Shots Fired in Terminal 2

by William Hazelgrove

  “Outside…Do U have Clay?”

  “No.”

  I am back out in the sunshine and SWAT teams are running toward the terminal. People are crying, swearing, lying on the ground, hiding behind poles, shrubs, barricades, suitcases, nothing. Sirens come from everywhere. I start running, looking at the people behind car doors, tires, on the curb. An Asian woman stares at me as if I am a strange animal as she sits on an overturned luggage cart. Another woman cries into her phone. Everyone is feeling the same danger, the knowledge that anyone at any time could be shot and killed.

  This is the beginning of our incarceration that will last for the next eight hours. We are all trapped between Terminals 1 and 2, with hundreds of cars, police, media, ambulances, and a parking garage that now represents a shooting gallery. There is no information and there is no escape from an airport in lockdown, where every escape route represents a potential path into the sights of a shooter. Worse, if a shooter is on top of the garage with a high-powered rifle a bullet could find anyone at any moment.

  We don't know it, but from the second the shots in Terminal 1 were heard we were all trapped inside the Fort Lauderdale–Hollywood International Airport. This, to me, seems to be the ultimate setup for a terrorist—bottle up the ten thousand people in the airport and begin picking them off. I finally know what the definition of terror is…the horror of knowing I could be killed at any second.

  And at the same time I am indignant. How can this happen after 9/11? Aren't airports the one place where we are supposed to be safe? The truth is that any shooting or terrorist act of any kind in the United States relates back what happened on September 11, 2001. To this day that is the granddaddy of all terrorist acts in American, and our response to this singular event has affected our police, our politics, our sense of security, our ongoing fight over guns and rights under the Second Amendment, how we fly, our airports, our technology, the militarization of our civilian police force, our relationship with the Middle East, our immigration policies, and our election of presidents, and has led to our sense that we will forever be waiting for the next 9/11.

  Every time we take off our shoes, our belts, phones, and watches, and every time we get wanded or set off a puffer because talcum powder has chemical relations with sensors designed to detect explosives or a dog sniffs our luggage, we think of that sunny day in September when the world changed, the monster in our rearview mirror that we are always trying to drive away from.

  Flying would never be same after 9/11. It instantly became something we had to endure and get through as quickly as possible. We now leave hours before our flights to endure the security lines. We examine our shampoo bottles and get rid of any sort of aerosol can. Luggage will be displayed for all to see and possibly opened and manually inspected. Going to an airport now fills us with the dread associated with doctors’ offices. We could be poked and prodded and examined. A plane has become a potential bomb that could wipe out a skyscraper and pilots are potential terrorists. A Muslim woman or man sometimes instills fear in us as we put our carry-on bags into the overhead compartment and wonder for the tenth time if all that technology could really stop someone who wants to do us harm. It wasn't always this way.

  In the 1960s and 1970s, all aviation security was taken up a notch from what had been a system with very little security. After planes started getting hijacked, a system of X-ray machines, magnetometers, and federal air marshals was put into place, resulting in a dramatic reduction in hijackings. Then, in 1988, a bomb in the cargo hold of Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people. This pushed the George H. W. Bush administration to implement “anti-explosive” procedures, with mandatory X-ray screening of baggage and a one hundred percent passenger bag match.1

  We were creeping toward 9/11 with baby steps. Responsibility for air safety and security in airports was divided between the FAA and the airlines. The Federal Aviation Administration was responsible for minimum security standards and had the power to enforce those standards with inspections and fines. The airlines were responsible for screening passengers, baggage, and cargo and for protecting the planes. Congress would create aviation security law and was responsible for funding the federal part of the aviation security system.

  The biggest concern in airports up to 9/11 was keeping the planes flying and people moving through airports. Security was still secondary to getting people to their destinations quickly. There had not been a bombing or hijacking since 1991, and the feeling was that the threat to airlines had been contained. On September 11, 2001, the American security system for aviation centered on detecting the placement of explosives in baggage. The screening focused on preventing handguns or large knives from getting on airliners.

  But let's say those box cutters had been detected; the rules of that time would have required the terrorists to check their box cutters in baggage, where they could retrieve them later. Much like Esteban Santiago, the terrorists would have had to wait to retrieve their weapons after their flights had landed before commencing with their carnage. This would have prevented the destruction of the World Trade Center in theory and would have left the terrorists with the possibility of attacking passengers in the baggage claim area and potentially closing down an airport. But it gets worse.

  The 9/11 terrorists were known to the authorities and had been flagged as potential threats. Two of the nineteen hijackers were on terrorist watchlists, which the FAA had not been made aware of.2 Seven of the nineteen were identified as potential threats to civil aviation based on their ticketing information.3 Mohamed Atta, the ringleader, was singled out in the airport for extra security scrutiny, along with two others who could not answer security questions correctly.4 Twelve of the nineteen hijackers had been identified as potential threats, and it gets worse again—three set off the magnetometers (metal detectors) in the airport, and two of the three set off a second magnetometer. Yet all nineteen of the hijackers eventually did board the planes.

