by Ben English
He checked his seat belt.
The emergency medical and fire response units assigned to the airport were housed in a single-story cement headquarters next to the main terminal, behind a single low concrete barrier. Common sense dictated that the vehicles for the response teams have easy access to the tarmac and both the commercial and private terminals, and the ambulance shared a parking garage with the firefighting teams and a mobile unit of airport security.
The bullnose dump truck blew through the barrier at full bore, still accelerating as it drew down on the parking garage entrance. A red fire truck appeared at the entrance to the garage, lights and sirens fully active, and met the dump truck head on.
The driver felt the impact in his bones, deeply, but the mass of his vehicle and its velocity managed to swallow the killing force of the collision. He actually needed to apply brakes.
The fire engine was a mess, its front end mangled beyond recognition. Fluids pooled underneath. The warning lights and alarms still worked, and someone inside pounded frantically on the horn.
Exiting the cab of the dump truck, the driver checked to make sure the entrance was fully blocked. He’d aimed well, allowing for little space on either side of his truck. Nothing larger than a Vespa would come out of that garage.
From the other side of all the smoke and burning oil, someone shouted at him in Spanish, asking if he were all right. He answered with a brief burst from his Norinco 56, and the shouting stopped.
He tossed a satchel of explosives underneath each axle, grimacing at the sound of the sirens underneath the low ceiling. Smoke pooled under the cement roof, and someone coughed. Others yelled, their cries desperate. He doubted they appreciated the full nature of their situation.
A deep lungful of fresh air greeted him outside, along with a handful of rain. The planes themselves were nearby. His path took him under the elevated tramway, and he put a cement support between himself and the emergency response building before triggering the last of his explosives.
*
Jack frowned, matching the expression of the security guard between him and Nasim. The security guards seemed determined on enforcing a one-way flow of humans out of the building. The guard at the gate carried himself like an athlete, but Jack had no intention of stopping this close to Nasim.
Still, he regretted what he was about to do. Despite the opinions of Hollywood and most popular fiction, it was tremendously difficult to knock someone unconscious with a single blow to the head, let alone if they had any idea you were about to attempt it.
The guard rocked back and forth on his feet and flexed his hands. He looked Cuban, but by his stance and the manner in which he wore his uniform—belt height, pants length—Jack placed him as a Repatriated. Probably third generation in the United States, but still a Cuban. Jack found himself thinking about the University of Miami’s offensive line.
He steeled himself for a rush at the security gate, and saw Miklos change direction.
The other man broke clear of the crowd and moved for the tram. No one could hold him. He’d come out of customs on the Departures side of the track.
Jack nodded amiably at the guard and sprinted towards the Arrivals side of the platform. With less distance to travel, Miklos was probably already there.
*
Miklos was learning to trust the little voice in his ear. Apparently his team was ahead of schedule. Both rocket teams were closer to the extraction point than he expected. Perhaps they’d join him after all. He turned to leave the concourse just as the next missile hit.
Another rocket, corkscrewing in from the direction of the control tower, slammed into a jetliner attached to the terminal, and the echo of the explosion caromed down the gangway, out the gate, and shuddered across every surface in the long hall. Bits of aluminum struck the thick glass in rapid staccato. Several launched with sufficient force to embed themselves in the gummy, coated glass. The windows cracked and crazed in splintering rhyme, and chips of cement sloughed off the frames. The windows went opaque as tiny cracks multiplied, creased, and folded in on themselves.
Another rocket hit, and the fuel tank of the plane ignited. Glass splintered with a sound like a gunshot, and as the jet fuel spattered and ignited, the opaque walls hove in. A heaving wall of flame surged behind them and the air in the long hall groaned, like a doomed soul gasping for breath in hell.
Instantly the sprinkler system activated, but the carpeted areas and the electronic signs reached their flashpoint quicker than the speed of falling water. The far end of the concourse burned freely and hard, dripping with incandescent jet fuel. A steady, directed breeze instantly kicked up; the fire was drawing oxygen to itself, along with any other combustible material. The breeze became a gale wind. Snatches of rain flew in the shattered front of the airport and all the way down the concourse. Miklos felt the droplets on his face, and grinned. The water was warm, like the blood and tears of the lesser beings around him.
A second plane ignited behind him. And a third.
Even in the extremity of their terror, the lesser beings drew back as he swept through them. It was a primal reaction, an instinct born into the race. They recognized a predator in their midst. Miklos ran onto the platform in perfect balance; no one stood in his way.
Someone moved in counterpoint, however. On the far side of the platform, behind the glass wall separating the tram from the main entrance, raced another tall figure, almost a mirror-image. Miklos was not surprised in the least. Jack Flynn, brought here by fate or destiny or the symmetry of the moment. He felt a chuckle bubble in the back of his throat, and glanced down the track. Any regret he felt at leaving the scene of all this beautiful carnage and fear was about to be swallowed up in the next few seconds.
The crowd included several children.
