Infernal

by F. Paul Wilson

  I should’ve been there, goddamn it.

  He didn’t know what use his little six-shot .380 would have been against Mac-l0s or HK-5s. Not much, probably, but you never knew.

  Another fantasy… taking down a single shooter with a couple of .380s into his face… or, if there’d been two or three, taking one down, tossing his AMT to Dad, then grabbing the downed shooter’s weapon and the two of them taking on the others… just as they’d taken on Semelee’s clan in the Everglades.

  More likely he’d now be lying dead beside his dad.

  At least they’d have put up a fight, kept whoever it was from getting clean away.

  And maybe being dead wouldn’t be as bad as dealing with this blistering guilt for not being there when his father needed him most.

  Jack forced himself out of the fantasy to deal with the reality of the moment: The gun had to go.

  He popped out the magazine, removed the chambered cartridge, then pulled out the old, oil-stained rag he kept in the glove compartment. He emptied the magazine, wiped it down, then did the same with each casing.

  He removed the leather ankle holster and wiped that down. Then he removed the slide assembly from the pistol frame and wiped each part.

  He opened the car door. A look around showed no one in sight, so he got out and leaned over the edge of the parapet. No one below. He dropped the slide onto the pavement six stories down.

  He began walking the perimeter of the level, tossing a cartridge every hundred feet or so, then finally the frame and the holster.

  When he returned to his car he moved it to a more centrally located slot.

  Then he crossed the skyway back toward the terminal. At the end he turned the corner and found himself in the middle of a crowd. Security personnel were blocking the escalators down to the ticketing and baggage levels.

  Jack tapped a heavyset woman on her arm.

  “What’s going on?”

  She looked at him—bloodshot eyes, blotchy face, tear-smeared mascara.

  “They won’t let us down! My daughter was due in! I—I don’t know if she’s alive or dead!”

  At least you still have hope, Jack thought.

  * * *

  6

  He’d been standing on the glass-walled skyway for two hours. Dark now—the sun had set around four thirty. He’d called Gia to tell her he was okay. She said she’d heard the news and had been worried sick. When he told her about his father she broke down. Listening to her sob, he’d almost lost it himself.

  Two hours with the crowd of mourners and stranded passengers watching a seemingly endless parade of stretchers wheeled back and forth from the terminal to the ambulances below. All carried bagged bodies. He saw no wounded and wondered why.

  No matter. Dad wouldn’t be among them. It ate at Jack that he hadn’t known which bag contained his father.

  And finally the stretchers stopped rolling, and the last of the ambulances pulled away.

  “Where are the survivors?” said a forty-something woman nearby. “Aren’t there any survivors?”

  “Maybe they were taken out another way.”

  “No way,” she said with an emphatic shake of her head. “I know this airport, everything at this end has to funnel through directly below us. I’ve watched the ambulances coming and going, and right down there was the only spot they stopped.”

  “There have to be some survivors,” said a man in a herringbone overcoat. “I mean, they couldn’t have killed everybody.”

  Seemed logical, but Jack couldn’t remember seeing anyone stirring amid the bloodbath.

  He kept that to himself, however. He was concerned with where they’d taken his father… and how he was going to claim the body when he didn’t own a single piece of ID under his real name.

  He wandered back to the escalators. Still blocked, but he spotted a familiar-looking cop—the older one from inside—giving instructions to the security men.

  “Sergeant?” he called. “Hey, sergeant?”

  The cop didn’t turn.

  What was his name? He’d seen the nameplate but had been in shock—wait. Driscoll. Yeah.

  “Sergeant Driscoll?”

  When he turned Jack waved to him. He looked as if he couldn’t place Jack’s face.

  “We met inside. Where can I claim my father’s body?”

  As Jack’s question was echoed by other voices, Driscoll stepped closer.

  “Call the one-one-five—”

  “Precinct?” someone said.

  “Right. They’ll have a procedure in place.”

  “What about the wounded?” a woman asked. “What hospital were—?”

  Driscoll shook his head. His grim expression became grimmer.

  “We have no wounded.”

  “No wounded!” the woman cried, her voice edging into a wail. “They can’t all be dead!”

  “We have survivors who saw what happened, and they’re being debriefed, but we have no wounded.”

  “How can that 6e?”

  “We’re working on that, ma’am.”

  “What happened?” someone else said as horrified cries rose all around. “Who did this? Who’s responsible?”

  He shook his head. “I can’t answer that. The mayor and the commissioner will be holding a press conference at City Hall soon. You’ll have to wait till then.”