  We would like to think that this could never happen again. In the post 9/11 world we see airports and planes as secure areas, where an array of electronic, human, and K9 detection and apprehension keep the threats to the far side of the TSA checkpoints. On one side is the sterile world of the airport, where all screening has taken place; the odds of someone penetrating this safe zone is very low. On the other side is the dirty world where people come and go…and pick up their baggage.

  The 9/11 commission, formed to assess what had gone wrong and what could be done to prevent future attacks, made many recommendations. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) was formed to oversee aviation security. We are all now well acquainted with the TSA men and women at the checkpoints, who ask us to take off our shoes and our belts and ask if we have anything in our pockets.

  Another recommendation of the commission was that “to enhance security and improve efficiency, explosives detection equipment should be moved from airport lobbies and placed where they can accomplish their vital mission ‘in line’ as checked baggage is moved from the check-in counter to the aircraft.”5 This would expand the sterile area and make sure any baggage, be it carry on or checked, would be subject to the same rigorous screening. This would not include the baggage claim area, however, which would still be outside the sterile area.

  Another change that came after 9/11 involved passenger prescreening. This had already existed to a lesser extent in the form of CAPPS, the Computer-Assisted Passenger Prescreening System, which alerted airlines as to passengers whose bags should receive further inspection. The TSA and the airlines would consult the terrorist watchlist, the No Fly List, and the Automatic Selectee List. The people on the first two lists would not board the plane, and the Automatic Selectees would be subject to rigorous screening.

  In 2004, a report by the Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security, found a high-risk area, a hole in the security apparatus: information sharing: “Creating a single infrastructure for effective communications and informat
ion exchange at various classification levels within the Department remains a major management challenge for DHS.”6 In other words, if a man goes to the FBI and says that he is hearing voices telling him to kill, that he has been instructed by ISIS, and that he has a gun—which the FBI takes away from him and then gives it back—the agency should put that information into the database so that when one Esteban Santiago goes to purchase a one-way ticket for Fort Lauderdale–Hollywood International Airport he will be prevented from boarding an airliner with his Walther 9mm in the cargo hold.

  After spending more than twenty billion dollars on aviation security after 9/11, the federal government, the TSA, the airlines, Congress, and Homeland Security couldn't stop a man who should have been watchlisted from flying with his handgun, which he was able to retrieve in the baggage claim area at his destination and then to inflict unspeakable horror and close down a major US airport for twenty-four hours. Some might call this a complete breakdown of aviation security, and then some might say that in the wake of 9/11 we are always waiting for the other shoe to drop. This time the shoe dropped inside the safe zone. Some might say you can't really stop anyone who is determined to kill.

  This thought gives me no solace as I look for my family.

  I had graduated college with a master's degree in history with the thought that I would go to law school. This was some sort of F. Lee Bailey dream that had more to do with my grandfather, who had been a highly regarded lawyer in Virginia. I had never been a great student until I could write a historical thesis in graduate school and use the power of prose to explain my arguments in exam essays. This did not help on the Law School Admission Test, which required deductive reasoning. So I sat down and wrote a novel.

  Six years later I was published and had started down the high-risk road of the novelist. I married Kitty, who had been engaged to a man who promised a more stable life. I was the fun guy who took her for motorcycle rides in the middle of the night and picked her up from her advertising agency at all hours of the morning. The more stable man in her life demanded an answer, and she threw over security for the unknown. “I know I will never be bored with you,” she said.

  I wonder now if a boring life would have been so bad. You always question your choices after a certain amount of water has flowed over the dam and that old saw that actions have consequences takes root. I have had a good career as a writer, with over twelve books, many good reviews, and even a movie-rights sale. But I've never had that out-of-the-park homerun, and so my life has resembled a high-wire act, always just one bad step from the abyss. Having kids, of course, had put that wire just a little higher.

  And as I run along the outside of the terminal looking for my family in the middle of a shooting, I think about the odds. What are the odds I have played with my whole life? Would a different career have produced different results? Maybe we would not have had a layover if I had more money. Maybe we would have caught an earlier flight and gone to the beach to kill time and not been sitting in the airport. Maybe Kitty should have married that more stable man who had a more stable life. Maybe boring is alright. Maybe this is where the dice comes up snake eyes, and the odds I have played my whole life have come for their due.

  The odds of being struck by lightning are about 1 in 1,000,000. The odds of being in a mass shooting are 1 in 11,125.1 But here is the statistic that stops you cold: the chance that you will be shot dead with a firearm in America is 1 in 315. Gun violence is the eighteenth leading cause of death in the United States.2

  This is in the realm of possibility. But none of these numbers mean a thing when you are in the middle of a shooting. You have broken the odds, smashed the roulette table, busted through twenty-one in blackjack, and rolled snake eyes. You have somehow entered the world of the unlucky and joined forces with people on television crying, bleeding, dying, and telling the world how unlucky they are. You are now officially the unluckiest person you know. Now I am running up and down like a madman trying to find my family. Oddly, I think of the time when I was a kid in Virginia and my friend showed me the room where his father had committed suicide. It was in a den, and he pointed to a hole in the ceiling. “That's where the bullet went,” he whispered. “It came out of his head.” I was maybe nine and didn't understand how that small hole could mean the death of a father. But bullets and guns have always been on the periphery one way or another.

