by Gini Koch
Kevin looked impressed. “You’re Angela’s daughter, that’s for sure.” He sighed. “I’m calling in all Security personnel. This’ll be too much for us to handle alone.”
“Works for me, do whatever it is the P.T.C.U. does best. But make it big—lots of fuss, lots of manpower, bomb sniffing dogs if at all possible, the works.”
He laughed and pulled out a cell phone, moved a couple of feet away and started talking. I pulled my guys into a huddle. “Okay, I’m betting on option number two.”
“Why?” Gower asked. “Maintenance seems easier.”
“They held the plane,” Christopher added. “So maintenance or checked luggage would seem to be the way to assume.”
“No. They wouldn’t let the passengers off. Half the time if you change planes like this your checked bags won’t make it with you anyway. They’ll fly out before or after you. In a standard delay situation, they’d move as many people to the next flight as they could, probably taking the first class passengers and then those with connecting flights.”
“They held it for us. We’re important.” Christopher sounded frustrated.
Tim laughed. “Christopher, only we know we’re important.”
“Tim’s right. We’re a freaking covert operation. Commercial jets aren’t held for covert ops. They fly in their own damn planes, like we normally do. Jeff was ready to pop a vessel over this, and, Paul, you know you don’t like it. Think, dammit. It’s a setup.”
Reader had the file out and was skimming it. “Who did our girl Alicia say was the one who gave the order?”
“Leventhal. No first name.”
“Oh.” Reader was quiet for a moment, staring at the folder. “Ten to one that would be Leventhal Reid, head of the House Subcommittee on Terrorism.” He looked up from the file. “And, for the record, he knows about us and hates our guts.”
I wondered if this was the same Reid my parents had mentioned at dinner and bet that it was. “Is he also on the House South American Policy, Joint National Security, and House Immigration committees?”
Reader nodded. “He’s got a lot of clout, in a lot of areas, all of which affect us.”
“Figures.” I’d never heard of him before last night, but this didn’t surprise me all that much. I was more of a pop culture, as opposed to political, follower. I knew what Brad and Angelina were up to, not so much what was going on in areas that actually affected me. My mother wasn’t the only one who found this more than a little annoying. “What agency asked us to come out to Florida in this odd manner?” I asked Gower.
“Richard wouldn’t tell me,” he admitted. “But I think it was high enough up that he had to acquiesce. And this arrangement was their idea, not Richard’s.”
“Reid’s got a lot of influence,” Reader said. “I’d bet he used it to do this.”
“Why would he?” Kevin was back and had heard this exchange. “Not saying he wouldn’t, by the way. He’s a nasty piece of work. But it seems risky.”
“Not if we’d blown up.”
“We have to prove a threat first,” Martini said. “We have nothing if there’s nothing wrong other than Kitty being overly suspicious.”
“Good point. Here’s what we’re going to do. We’ll search each person, pilots and crew included. We’ll line up—James, Paul, and me on the left, Tim, Christopher, and Kevin on the right—and we’ll have them walk between us.”
“What’ll I be doing, knitting?” Martini sounded peeved.
“No, you’ll be standing behind us, looking genial.”
“Why?”
“Because the six of us will be looking carefully at each person. Tim and James will pull out the obvious suspects. Christopher and Paul will pull out some that might be and some just to make everyone else nervous. And Kevin and I will look over those who make it to us very closely, and we’ll pull out people, too. Jeff, I want you to monitor the emotions. Everyone’s going to be scared, of course.”
Kevin looked at me closely. “You want to find, what? The ones who are relieved to make it past us?”
Martini grinned. “No. She wants to spot the ones who feel guilty or triumphant.”
Gorgeous and smart. And mine. Okay, Kevin could stay happily married.
