he's gonna try to get on a plane.”

“How?” asked Baker. “I mean, there's security at the airport, right?”

That got a large snort from Seitz.

WHEN Snake and his small, unhappy group reached the concourse for their Air Impact! flight, they found a long line of people waiting to go through the security checkpoint.

“Hold it,” said Snake, pulling back on Jenny's arm. He wanted to watch a little bit, see what was going on.

It was the standard airport-security operation, which meant it appeared to have been designed to hassle law-abiding passengers just enough to reassure them, while at the same time providing virtually no protection against criminals with an IQ higher than celery. Passengers put their belongings on a conveyor belt that went through the X-ray machine; they put their phones, keys, beepers, and other metal objects on a little pass-through shelf; then they walked through the metal detector. This operation was being overseen by harried, distracted employees who seemed primarily concerned with keeping the line moving.

It took Snake, who had never before seen an airport security checkpoint, about two minutes to figure out how he would get his gun through. He actually had three guns on him, one in his hand and one in each side pocket. He thought he could probably get them all through, but decided not to get greedy. He herded his group over to a trash can and, after glancing around to make sure nobody was looking, dropped Monica's and Walter's official-issue Glocks into the slot. Then he waited for another minute, until he saw a businessman with a laptop-computer bag slung over his shoulder approaching the checkpoint line. As the man walked past, Snake shoved Puggy after him, into the line. As they shuffled forward, Snake whispered to Puggy and Jenny:

“We get up there, you”—he jabbed Puggy—“put that suitcase on that belt and then you walk through. Girlie, you walk through right after. I will be right fucking behind you. Either one a ya says a fuckin'
word,
you are both fuckin'
dead,
unnerstan'?”

“Snake,” said Eddie. “This ain't gonna work, man. They got
machines
up there and shit.”

“Shut up,” said Snake. He was sick of Eddie's attitude.

They were now almost to the checkpoint. Just on the other side of the metal detector was a rotund man whose job, as he interpreted it, was to wave people through as fast as possible.

“Step through, please!” he said, over and over, waving at the passengers.

The businessman in front of Puggy put his laptop bag on the belt, and the rotund man waved him through, then started waving Puggy through. Puggy, prodded by the feel of the gun under Snake's sweatshirt, hefted the suitcase onto the belt and went through the metal detector. As he did this, the woman operating the X-ray machine, seeing the businessman's laptop, said, “Computer check!” They were very vigilant about computers at the security checkpoint.

The rotund man turned toward a stern-looking woman at a table at the end of the conveyor belt and said, “Computer check!” The woman waved the businessman over. She would make him turn on the computer. That was the heart of her job: making people turn on their computers. In the world of the security checkpoint, the fact that a computer could be turned on served as absolute proof that it was not a bomb.

The instant that the rotund man turned his head away, Snake, in one motion, pushed Jenny through the metal detector and placed the sweatshirt, with the gun in it, on the pass-though shelf. He stepped quickly through the detector right behind Jenny and picked up the sweatshirt; this took maybe two seconds. By this time the rotund man had turned his head back and was looking past Snake, to the next person in line.

“Step through, please!” he said.

“Bag check!” said the X-ray woman. She was pointing at the metal suitcase. “Bag check!” said the rotund man, to the stern woman, who was watching the businessman turn on his laptop. When he was done, she pointed at the metal suitcase at the end of the conveyor belt and said to Puggy, “Is this yours?”

“It's mine,” Snake said. He was right behind Puggy, letting him feel the gun in his back.

“Bring it over here and open it, please,” the woman said.

“Do it,” Snake said to Puggy.

Puggy lifted the suitcase onto the table. He unlatched the four latches and raised the suitcase lid. The stern woman looked inside, saw the steel canister, the black box with the foreign writing, the bank of switches.

“What is this?” she asked.

“Garbage disposal,” said Snake.

“A garbage disposal?” asked the stern woman. This had not been covered in security-checkpoint training.

“It's portable,” explained Snake.

The stern woman hesitated for a second. She thought about calling for her supervisor. But she also thought about what had happened the last time she'd asked him to look at something she thought was suspicious: It had turned out to be a latte machine, and the supervisor had chewed her out for letting the line back up. The supervisor had been hearing from
his
supervisor; there'd been a lot of complaints lately from passengers who had missed, or nearly missed, their flights because of delays at security.