Replaceable: An Alan Lamb Thriller

by Bouchard, J. W.

  That was when they heard someone yell, “Wait!”

  A moment later, a man holding a gun appeared in the doorway.

  Chapter 26

  They say that hindsight is twenty-twenty, and, in retrospect, it all made perfect sense.

  This was the thought that went through Alan’s mind as he shoved his way onto the plane, gun drawn, flashing his badge as his eyes went to his right, catching a quick glimpse of rows and rows of seated passengers, and then swept to his left, in the direction of the cockpit.

  This was the endgame after all. Which meant, Alan thought, that it would be Morrie Arti’s most elaborate trick yet.

  Go big or go home.

  On his short and panicked jaunt through the skybridge, everything had fallen into place.

  Two men were now in custody.

  Each appeared identical to the other.

  And both men identified themselves as Edgar Jimenez.

  The sole difference between them was this: Only one of the men was telling the truth.

  But is it really a lie? Technically, they’re carbon copies of each other. Does that make one of them more real than the other?

  According to Evans, Jimenez had been posted at the security checkpoint used exclusively to screen members of the flight crew. Given new legislation, it could hardly be considered a security checkpoint when it allowed for pilots to do little more than flash their ID to gain admittance. Only a handful of personnel would have been permitted to use the crew entrance that morning. Meaning they weren’t looking for a passenger at all. It had to be one of the pilots or one of the flight attendants.

  When Alan burst onto the plane, he didn’t know what he was looking for. All he knew for certain was that whoever Morrie Arti had planted on the plane was already on it.

  “Sir, can I help you?” one of the flight attendants asked.

  Alan ignored her and stepped into the cockpit, fixing his gaze on the three men that occupied it. In his ear, Marshall Evans was listing off the names of the flight crew.

  “Pilots,” Alan said.

  “That would be Sam Carrigan, Gregory Peck, and…here it is…Henry Torrance. You mind filling me in?”

  Alan’s gaze settled on the briefcase tucked between the two pilot seats.

  “Whose briefcase?” he asked, barely aware that his Glock was gripped firmly in his right hand.

  “Mine,” Torrance said.

  “I’m going to need you to open it for me.”

  Torrance stared at him, a smile gradually spreading across his face.

  Finally, he said, “I don’t think that would be such a good idea.”

  “What exactly is this about?” Peck asked from his seat on the right side of the cockpit.

  “We have credible intel that someone has brought a bomb onto this flight,” Alan said. “And all evidence points to it being one of the three of you.”

  From his position behind the other two men, Carrigan said, “Are you nuts? You think one of us brought a bomb on our own plane?”

  Les Tetrault appeared behind Alan. “Did you figure out who it is?”

  Over his shoulder, Alan said, “Working on it.”

  Tetrault had produced a firearm from a holster that hugged the left side of his ribcage.

  “I’m going to ask you one more time,” Alan said, bringing up his Glock. “Open the briefcase.”

  Torrance continued to smile. He looked neither nervous nor surprised. In fact, the smile he wore seemed to say that things like this happened on a daily basis to a guy like him.

  To Alan, there was something naïve about that smile; as though the man he was talking to was a little slow in the head, and his only offering was the goofy grin he wore.

  Torrance said, “If I open the briefcase, things might go boom. None of us want that. Do we?”

  Both Co-Pilot Peck and Flight Engineer Carrigan stared agape at their captain.

  “Just open the damned thing,” Peck said. His eyes hadn’t left the Glock that was now pointed at his colleague’s head.

  Carrigan said, “Are you off your rocker? Do what the man says, Hank.”

  “I can’t,” Torrance said, turning his head to glance at his fellow pilots. The smile never faltered. “There’s a bomb in that briefcase. And the second I open it, it’ll blow all of us and the people on this plane to smithereens.”

  Without removing his gaze from Torrance, Alan said, “Evacuate the plane. Get everyone off. Then alert the bomb squad.”