CHAPTER 12
AIRPORT SECURITY WAS THERE IN DROVES, as well as the Pueblo Caliente Bomb Squad, complete with several dogs, and a SWAT team. It was a big deal, and Kevin made sure it looked even bigger. I kept Alicia calm; Martini had already scanned her emotions, and he didn’t think she was involved at all. I found myself hoping someone was indeed trying to kill us—the explanation if we found nothing would be worse than defusing a bomb.
We did our test-run strip searches—nothing. The few folks who hadn’t moved to baggage claim were sent there with an escort. The entire wing of the terminal was emptied.
Maintenance crew was next. We found three illegal aliens from the exotic locales of Mexico and Guatemala. These were released into the baggage claim holding area and told to get a green card. None of us felt it was right to be too hard on them—they were here to work, not to try to kill innocent people.
We also found a couple of younger maintenance kids who had drugs stashed, another couple having sex on company time, and one asleep. All reprimanded, all clean, so to speak, all sent to baggage claim.
I really didn’t think the bomb was going to be in the checked bags, and if it was, we wanted the passengers off the plane anyway, so we had them file through first.
Alicia was great. She explained we were looking for a terrorist, just as I’d told her to. She sounded frightened because she was, and we’d encouraged her not to try to remain calm and so ensured that the passengers and crew would be in a higher state of anxiety than normal.
This was going to be hard on Martini—there were a lot of things that wore his blocks and empathic synapses down. I learned new ones it seemed like every week. Running this kind of job without his filters up was probably going to be a new example, but we couldn’t risk him missing something. Besides, I had the adrenaline harpoon case in my purse, so if it got too bad I could revive him. In five months I’d had to do it enough that I was a pro. I didn’t like this skill, but it kept him alive, so it was worth it.
Martini had four burly human security guards assigned to him, and Gower had called in a complement of ten more A-Cs working as backup as well. Anyone Martini indicated was going to be considered the highest-level threat, and we didn’t want them escaping or grabbing a hostage.
The passengers filed out. We let them keep their bags—if we could identify who the terrorists were, we could dispense with a full-on bag search. Whatever was happening in Florida was going to be done and handled before we ever arrived, but I felt our getting there alive was the preferable option.
Our only change was that there were two bomb dogs and their handlers next to Tim and Reader. The Bomb Squad had insisted on this, and no one had any objection. The rest of the dogs were in the section we’d set aside for main suspects. We had another holding area for passengers we thought were clean. All of this was still within view of our main gate area.
It was a big plane, and there were a lot of passengers. Tim and Reader pulled some obvious choices aside, and the searching began. We weren’t providing a great deal of privacy—there were screens set up for men and women, but they were right in the same area we were. I didn’t care about lawsuits—mass hallucinations had a great way of changing what people thought they’d gone through. Besides, once we found the means to make a bomb, most of the other passengers would be complaining they’d sat in the plane too long, not that we’d searched them later.
We kept on, pulling some men, a few women. I studied everyone who went by. Kevin and I were playing the baddest of our three sets of bad cops, and I made sure I didn’t look friendly.
An elderly couple moved through our line. My first reaction was to smile in a kindly manner and then to ignore them. Especially after the little old lady patted Tim’s hand and thanked him for pro
tecting them.
But there was something wrong about them. I wasn’t sure what bothered me, but I examined them more closely than anyone else who’d gone past so far. They gave me weak smiles and kept on staggering through our line.
They still bothered me, to the point where I turned around to watch them. Martini caught my eye and gave me an almost imperceptible nod. They moved past him, and he gave a signal to his security gaggle. The oldsters were stopped.
And instantly started protesting. Loudly. The woman in particular was making quite the scene. They were taken over with our other suspects and separated. The woman was wailing about how she was being manhandled. She garnered a lot of sympathetic looks from the passengers who weren’t corralled with our main suspects.
The next one to have his suspicions raised was Kevin. A young man came out, wearing his iPod headphones and seeming to be just sort of bouncing to the beat. He didn’t look dangerous, and our first two lines let him through. Kevin grabbed him, flung him to the ground, and ripped the iPod and headphones off. “Check these, right now,” he barked to one of the Bomb Squad.
