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 rude 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."
"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, nonproductive 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 Robert 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 corning 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!
"You see what it is?" asked Leonard. They were at the edge of the now huge mob in front of the Delta counter.
"Nope," said Henry, craning his neck. "All's I see is people tryin' to see."
"Well, fuck it," said Leonard. "I say we go to the counter."
"Worth a try," said Henry. He led the way, pushing through the crowd, which was shouting in several languages. From what snatches of English they picked up, they gathered that there were police ahead, and somebody hurt, and something crawling. As the crowd got denser, they struggled forward, Henry shoving people aside, each labored step strengthening their resolve to get… out… of… this… crazy… fucking… place.
As they approached the Delta counter, the crowd became almost impenetrably dense, squeezed from behind by people trying to see what was going on, and from in front by people pushing back, apparently trying to get away from something. There was a lot of shouting, the loudest coming from an area directly ahead of Henry and Leonard. Suddenly, the volume of the shouting intensified, accompanied by terrified shrieks; the crowd lunged backward violently just as Henry and Leonard pushed forward. They stumbled ahead and were suddenly in the clear, alone, surrounded by a vast ring of shouting and screaming faces. Henry caught his balance, but Leonard kept going, tripping over the pet transporter containing Pinky and Enid, who yipped and yelped in terror. Leonard pitched forward onto the floor. He groaned, then raised his head slightly and saw, on the floor two inches from his eyes… a really long tongue.
Snake was going nuts. The minutes were ticking past, and the two zitface pilots were still up there farting around, talking into their headset microphones, and the plane was not moving. Snake kept glancing out the window toward the door to the terminal, expecting it to open. Finally, he couldn't stand it. He stood in the aisle of the plane.
"Hey!" he shouted. "Start the fuckin' motors!" Justin, Frank, and the retirees turned, all of them glaring, until they saw the gun pointed at the cockpit.
The retirees gasped and pulled back in their seats, out of the line of fire. Justin and Frank stared at the hole in the end of the barrel, their brains frozen. Frank wet his new pilot pants.
"Start the fuckin' motors NOW," said Snake.
"We… we… " stammered Justin. "I mean, the door. We have to close the door."
"I'll close the fuckin' door, zitface," said Snake. He wasn't letting anybody else get away. "Now START THE FUCKIN' MOTORS AND FLY TO THE FUCKIN' BAHAMAS OR I BLOW BOTH YOUR FUCKIN' HEADS OFF."
This caused three of the four retirees to wet their pants. Justin and Frank began working furiously on starting the motors. The propeller on the right side of the plane started to turn, very slowly.
"Snake," said Eddie. He was looking out the window.
"What?" said Snake. He bent down and looked where Eddie was looking, then said, "Shit. SHIT."
The terminal door was open. The little punk — that motherfuther — was coming out of the building pointing the plane out to… the lady cop. That fucking bitch.
Snake screamed at Justin and Frank, "GET THIS FUCKIN' PLANE MOVING RIGHT NOW." He whirled and gimped back to the airplane doorway, aimed his gun toward the lady cop, and fired a shot.
Instantly, she ducked back into the building, yanking the punk with her and closing the door.
"WHY THE FUCK AREN'T WE MOVING?" shouted Snake.
"We gotta start the other engine," Justin shouted back. The right-side engine, after a few coughs and sputters, was roaring. The left-hand propeller was starting to turn. Snake looked back toward the terminal door; it was open a crack now, but he couldn't see inside. He turned toward the front of the plane, where he saw Justin speaking into his headset microphone.
"WHO'RE YOU TALKIN' TO?" he screamed.
"NOBODY," said Justin, talking loud over the sound of the engines. "JUST HIM." He pointed at Frank.
"TAKE THOSE THINGS OFF," said Snake.
"WE NEED THEM TO TALK TO THE TOWER," said Justin.
"TAKE 'EM OFF, ZITFACE," said Snake, pointing the gun at the cockpit. Justin and Frank removed their headsets.
"NOW," said Snake, "GET US THE FUCK OUT OF HERE."
"WHAT ABOUT THE DOOR?" asked Justin.
"I'LL WORRY ABOUT THE DOOR," said Snake. He was going to leave it open, for now, in case he had to shoot again.
Justin, shaking his head, released the brake and gently advanced the throttles. Very slowly, the plane started to move.