  “What are you going to do?” Tetrault asked.

  “I’m going to make sure this lunatic doesn’t blow us all up.”

  It took fifteen minutes to get all the passengers off the plane. Alan could hear the whispers and the mumbling and grumbling of over 150 passengers as they shuffled forward, sans carry-on luggage, and made their way onto the skybridge and toward the terminal.

  He heard all of this rather than saw it because he had had the good sense to keep the door to the cockpit mostly closed. There was no sense in causing panic by having any of the passengers witness him holding the plane’s pilots hostage.

  Once the plane had been evacuated, several officers arrived and escorted Peck and Carrigan off the plane. They would be taken in for questioning.

  Alan dealt with Torrance himself. For a moment, he and Torrance were alone in the cockpit. The bomb squad had arrived and was waiting on the other side of the cockpit door. With one hand, Alan kept the Glock trained on Torrance, and with the other, he brought out Zip-tie cuffs and bound Torrance’s hands behind his back. All the while, he was careful to not let the man make contact with the briefcase. He also made damn sure he didn’t bump into it himself. Quarters were cramped, and if Torrance had gotten froggy on him, there was a better than good chance that they would have dislodged the briefcase from where it sat between the two pilot seats. He didn’t know how sensitive the device inside was, but he treated it as though it was as fragile as a newborn baby.

  “Darrow,” Torrance said.

  “What?”

  “You want to talk to Darrow.”

  “How do you know Darrow?”

  Torrance didn’t respond, just went on smiling as though this was all fun and games.

  After Torrance was cuffed, Alan swung the man around in a less than graceful one-eighty and then shoved him out of the cockpit and onto the skybridge. After they had exited the plane, the bomb squad went to work.

  As Alan escorted Torrance through the skybridge, he said, “What was that you were saying about Darrow?”

  “You should give him a call,” Torrance said. “That’s all I was saying.”

  Once they were inside the gate, they were greeted by a circus of PAPD officers. Alan released Torrance into one of the Port Authority police officer’s custody, saying he would want to interrogate Torrance later.

  Apart from the mass of people that were crowded in the gate, Evans was waiting for him.

  “Congratulations,” Evans said and patted Alan on the back. “You were right. There was a bomb in it. Bomb squad’s disarming it now. Nothing too sophisticated by the sounds of it, but it was the real deal.”

  “Jesus,” Alan said. His hands were shaking and his heart was racing.

  Suddenly, a commotion arose and Evans’s said, “What now?” and when they looked over, they saw Torrance on the ground, surrounded by officers. Torrance was flailing wildly.

  “Some kind of seizure?”

  “Call the paramedics!”

  Torrance flopped back and forth like a beached fish, his back arching up off the floor, white froth spilling out of his open mouth. His eyes turned up in their sockets.

  “Get medical goddammit!”

  And then the man went still. His mouth bobbed open and closed a final time, and then…nothing.

  Alan knew immediately that the man was dead. He and Evans were standing outside the group of officers that had huddled around Torrance’s motionless body. Paramedics arrived and loaded Torrance’s body onto a gurney.

  All of it happ
ened in less than two minutes.

  “You think he took something?” Evans asked. “Some kind of poison?”

  Alan was barely aware that Evans was talking to him. “Maybe.”

  “It’s like one of those old spy movies, where if the guy gets caught he has a cyanide capsule hidden in a fake tooth. Christ, I better go and help get this sorted out. I’m going to be doing paperwork until I retire.”

  Alan found himself alone. Everything had happened so fast, for a moment he thought he might be dreaming. He was still trying to wrap his head around what Torrance had said right before the end.

  You want to talk to Darrow…

  …you should give him a call.

  He needed to notify Gant of what had happened. Like Evans, he shared the sentiment that he would be neck-deep in paperwork for the foreseeable future. He had just prevented a terrorist act; he had saved the lives of over a hundred innocent passengers. But there was no one there to pat him on the back.

