by Nick James
“Maybe you can get some inside information or stock tips from him on the flight home,” Douglass said.
“You kidding? After hitting every pub in Dublin over the course of forty-eight hours, Ackermann will have to take care of Dildo.”
“Unbelievable.”
“Listen, fellas, relax. I’m going to be spending any free time I have visiting churches and saying prayers for everyone in the office. I intend to say extra prayers for the two of you.”
“I believe half of that. You’ll probably end up on your knees, but it won’t be due to praying.”
“Ahh, Dildo. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy and just so you know, we’re all jealous. You don’t think it’s too late to put in a request for assistance? I mean me and Douglass, here, we’d be only too happy to help.”
“You know, I thought about that, got the request approved as matter of fact, but the Irish embassy denied entry to both of you. So now I’ve got to just struggle on alone and…”
“Shut the hell up,” Olson laughed.
They chatted for another forty minutes, walked Dillon to his gate. Along the way they stopped in the duty-free store, each of them choosing a special bottle of Jameson which they put on Dillon’s credit card.
Chapter Three
“Ladies and gentlemen, our new departure time will now be twelve-fifteen AM, New York time.”
A groan went up from everyone seated in the gate area. It was the third new departure time they’d heard over the course of that many hours.
“We should be halfway home by now,” a voice from somewhere behind Dillon whined.
“What a bunch of eejits,” someone else chimed in.
So this was what international travel is like, Dillon thought. He went back to scanning the crowd for an attractive blonde. He spotted more than a couple of women who fit the bill, and dared to hope one of them might land in the seat next to him.
The 12:15 departure time came and went. By this time people were stretched out on the floor, sleeping. One young couple on the floor seemed to be linked in an intimate embrace just beyond the last row of chairs. From what Dillon could see they appeared to still be clothed. A couple who appeared to have been deliberately over-served had been engaged in an argument for the past twenty minutes over his gift of a pasta maker the previous Christmas. It was almost two in the morning, and even the babies had stopped crying when the voice eventually came over the PA system once again.
“Ladies and gentlemen, flight seven-six-two-eight will begin boarding in just a few minutes. We’d like to invite all our passengers who need assistance to….” A cheer groaned out from those still awake in the crowd. Those passengers camped out on the floor slowly stretched and began to sit up, smacking their lips. The couple on the floor behind the last row gave a couple of frantic bumps and grinds before he rolled off and sat up wearing a smile.
Forty minutes later, Dillon was seated in an aisle seat toward the back of the plane. Seat 38B, to be exact. The seat next to him was still empty as the line of boarding passengers began to thin. At this point Dillon decided he’d be just as happy, in fact maybe even more so, if a gorgeous blonde never showed up. Careful what you wish for.
She caught his attention the moment she oozed into the cabin. He was too far away to hear what she said, but whatever it was the words wiped the smile off the flight attendant’s face.
She was large, very large. So large that she had to walk down the aisle at an angle, and even then her massive stomach, enormous thighs and jiggling rear bounced off the seats on either side. She was clad in possibly the largest florescent-pink garment he’d ever seen, billowing cloth draped down to her ankles. The suitcase she pulled behind her seemed to crash into every other row of seats causing her to sneer at whoever had the misfortune of being seated in her way. As she passed, a number of heads leaned out into the aisle and looked back at the massive body that had just waddled past. One woman gave her the finger.
Oh, God, no, please don’t let this happen, Dillon silently pleaded, and then followed up with a quick prayer.
The odds she might take some other seat decreased at an alarming rate with each thundering step. Unfortunately, she stopped at row thirty-eight and glared down at Dillon through blue jeweled glass frames.
“I believe we have the window seat,” she said, then oozed back a few steps so he could step out of his seat and let her in.
“Can I help you with your suitcase?” he asked and smiled.
“Please,” she said making the word sound more like a command than a thank-you. Experience had taught her that in these situations one had to take control. Immediately. She was too large for this person to get past her so she hoisted her suitcase up, careful not to brush against the contraband wedged in her cleavage, in the process nearly decapitating the individual across the aisle in 38C.
“Hey, watch it,” the guy shouted, and picked his baseball cap up from the floor and rubbed his head.
She ignored him, and thrust the suitcase toward Dillon forcing him back a step or two, then turned and began the process of wedging herself into the window seat.
Dillon hoisted her suitcase up over his shoulder and crammed it into the overhead bin. He noticed the two guys in the seats behind him had gone red-faced and were silently laughing. The balder of the two had tears running down his face. Dillon just rolled his eyes and shook his head.
She had wedged herself in front of his seat, reached down and raised the arm between the two seats, then edged her way over toward the window, a version of ten pounds in a five-pound bag. Her thighs appeared to be easily twice the size of Dillon’s waist. The pink garment had wedged up her butt crack, and as she fought her way toward her seat she reached back and extricated the cloth.
“If you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll use the restroom before we take off,” Dillon said, then hurried toward the rear of the plane in search of a flight attendant.
“Excuse me, sir, I’m afraid you’ll have to take your seat. We’re just about to take off.” The blonde flight attendant flashed a pseudo-smile, suggesting she was dealing with yet another passenger who didn’t seem to listen to the announcements.