She did not appear to be in any hurry, but it took Daphne only a few seconds to coil herself several times around Leonard. Leonard knew exactly what was happening, but found that there was nothing he could do to stop it: No matter how he moved his body, or where he put his arms, Daphne oozed effortlessly, casually, around him. Leonard sensed her astonishing strength, but only barely; she never seemed to need it. Leonard was terrified, but even with his terror, and the screaming around him, and the visceral revulsion he felt at being embraced by this thing, his brain found room and time to speculate on an unexpected phenomenon: He did not feel any great pressure; did not feel really squeezed. Instead, he noticed that, each time he exhaled, it became more difficult, and then impossible, to inhale, as Daphne calmly, relentlessly, took up the slack. Leonard was blacking out; he was dying, he could tell. Just like that, it's over, he thought. I'll never see New Jersey again.
And then, in his last moment of consciousness, he thought: Fucking snakes.
The stairwell was empty except for Monica and Matt. After Snake had fired the wild shot, Monica had told Eliot and Anna to take Puggy back to the main concourse and do whatever they had to do — "set something on fire if you have to" was how she put it — to get police attention and tell them what was going on. Anna had wanted to stay near the plane, but Monica told her that the best thing she could do for her daughter was to get help.
"What about Matt?" Eliot had asked.
"I need him here, in case I need a messenger," Monica had answered. "He'll be OK."
Eliot and Anna raced back up the stairs, followed by Puggy and Nina, who were holding hands. Monica opened the door a crack and peered out at the Air Impact! plane. It was parked so that the plane's fuselage was parallel to the terminal building. To taxi toward the runway, it would have to turn perpendicular to the terminal, meaning that the plane's occupants would no longer be able to see the doorway. The plane's right engine was roaring, its propeller a blur; the left engine was almost there.
"You stay here," Monica told Matt. "You watch through this crack, but you don't go out there. When your dad gets back here with help, you tell them what happened."
The plane had started to move, making a slow turn toward the right. When its windows were no longer visible, Monica opened the door.
"What're you gonna do?" asked Matt.
"Try and stop the plane," said Monica.
"How?" asked Matt.
"I have no idea," said Monica. And then she was sprinting across the tarmac. She did not look back.
Agent Greer led the way through the crowd, shunting people to either side, like a V-bladed snow-plow. Those who didn't get out of his way quickly enough got picked up and tossed like hay bales. Still, it took Greer, Seitz, and Baker a good five minutes from the time they reached the edge of the mob until they could actually see the Delta counter. They heard shouts and screams; they saw uniformed officers, some trying to hold back the crowd, some yelling instructions to each other and pointing toward… something going on down on the floor, out of sight.
"OK," said Greer, over his shoulder, as he drove his body forward, through the last few feet of crowd. "Remember, we get the suitcase."
The Air Impact! plane was starting to pick up speed, but it was still moving slowly enough that Monica — who, until sixth grade, when she developed breasts, had been the fastest runner of any gender in her school — was able to close on it. She angled to the left, where she could see the door at the rear of the plane, still open, with a little folding stairway hanging down. She tried not to think about the gun. She would worry about the gun when she caught the plane.
Henry had never killed a snake, large or small, in his life. But he was a professional, and he gave careful thought — quick, but careful — to how he would handle this situation. He had to shoot the snake's head, that much was obvious; the problem was that the bullet would keep going. Henry didn't want it to hit Leonard, of course, but he also didn't want it to go into the crowd. He didn't want to shoot down, because the bullet would ricochet off the floor, which would be concrete, under the carpeting. Henry decided his best bet was to shoot up, toward the ceiling.
Henry knelt and pulled his revolver from his ankle holster. Then he stood and circled Leonard, whose eyes were bulging sightlessly and whose face was turning maroon. Two brave cops had their hands on Daphne's neck and were pulling with all their strength, with no noticeable effect on Daphne. As Henry approached them, another cop ran toward him, yelling something that Henry couldn't make out in the general din; seeing the gun in Henry's hand, he backed off. Henry showed the gun to the two brave cops; they looked at each other, then let go of Daphne and stood. As they did, Henry dropped to his stomach, rolled onto his back directly next to Leonard. As Daphne, who was never in a hurry, gracefully turned her head to see what was happening, he stuck the barrel of the gun into the underside of her jaw, pulled the trigger, and blew out her brains, not that she had many.