  “But—”

  He held up his hand. “I’ve told you all I can.”

  “When can we leave?” someone shouted as he turned.

  “The checkpoints are in place now. You can start to head out.”

  And then his back was to them and he was walking away. If he heard any of the questions called out after him, he gave no sign.

  Jack too barely heard them. The word “checkpoints” was blaring though his mind.

  His earlier misgivings about his Tyleski ID withstanding full-bore scrutiny had became full-blown doubt. But even if it did pass muster, his car was another story. A check of the registration would raise a horde of questions. Like why was he driving a car registered to someone else? And to Vinny “the Donut” Donato, of all people? If someone checked with the owner they’d learn that the black Crown Vic in question was sitting in his garage in Brooklyn.

  Then even more shit would hit the fan.

  Bad enough to be bagged for false ID, but to be suspected of being connected to the terrorists who’d killed his own father… a father he couldn’t officially claim as his own…

  Had to find another way out.

  * * *

  7

  Jack fought the numbness his mind yearned to yield to and forced it to focus. He shuttled between the garage and the skyway, getting the lay of the land and not finding much in the way of potential escape routes.

  To the north lay the runways, the East River, and Rikers Island. If he didn’t get out of here soon, Rikers might be his new home.

  To the south, past Ditmars Boulevard and Grand Central Parkway, the glowing house windows of Jackson Heights beckoned.

  East offered only dark expanses of marsh and more of the East River. The west had possibilities, but involved long stretches of exposure.

  He had to get down to the highway.

  Jack fell in with a group heading from the skyway to the garage. No one spoke. Shock was the order of the day.

  As they entered the fourth level and scattered toward their respective cars, Jack took the elevator down to the ground floor. Crossed to the outer rim and hopped over the wall. Cut across an access lane to a low concrete wall. Hopped that, landing on a patch of bare ground. Directly ahead, across a scraggly winter lawn, lay Grand Central Parkway.

  All that stood between Jack and freedom was an eight-foot, chain-link fence with a barbed-wire crown.

  Blue-and-white police units and sinister black SUVs kept roaring in and out along the airport access roads.

  That fence… that damn fence…

  Couldn’t go over it. No big deal physically—he could easily climb the links and throw his sweatshi
rt over the barbed wire—but he’d be spotted for sure.

  Had to find another way.

  Jack lay flat and began to belly crawl through the cold, dead grass. When he reached the fence he turned and crept along its base, feeling his way, searching for—

  His hand slipped into a depression in the dirt. Knew he’d find one somewhere along the line. Inevitable that some dog at some time would want to get past the fence. To do that it would dig. And one had dug here.

  Not deep enough to allow Jack through, but okay. The dog trough gave him a head start. All he had to do was make it a little deeper, strip down to his underwear, and slip through.

  He pulled out his knife and flipped it open. A sin to use a Spyderco Endura as a digging tool, but…

  At least the ground was still soft. Though cold, winter was a couple weeks off, and the ground hadn’t frozen yet.

  He began to dig, loosening the dirt with the knife blade and scooping it out with his free hand…

  * * *

  8

  Jack crouched in the shadows under an overpass. He punched Abe’s number into his phone and prayed he was still at the store. He released a breath when he heard him pick up.

  “Abe? It’s me.”

  “Hello, Me. I don’t recall ever meeting a Me. I should know you?”

  “Hold the jokes, okay. I need a favor.”

  “Always with the favors.”

  “This is serious.”

  Abe must have picked up on his tone. “Serious how?”

  “I need a ride.”

  “You call that serious?”

  “Abe, I’m stranded on the Grand Central. Can you pick me up?”

  “I should drive all the way out to Queens when you can take a cab?”

  “I can’t take a cab.”

  “Why? Someone pick your pock—hey, wait. Are you out near the airport?”

  “Very.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “No.”

  “Wait—your father was coming in today. Was he—?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Gevalt! He’s not…?”

  “Yeah, Abe. He’s gone.”

  “What?”

  “Gone.”

  Silence on the other end. Finally Abe spoke, his voice thick.

  “Jack… Jack, I’m so sorry. What can I do? Anything. Just tell me.”

  “Come get me, Abe. Check the underpasses near the airport exit ramp. I’m under one of them. Wish I could tell you which one but…”

  “I’ll take the truck.”

  “Hurry.”

  * * *

  9

  Hours later Jack sat slumped in a funk on Gia’s couch while she huddled against him. Vicky was upstairs doing her homework. Gia had told her that Jack’s father had died and left it at that. Knowing that he’d been slaughtered in what the media were now calling the “Flight 715 Massacre” would only frighten her. Better for now to let her think he was an old man who’d died of natural causes—whatever those were.

