Big Trouble (30 page)

“I dunno,” said Baker. “This airport, it can be hard to stand out.”

 

 

 

In front of the Delta counter, two police officers were trying to revive Daphne's owner. He had resisted efforts by officers to pry him off the dog-owning widow, and finally one of them had clubbed him with a heavy-duty four-cell flashlight, rendering him, for the moment, unconscious. This was bad, because the police needed him to subdue Daphne, who had abandoned her fruitless efforts to get at Pinky and Enid and let go of the pet transporter. She was now surveying the rapidly growing mob of gawkers, thinking whatever it is that large, hungry snakes think.

The police had a problem. Obviously, they could not allow this creature to remain loose in the airport. Just as obviously, they could not risk trying to shoot it with all these civilians around. That meant that somebody had to capture it, but its owner was currently out cold, and none of the police officers present wanted any part of trying to apprehend Daphne manually. As one of them put it, “What're you gonna do? Slap handcuffs on it?”

And so, for the moment, it was a standoff. On the one side stood the police, trying to hold back the crowd; on the other side stood, or, more accurately, coiled, Daphne. An officer had radioed headquarters to request that an animal-control unit be dispatched to the airport immediately, but he had just been informed that the closest such unit was tied up with a major traffic jam on Le Jeune, involving goats.

 

 

 

“Where are the police?” Anna was asking, her voice right on the edge of hysterical.
“How can there not be any police?”

“We'll find some,” Eliot said. “There have to be some around here.” But he was wondering, too. There were
always
police here.

Eliot and Anna were trotting through the crowd a few steps behind Matt, with Nina bringing up the rear. Their search was becoming more desperate by the second as they realized how many people were in the airport, how many concourses, how many gates.

They came to a security checkpoint, where at least two hundred people were waiting in two lines to pass through the metal detectors into the flight concourse. Matt, Anna, and Eliot separated and moved up and down the lines, scanning the faces. No luck. They had just started moving down the main concourse again when they heard Nina cry out. They turned and saw Nina running back toward the checkpoint, calling a name that sounded like “Pogey.” Matt was the first to see where she was going.

“It's the little guy!” he shouted. “With the beard! From the house! The guy who carried the suitcase!”

Anna and Eliot saw Puggy then, on the other side of the security checkpoint, trotting toward Nina, a look of wonder on his face.

“Matt,” said Eliot, “go find the lady cop. We'll stay here with this guy.
Run
.” But Matt was already sprinting through the crowd.

 

 

 

“You said Delta, right?” asked the driver.

“Delta,” said Henry.

Henry and Leonard were in a U-Drive-It Rental Car shuttle bus approaching the main terminal. They had flagged down the bus—actually, they had stepped in front of it, forcing it to stop—on the airport access road, after abandoning their rental car and hiking through the mass of stopped traffic on Le Jeune. The bus driver had at first been reluctant to open the door, but Henry had persuaded him by pressing a twenty-dollar bill against the windshield.

Henry and Leonard were hot and sweaty and not in a good mood. Every minute or so, Leonard shook his head and announced to the other bus passengers, who were carefully not looking at him, “Fuckin'
goats
.” Henry, though more restrained, was also fed up with this frustrating, non-productive trip. He'd decided that once they got their boarding passes for the Newark flight, he was going to call his Penultimate contact and tell him that, sorry, but they could find somebody else to kill Arthur Herk, because he, personally, was never coming back to this insane city, where every time you try to execute somebody in a careful, professional manner, another shooter shows up, or the police show up, or a dog attacks you, or some maniac jumps on you out of a tree.

“Delta,” the driver said, stopping the courtesy bus and opening the door.

Henry and Leonard got off, with Leonard pausing to tell the bus driver, by way of a farewell, “Fuckin'
goats
.”

As the bus pulled away, Henry and Leonard looked through the automatic glass doors to the terminal. It was packed with people, some of them running. From somewhere inside came the sound of a woman screaming.