One second later, Greer burst through the crowd, drawing his own gun as he heard the shot and the ensuing screams. He ran forward, and then stopped, gun in hand, staring down at the scene on the floor — first at the unconscious Leonard, then at the now headless Daphne, and finally at Henry, who was on his back, gun still pointing straight up.
The two men studied each other for a moment. Then Henry spoke.
"Agent Greer," he said. "What brings you to Miami?"
The plane was moving faster now. Monica, tiring fast, was not sure she'd catch it. She was not entirely sure she wanted to catch it. But she found some reserve energy somewhere and got to within a few feet of the hanging stairs. She reached her left hand out, and for a second, caught hold of the plastic-covered steel cable that served as the stair's railing, but the effort of reaching forward slowed her slightly, and the railing was yanked away. Straining, her lungs burning, she lunged forward again, and this time she had the railing, but she was starting to stumble and shit she was going down and the plane was going to get away and…
… and Matt, sprinting next to her now, pulled her upright and gave her a push forward, and she grabbed the other railing and swung on to the ladder. She moved up to the second step and turned and held out her hand to Matt, and he grabbed it and she pulled, and in a second Matt was on the lower step, and in the next second the plane suddenly accelerated, and the fastest runner on earth would not have caught it.
Eliot, drenched in sweat, with the others trailing behind him, ran back toward the security checkpoint.
"POLICE!" he shouted. "POLICE!"
In front of him, a herd of returning cruise-ship passengers watched his approach, openmouthed.
"CALL 911," Eliot shouted at them as he went past. "PLEASE. THERE'S A MAN SHOOTING BACK THERE."
The passengers stared as Eliot disappeared down the concourse, with Anna, Puggy, and Nina behind him. One passenger went to a pay phone, dialed 911, and told the operator what Eliot had said. The 911 operator said the police were aware of the shooting at the airport and had the situation under control. The passenger reported this news, and the herd relaxed.
Monica hauled herself to the top of the folding stairs and wriggled past the heavy suitcase partially blocking the doorway, keeping low. She peered around the last row of seats on the left and saw Snake standing in the middle of the plane, his back — thank God — to her. He was watching the pilots.
The pilot on the left yelled something to Snake, which Monica thought was about the door. Snake yelled something that Monica couldn't make out, and he pointed his gun at the pilot. The pilot shrugged and turned back to the controls.
Monica crawled across the aisle and into the last row of seats on the right side of the plane. Matt crawled in and went to the left side. He gave her a look that said, Now what? Monica held up her hand in a gesture that said, Wait. She had no idea what for.
The plane had reached the end of the taxiway and was turning onto the runway. The engines were very loud now. They were taking off.
As they turned into Garbanzo Street, the couple in the Lexus was arguing. They had been arguing for two hours now, since the start of their dinner at the Italian restaurant in Coral Gables. The issue was whether to stay in Miami, where the husband had been transferred by his bank a year and a half ago, or move back to Cedar Rapids, where they were both from. He thought that, for career reasons, they should stay; she wanted to go.
They were arguing so heatedly that the husband almost ran into the large man standing in the street, waving his arms. The man seemed to be wearing a uniform, but it was filthy and drenched in sweat, and there was blood running down his arm, which was… handcuffed to some big, mangled piece of metal, which was… my God, it was handcuffed to another man, a strange-looking man, off to the side there. With a big dog.
"I think we should get out of here," the husband said.
"They look like they need help," the wife said.
"OK," said the husband, "but we stay in the car."
Keeping the car in gear, the husband pressed the power-door-lock button and lowered his window two inches.
"Listen," said the large man. "I'm a Miami police officer, and I need you to…»
"GET OUT WHILE YOU CAN!" said the strange-looking man.
"SHUT UP!" said the large man. Turning back to the couple, he said, "I need you to…»
"SHE WANTS YOUR SOUL!" said the strange-looking man. He was pointing at the dog, who sniffed his finger, then barked.
"I SAID SHUT THE FUCK UP GODDAMMIT!" said the large man, shoving the big metal thing hard, knocking the strange man over. 'THAT IS NOT ELIZABETH FUCKING DOLE!"
The husband pressed the accelerator. The car shot forward, tires squealing.
"NO!" screamed the large man. "COME BACK!"
The husband drove three blocks before speaking.
"OK," he said. "You call the movers."
