Part 23 (1/2)

The instant that the rotund man turned his head away, Snake, in one motion, pushed Jenny through the metal detector and placed the sweats.h.i.+rt, with the gun in it, on the pa.s.s-though shelf. He stepped quickly through the detector right behind Jenny and picked up the sweats.h.i.+rt; 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 pa.s.sengers who had missed, or nearly missed, their flights because of delays at security.

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. Pa.s.sengers 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: 00:00 The stern woman frowned at the blinking zeroes, then at Snake.

”It's got a timer,” he explained. ”Like a whaddya-callit. 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: 45:00 And then: 44:59 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 pa.s.senger, 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.

43:47 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 pa.s.senger that he would not be permitted to board his flight with his thirteen-foot python, Daphne, wrapped around his body. The pa.s.senger, attempting to show what a well-behaved snake Daphne was, had placed her on the counter. As the Delta agent and the nearby pa.s.sengers backed away in terror, Daphne had spotted, on the floor a few feet away, a small plastic pet transporter containing two Yorks.h.i.+re terriers named Pinky and Enid. In a flash, she had slithered off the counter and was snaking toward them, as screaming pa.s.sengers 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 Modem 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.

”s.h.i.+t,” 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?

42:21 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, pa.s.sengers 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 pa.s.sengers' 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 s.h.i.+ft 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 pa.s.senger 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 pa.s.sengers 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 pa.s.senger list on the computer, he found only eight names, half of which, he noted with mild interest, were John Smith. There were four pa.s.sengers 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 s.h.i.+rt, 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 pa.s.senger 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-f.u.c.k-with-me stare. Unger responded with an I-don't-give-a-s.h.i.+t 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-d.a.m.n, 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.

”Motherf.u.c.ker,” said Snake, furious, squeezing Jenny's arm so hard that she cried out. ”That punk motherf.u.c.kER.” He spun back to Unger.

”When's this plane leave?” he said.