  Now I am running, sweating, wheezing, looking frantically for the people I would die for, and another image comes to me. Kitty and I are in a bad neighborhood in Chicago and automatic weapon fire breaks out. I push her down in the car and I try and get us out of there and I smash into the car behind me. It is a summer night and people are running in all directions trying to get away from the bullets. We finally get out, and I go through three red lights before I slow down.

  I am running across the access road bent over, with heavily armed SWAT Teams running down the street the other way. The terminal doors are propped open but it is empty and people are everywhere outside. People are still wedged under small shrubs, hiding behind cars, trashcans, poles, lying against walls and curbs. It seems everyone has a gun out. I see plainclothes policemen holding their guns, staring up at the parking garage, and that means I am completely exposed. I remember strangely the images of the people after the buildings collapsed on 9/11 running around with pictures of their loved ones whom everyone knew were gone. And I wonder if my life has changed forever. Will this be the day my life stops and another world begins? Will I now be alone in the world after the great tragedy?

  We live in a mostly white suburb thirty miles west of Chicago. Yet we are urbanites who lived in the city for ten years and then in Oak Park on the edge of Chicago. We loved the progressive quality of Oak Park, but after 9/11 it changed. It seemed that the crime was coming closer. A man was mugged on our street while walking his dog. My neighbor's house was burglarized, and there were stories of a murder one block over. A man we hired to rake leaves came to my door one night and demanded money. It felt like those jets that had destroyed the Twin Towers were coming ever closer. I had studied maps of the projected blast of a dirty bomb in Chicago and decided that with a second child and our third one on the way it was time to make the final evolution to the western suburbs.

  Here, crime was nonexistent. We could leave our door unlocked, our car unlocked, the bikes on our very wide front lawn. No more bikes being stolen, baby carriages stolen, garages broken into. No one stole anything. No one shot anybody. I see now that my whole life has been one of trying to mitigate the very high risk inherent in my career choice by embracing perceived safety. And of course it was an illusion. Life is risky.

  I am still breathing like a runner, still frantically looking for my family.

  “We R by the door.”

  The text comes in delayed, and I run for the door and see nothing, but then Kitty moves aside a plastic bin used for carrying luggage, and I see Callie and Kitty lying on the ground under similar bins. No one is bleeding, just lying on the ground in terror.

  I glance around quickly.

  “Where's Careen?”

  Kitty looks to her right, and I see another gray bin, with two white Crocs sticking out from under it. I pull up the bin and Careen is lying there, crying. A long-legged twelve-year-old in sixth grade is hiding under a plastic bin afraid she is going to get shot. I pull her up and hug her for a long time. I look down to where the media trucks and police cars and ambulances are piled up around Terminal 2. To me, that has to be safer. The media trucks are large and bulky, and there are a hundred cops down there.

  “Where's Clay?”

  Kitty shakes her head. “I don't know.”

  I look again at the media trucks puffing out diesel exhaust.

  “Let's go toward Terminal 2. It's safer.”

  Kitty shakes her head. She is trembling. “No…I don't want to move.”

  I look at the parking garage, with the SWAT teams swarming over the floors. I don't blame her. Anything in the open se
ems dangerous, but I think it is dangerous to stay by Terminal 1, where we heard the shots. Careen has to go with me. “I'm taking Careen down to the police and the media trucks.”

  Kitty looks out from her bin.

  “Okay.”

  “I'll be back.”

  She understands why I am doing it. I take Careen's hand and look at her; her big blue eyes are full of wonder, full of terror.

  “You ready to run?”

  She nods.

  “Yes.”

  We begin to run, and I realize that in two weeks we are supposed to be going to our daddy-daughter dance. It is a dance put on every year by the park district at which fathers get to spend a night with their daughters and eat lots of candy and warm cheese and lemonade. You watch a magician, get balloons, dance and scream, and eat too many marbleized meatballs. It is amazing, really, to see all the fathers in suits with their daughters. I used to take Callie and Careen, but Callie at sixteen feels she is too old, so it is now just Careen and me, and I know that this too will end soon. I am the dad who spends all the time he can with his kids and will be destroyed when they leave.

  I have discovered that Careen has a very funny sense of humor and loves to make slime out of borax and glue. We ride our scooters around the driveway and discuss her day when she comes home from school and I am done writing for the day. Maybe it is that way with the youngest; you know that this is it, and you reach across that chasm between parents and children to stay connected as long as you can. Maybe it is because you understand it will end.

  But now we are running toward Terminal 2. It is incongruous that this is the terminal where people are lying dead inside after the killer's rampage, but instinctively I am running toward the police and the media, and there are television trucks all over. We run for our lives, low to the ground along the wall, and after we clear Terminal 1 I see people out on the tarmac of the runway. There is a vast crowd of ant people, something I have never seen before. They are tiny in the distance, but I can see that they are running past the jets stopped on the runway. Chaos has overtaken the airport, and everyone is running from the unseen danger.