Big Trouble

The stern woman frowned at the blinking zeroes, then at Snake.

"It's got a timer," he explained. "Like a whaddya-callit. VCR."

"Computer check!" called the X-ray woman.

"Computer check!" echoed the rotund man. The laptops were stacking up.

"OK," said the stern woman, waving Snake's party away. Snake closed the suitcase, not noticing, as he did, that the digits had stopped blinking and were now registering:

45:00

And then:

44:59

Snake latched the suitcase, then jabbed Puggy. "Move it," he said. Puggy picked up the suitcase, and the little party headed down the concourse toward the planes. Behind them, the stern woman turned her attention to the next passenger, a pension actuary who was already, without having to be asked, turning his computer on, knowing that this was the price that a free society had to pay to combat terrorism.

43:47

Monica trotted through the automatic doorway into the main concourse, darting her eyes back and forth. She was hoping to see another officer, but as bad luck would have it, all the available airport police had been summoned to the extreme other end of the large, semicircular concourse, where trouble had flared at the Delta counter. It had started when a Delta agent had informed a would-be passenger that he would not be permitted to board his flight with his thirteen-foot python, Daphne, wrapped around his body. The passenger, attempting to show what a well-behaved snake Daphne was, had placed her on the counter. As the Delta agent and the nearby passengers backed away in terror, Daphne had spotted, on the floor a few feet away, a small plastic pet transporter containing two Yorkshire terriers named Pinky and Enid. In a flash, she had slithered off the counter and was snaking toward them, as screaming passengers frantically scrambled to get out of her way, clubbing each other with boxes of duty-free liquor.

Within seconds, Daphne had wrapped herself around the pet transporter and was trying to figure out how to get at Pinky and Enid, whose terrified yipping inspired their devoted owner, a seventy-four-year-old widow with an artificial hip, to overcome her lifelong fear of reptiles and flail away at Daphne's muscular body with a rolled-up Modem Maturity magazine, until she was tackled from behind by Daphne's owner, who was no less devoted to his pet and had also played linebacker at the junior-college level.

Within a minute, the Delta end of the concourse was in near-riot mode, with virtually the entire airport police force sprinting in that direction, walkie-talkies squawking. Thus, when, a few minutes later, Monica entered the concourse at the other end, looking for reinforcements, she saw none.

"Shit," she said. She turned and saw Matt, Anna, and Eliot right behind her, with Niña just coming through the door.

"OK," said Monica. "We're gonna split up and look for them. I'll take that side"—she gestured left—"you all go that way. If you see them, you keep an eye on them, but don't approach them, and, Matt, you come running and find me. Got it?"

Matt and Eliot nodded.

"OK," said Monica, turning left and plunging into the concourse traffic flow. Matt turned right, with Eliot and Anna a step behind, and Niña trotting after. Niña's main concern was not being left behind. The other four, as they scanned the crowd, were all troubled by variations of the same nagging thought: What if they were in the wrong place?

42:21

Air Impact! Flight 2038 for Freeport was a two-engine propeller plane with a seating capacity of twenty-two people. It had no flight attendant, and was too small for a jetway; to board it, passengers walked down a stairway from the concourse gate, then across the tarmac about thirty yards to where the plane was parked.

There were supposed to be two Air Impact! employees working the gate that evening, but neither of them had shown up, which meant that the passengers' tickets were being taken by the baggage handler, a man named Arnold Unger who had joined the Air Impact! team after being fired from two other airlines for suspected baggage theft. Unger had worked the same no-break double shift that had seriously undermined Sheila the ticket agent's desire to be Employee of the Month. He'd been keeping his spirits up by swigging from a bottle of Bacardi rum that he'd swiped from a cruise passenger and kept hidden under the stairs. He was eager to get Flight 2038, Air Impact !'s last of the evening, on its way, so that he could go get really hammered.