“Could someone have taken over security access or the entire airport? Could the Port Police have been taken hostage themselves? I mean, something doesn’t seem right if these guys in white have badging access and the police-looking guys don’t,” she noted to Mr. Harleyman. She just couldn’t be sure who was in charge. The only reason it concerned her was the mystery of who to trust and who could be monitoring things. They crawled back to the group who remained gathered behind the large podium.
“Okay, I know we are probably going to be seen by the Port Police looking guys,” Jahnni whispered. “But, here is the best way I can think of. We’ll go through that bypass door across from us. Then the bypass door into the common area is right there as well, on the other side of that door. We’ll be done with this in a few minutes. If we are seen, then we won’t have time to bring each other over one at a time. Not even two at a time.”
“Right, Jahnni, so you’ll lead and access the door. I’ll follow at the end of the line,” Mr. Harleyman instructed as he pointed and gently guided everyone into their positions. “I think Crutch should be right behind you and then Samantha will be third. Pops will be right behind Samantha. Stay tight.”
Jahnni looked right at Crutch and asked, “Are you scared?”
“Are you serious? I’m having the time of my life!” Crutch whispered a squeal of delight that revealed a crackling squeak in his voice as he looked up from playing his hand-held game.
“Okay then. Now that I don’t feel brave anymore, let’s proceed,” Jahnni said.
“Are you ready, Mr. Harleyman?” Jahnni asked, noting that everyone was in line. He nodded yes.
“Don’t worry. You have the access and I have your back,” he promised as he held her gaze a little longer and smiled. There was something about the confidence in his voice and the way he looked at her that made Jahnni know she could trust him.
“On the count of three, know where you belong, and follow me as fast as you can. Mr. Tropopoulis, are you ready?” Jahnni asked while motioning to him. He gave her a quick nod yes. She looked at each person in the group. “Okay... 1... 2... 3... GO!”
They didn’t look for cameras. They didn’t look again to see if anyone was crouching nearby. They only ran—ran as fast as they could. Everyone forgot to slow down before they got to the other side, and slammed into the back of Jahnni as she reached to swipe her badge and put in her code. The numbers went in wrong and she had to start over. She hit ‘cancel’ and swiped her badge again and started putting her code in. She heard voices on the other side of the door. She stopped and looked at the others. They heard them too. Noise from her left made her whip her head around and she saw what looked like uniformed police running towards them from the bottom of the concourse. Before she could finish adding her code, the ‘uniforms’ shouted for them to stop. Suddenly the security door swung open apparently of its own volition before she even finished keying in. She scooted in first, pulling Crutch in with her. Everyone else filed through after her. Mr. Harleyman pushed Mr. Tropopoulis in then secured the door shut after he followed. As they tried to regroup and continue their journey, Jahnni looked up to see the two people dressed in white, wearing hooded masks, pointing their machine guns, or whatever kind of gun they held, one on Samantha and one on Mr. Tropopoulis. Then the banging on the other side of the door began.
It sounded like someone was talking into a radio. “They went through this door.” Then a voice answered back, “Clear the way. I have you on camera. I can access you through remotely.” Jahnni was confused. After a brief pause, she realized that she could just key her badge in the other door in front of them. In the sudden confusion, it took her a few seconds to realize that these people in white suits stood between them and the last door they needed to go through. Direct access to the other side of security was right there. A couple more feet. She looked at the door, looked at the people with the guns, then glanced at Mr. Harleyman. Escape into the common area was a mere arm’s length away.
Jahnni looked again at Mr. Harleyman, wondering why he didn’t pull his gun out and start ordering these people around. He nodded almost imperceptibly, lifting his chin towards the people with guns as if he wanted her to listen to them. Then the tall, more muscular gunman quickly grabbed Jahnni by the armpit and started pulling her up the stairs, motioning for everyone to follow. The smaller gunman lifted his gun at the same time and pointed for Mr. Tropopoulis to follow them up the stairs, waving the weapon like it was a pointer stick. He looked at Mr. Harleyman and pointed the way with his weapon, and Jahnni watched him nod in agreement and begin climbing the stairs behind Mr. Tropopoulis. She turned back to watch where she was going but after rounding the third curve on the stairwell, Jahnni slipped and fell up the stairs. The man grabbed her again and yanked her up, trying to hurry as they continued climbing.
Below, the ‘uniforms’ had made it through the door. They sounded like cattle being rustled into a bull pen, as they started clamoring up the stairs after Jahnni and her little posse. The gunman shoved Jahnni forward to motion for her to keep going up. Then he pulled something out of his jacket. The rest of them kept running up the stairs behind Jahnni. The smaller gunman motioned for Mr. Harleyman and Mr. Tropopoulis to follow the rest of them on their ascent, then scurried past them. Mr. Harleyman had hold of Mr. Tropopoulis’s arm to keep him steady as he tried to keep up. The first gunman took the item he had pulled out of his jacket, pulled on it with his teeth and threw it down the stairwell.
“Oh! No!” Samantha said too loudly. “A grenade!” Everyone hit the floor, cowering under their arms, and covering their heads.
