Even veteran air travelers find Miami International Airport disorienting. It's often crowded, and it seems to have been designed so that every passenger, no matter where he or she is coming from or going to, has to jostle past every other passenger. The main concourse looks like a combination international bazaar and refugee camp. There are big clots of people everywhere — tour groups, school trips, salsa bands, soccer teams, vast extended families — all waiting for planes that will not leave for hours, maybe days. There aren't enough places to sit, so the clots plop down and sprawl on the mungy carpet, surrounded by Appalachian-foothill-sized mounds of luggage, including gigantic suitcases stuffed to bursting, as well as a vast array of consumer goods purchased in South Florida for transport back to Latin America, including TVs, stereos, toys, major appliances, and complete sets of tires. Many of these items have been wrapped in thick cocoons of greenish stretch plastic to deter baggage theft, which is an important airport industry, another one being the constant «improvements» to the airport, which seem to consist mainly of the installation of permanent-looking signs asking the public to excuse the inconvenience while the airport is being improved.
The airport air smells of musty tropical rot, and it's filled with the sounds of various languages — Spanish, predominantly, but also English, Creole, German, French, Italian, and, perhaps most distinct of all, Cruise Ship Passenger. The cruisers just arriving are usually wearing brand-new cruisewear. They follow in groups close behind cruise-line employees holding signs displaying cruise-line names; they tell each other what other cruises they have been on, and they laugh loudly whenever anybody makes a joke — which somebody does every forty-five seconds — about how much they're going to drink, gamble, or buy. The cruisers heading home are more subdued — tired, sunburned, hungover, and bloated from eating eleven times per day, whether they were hungry or not, because… it's all included! Some of the women have had their hair braided and beaded, a style that looks fine on young Caribbean girls, but on most women over sixteen looks comical or outright hideous. Some passengers are clutching badly mass-produced "folk art" — large, unattractive, nonfunctional sticks are popular — and a great many of them are lugging boxes containing the ultimate cruise-ship passenger trophy: discount booze! Never mind that they spent thousands of dollars to take this vacation: They're thrilled to have saved as much as ten dollars a bottle on scotch and brandy and liqueurs that they will never actually drink, but which they lug through miles of airports, on and off various planes, so that when they get back home they can haul it out and display it proudly to visitors in the months and years to come ("We got this for twenty-three-fifty in the Virgin Islands! Guess what it costs here!").
On the night that Snake and his party walked in with a nuclear bomb, the airport was even more chaotic than usual. There was bad weather in Chicago, which of course meant that virtually every flight in the western hemisphere, including space shuttle launches, had been delayed. And now some airlines were noticing a problem getting clearance for outgoing flights to push back, although the control tower was not saying why. Most airline ticket counters had sprouted long lines of pissed-off passengers shoving to get to the counter so they could argue fruitlessly with pissed-off airline employees. Police had already been summoned to arrest one returning cruise passenger who had threatened a ticket agent with his souvenir stick.
Eddie came through the airport door first, followed by Puggy, lugging the suitcase, and then Snake, who had one hand under the sweatshirt and the other holding Jenny's arm. Like Eddie and Puggy, Snake had never been inside MIA before, and for a moment, when he saw the roiling mob, he thought about turning and running. But then he squeezed his gun, his wand, and the moment passed. He was not going back to scamming dimes.
"Where we goin'?" asked Eddie, staring at the airport scene. He had never felt less like he belonged somewhere, and Eddie was the kind of person who never felt he belonged anywhere.
"That way," said Snake, pointing, pretty much randomly, toward a line of ticket counters. He jabbed the barrel of the sweatshirt-swathed gun into Puggy's back and said, "You stay close, punk. You don't go one step farther away from me'n you are now."
They moved slowly through the crowd — first Eddie, then Puggy lugging the suitcase, followed closely by Snake, who limped next to Jenny, who shuffled her feet and stared ahead, zombie-like. The first airline they came to had a name Snake did not understand and a sign listing departures for cities that Snake had never heard of; everyone at the counter was talking in Spanish. Snake jerked his head to indicate to Eddie that he should move ahead. They went past a half dozen more airlines that Snake found incomprehensible, then came to a small counter with a half dozen people waiting in line for a lone agent. Over the counter was an orange sign that said:
Snake felt a good-vibe jolt. The Bahamas! He motioned Eddie to get in line. They shuffled forward, Snake keeping his grip on Jenny and periodically letting Puggy feel the gun in his back. In ten minutes, they were standing in front of the agent.
The agent was a single mom named Sheila who had been on duty for fourteen hours without a break, because two of her three coworkers had quit that very day. Air Impact! had trouble keeping employees because its paychecks were behind schedule as often as its flights, which was quite often. Air Impact! was owned by two brothers from North Miami Beach who had done well in the pest-control business and had hatched the plan of starting an airline so that they would have a legitimate business excuse to fly to the Bahamas and gamble and have sex with women who were not technically their wives. The airline was in its second year, and the brothers were spending more and more time in the Bahamas and less and less time on business details such as payroll and schedules and hiring competent personnel.
The Federal Aviation Administration had begun to take a special interest in Air Impact! after receiving an unusually high number of passenger complaints about flight delays and cancellations. Eyebrows had also been raised two weeks earlier when an Air Impact! flight from Miami to Nassau, flown by pilots with questionable credentials, had in fact landed in Key West, which even non-aviators noted was several hundred miles in the diametrically opposite direction. Rumor had it that the FAA was about to shut Air Impact! down, and morale was very low among the employees who had not already quit. Nobody's morale was any lower than Sheila's; aside from having been on her feet for what seemed like forever dealing with unhappy customers, she had just received a call from the baby-sitter she could barely afford telling her that her two-year-old daughter was throwing up, this coming on top of the call from the mechanic telling her that her 1987 Taurus, which always needed something, needed major transmission work.
Had Sheila been in a state of higher morale, she probably would have cared enough to be suspicious of the quartet now standing at the counter — a zoned-out young woman with three scuzzy-looking men. But Sheila had long since passed the point of giving a shit.
"Yes?" she said to Snake.
"We need four tickets to the Bahamas, one-way, next flight you got," said Snake.
"Nassau or Freeport?" she asked.
Snake frowned. "The Bahamas," he said.
"Nassau and Freeport are in the Bahamas," said Sheila, mentally adding you moron.
Snake thought about it.
"Freeport," he said. He liked the sound of it.
"There's a ten-ten flight," said Sheila, checking her watch, which said nine-fifteen. "Four one-way tickets is" — she tapped the computer keyboard — "three hundred sixty dollars."
Snake let go of Jenny for a moment while he dug his free hand into his pocket He pulled out the fat wad of bills he'd taken from Arthur Herk at the house. He set it on the counter, in front of Sheila, and, one-handed, started counting off twenties out loud… "twenty, forty, sixty… " At 120, his brain fogged up — he'd always struggled with arithmetic — and he had to start again. He did this twice, said "fuck," and pushed the wad off the counter, scattering bills across Sheila's keyboard.
"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.
I want your sex pootie!
I want your sex pootie!
I want your sex pootie!
I want your sex pootie!
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 Clocks 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.
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 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:
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 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.
"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.
"Motherfucker," said Snake, furious, squeezing Jenny's arm so hard that she cried out. "That punk motherFUCKER." 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.