  And still, all he could think about was what Torrance had said when it had been only the two of them standing in the plane’s cockpit.

  You want to talk to Darrow.

  How had Torrance known about Darrow? Darrow was the man in the shadows.

  When some of the adrenaline wore off, when his heart no longer threatened to burst from his chest, Alan remembered Darrow’s business card in his wallet. He took it out and examined it, staring at the number written on the otherwise blank card.

  He yanked the earpiece from his ear, pulled out his cell phone, and dialed the number written on the card.

  Alan listened to it ring, and by the third ring he realized that the sound wasn’t only coming from his phone, but that he could hear the sound of a phone ringing somewhere nearby. He looked around, trying to pinpoint the source, and then he spotted a man standing by himself near the row of seats outside the Rome Airways gate.

  The man was holding a phone in his hand. The man had short black hair, brown eyes, and Alan put the man at an inch or two taller than himself.

  The man was smiling. He had perfect white teeth. Almost too perfect.

  Colgate model teeth.

  “Darrow.”

  Darrow slid his phone into his pocket and began to clap slowly.

  Chapter 27

  The two men sat across from one another in the bleak interrogation room. Alan on the side closest to the large polarized window, Darrow on the other. Darrow’s hands were shackled in front of him. He was still smiling. Alan wanted to reach across the table and slap the smile off the other man’s face. He hadn’t let Darrow out of his sight since they had met in the airport.

  “It was you all along, wasn’t it?” Alan asked.

  “I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean,” Darrow said. His voice was smooth and even.

  “I’m done playing games. Do you go by Darrow, or do you prefer Morrie Arti?”

  There was the million dollar question, Alan thought.

  They had fingerprinted Darrow (or Morrie Arti, or whatever his real name was) upon arrival at Queens Central Booking and run them against the national database, but hadn’t come up with a hit. Darrow really was a ghost. More than that really, since technically he didn’t exist at all. When one of the Port Authority officers had done a pat-down prior to loading him for transport, Darrow hadn’t had any identification on his person. His cell phone had been confiscated and was on its way to forensics for processing. Alan didn’t hold out hope that they would find anything on it. A man as capable as Darrow didn’t make mistakes like that. It was most likely a burner phone, and Alan would have gambled his reputation on the hunch that the only call to or from the phone was the one Alan had made to it just over an hour ago when both men had been standing at the Rome Airways gate in JFK.

  “You can call me whatever you like,” Darrow said. “I want you to know that you played the game well.”

  “I won, asshole,” Alan said. “I played your game and I won.”

  Darrow’s smile widened. His teeth were so white they nearly gleamed. His short black hair was styled. It was a little tousled after the ordeal, but he hadn’t gotten his hair done by a hack. Alan’s eyes found their way to the man’s hands where they rested on the table between them. His fingernails were short and neat, probably professionally manicured.

  Everything about the man’s appearance, along with the air of confidence he conveyed, alluded to the fact that the man came from money; that he had either been born with the handle of a silver spoon sticking out the corner of his mouth, or that he had made a success of himself somewhere along the way.

  “Are you getting it all?” Darrow asked.

  “What?”

  “You were sizing me up just now. Taking mental notes about me. My hair, my nails…I’m curious to know what conclusions you’ve come to.”

  He’s still playing a game, Alan thought. Why are you so smug? We’ve got you, and yet you don’t seem to have a care in the world.

  “You come from a wealthy family. That, or you’re successful. Either you’re a trust fund baby or you started your own business. You’re arrogant.”

  “Am I?”

  Alan nodded. “Borderline egomaniac. Antisocial personality disorder maybe.”

  Darrow chuckled at that.

  “You’re of above average intelligence and resourceful. Good with people. Maybe a salesman at some point in your life. You’re persuasive. You would have to be to have recruited McKay. Got him to steal from his own company.”

  “Believe it or not, it wasn’t all that difficult. Most people are just waiting to be turned. The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”

  “Thoreau,” Alan said.