Kevin let the kid up, but he kept the guy’s arm twisted behind his back. An officer came over and slammed hand-cuffs onto the young man. “Yep,” he said to Kevin, then dragged our boy over to our confirmed suspects area.
“What was in the iPod?” I asked him quietly, while more passengers crept through.
“Probably a plastic of some kind.”
“How’d you spot him?”
“He was trying too hard.”
That was it. I spun around and went over to Martini. “There’s something really wrong with those old people.”
He nodded. “Not sure what, but boy did they feel like they’d won the lottery when they got past you.” He gave me a half-smile. “Your new boyfriend seems to be working out well.”
“Oh, stop it.”
Martini grinned. “Amazingly, I’m not jealous.”
“Yeah, he’s happily married.”
“Nah. I liked that you were proud of me for knowing what you were thinking. Made up for your panting after the Fed.” He nodded toward the line. “Back to work, baby. More are coming.”
I returned to my post and more filtered through. A couple of the flight attendants came out now, one blonde, one brunette. The dogs started barking at the blonde’s bag. She seemed freaked. The brunette tried to move past, but Reader grabbed her. Both of them were moved to the holding area.
I looked over my shoulder; Martini was talking to one of our spare A-Cs who then went and talked to the bomb guys.
And so it went. A few more suspects, then the plane was supposedly empty. Christopher took three A-Cs inside to do the cabin search. And came out with a little guy who looked like a weasel. “He was in the bathroom,” Christopher said, as he dragged him to Martini.
“I had to go!” The guy was shorter than me, and I really figured I could take him easy, best two out of three. He was slight, poorly dressed, and looked like a smoker, if his teeth were any indication.
Martini shrugged. “We’ll find out.” He looked over to the security guards. “Someone gets the unenviable task of looking to see what he got rid of in the toilet.”
“Urine!” He sounded panicked. “I’m not kidding, I couldn’t hold it anymore, we sat there for hours waiting for you guys.”
Martini looked at me and we both smiled. “What’s your name, sir?” I asked him.
“Shannon.”
“Isn’t that a girl’s name?” Tim asked.
“It’s traditionally male,” Shannon huffed.
“True. So, Shannon, let me put it this way . . . you can tell us what part in this you played, or we can use you as the example for your cronies of what we’re going to do if they don’t spill.”
“What’re you talking about?” he gasped. “I don’t know what’s going on.”
“Then . . . how did you know the plane was waiting for us?” I let that one sink in while watching Shannon’s eyes dart around frantically.
Martini chuckled. “He knew because he’s absolutely in on it.” He pulled me to him. “Use him as the litmus test for who his pals are?” he whispered in my ear.
“Mmmm . . . yeah.” I had to control myself from rubbing up against him. There was something about being in these high-stress, dangerous situations that made me want to jump Martini’s bones more than normal.
“You’re an adrenaline junkie,” he whispered. “But that’s okay. I think it’s sexy.”
I managed to keep it together, mostly because Shannon’s pitiful excuses wrenched me back to the reality of our situation. I went back to the rest of our team. “Let’s start figuring out who has what. Oh, and Shannon? You’ll talk, or we’ll each take turns seeing how hard we can hit your face.”
“Not in the face,” he gasped. I didn’t know why, a broken nose might be an improvement for him.
Kevin knew. He wrenched Shannon’s jaws open—and pulled out his teeth.
CHAPTER 13
“PLASTICS,” Kevin said as he handed the dentures to the Bomb Squad guy who’d raced over.
Reader pulled out a couple of wipes from his inner suit pocket. “Here you go, that has to be gross.”
“Thanks,” Kevin gave Reader a friendly smile. Reader grinned back, and I saw Gower’s eyes narrow. Reader and I were going to be in trouble with our respective mates when we were alone, that was clear. Because even if Martini was okay with my drooling over Kevin, I knew he’d find a way to make me pay for it. Of course, it would be a way I’d enjoy to the point of wanting to self-destruct from pleasure. I hoped Reader’s punishment would be similar. It wasn’t like we could help it—Kevin really had bags and bags of charisma.