Some were on a landing between floors. Some were crumpled on the stairs. The pop sounded, but not as loud as Jahnni had imagined it would sound.
“What is that smell?” Jahnni demanded as smoke started filling the stairwell from below. “I can’t breathe! I can’t see!”
“Just get up! Now!” her captor screamed when he turned back to pull her forward. “Keep moving!”
So, she complied. “But really!” she complained as she gasped for breath. “I can’t breathe! I can’t go any further.” She collapsed on the stairs, coughing into her sweater as she held her arm to her face. Everyone fell down on the landing by the door. They were all coughing as the cloudy stench hovered in the air. The ‘uniforms’ were slowly gaining on them but were slowed down by their own coughing and gasping for fresh air.
Jahnni didn’t understand why, but felt that these white gunmen were trying to slow down the uniformed cops for them. The smaller gunman, who helped push them forward up the stairs before climbing over them to get ahead, had already accessed the security door for them and started to pull on their arms, and push them through it. Then the two gunmen in white continued bounding up the stairs to the roof, leaving Jahnni and her crew to fend for themselves on the other side of the security door.
Jahnni’s group were coughing and wiping their eyes. The noise of the ‘uniforms’ getting closer, confirmed them doing the same. Mr. Harleyman was the last one through the door after Mr. Tropopoulis. The commotion was heady with the door alarm now dinging and she wondered how close they were as she pushed the door to shut it behind them. But just as Jahnni was pushing the door shut, a hand reached out through the last sliver of a crack, and grabbed onto her arm. He tried to pull her back through the door. He wedged his foot between the door and the door jamb to keep it from closing, holding firm onto her arm. His grip was heavy and binding and she screamed out while she twisted and pulled to get away. She felt the strain in her muscles because she was pushing on the door, and pulling on her arm, but she continued to hold the door while she braced her own foot against it. She didn’t look behind her, but felt Mr. Harleyman’s weight against her, beside her, holding the door from opening further, and pulling on the fingers that gripped her arm.
Jahnni lowered her head and bit into the hand that held onto her arm, hoping he would release his grip. He did, screaming out in pain just as Mr. Harleyman kicked at the m
an’s knee causing his foot to slide out of the way of the door and they both pushed it shut. On the other side of the door, moaning and yelling and barking orders seemed to add to the confusion. But the five of them had made it through. Jahnni looked around at them watching as they sucked the fresher air into their heaving chests, wiping strange tears off their cheeks.
With red eyes, Samantha glanced over, then grabbed Crutch and hugged him tight, wiping his face with her sleeve. She brought his chin up so she could look into his eyes. “It’s okay, sweetie. We aren’t going to give up. We will keep you safe!”
“I know. I know you will. I’ll be okay,” Crutch stammered. Then after a pause, “Wow, that was one heck of a trip!”
Chapter 10
Let’s Play Hide and Seek
“I don’t think I have ever been here,” Jahnni said, still out of breath as she turned circles to get her bearings. She went into the nearest room and noticed its configuration. “Look in this room. I have an idea. Everyone... hide in this room. I can see an alcove around the corner in here. I don’t think they will see us until they are right up on it. I’ll be right back. There’s another door at the end of the hallway... but, Sam... whatever you do, don’t let go of Crutch.”
“We just need to find our way to the other side of security, don’t we?” Samantha said, pleading with her eyes as she continued looking around the room and over Jahnni’s shoulder.
“I realize that, but we have to lose these guys that are chasing us first. Then we can get back down to that floor and walk out to the open area. I don’t want to get shot before we reach safety to explain who we are... Or who we aren’t. And they are probably going to get electronically scanned through this door any minute, so hurry... I don’t know where that door at the end of the hall even leads to, so I’m thinking, we should go back the way we came up and then go back to our original plan to get to the other side of the secured area. We could be in worse shape trying to scan through up here. We just need to go back down the stairwell. Hurry and get to the alcove there on the right!” Jahnni whispered loudly, pulling on Sam and Crutch, and motioning for Mr. Tropopoulis and Mr. Harleyman to go around the corner and into the alcove.
Crutch put his hand on Mr. Harleyman’s arm and asked, “Why don’t you just wait for them to come through the door, then hold them with your gun and get us to safety that way?”
“There’s many reasons,” Mr. Harleyman said as he looked around the room before continuing. “The main reason is you. I’m not here right now to catch these guys. I’m here to help get everyone to safety. Bullets flying will not accomplish that. Right now, I don’t care who they are. I’m not risking your lives.” Mr. Harleyman smiled, patting him on the shoulder and held out his arm to guide him to the alcove. Crutch nodded okay.
There were so many areas that were off limits to the public. They couldn’t just go screaming through a security door when she didn’t know who to trust. In fact, Jahnni wasn’t sure who was in the control rooms at the Security or Port Police offices. On one hand, she had accessed a bypass door and brought others through it during what she assumed was an Imminent Threat. With the old codes, it would be considered a code red. Part of her feared that a move like that placed her in a position of being an assumed terrorist, or may implicate her in some way. Possibly even put her in a ‘shoot first, ask questions later’ predicament. But another part of her was twisted with doubt. They expect us to use our judgment in precarious situations... and I just need to get everyone to safety, especially Crutch. So, wouldn’t there be leniency once they reviewed the circumstances... if we live to tell our story?