  They stared at the old TV, watching the same shots of La Guardia’s Central Terminal, hearing the same clips of the mayor, the police commissioner, the head of Homeland Security, and the president himself. No new news, just repetitions of what little had been gleaned from witnesses who had been close enough to see the massacre, but far enough away to stay clear:

  Two gunmen wearing airport coveralls, ski masks, and Arab headdress—described as “the kind of thing Arafat wore”—had entered baggage claim through an employees-only doorway and opened up on the passengers of American Airlines flight 715. The result was one hundred and fifty-two dead—men, women, children, passengers, relatives, limo drivers, security guards—everyone who’d been anywhere near the carousel.

  Among the dead were forty-seven members of the ultra-orthodox Satmar Hasidic sect returning to Crown Heights from a gathering in Miami. Since the killers did not attack any of the other nearby carousels, the news heads speculated that the presence of such a sizable group of Hasidim might have been why that particular flight was targeted.

  After finishing their bloody work, the killers had fled through the same doorway. In the hallway beyond they’d discarded their coveralls, their masks and kufiyas, as well as their assault pistols. Word had leaked that both pistols were Tavor-2 models, manufactured in Israel. That started speculation that the choice of weapon might have been a way of adding insult to injury. Jews slaughtered by Israeli-made weapons.

  But the question most asked by the news heads to their endless parade of experts on terrorism and Arabs and Islam, singly or on panels, was why there were no wounded. How could every wound be fatal? Finally someone offered the possibility that the terrorists might have used cyanide-filled hollow-point rounds.

  “Oh, my God!” Gia said. “How could they?” Then she shook her head. “Sorry. Stupid question.”

  “I figured it might be something like that.”

  “Why? How?”

  As he’d knelt next to his dead father, Jack’s reeling mind hadn’t been able to process all the surrounding sights and sounds. But as he’d waited in the cold darkness for Abe, he’d slowed and corralled his chaotic thoughts, and painstakingly pieced together what he had seen.

  Dad hadn’t been lying in a pool of blood—he’d been lying next to one that seemed to have come from the uniformed woman beside him. His body wasn’t bullet riddled; in fact Jack had seen only one wound, a bloody hole near the left buttock, but not much bleeding from that.

  “My father’s wound—at least the one I could see—seemed to be a flesh wound. Of course the bullet could have ricocheted off a bone and cut through a major artery. But after I heard there were no wounded, that everyone who’d been shot was dead, I began to suspect cyanide.”

  None of this had been confirmed, but Jack was pretty sure it would turn out to be something along those lines.

  Gia shivered against him. “I’ve never heard of—I mean, what hideous sort of mind dreams up these things?”

  “Cyanide bullets aren’t new. They’re a terrorist favorite, but usually when they’re out to assassinate a specific target. The poison guarantees that an otherwise nonlethal wound will be fatal. First I ever heard of them was back when we were kids—when those Symbionese Liberation Army nuts used cyanide-tipped bullets to kill that school superintendent. But for mass murder? Never heard of them being used for that. At least until now.”

  Gia closed her eyes as a tear slid from each. “So if they’d used regular bullets your father could have lived… if he’d laid still and played dead, he might have survived, and we’d be standing around his hospital bed now talking about how lucky he was.”

  Thinking about what could have been and might have been never worked for Jack. Seemed like self-torture, and he felt tortured enough right now.

  “I doubt it.”

  Gia opened her eyes. “What do you mean?”

  “I saw a smear of blood about the length of his leg on the floor beside him. His hand was on the holster of a dead security guard. I think—no, I’m sure he was going after her gun. Dad wasn’t the type to sit and wait to be killed. He was an excellent shot. If he’d reached the gun… who knows? I doubt he could have taken down both of them, but maybe he could have hit one of them, and that might have scared off the other.”

  Could have… might have…

  Useless.

  Just as useless as the rerun of his fantasy of teaming up with Dad to take out the killers.

  Gia said, “He would have been a hero.”

  “Most likely they’d have cut him to ribbons as soon as he fired his first shot.”

  “At least you got to see him again. If this had happened down in Miami, you, well… you’re now the last one to see him alive.”

  Jack knew he couldn’t claim that blessing for himself.

  “No, the killers were.”

  “I mean in his family—oh, God! Family! Did you call your brother?”

  Shit!

  “No. I didn’t even think…”

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