“Actually, I was hoping you could put me in another seat.”
“Another seat? Is there a problem?”
“Yeah, there’s a problem. The woman sitting next to me should have purchased two tickets; she’s huge.”
“Oh, the pink moo-moo dress,” she said by way of explanation to the attendant standing next to her.
“I was just about to bring a seatbelt extension to her. That’s row thirty-eight, right?”
“Yeah, seats A and B. She’s taken up both seats. Can you move me to somewhere else?”
“I’m afraid not. I’m sorry, but it’s a completely full flight.”
It was at this point that Dillon decided to take command. “Here’s the deal, ma’am. I’m a US Marshal, on official business. I’ll be escorting a prisoner back to the States from Dublin on Sunday. I have a ticket, but right now there’s no where for me to sit.”
“We could put you on tomorrow evening’s flight. That would have you arriving in Dublin the following morning. You’d still be able to make your return flight on Sunday.”
“I’ve people meeting me tomorrow morning. Paperwork to review with the local authorities. You can’t move me up to first class? Or even her?”
The women both seemed to look at him for a solution to the problem. “I’d better get this extension up to her,” the flight attendant eventually said, and hurried away.
“You can’t help me?” he asked the attendant with the blank look on her face.
“Like we said, sir, I’m afraid the flight is sold out. There simply are no other seats available.”
“So I’m screwed?”
“Afraid it looks that way, sir.”
He walked dejectedly back up the aisle. “Good luck,” the flight attendant who had run off with the seatbelt extension said as she hurried past toward the back of the plane. Her tone suggested there w
asn’t a snowball’s chance in hell it was going to work out.
As Dillon approached the seat he became aware of a number of air vents on, all loudly blowing air. As he drew closer to his seat the smell of a sickly sweet perfume seemed to hang like a cloud. The arm between their two seats was up and her massive thighs, stretching the pink cloth, oozed more than halfway across his seat. He felt a headache begin to start at the back of his skull, stomp its way up across his temples then throb across his forehead as he attempted to sit down and wedge himself into what remained of his seat.
“I wonder if you wouldn’t mind shifting over just a little more,” he pleaded as he attempted to squeeze in next to her.
“There’s no room. They make these seats so small, it’s absolutely criminal,” she groaned just as the plane pulled away from the gate.
He could hear the two guys in the row behind attempting to silently laugh and failing miserably.
Chapter Four
Jack did some quick calculations and wasn’t all that sure the plane would be able to take off with the weight factor in row thirty-eight, but somehow the flight managed to get airborne. Five minutes into the flight his seat partner thrust a hand deep into her cleavage. She rummaged around, almost elbow-deep for the better part of a minute before she pulled out a small, scruffy, brown dog with large black eyes. The thing wasn’t much larger than a double cheeseburger.
The woman gave an angry glance in Dillon’s direction, just to ensure he remembered his place. She raised the small dog, holding him between her two hands.
God, she’s going to eat the damn thing, Dillon thought.
You just sit there quietly and don’t you dare say a word, she thought then shot another warning glance in Dillon’s direction.
“Oh, Mister Nibbles, you are such a good boy. Yes, yes. I know, I know, it’s too bad,” she cast a quick glance at Dillon from out of the corner of her eye, “but we have to share the seat.”
At this point Mr. Nibbles looked toward Dillon and growled, “Grr-err, grr-err, grr-err.”
“Now, now, Mr. Nibbles, we’re just going to sit quietly for the rest of the flight and relax. We’ll be there in a few hours,” she said, then seemed to sort of wiggle back and forth, spreading further into Dillon’s seat.
“A beverage, ma’am,” the flight attendant asked a half-hour later.
“I think a Diet Coke and maybe three or four bags of pretzels. Any chocolates?”
“I’m afraid not.” The flight attendant smiled. Dillon thought he could see the wheels turning behind her eyes.
“When will you be serving dinner?” she asked, looking hopeful. Mr. Nibbles had apparently scurried down into her cleavage and was no doubt hiding in a roll of fat, nowhere to be seen.
“Maybe another hour, once we’ve distributed the snacks and then picked up. Sir?” The attendant smiled and then a horrified look washed over her face as she recognized Dillon. She was the same flight attendant who told him she couldn’t help with the seating, suggesting he could take a flight the following evening if he didn’t like it. “Something to drink, sir?”
He glared back. “I’ll have a bourbon on the rocks and one of your evaluation forms.”
“Umm, I’m afraid that will be ten dollars,” she said and seemed to drift back a foot or two in the event he took a swing at her.
He handed her the ten-dollar bill he’d been folding and unfolding for the past thirty minutes, then pulled down his tray. Instead of lowering all the way down, the tray rested on the woman’s stomach at about a forty-five degree angle. Her huge stomach rested on top of her massive thighs and blocked any further tray progress. Dillon looked up at the flight attendant and glared again, thinking, You have got to be kidding me.
“I’m sorry, we don’t take cash, credit cards only, sir,” she said, and handed back his ten dollar bill.
“Really?”