Mr. Harleyman’s face was stoic. His eyes moved like he was accessing different compartments of his brain. She hoped that between the two of them, they could keep everyone safe.
The group gathered behind Mr. Harleyman who kept putting his arm behind him as if it encircled them into an invisible shield. They craned their necks, listening intently. Jahnni hesitated a moment, looked around, then hurried away.
She ran down the long hall as she peeled off her sweater. She threw it right up next to the other access door, partly touching the door and partly skewed against the door jamb. She doubled back to hide with the others in the room with the alcove. She heard the stairwell door’s lock click and feared that the two police-looking gunmen were being remotely keyed in already. Panic set in when she realized she wouldn’t make it to the room where Mr. Harleyman and the others waited. She reversed direction again to head back and swung herself around the large pillar at the end of the hallway, near the small open area where she had thrown her sweater against the other bypass door. She stood frozen, flattening herself against the wall, knowing they could see her if they turned at just the correct angle once they arrived in the small open area. She began to breath as slowly as she could, silently trying to calm the nerves she knew could cause her knees to buckle in fear.
Her mind was roiling like a wave, trying to understand what was happening. Frankly, it bothered her that they never identified themselves as Port Police. In fact, they never had identified themselves as anyone who should be waving a weapon. They were either running, yelling, and from the sounds of it, shooting things at the end of the concourse. Her intuition said not to trust them.
She heard the stairwell security door fully open and the ‘uniforms,’ neither of whom Jahnni had recognized before, lumbered down the hall, still clearing their throats. She listened for a scuffle or argument, had they found the others, but she heard nothing but their rustling clothes, heavy breathing, and foot falls moving through the area. They began trotting down the rest of the hallway towards where Jahnni was partially hidden behind the large pillar.
“So, what do we have here?” one of the ‘uniforms’ said to the other. He let out a cough, cleared his throat, then began to reach down.
He picked up Jahnni’s sweater, tossed it to the other ‘uniform’ and called in on the radio.
“We need to be scanned through #3929,” the big one spoke. Then what felt like quite an undue amount of time to wait for it to take place, she saw in the corner of her eye, the light turn green and they both grabbed for the handle to pull it towards them. They clamored through the door and it smoothly swung closed and clicked as it locked behind them.
Oh, my God. My heart is going to pump out of my chest. Just breathe. Just breathe, Jahnni told herself. The hall was empty. Jahnni waited. She made sure she didn’t hear anyone lingering on the floor or listening from the other side of that door. When she felt it was safe, she hurried back to the conference room where the others waited. Mr. Harleyman met her at the conference room door first, weapon in hand.
He glanced back and forth then motioned for the others to hurry. He motioned for them to follow Jahnni as she accessed the stairwell bypass door and held it while they all hurried back through. Jahnni quickly pulled the door shut, cutting off the immediate threat of the door dinging from being held open too long. They beat the five second timer. She leaned against it and looked at the group, smiling that they got away... until she heard voices in the hallway they had just escaped.
“Sir,” the voice said, “We were already here.”
“I know you already went through it. I scanned you through, idiot! That’s why I sent you back! Pay attention! I’ll scan you through #3927 When I checked the camera, I saw the door closing. I am having trouble seeing who last keyed the door because my security computer keeps freezing up. Wait... here it is, Jahnni Dawson. We’ll call it a security breach when the time comes. I want them in my office.”
Jahnni and the rest of the group began rushing down the stairwell, letting their hands slide over the handrail as they ran. One more door. One more door, she told herself as they followed her back down the stinky stairwell.
Jahnni and Samantha were leading the way back down the stairwell with Crutch between them. She reached out and put her ear to the security door that led to the main floor of the airport. “This door leads to the common area of the airport. That
door there,” she said as she pointed behind them, “leads to the boarding gates that we first escaped from.”
She quickly scanned her badge and began the process to access the door. Nothing happened. She hit cancel and started over. Nothing happened. Wide-eyed, she looked at Samantha. Sam pushed forward and tried to scan through using her badge. Nothing. Not a green light nor a red light. It was like the door was dead. Jahnni paced in place, trying to decide what to do. Above them, they heard voices and the footfalls of the ‘uniforms’ began their descent.
“You said there is way through the bagwell from here, right? Take us there. Now. Hurry!” Mr. Harleyman said as he pushed them one by one towards the stairwell that continued down.
She kept looking back to see if Crutch and Mr. Tropopoulis were keeping up. She saw Mr. Harleyman following at the back... appearing a little too calm, but noticed that he continued to look behind, and up the staircase between the floors. One more stairwell landing and we will be on the bag-well floor in the basement, she thought, as she tried to envision any other routes.
Jahnni froze as they made it to the door that leads into the bagwell. Her hands shook as she tried to untangle her badges to try the bypass door. Will it even work this time? she asked herself, noting that minutes ago, the last door was dead to her. The familiar sounds of pursuing footsteps, made all of them look back and forth at each other.
“Here,” Mr. Harleyman said as he pointed, and they all jumped to follow his instructions.
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