Big Trouble (29 page)

As the stern woman was thinking about this, the X-ray woman called out, “Computer check!” Another potentially deadly laptop was coming down the belt.

“Computer check!” echoed the rotund man. Passengers were still streaming through the metal detector. The checkpoint was backing up.

The stern woman looked at the line, looked at the suitcase, looked at Snake.

“You'll have to turn it on,” she said.

Snake studied the interior of the suitcase. On the black box next to the metal cylinder were three switches, which Snake figured were some kind of security system, to protect the drugs or emeralds or whatever was in there. He reached down and flipped the first switch. Nothing happened. He flipped the second. Nothing. He flipped the third. Some digital lights started blinking under a dark plastic panel on the bottom left corner of the box. They said:

 

 

 

The stern woman frowned at the blinking zeroes, then at Snake.

“It's got a timer,” he explained. “Like a whaddyacallit. VCR.”

“Computer check!” called the X-ray woman.

“Computer check!” echoed the rotund man. The laptops were stacking up.

“OK,” said the stern woman, waving Snake's party away. Snake closed the suitcase, not noticing, as he did, that the digits had stopped blinking and were now registering:

 

 

 

And then:

 

 

 

Snake latched the suitcase, then jabbed Puggy. “Move it,” he said. Puggy picked up the suitcase, and the little party headed down the concourse toward the planes. Behind them, the stern woman turned her attention to the next passenger, a pension actuary who was already, without having to be asked, turning his computer on, knowing that this was the price that a free society had to pay to combat terrorism.

 

 

 

Monica trotted through the automatic doorway into the main concourse, darting her eyes back and forth. She was hoping to see another officer, but as bad luck would have it, all the available airport police had been summoned to the extreme other end of the large, semicircular concourse, where trouble had flared at the Delta counter. It had started when a Delta agent had informed a would-be passenger that he would not be permitted to board his flight with his thirteen-foot python, Daphne, wrapped around his body. The passenger, attempting to show what a well-behaved snake Daphne was, had placed her on the counter. As the Delta agent and the nearby passengers backed away in terror, Daphne had spotted, on the floor a few feet away, a small plastic pet transporter containing two Yorkshire terriers named Pinky and Enid. In a flash, she had slithered off the counter and was snaking toward them, as screaming passengers frantically scrambled to get out of her way, clubbing each other with boxes of duty-free liquor.

Within seconds, Daphne had wrapped herself around the pet transporter and was trying to figure out how to get at Pinky and Enid, whose terrified yipping inspired their devoted owner, a seventy-four-year-old widow with an artificial hip, to overcome her lifelong fear of reptiles and flail away at Daphne's muscular body with a rolled-up
Modern Maturity
magazine, until she was tackled from behind by Daphne's owner, who was no less devoted to his pet and had also played linebacker at the junior-college level.

Within a minute, the Delta end of the concourse was in near-riot mode, with virtually the entire airport police force sprinting in that direction, walkie-talkies squawking. Thus, when, a few minutes later, Monica entered the concourse at the other end, looking for reinforcements, she saw none.

“Shit,” she said. She turned and saw Matt, Anna, and Eliot right behind her, with Nina just coming through the door.

“OK,” said Monica. “We're gonna split up and look for them. I'll take that side”—she gestured left—“you all go that way. If you see them, you keep an eye on them, but
don't approach them,
and, Matt, you come running and find me. Got it?”

Matt and Eliot nodded.

“OK,” said Monica, turning left and plunging into the concourse traffic flow. Matt turned right, with Eliot and Anna a step behind, and Nina trotting after. Nina's main concern was not being left behind. The other four, as they scanned the crowd, were all troubled by variations of the same nagging thought:
What if they were in the wrong place?

 

 

 

Air Impact! Flight 2038 for Freeport was a two-engine propeller plane with a seating capacity of twenty-two people. It had no flight attendant, and was too small for a jetway; to board it, passengers walked down a stairway from the concourse gate, then across the tarmac about thirty yards to where the plane was parked.

There were supposed to be two Air Impact! employees working the gate that evening, but neither of them had shown up, which meant that the passengers' tickets were being taken by the baggage handler, a man named Arnold Unger who had joined the Air Impact! team after being fired from two other airlines for suspected baggage theft. Unger had worked the same no-break double shift that had seriously undermined Sheila the ticket agent's desire to be Employee of the Month. He'd been keeping his spirits up by swigging from a bottle of Bacardi rum that he'd swiped from a cruise passenger and kept hidden under the stairs. He was eager to get Flight 2038, Air Impact!'s last of the evening, on its way, so that he could go get really hammered.

It figured to be an easy flight. Most of the scheduled passengers had missed their connecting flights into Miami because of the bad weather in Chicago. Unger had loaded just eleven bags onto the plane. When he came up the stairs into the waiting area and punched up the passenger list on the computer, he found only eight names, half of which, he noted with mild interest, were John Smith. There were four passengers in the waiting area; these were two couples, retired postal workers and their wives, all originally from Ohio, now living in Naples, Florida. They had driven across the state that afternoon to take advantage of the bargain Air Impact! fares on flights to the Bahamas, where they planned to play keno. They were anxious to get out of Miami International Airport, which they regarded as the most foreign place they had ever been, including Italy, which they had visited once on a group tour with other retired postal workers.

They looked up expectantly, as Unger, wearing grimy dark blue shorts, a blue short-sleeved work shirt, work boots, and kneepads, propped open the door to the stairwell. He picked up the receiver of a wall-mounted phone, punched in a code, and said, in a booming voice, “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Air Impact! Flight 2038 to beautiful downtown Freeport is now ready for passenger boarding through this door right here. We'd like to begin our boarding tonight with . . .”—he pretended to look around the almost-deserted waiting area, then pointed at the retirees—“YOU lovely people!” The retirees shuffled over and gave him their tickets. He told them to go downstairs and head out to the plane. They asked him how they would know which plane. He told them it was the plane that said Air Impact! in great big letters on the side. They did not like his tone one bit.

