Part 32 (1/2)
”Miss Cheysson,” the guard said, viewing Kort somewhat suspiciously. ”If you'd just back it up and pull it over there, please. The line's still busy. I can't get through, and I've got to get an authorization number before admitting your car onto the field.”
Kort put the first and only bullet necessary into the man's nose, taking a piece out of the back of his head and knocking him down as if he were made of cardboard. Monique barked with horror but quickly controlled herself. Kort hurried to the guard booth. He hit the switch that opened the red-and-white-striped boom and waved Monique through. He stuffed the body inside, tripped the switch again, lowering the boom, and slid the booth's metal door closed. He took one step toward the Toyota, reconsidered, and tried the plastic sign that was framed on the front of the booth. PLEASE HAVE IDENTIFICATION READY FOR GUARD, it read in big bold print. It moved. He slipped it out of its frame and flipped it over. GATE CLOSED. He returned it to the frame, ducked under the boom, and joined her.
She drove away at an incredible speed.
”Slow down,” he said. ”No need to attract attention.”
Her lower jaw was trembling. ”They'll find him.”
”Maybe not for a while. These are the chances we take.”
”And how do I get back out, please? You have the mechanic's identification. You can slip out without any problem ”
”Anyone can slip out without a problem. It's getting in that's the problem.” He placed the fire extinguisher back in the bag, and removing the coveralls from it, slipped them on. He clipped Boote's ID crudely to his pocket, though he faced the man's photograph against his chest so that only the backside of the ID showed. Identification tags, especially on baggage handlers and mechanics, often ended up clipped on this way, hastily returned to clothing after falling off. ”Park it over by the terminal somewhere. You've got your ID. You can get out any door you want.”
”You shouldn't have done it.”
”We're fine. Five minutes is all I need. We're going to lose the car, so we'll meet at the Pentagon Metro stop in one hour.”
That turned her head. ”What, are you kidding?”
”I want to see my work,” he said, motioning for her to pull over. The tailfin of the huge 959 with red-white-and-blue letters spelling QUIKLINK, lay waiting for him, twenty yards to their left. It was scheduled for takeoff in a matter of minutes.
FORTY-TWO.
DAGGETT ARRIVED AT the entrance to Quik-Link Couriers out of breath and in a full sweat, his watch showing less than five minutes of his estimated thirty remaining. To his frustration, he found himself in the midst of a s.h.i.+ft change, at the back of a long line of fresh employees stretching from the company's self-provided security check-in. He quickly broke out of the line and reached the bottleneck, where employees were individually showing their ID tags to either one of the two guards who manned the station. Daggett removed his ID and allowed it to hang open.
”FBI,” he said loudly enough to gain the attention of the man closest to him. ”It's an emergency. I have to see whoever's in charge.”
”You carrying a piece?”
Daggett removed his weapon and showed it to the man.
”You gotta leave it with me.”
”That's absurd. I'm here on business. I'm FBI!”
”I don't care if you're J. Edgar Hoover, pal. The piece stays with me.”
”You know a guy named Henderson?” Daggett asked, recalling the name of the shorter of the two men with whom he had escaped the Bernard explosion. ”Airport Police?” The guard's brow furrowed. ”Henderson, I think. Call him up. Now. I want that piece with me. Tell him Special Agent Daggett. He'll okay it.” The guard put the gun out of sight, pointed to where Daggett could come through, and turned his attention to a waiting employee. Daggett grabbed. the phone's receiver, forced it into the guard's hand, and repeated, ”Henderson. Now.”
”Yeah, yeah,” the guard said, slightly intimidated and beginning to dial. ”Check back in a minute.”
Thanks to a receptionist who seemed either frightened or impressed by his considerable lather, Daggett was led to a back warehouse filled with sorting equipment, bright blue mailbags, and a level of activity one expected to see only in television ads. The manager, a lanky man in his late fifties with an Air Force haircut and a drill sergeant's charm, after hearing Daggett's opening salvo, pulled him out of the way of a tug towing three trailers and said, ”You got to be s.h.i.+tting me. First I've heard of it.”