At which point his seat mate asked, “I wonder if I could trouble you for another bag or two of pretzels?”
The attendant quickly handed her two more bags, and thought. Oh, you poor bastard. She had a change of heart, poured Dillon a bourbon on the rocks and said, “No charge, sir.” Then decided the best course was to simply flee the scene and she hurried up the aisle.
Dillon finished his bourbon and ordered another. The moment the second drink was finished he closed his eyes and prayed he could get some sleep. He slept fitfully, suffering through the recurring nightmare of being chained in a small room with the walls slowly closing in on him. His fervent prayer for sleep must have been answered because when next he woke the flight attendant was in the process of collecting two empty dinner trays from the fat woman.
A moment later the overhead announcement came across instructing everyone to return their seats back to the upright position.
Dillon rubbed the sleep from his eyes and anxiously glanced over to look out the window as the plane made its final approach over the Irish coastline and headed into Dublin airport. Unfortunately, and not at all surprisingly, his seat mate was completely blocking the window.
The moment the plane came to a stop and the “fasten seatbelt” sign went off Dillon was the first person bounding out of his seat. The entire left side of his body felt numb. Mr. Nibbles popped his head out from the valley of cleavage for a brief moment, gave a quick growl in Dillon’s direction, then ducked back down like the little sewer rat he was and disappeared.
Once off the plane he walked down a large, long corridor with black and white posters of famous Irish individuals hanging from the wall. Sports figures, actors, writers, and musicians stared back at him in earnest as he hurried past. He wove in and out of the crowd of slower-moving passengers heading toward passport control, hoping to get toward the front of the line. The mob of passengers thinned ever so slightly every time it passed a restroom.
He needn't have bothered; the line for non-EU passports wove back and forth through about a mile or two of lanes defined by blue nylon belts. Most of the people standing in line ahead of him had carry-on luggage large enough to hide a body in.
The individual at the front of the line had to wait until they were called by one of the passport control officers. There were a good two hundred people ahead of Dillon, another hundred or so filling in behind him and things didn’t seem to be moving all that quickly. As a matter of fact, they didn’t seem to be moving at all.
He was in the process of stretching and turning left and right at the waist in an effort to massage a semblance of life back into the left half of his body. After having a couple hundred pounds of dead weight plus Mr. Nibbles draped over it for the past six-plus hours, he could barely feel a thing.
“Mr. Jack Dillon, please. Is there a Jack Dillon here?” a female voice called out from the front of the line.
Thank God, Dillon thought and called, “Over here.” He waved his hand above his head. As if in response, a good two hundred heads turned in unison and stared at him.
“One moment, please,” a woman called, then walked along the far side of the line toward the lane where he stood. She stopped and unhooked one of the nylon belts forming the aisles. “If you’ll come this way, please,” she said, and indicated he move toward her with a wave of her arm.
“What’s that jerk got that’s so special?” someone growled from further back in line.
Dillon wound his way past people seemingly still asleep on their feet. He wedged his way past an exhausted young couple holding two sleeping toddlers, and a group of four college girls, carrying back packs, who looked like they were going to be camping in the wilderness for a month. He wiggled around a business guy in a blue suit coat who moved over no more than a half-inch so Dillon could just barely squeeze past.
“Is he the only one?” some guy called as Dillon edged around the foot locker that served as the business suit’s carry-on luggage.
“We’ve all had a very long flight,” a woman with a pink suitcase emblazoned with white cat paws and a matching handbag said. She had a strand of red yarn tied
around the handle of her suitcase as if there’d be a number of similar pieces of luggage in the baggage claim area.
So long my fellow travelers, thought Dillon, not one bit sorry to leave them all standing in line.
Chapter Five
The woman who had called his name was an attractive redhead, hair just a little shorter than shoulder-length, made all the more attractive by her green eyes and freckles. Dillon thought If this is what they look like over here it’s going to make the last six hours worth the trouble. She wore blue trousers, a light blue shirt with dark blue epaulets and a dark blue tie. She sported fairly large breasts, a slim waist, wonderfully curved hips and a smile that would melt you on the spot.
“US Marshal Jack Dillon?” she asked as he stepped forward.
“That’s me.”
“Welcome to Ireland, Marshal. I’m Garda Ann Dumphy. This way, sir, if you please, and we’ll get you out of this line. A long flight I hear, you’re almost five hours late.” She indicated a long hallway with her hand, smiled gleaming white teeth and thought, For being five hours late and six hours behind the local time you’re not too bad looking. Too bad this has to be about business.
“After you,” Dillon said, then followed as she walked him past the passport control stations, down a long hall and toward a door marked ‘PRIVATE’. Her uniform, which appeared to be designed to hide her figure, was fortunately failing at the task, and he continued to admire the enticing view from behind. She opened the door then stepped to the side, holding the door for him.
The windowless room they entered had a number of color monitors along one wall. Uniformed Garda were seated in front of every two monitors. Bits of casual conversation occasionally flowed back and forth between the officers. A ceramic mug seemed to be in front of just about everyone.
“How did they even let her on the flight?” someone said.
“God, will you look at that,” another replied.