  “The majority of people will gladly compromise their moral code for the ability to climb the fence in promise of greener pastures.”

  “I don’t agree with that.”

  “No. I don’t expect you would. See, I’ve been sizing you up as well. Obviously, it’s a necessity in your line of work. For me, it’s more of a hobby really.”

  “I’ll humor you.”

  “You live in a world that is black and white. A world of right and wrong, of good and evil. There isn’t a middle ground, no gray area. You prefer to keep things neat and tidy. You live simply. Some might call it sparse. You don’t do well with clutter, in both your physical life and in your mind.”

  “Cleanliness is next to Godliness,” Alan said sarcastically.

  “I’d commend you for your ability to see the world the way you do, but it also makes you colorblind. Causes you to miss things. Not often, but enough for one to consider it a weakness. You overlook a small section of the spectrum. The fuzzy space that overlaps the edges.”

  “Maybe, but I caught you didn’t I?”

  Darrow leaned forward in his chair. “Let’s not forget that I helped you along the way, Alan. I was always there to nudge you in the right direction, was I not?”

  “I would have caught you either way.”

  Darrow’s eyes narrowed, but the smile remained. “Perhaps.”

  “I won’t bother asking about the specifics. Something tells me you wouldn’t talk about that. I don’t think you’re interested in the nuts and bolts as much as you are the grand scheme. But what’s the game? What’s the purpose?”

  “Are you asking me what my philosophy is?”

  “You can call it whatever you want.”

  “Chaos.”

  “Chaos?”

  “Without chaos, life would cease to exist. The absence of chaos is nothingness. It’s what pushes us to evolve.”

  “I don’t buy it.”

  “So tell me then, Alan. What is it that you think makes me tick?”

  “I think you relish causing others pain,” Alan said, leaning forward so that his face was less than a foot from Darrow’s, their eyes locked. “Or maybe you’re just a rich brat that’s bored with life in general and you get your jollies off by inflicting harm on innocent people.”

  “I don’t think you really believe
that,” Darrow said.

  “It’s like you said. I like to keep things simple. And in this case, the simplest solution is that you play the game just to play the game.”

  “I’ve spent a long time searching for a worthy adversary. It wasn’t enough to settle for any opponent. I needed someone that I could go to battle with. A battle of wits. One mind against another. I’ve studied you for a long time. We’re connected, you and I, in more ways than you know.”

  “Is that a fact?”

  “I needed someone that wouldn’t stop. That would keep playing the game, that would stay on the trail at whatever cost. Even if it killed them. I chose you, Alan.”

  “And I caught you,” Alan said. “Game over.”

  Darrow moved quickly, like a magician. Alan was too preoccupied with the man’s gaze to see Darrow’s hands flash forward as far as the shackles would allow, which was enough for him to cup his hands over Alan’s, gripping them firmly and holding them in place.

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” Darrow said. “The games have only just begun.”

  Darrow threw himself back into his chair. The chair tipped and was frozen at a precarious angle for only an instant before both it and Darrow toppled backward to the floor.

  Alan came around the table and saw the man laying there, his body shuddering violently, white froth bubbling out of his mouth and running down the sides of his cheeks.

  The smile was gone.

  Darrow’s eyes turned toward Alan before they rolled up to whites. His back arched and Alan heard a sharp snap like the sound of a whip being cracked as Darrow’s back broke.

  Then the violent fit ended.

  Alan stared down at the still body.

  Chapter 28

  He landed in Omaha around one o’clock on Friday afternoon. He was beyond tired, and his body pleaded with him to bypass the office and drive straight to the Patriot Inn where his bed (uncomfortable or not) awaited him.

  As he had been leaving Queens Central Booking, Alan had been stopped by one of the port authority officers that had ridden with them from JFK to the station.

  “Agent Lamb?” the officer had asked. He was a man by the name of Kurt Yodel. He looked exhausted from pulling too much overtime.