The Gambit (41 page)

I nervously tapped my foot against the concrete. I wiped a line of sweat off my brow. The heat was getting to me, but I knew it couldn’t be too much longer. I stared at the ticket in my hand and realized for the hundredth time that the success of this plan was entirely in my hands. I steadied my exhale in an attempt to calm myself down. I had to keep focused.

There was a nonstop ruckus around me. The shuttlebuses coming and going. Taxis honking their horns and people being dropped off by their family members. Hundreds of people around me, but I had quieted my mind. It
had
to be quiet, because we couldn’t fail.

I
couldn’t fail. Where in the world was she? I hoped everything was all right.

“Hey,” Rachel’s voice comforted my worry as she sat down next to me. Her eyes were sullen and she looked like she had just watched something tragic. She didn’t look like her normal, happy self. Perhaps, she really
was
attached to Owen.

“Did he make it through?”

“I think so,” she nodded.

The knot in my gut lessened. Owen making it through TSA was half the battle. The other half was mine.

“Good. Briana will be happy to hear that her passport worked. Do you think they made it to the safe spot yet?”

“It’s only fifteen minutes away. They should be arriving there any minute. My cousins know what to do, their jobs are done. You can get the money Owen promised Briana and my cousins, right?”

“Of course I can,” I answered.

“Okay, I’ll wait for you here,” she said, adjusting her Dolphins cap she wore yesterday. “Good luck, Grey.”

“Thank you. Keep your head down and don’t look anyone in the eye.”

“I know,” she nodded.

I glanced down at my watch. It was 3:15.

“It’s 3:15. If I don’t come out in thirty minutes, assume I have been caught and get the hell out of here. Save yourself.”

“What?! Grey, don’t talk like that. You will be fine. Everything will work out.”

Her confidence in my abilities helped ease my anxiety, but my request was firm. She had to adhere to it because I knew what the consequences would be if she was caught. Owen wouldn’t want that.

“I know, but still. I’m leaving now. If I don’t come back by 3:45, leave without me. I will get my own cab. I’ll call you and get the address. It’s for your own safety, trust me.”

She blinked, and her big brown eyes showed uncertainty, but she nodded anyway.

“Okay. See you soon.”

“Yes, twenty-nine minutes from now,” I said and walked into the terminal. The AC hit me like an icy breeze and it was relieving from the heat outside. My pulse quickened and I headed for the ticket kiosks. I turned instinctually. I knew this airport like the back of my hand.

I was still wearing the Armani suit I wore last night, and I thought it was fitting. I looked just like any other businessman. Except, I didn’t have a briefcase. Just a ticket, a flash drive, and a plastic baggy in my left pocket that contained a crucial element of my plan. Every person I passed created wind that made my ticket crinkle and flap around in my hand. The code I constructed was delicate, and I hoped it wouldn’t mess it up. I was surprised the CIA hadn’t swarmed the building yet.
Someone
had to have been watching.

I found an open ticket kiosk and sat down. I let out a shuddering exhale and tried to balance my breath before I did the deed. My ticket wasn’t even a ticket, really. It was similar to a QR code, which would be scanned by the machine and print out my boarding pass.
But
, I designed my ticket to execute an SQL injection. It would never print out a ticket, just execute an action within the system, instead of query my flight information in the database.

My eyes scanned over the tiny black lines and squares that comprised the code, and I nervously pressed the button on the touch-screen that said
Scan Confirmation Code
.

I stuck the paper in the scanner. I heard a beep, and nothing happened.
Nothing
.

That
was what I wanted, though. I wanted it to appear like nothing had happened to their system on the outside and to all the passengers. The beep made me tremble…for that small noise was an indication to me that my code was read. The system
scanned
it. Step one was done.

I stood up and hurriedly headed away from the ticket kiosks. I darted down a side hall that I had already walked through many times over. I had been in every bathroom in this airport, and there were dozens. This place was fucking massive. That was what Owen, Rachel, and her cousins
didn’t
know. It was the information I was so terrified of jinxing. During mine and Briana’s many trips around Miami in the previous days, we came here. We scoped this place out in depth. If we hadn’t, I wouldn’t have been able to attempt step two of my plan. I clenched the plastic baggy in my pocket with a sweaty palm and felt the latex glove beneath it. I grabbed the latex glove between my index and middle fingers, pulling it out.