Shannon was dragged off to our main suspects area, still protesting that he just needed dentures.
“How stupid is that guy? I mean, who would get dentures that look like crap?”
“He seems pretty stupid, but that could just be an act.” Kevin sighed. “We don’t have enough with his teeth and the iPod. We’re missing the trigger, at least. I’d guess we have at least five others involved, maybe more. And we also need to identify what group managed to find this many willing suicidals.”
I thought about this as we walked to the main suspects holding area. “The old folks. There’s something really wrong about them.”
“Well, that’s going to be tough, they’re really creating a scene.” Kevin didn’t look happy.
As we reached them, the old lady started up again. “This is just like what they did in Uganda! They separated the Jews and then tried to kill them!”
My mother was an Italian-American former Catholic who had somehow been the only non-Israeli, non-Jew to ever join the Mossad. She’d met my very Jewish-American father in Tel Aviv. I had my father’s fair coloring but I favored my mother otherwise, so I didn’t “look” Jewish. But I was. And they weren’t. But they were pretending to be.
“Why would you be insinuating that we’re trying to separate Jews from the other passengers?” I asked her.
She started wailing. “It’s what always happens!”
“Not in America.” Kevin wasn’t buying it now, either. I already knew Martini wasn’t.
Martini gave her his most winning smile, usually reserved for my parents. “Ma’am, now, why would you think a nice Jewish boy like me would do that to you?”
She gave him a baleful look. “You’re not Jewish.”
He grinned. “You’re right. And you’re not an old lady.” He reached out and yanked her hair. It came off in his hand. Revealing short, blonde hair, clearly dyed.
“Ick.”
Martini dropped the wig. “We may want that checked out. Full search, her and her ‘husband.’ ”
The supposedly old man with her started to protest. “That’s not my wife! Help, they’ve switched my wife!”
“These are some of the worst actors I’ve ever seen in my life.” It was like dinner theater, only without food.
Reader reach
ed out and pulled the hair on the old man’s mostly bald head. It came off along with the bald skullcap, revealing a head of plastered-down hair.
The searches of the two supposed old people—both of whom refused to tell us their names, real or fake—the young man, and Shannon the Toothless Weasel took a few minutes. While Pueblo Caliente’s finest did the searches, Kevin, Martini, Christopher, and I went through their wallets and the “old lady’s” purse. Reader, Tim, and Gower rechecked everything, just in case. The men were going a lot faster than I was—this chick had a lot of membership cards, and going through them was taking forever.
We were able to identify our suspects easily since they all had driver’s licenses. Shannon’s last name was O’Rourke, explaining the commitment on his parents’ part to ensure he’d have a horrible life at American schools. The younger dude was Curtis Lee; he had a card listing him as a direct descendant of Robert E. Lee—I felt sure the South was okay with losing this particular son. The woman’s name was Maureen Thompson, and since the guy playing her husband was named Robert Thompson, it was a good guess they were married.
“What are we looking for?” I asked as I looked at Maureen’s fiftieth membership card.
“Anything that links them.” Kevin sounded frustrated. “This is too big, too well organized.”
“And the four we’ve identified are all too stupid.”
“Yeah,” Martini said. “So they didn’t plan this, someone else did.” I stared at him. “What? I can think, too.”
“Yeah, that wasn’t what made me look at you. It just dawned on me that you didn’t say Reid, just someone else.”
He shrugged. “We don’t know it’s Reid, yet.”
“Right.” My brain was kicking at me. I looked back at what I was holding, a Club 51 card. “James, is there some big warehouse store called Club 51?”
“No, not that I know of. But, you know . . . that sounds familiar.”
“Well, we hang in Area 51,” Tim said with a laugh.