“
Now
what?” said Henry.

“Whatever it is,” said Leonard, “it can't be any worse than goats.”

 

 

 

“C'mon,” said Snake. “
C
'
mon
, let's fuckin'
go
, here.” He was talking mainly to himself, but the postal retirees, sitting four rows ahead, in the front of the Air Impact! plane, could hear him, and they did not approve of his language.

In the cockpit, separated from the cabin by a half-open black curtain, the newly hired Air Impact! pilots were going through their preflight checklist. They looked to Snake to be, based on zit count, maybe seventeen years old, although in fact they were both twenty-three. Their names were Justin Hobert and Frank Teeterman, Jr., and they had been close friends since elementary school, when they'd discovered that they both passionately loved airplanes. They had taken a lot of shit in junior high for continuing to build model airplanes when all their friends had become interested in titty mags.

Justin and Frank had remained single-mindedly obsessed with aviation, and their social lives had suffered. But they felt that it had all been worth it, because, after years of lessons and study, they had become commercial pilots, and tonight they were going to fly together professionally for their very first time. They could not believe their good fortune; most airlines made you fly for
years
with more experienced pilots. Sure, the pay at Air Impact! was not great—$14,200 a year—but the important thing was, they were flying. They were wearing new pilot shirts and new pilot pants, and they were
in command
.

Justin—who had won the coin toss to see who would be the captain on this flight—turned to the seven passengers in the cabin and, deepening his voice and developing a drawl, said: “Folks, welcome to Air Impact! Flight 2036 to . . .”

“Flight 2038,” whispered Frank.

“Right, Flight 2038, to, ah, Freeport,” said Justin. “I'm Captain Justin Hobert and this is my copilot, Frank Teeterman.”

Frank waved a little salute.

“We're almost through our checklist,” said Justin, “so in just a few minutes we'll be closing the door and giving you a safety briefing, then we'll be on our way.” Justin had practiced this speech in front of his bathroom mirror. He thought it came out pretty good. He turned back to his checklist.

“Hey.” It was Snake's voice, from the back. “How 'bout we go now.”

“What?” said Justin, turning back around. The retirees also turned around to administer a group glare at Snake, who was sitting next to Jenny, who had her eyes closed and was leaning her head against the window. Eddie was across the aisle, looking glum.

“I said, let's go now,” said Snake. He was thinking about the punk getting away. Snake figured the punk, being basically a lowlife like Snake, would not go to the cops. He was probably just saving his own ass, which was what Snake would have done. But Snake still wanted to get out of there.

“Sir,” said Justin, “we have to finish our preflight checklist, then we'll go. It's for your safety, sir.”

Snake almost showed him the gun right then. He even thought of a good line:
I got my safety right here, asshole
. But he decided to give it another minute or two.

 

 

“Officer!” shouted Matt, darting through the airport congestion and waving his arms at Monica, whom Matt had spotted near the American Airlines domestic counter. “Officer!”

“You found them?” asked Monica, running toward him.

“We found the little guy,” said Matt. “With the beard. Back this way.” They were running together now.

“Just him?” asked Monica. “Alone?”

“Yeah,” said Matt.

“Did he say where the others are?” asked Monica.

“I didn't talk to him,” said Matt. “My dad said come get you.”

“Good work,” said Monica.

 

 

 

“The airport is laid out how?” asked Greer.

“The main concourse is a big semicircle,” said Baker. “Gate concourses radiate off it.”

“This about the middle?” asked Greer.

“Pretty close,” said Baker.

“Ok, then,” said Greer. “We'll stop here.”

Seitz pulled over and stopped next to a NO STOPPING ANYTIME sign. They got out of the car and headed for the terminal entrance.

Greer, talking to Baker, said, “My guess is, these morons already fucked up somehow, attracted the attention of the cops here. Should be easy to find 'em. When we do, we need your help to get the suitcase, get custody of the perps, and get outta here quick and quiet as possible. OK?”