”All I'm asking is that you stall that plane long enough to speak with my superiors.”
”Maybe I can do that.”
”Maybe?”
”I gotta check with my superiors first, right? Listen, I'm not trying to be a pain in the a.s.s here, but I gotta check you out and I gotta check with St. Louis before I hold up the afternoon flight. You know how many bomb threats this company gets? You have any idea?”
”This isn't a threat. I'm FBI. I'm working on information. I'm telling you that your 959 isn't leaving the ground, if I've got to see to it myself.”
”Now let's not get like that. Okay? You want to play f.u.c.king tough, friend? I can play f.u.c.king tough. Believe you me.” He tapped Daggett on the chest with a metal finger. ”You come with me. We'll make some f.u.c.king calls.” He walked away, his face a bright red.
Daggett saw the hole he had dug for himself. He'd been too pumped up by the run, too hot to act cool. ”What about the plane? Can't you at least hold the plane while we make the calls?”
”One thing at a time, friend. One thing at a f.u.c.king time.”
FORTY-THREE.
KORT HADN'T REALIZED how close he had cut it. Having planned to sabotage the morning plane, he realized now that the afternoon information he had was off by at least half an hour. Holes in information troubled him. He took them as bad omens. In a perfect world, there were never any holes.
Unlike the AmAirXpress flight 64, which he had so easily boarded during preflight maintenance, when he had experienced no c.o.c.kpit activity and had gone about his task completely alone, this time he stepped into a hornet's nest. At the plane's starboard midsection, large mail sacks, some stuffed to the limit, others limp and mostly empty, were being unloaded from towed trailers and tossed onto an active conveyor a.s.sembly that shuttled them up into the fuselage, where they were presumably stowed and secured for flight. On the left side of the plane, as Kort climbed the steep stairway to the flight deck, another maintenance engineer hurried past him carrying a stainless steel coffeepot. ”f.u.c.king coffee machine's down,” he said angrily. ”See if you can do something.”
I can do something, all right, Kort was thinking. What he did, once inside the plane, was place the flight bag down, remove the fire extinguisher, and step into the flight deck, where he unexpectedly encountered the two men he had come to kill. They were running through a checklist, each echoing the other with cryptic terms and busy fingers. Kort, whose unusual calm was rattled by finding the seats occupied, suddenly realized he was all but invisible to these two. They paid him no mind whatsoever. He dropped to one knee, fire extinguisher in hand, at which point the copilot said, ”You got the coffee fixed yet?”
”Working on it,” Kort answered.
”What gives?” the man asked as Kort went about working in the cramped quarters beneath his seat, reaching in from behind. But the pilot demanded his attention as he threw another switch, and Kort avoided an answer.
He unfastened the clamp holding the existing extinguisher, removed it, and replaced it with the one he had brought. Having earlier set the detonator's timer to the exact time specified by Ward's simulation of this flight forty-seven seconds he had nothing more to do. The beauty, as far as he was concerned, of Bernard's detonator was that it didn't require being turned on or activated. The pilots did that for him, first by pressurizing the airplane, and second by pointing the nose into the sky. At that point the clock would run, the gas would be released, and, at long last, it would all be over.
Tasting success and victory, Kort slipped out of the flight deck and debated whether to place the extinguisher in his bag or not. He knew well enough that hesitation was an operative's biggest enemy. The appearance of confidence was everything. He stuffed the extinguisher away and was just zipping the bag shut when the other mechanic came bounding up the stairs and stepped right past him. This man headed directly to the onboard coffee maker. As Kort stood the man asked, ”You new?”
It caught Kort off guard. Should he just leave? Did he dare? ”Yeah,” he said, attempting to sound as American as possible. He turned to face the man.
”Thought so.” He stuck his hand out. ”Russ Kane. Good to meet you.”
Kort shook his hand firmly, his mind going blank. He needed a name .. . His eyes found the airport identification tag riveted to the fuselage. ”David Dunning,” he said.