*
Mercedes cut across the hall, a few seconds behind Jack as he stepped onto the platform. A wall of humanity filled the other side, from the edge of the track to the narrow pass back up toward the burning concourse. The terrorist stood among them yet separated from them by a radius of dead air, of almost palpable dread. It shone in the faces of everyone on that side. The terrorist smiled, as if drawing strength from their near-panic.
His hand rested on the shoulder of a small boy, maybe nine years’ old, wearing a Goodwill Games shirt. He looked sadly at Jack and Mercedes.
The concourse behind them burned with a blind, heedless fury. Soldiers and others in uniform struggled to make it down onto the track, but the crowd was far too compressed. Another explosion quivered through the building, and the interior glass walls trembled. Miklos laughed.
Almost without thinking, she sighted down the viewfinder and captured a picture, using Jack’s head and shoulders to partly frame a longer shot of the terrorist and the child. The compressed scene pulled her attention into a tight focus, and Mercedes didn’t lower the camera immediately. Watching Jack square himself on the edge of the cement overhang, she was suddenly struck with the oddest taste of déjà vu. Almost an echo of the epiphany she’d been riding the past few weeks.
Without lowering the camera she switched it to capture video, and recorded a few seconds of the two men, separated by a few yards of air, as they sized each other up. Jack bounced lightly on the balls of both feet.
Miklos noticed. Mirth danced in his colorless hair and eyes. He indicated the gap between the platforms. “Think you can leap it in a single bound?”
A soft pinging sound filled the platform.
Miklos shoved the child. With a cry, the boy dropped onto the tracks.
The people mover tram slid into the building. It was empty, but moving faster than it had any right, squealing and shrieking down the tracks. A collective gasp went across the face of the crowd, outrage mixed with disbelief, mostly inarticulate emotion. A man near the entrance flinched back towards the crowd; it was packed too tightly, and he rebounded toward the oncoming car. It clipped his forearm, spinning him in place. Blood fountained.
The brake
s engaged, and thick plumes of incandescent sparks from beneath the tram crested the concrete lip of the platform at even intervals.
Jack plunged at the child, oblivious. His feet touched down and he was already bending and turning to gather the little body lying between the rails and hurled him, hard, into Mercedes. She fell backwards under the sudden weight and lost sight of Jack, still spinning with the momentum of his throw.
The tram roared in, sparking, and met the end of the track with a surprisingly gentle click.
Mercedes pushed herself to a sitting position, doing her best to cradle the sobbing child with her body. All the tram doors snapped open with a merry ping, and the crowd flooded through the cars. Mercedes barely had the opportunity to surrender the little boy to his family before being borne back into the main terminal by the press of humanity running for the exit.
Even in her shock and grief, she knew what she needed to do. A spot to the left of the door gave her a vantage point, and Mercedes looked at every face pouring out into the rain. It took concentration and a quick eye, but when the flow ebbed Mercedes was sure Miklos hadn’t slipped out among them.
Ignoring everyone else, she ran back to Arrivals. The decks stood empty. Another chime sounded, and the tram doors eased shut. Placing her palm against the steel and ceramic skin of the car, she looked down. There was barely a handbreadth of space between the platform’s concrete edge and the car. Dark smoke curled in that space, as whatever plastics and rubber lay below smoldered.
Rain gusted in through the open track at the end of the platform, danced quietly on the surface of the train. Mercedes felt her heart and head begin to turn toward memories of an old man and a frog handkerchief, then wrested her thoughts back to the moment.
Miklos hadn’t left the airport. Through the glass doors of the train, distorted, she saw a door on the other side, further along the wall. It stood ajar.
The sliding tram doors were a loss. Locked. Mercedes placed the tip of one shoe in the lower corner of a tram window, grabbed a rail near the door, and pulled herself up far enough to get a decent handhold on the roof. She lost no time scrambling across the train and sliding down the other side.
The door on the other side turned out to be a maintenance access point, with a lock requiring a magnetic key and a combination keypad. However it opened, it would never close properly again: The doorframe itself had shifted, probably due to the man-made earthquakes.
She felt for her camera and the phone, drew Jack’s coat around her, and crept down the stairs into the dimness beyond.
Mercedes paused, motionless, on a wire mesh platform overlooking the luggage conveyor belt, watching the terrorist escape. She took his picture, flashless, as Miklos sailed by beneath her. For some reason, she kept moving after him. The clacking from the machinery covered her steps.
The underworkings of the airport were a maze of gantry ways and platforms, wide paths for forklifts and narrow, canted chutes for luggage of all sizes. Emergency lighting and red strobes illuminated her path down the stairs, and as she navigated the web of inconsistent shadows Mercedes did her best to shake the idea of some large, bulb-bodied bug waiting for her to step into just the right spot for it to gather her up and spin her a soft cocoon.
It smelled of diesel and kerosene.
Only one conveyor belt moved, and it bore Miklos away. She hesitated only briefly before stepping on it herself.
It stood to reason Miklos had some help beyond himself, beyond even the men who were setting bombs or whatever around the airport. The way the tram showed up was nearly supernatural, and now the conveyor belt – he had a hacker on his team, of course. All those systems were controlled by computers. She wondered if she were being watched.