"You know this guy?" Baker asked Greer. They were standing with Henry, who was watching three police officers and two paramedics unwrap Daphne from Leonard, who had regained consciousness. So had Daphne's owner, who was being formally taken into police custody and had already been handed business cards by four personal-injury attorneys who happened to be on the scene.
"Oh yeah," said Greer, "I know Henry from the old days, in Jersey. I used to interrogate him alla time, back when I worked organized crime."
"Wasn't that organized," said Henry. "Which is why I got out of it."
"You're saying you're retired now?" asked Greer. "Workin' on the stamp collection? Drinkin' Ensure?"
"More or less," said Henry.
"Sure," said Greer. "Listen, much as I would enjoy hearin' you explain to these officers why you come to their airport wearin' a piece on your ankle, I got important federal business, OK?"
"Real good chattin' with you," said Henry, turning back to Leonard.
"OK," said Greer, to Baker and Seitz. "These are assholes, but not the right assholes. I need to talk to somebody in charge."
"That guy there, I'm pretty sure he's the head airport cop," said Baker, pointing to a white-haired man in a shirt and tie, talking on a cell phone and holding a walkie-talkie, which was emitting a drumbeat of messages and static. Greer walked over.
"No, nobody got hit," the white-haired man was saying. "Just the snake." He listened for a moment, then said, "I don't know what kind. A big snake."
Greer was holding his badge wallet in the man's face.
"FBI," he said.
The man waved the wallet away.
"We don't need any help," he said. "We got this."
"No," said Greer, "I need somethin' from you."
"Well, it's gonna have to wait," said the white-haired man, turning away.
Greet stepped a few paces away. He pulled the odd-looking phone from his pocket and pressed a button on it. He waited for two seconds, then spoke for about twenty. He pressed another button and put the phone back in his pocket, then walked back and stood next to the white-haired man, waiting. The white-haired man, ignoring him, continued talking on his cell phone for about thirty seconds, then stopped and listened.
"What?" he said. He looked up at Greer. Greer showed him his badge again.
"Yes," said the white-haired man, into the phone. "He's right here." He listened some more, frowning.
«But…» he said, then listened some more.
"OK," he said. "I got it." He shut off his phone, looked at Greer.
"My name's Arch Ridley," he said. "Tell me what you need."
"I need you to find out if anything else unusual has happened in this airport in the last thirty minutes," said Greer. "Besides this mess here."
"Lemme call the security office," said the man. He dialed a number, waited, and said, "Doris. Arch. Listen, is there… What? Oh, Jesus. When?"
"What?" asked Greer. Ridley raised his hand, indicating wait a sec.
"No, that's not your fault," he was saying, "all this radio traffic. So what else did they… OK… OK… shit. OK. Keep the phone line open. I'll call right back." He shut off the phone.
"What?" said Greer.
"Five minutes ago," Ridley said, "the tower here got a message from a pilot on the ground, saying he had a guy on his plane, with a gun, telling him to take off."
"Oh Jesus," said Greer.
"The tower tried to get more, but they're not responding," said Ridley. 'The plane taxied out and just took off, just now."
"Shit," said Greer. "For where?"
"It's an Air Impact! flight," said Ridley. "Prop plane. It's supposed to go to the Bahamas."
"OK," said Greer, "listen. Call the tower, tell 'em to watch the plane, keep trying to raise 'em. Which way is the Air Impact! counter?"
"That way," said Ridley, pointing, "little over halfway around the concourse. I can…»
But Greer, Seitz, and Baker were already running.
Flight 2038 took off into the prevailing winds, to the west. As the plane gained altitude over the Everglades, Justin banked left, making a long, slow turn until he was heading almost due east, toward downtown Miami, with Biscayne Bay beyond, then the southern end of Miami Beach, then the Atlantic. Justin was praying that air traffic control was telling the other air traffic where he was, since without his radio he had no way to get flight instructions.
Justin glanced over at Frank, and what he saw was not good: Frank was a zombie. It was up to Justin, the captain, alone, to handle this maniac with the gun. He figured the main thing was don't piss him off, do what he said, fly him to Freeport. They'd be tracked on radar; the authorities would be alerted; rescuers would be sent.
Justin clung to that thought. Help was coming.
As he ran, Greer was talking into his special phone. Baker was behind him and missed most of what he said. The only word he heard clearly was "fighters."