“OK,” said Baker.

“But no matter what,” said Greer, now talking to both Seitz and Baker,
“we get the suitcase.”

As they entered the terminal, they were almost knocked over by two men with walkie-talkies, running toward their left, the direction of the Delta counter. They could hear shouting coming from that direction, then a scream.

“Bingo,” said Greer.

 

 

 

Puggy could not believe it: his angel! Here! He held her hand and looked into her eyes, which were at exactly the level of his eyes. For a minute, he couldn't even hear what the other lady was saying to him.

“Please,” Anna said, for the third time, “where is my daughter?
Please
.”

“Puggy, you must help,” said Nina.
Pogey, you mus help
.

Puggy got it now.
The girl
.

“They're down that way,” he said, pointing back through the security checkpoint, down the flight concourse toward the Air Impact! gate. “They got on a plane.”

“Oh my God!” said Anna. She grabbed Eliot's arm. “We have to get down there!”

“Right,” said Eliot, looking around desperately.
Where the hell was Matt? Where was the lady . . . there she was!

“Over here!” he yelled, waving to Monica and Matt, who were sprinting through the crowd.

“What's he say?” said Monica, reaching the group, panting.

“He says they're on a plane,” said Eliot. “Down that way.”

“Show me where,” said Monica, grabbing Puggy's arm and striding toward the security checkpoint. Puggy, reluctantly letting go of Nina's hand, stumbled behind Monica.

“Police emergency!” shouted Monica, as she reached the head of the checkpoint line. “Out of the way, please!” Dragging Puggy, she went through the metal detector, which beeped because of her badge. Immediately, she found her path blocked by the rotund man.

“Listen,” said Monica. “This is a police emergency. I need to go down that concourse with this man, and I need you to notify the airport police right now that . . .”

“I have to scan him,” said the rotund man, waving a handheld scanner toward Puggy.

“Did you
hear
me, for God's sake?” shouted Monica. “I said we have an
emergency
down there. We have a hostage sit—”

“AND I SAID I HAVE TO SCAN HIM,” replied the rotund man, brandishing the scanner in Monica's face. Rules were rules.

“Scan
this
,” said Monica, yanking the scanner from his grasp and flinging it over her shoulder. She shoved past the rotund man, dragging Puggy behind her.

“Hey!” said the rotund man. “Hold it! You can't . . . HEY!”

“Excuse me,” said Eliot, coming through the metal detector and pushing past the rotund man, followed closely by Anna, Matt, and Nina. “We're with them.”

“STOP!” shouted the rotund man, trying unsuccessfully to block this renegade group. “SECURITY!”

“SECURITY!” chorused the X-ray woman, and the stern woman at the end of the conveyor belt, and the other checkpoint workers. “SECURITY! SECURITY!”

There was an officer assigned to this checkpoint: His name was Ralph Pendick, and he happened to be the older, but not a whole lot smarter, brother of Jack Pendick, the man who earlier that evening had alertly foiled the attempted squirting of Jenny Herk by firing bullets randomly in a parking lot. Ralph Pendick's orders were to remain at the security checkpoint at all times, and he had tried mightily to comply with these orders when he first heard, on his walkie-talkie, about the trouble down at the Delta counter. He had watched, with mounting envy, as other officers ran past, headed for the action; there was
never
any action, here at the checkpoint. Finally, unable to stand it any longer, Ralph had abandoned his post and headed for Delta, which meant there was nobody to heed the cries of the personnel at his assigned checkpoint, who were still yelling “SECURITY!” at the rapidly receding figures of Monica, Puggy, Eliot, Matt, Anna, and Nina.

The rotund man waddled quickly over to a wall-mounted phone, grabbed the receiver, punched a code, and began shouting into it, nearly incoherent with excitement. Security had been breached! A police officer was involved! People had gotten through
without being properly scanned!
They could be carrying . . .
concealed laptops!