Gantries and walkways passed by overhead, some very low, many with blinking emergency beacons. One such light illuminated Miklos crouching spiderlike, surveying everything around him. The belt system bore them through sections of light and darkness. They must be near the second terminal by now, the undamaged section of the airport.
The singing belt underneath the machine reminded her of nothing so much as the sound of the cable car system back in San Francisco. The memory came to her oddly, clean and clear, as if she were standing on the corner of Battery and California, watching the trolley trundle by.
The baggage conveyor emptied them out practically underneath a turboprop airliner. Mercedes rolled off the belt as soon as she had enough light to do so, and moved between stacks of luggage and empty pallets until she was near the plane.
Jack’s phone was useless. A black plastic pebble. She couldn’t find a single button or seam for a slide-out keyboard. Maybe it was keyed to his thumbprint, or something. So much for calling in the cavalry.
Miklos was conferring with a group of what appeared to be airport workmen, although two of them carried compact machine guns. Each of them stood stock-still, and this fact more than any other told Mercedes these were dangerous, dangerous men.
It was a passenger plane. White, worried faces peered out of each window. It looked full.
The men spoke in Spanish. “We’ve taken all the cellphones. The plane is in radio silence.”
“Fueled?” Miklos asked.
The first one nodded. “We have the air traffic control codes as well.”
He hesitated. The taller man gestured impatiently.
“There is extra Semtex, and two more assault rockets for the M141.” He exchanged glances with a third man, who asked, “Do you want us to bring this terminal down as well?”
Miklos shook his head. “Our . . . employer wants to make sure as many people as possible get away from Cuba over the next few days.” His eyes narrowed. “There is something else. Tell me.”
“We have money, a large amount, in multinational denominations.” He found an additional measure of courage. “Mr. Raines assured us we could take it to the island, for our struggle in Colombia.”
A terrible expression crossed Miklos’ face, but he merely said, “Load it. We leave in two minutes.”
All but two boarded the plane. Mercedes watched the remaining mercenaries—she couldn’t think of anything else to call them—work away at a stack of square packages wrapped in brown burlap and hemp twine.
And now?
The question almost sounded like it came from outside her own head. What now? Well, that was obvious. She snapped a picture of the two men, and another of the plane. The aircraft registration numbers on the tail were visible in the shot. That should be enough. She would turn the photos over to the military, maybe to Alonzo. Jack’s team would know what to do. That was the safest thing to do.
Really, the safest thing to do.
And in her mind’s eye she saw Jack Flynn as he erupted from the skylight, as he threw Lopez across the roof. Dancing with her in the plaza across from the coffee shop, Alonzo and the British woman laughing at them both. Seventeen year-old Jack, standing between Alonzo and Merrick and that damn baseball bat—then a few days afterward, when she discovered him asleep on her front porch in Palo Alto, practically hypothermic in Northern California’s subzero version of August. She saw adult Jack walking with easy purpose against the tide of people fleeing the airport, toward the still point of destruction, seeking out the center of the fury. She saw him pluck the little boy off the tracks, careless, relaxed, even in the path of the onrushing train.
Perhaps two more loads for the mercenaries to carry to the cargo door. The plane held innocent people. She didn’t need a little voice to tell her what to do next. No epiphany required.
Mercedes prepped her camera and found a decent place to set it, facing the plane. Took care of a few last arrangements, and ran for the cargo door as soon as the two men turned their backs.
*
He hoped she caught the little guy. Would be nice to find out either way.
This isn’t exactly how he planned on ending the day. Jack wriggled a bit, keeping his eyes shut and ignoring the urge to breath. Smells of scorched rubber and metal came t
o him anyway. He felt the superheated air from the rails and electric brakes against the entire length of his back, and wondered how much space separated him from the tram. Wondered if there was enough warmth to cook him, slowly.
To call it a crawlspace would be an exaggeration. He’d seen the gap underneath the overhanging train platform the instant after he made the decision to go after the little boy, and managed to shoehorn himself in and get a decent breath all in the same moment. Another leap of faith rewarded, though not necessarily by comfort.
Plenty warm down here, though.
The tram pinged happily again, and eased away down the track. Thank God for mindless, redundant computer programs, thought Jack. He gingerly turned himself around in the narrow space, eyed the rails, and eased himself out from beneath the overhang.
The tramway was quiet. He brushed a handful of gum wrappers and other filth from his clothes, enjoying the taste of the air.
Jack didn’t fancy himself claustrophobic, but decided it was just fine if he didn’t spend any more time in any enclosed space for whatever passed for the rest of his natural life.
*
The construction crew was the only manpower available. Alonzo rallied them quickly and commandeered a small fleet of bulldozers to scrape a burn zone around the flammable areas, and clear a path around the wrecked portion of the highway so emergency crews from Havana could reach the airport and evacuate. The crew had decent first aid supplies, and quickly began attending to the survivors of the overpass bombing.
The locals worked with much passion. He had to step in only once, to dissuade a foreman from pushing a wall of dirt onto one of the smoldering buildings near the civilian terminal, explaining that there might be civilians trapped inside.