As I approached the men’s restroom, I slipped the glove on my right hand. Stuck to the chrome door of the bathroom hung a sign that read,
This restroom is currently being serviced. Please use one of the others nearby. We are sorry for the inconvenience.

Perfect
. The timing couldn’t have been any better. I forcefully swung open the door and saw a Haitian man mopping the floor. My heart was in my throat as his eyes met mine.

“This bathroom out of service, use other one please,” he said in his accent.

“I can’t hold it, I really have to go.” I walked towards him.

“No sir, chemicals on seats. You can’t.”

With my gloved hand, I grabbed the cloth within the baggy, clutching it tight.

“I have to, I’m sorry,” I walked around his cleaning cart.

“Sir,” he put down the mop and turned to me. I shoved the cloth in his face and used my free hand to grasp the back of his head, forcing him to breathe it in. His eyes closed, and his body went limp. I set him down gently and began to undress him.

Chloroform.

I slept in the living facilities last night. I hadn’t seen the sun in forty-eight hours. I was working what they called a double, but it felt like a triple. Since we were approaching the one-week mark of Owen and Rachel’s disappearance, Veronica had us searching day and night for them. Sure, she wasn’t here all the time. She’d leave sometime after midnight and return around noon. I was
supposed
to be home with my wife and kids right now. Ha. What a joke, because when I
was
home, I was sleeping. I hadn’t been home in almost three days. My wife was probably convincing my kids that they still had a father. I missed most of their fall break, and now they were back in school. Such bullshit. Yeah, it was overtime, but this was almost like forced labor. We couldn’t leave until she said we could.

She sat in her desk at the front of the room, just as she always did. The wall-to-wall projection screens surrounded her. Each with different camera feeds from different locations in Florida. They changed every few seconds. She had her hands over her forehead and her fingers dug into her hair. She probably had one of her migraines, which were frequent.

I would switch the feed on my computer every minute or so. I wasn’t eager to help her catch innocent people. What I desired was quite the opposite. Most of my colleagues were doing the same, but a few had that blind determination most young government employees had. You could see it, like a fervor bubbling within, they wanted to catch the bad guys. If only they would have woken the fuck up and realized the bad guy was in the same room as them.

“Ma’am…” A voice on the far side of the room spoke up. My stomach sank. Veronica’s head barely moved upwards to acknowledge him. “Facial recognition found a match at the Miami International Airport.”

The entire room went silent. Not even a click from the keyboards. Veronica slowly stood to her feet and shook her hair out of her eyes. “Blow it up on the big screen.”

The image appeared and my stomach wrenched. There he was. A bleach-blond Owen Marina stood frozen mid-stride as he approached the TSA security screening. My rational mind knew, this was game over for Owen.

“It’s him…” Veronica’s voice trembled with a frightening excitement. “And the girl?”

“She is with him. She is seen walking away from him a few frames before this one.”

“My God…” She uttered. “Why the
fuck
is Owen in an airport?! What is the time-stamp on this image?”

“Twenty minutes ago, ma’am.”

“Goddamn it!” she shouted at the top of her lungs. “Let’s get our shit in gear! Call the airport now, have them stop all outbound flights before it’s too late!”

“I’m on it,” the same, gung-ho newbie who found Owen responded to her. I glanced over at my colleague Kyle, who I’d worked with for years, and he shook his head in disapproval.

“You!” she pointed to some guy towards the front. “I want you on the phone with Miami PD and our offices in Miami, now!”

“Got it,” the man said.

“Ma’am,” the newbie began, “I’ve called five different lines to the airport—they’re all dead.”

“What do you mean, dead?”

“Uh, every line I call is busy. I can’t dial in.”

I thought Veronica’s head was going to explode.

“You can’t be fucking kidding me!” she screamed and slammed her fists against the metal desk. She must have had permanent bruises because she did that so damn often. She reminded me of a spoiled brat who wasn’t getting her way.