It was now ten minutes before the scheduled departure, and Unger was thinking about closing the door, when Puggy, lugging the suitcase, entered the waiting area, followed closely by Snake and Jenny, followed by Eddie. They moved in a tight, strange-looking little clot over to Unger. Snake handed Unger the tickets.

“Ah,” said Unger. “The John Smiths.”

Snake gave Unger a don't-fuck-with-me stare. Unger responded with an I-don't-give-a-shit shrug. His feeling was, whoever these people were, they were soon going to be not his problem. He gestured toward the doorway.

“Plane's downstairs,” he said.

The clot went down the stairs, with Unger closing the door behind them and following them out to the tarmac. He gestured toward the plane, where the retired couples, complaining loudly about not getting any help, were ascending the narrow fold-down stairway at the rear of the plane, slowly and laboriously, as though it were the last fifty feet of the Everest summit.

Unger followed Snake's clot to the plane. When they reached it, he reached for the suitcase, telling Puggy, “I'll take that.”

Snake grabbed Unger's arm. “It goes onna plane,” he said.

“I'm gonna
put
it on the plane,” said Unger. “You get it back in Freeport.”

“I mean it rides with us,” said Snake.

“Can't,” said Unger. “Too big. FAA regulations.”

Snake reached into his pants pocket, pulled out a wad of bills, and handed them to Unger.

“Lemme give you a hand with that suitcase,” Unger said. As Snake watched him closely, he grabbed the suitcase—
damn,
this thing was heavy—and manhandled it to the folding stairs. He was a strong man, but he just barely got it to the top. He left it just inside the doorway opening.

Panting, Unger came back down the stairs. He looked past Snake, toward the terminal.

“Where's your friend going?” he asked.

Snake whirled. Puggy, who had been right next to him, was gone. Snake looked back toward the terminal and saw the stocky shape disappearing through the doorway.

“Mother
fucker,
” said Snake, furious, squeezing Jenny's arm so hard that she cried out. “That punk mother
FUCKER.
” He spun back to Unger.

“When's this plane leave?” he said.

“You wanna go back and get your friend?” asked Unger.

“No, I want this fuckin' plane to leave
right now,
” said Snake.

“It'll leave soon's you get on and the pilots finish the preflight,” Unger said. “Five, ten minutes.”

“Get on,” Snake said to Eddie. Eddie was looking back to where Puggy had disappeared.

“Snake,” said Eddie, “I don't think this is . . .”

“I said
get on the plane,
” said Snake, using his sweatshirt-gun to prod Eddie exactly the way he had been prodding Puggy. Eddie turned slowly away from the terminal and trudged up the stairs. Snake shoved Jenny up after him. They had to step over the suitcase to get into the aisle.

Unger walked around to the front and signaled to the pilot to slide open his side windshield panel. When the pilot did so, Unger said, “You're set to go.”

“What about the guy who ran back to the terminal?” asked the pilot. “He forget something?”

“Nah,” said Unger. “Looks like he just changed his mind.” Unger almost said something else then, something along the lines of,
You got a weird passenger back there,
but decided not to. He'd seen weird people get on planes before; South Florida was full of weird people. This guy was definitely carrying drugs or some damn thing. But Unger viewed that as somebody else's problem. It was late, time to get to drinking, and besides, he didn't know this flight crew, a couple of young guys who'd just been hired to replace a couple of other young guys who'd gotten fed up with Air Impact! and quit. Unger, stepping away from the plane, gave the pilot a thumbs-up sign.

 

Puggy was trotting away from the Air Impact! gate area, trying to decide what to do. His main thought was to get away from the crazy man with the gun, to just keep going, get out of the crowded, scary, alien airport. But he was also thinking about the girl back there. She was scared to death of the crazy man, Puggy could see that, and he could also see that she was right to be scared to death of him. Puggy thought he should tell somebody about her. But who? Puggy didn't like cops—he'd had bad experiences with cops—but he wished there was one right here that he could tell about the girl.

Ahead, he a saw a counter with two agents, a young man and an older woman, standing behind it, counting pieces of paper, doing the final paperwork on a Miami-to-Philadelphia flight that had been delayed nearly three hours. He hesitated, then went up to the counter. The young man looked up.

“Yes?” he said, not pleasantly.

“Um,” said Puggy. . . . “There's . . . I need to . . .”

“I'm sorry,” said the young man, who was clearly not sorry, “this flight is closed. No seats, OK?”

“No, there's a guy down there,” said Puggy, gesturing back toward the Air Impact! area. “He has this girl.”

“Sir,” said the woman agent, even less pleasantly than the man. “We have to get this flight out of here
right now,
OK? So whatever it is, we don't have time for it.”

“He's makin' her go,” said Puggy. “He has a . . .”

“We don't have time for it right now,
sir,
” said the man, and he went back to counting pieces of paper, and so did the woman, both of them shaking their heads at how people could be.

 

 

 

“So what's the plan?” said Baker. “We get in there and sound the alarm?” The rental car was weaving through traffic on the airport Departures ramp.

“Negative,” said Greer. “Like I said, the more people know, the more likely we have people getting killed. So we keep it quiet unless we absolutely have to.”

“So how're we supposed to find them?” asked Baker.

“We find them because, number one, they're gonna be moving slow, schlepping that suitcase,” said Greer. “Number two, what I know about these scuzzballs from our friend back at the Jolly Jackal, they are not gifted in the brains department. Plus they got hostages. They are definitely gonna stand out in the crowd.”