One Rough Man (31 page)

“Remain calm. We’re going to walk right to the man over there taking the customs forms. He’ll let us through as long as we don’t look like we’re hiding something.”

I gave her a reassuring smile. “You ready?”

She nodded weakly, looking like she’d rather go back to the interrogation room.
Don’t worry about that. If this doesn’t work, we’ll be there soon enough.

We got in line behind a family of four. Acting like I was a newbie tourist, I held up our blue-and-white cards and said, “Do we give these to you?”

The man nodded, saying, “No luggage?”

“Yeah, we have luggage. It’s somewhere between here and South America. Don’t get me started.”

The man smiled and waved us through. We entered the security checkpoint and made it to the far side without any issues, now back into the airport proper inside concourse E.

“All right, we need to get out of here and get lost in the city. Unfortunately, we’re at the last terminal in this damn airport. We’re going to have to cross all five concourses to get out of here. We need to start moving faster. Sooner or later they’re going to lock this place down.”

We jogged down the escalator to the underground trains, with one pulling up as we hit bottom. I ignored it, pulling Jennifer to the moving sidewalk in front of me.

“What are you doing? We get on that and we can be at the entrance in minutes.”

“Yeah, I know, but it’s too risky. They pull the trigger on an alarm and that train’s going to stop, with us inside it and no way out. We need to run it to the end.”

We started walking like we were missing a plane, fast, but not fast enough to cause someone to stare. I noticed that the camera systems here in the tunnel were only clustered around the train entrances and exits.

Right after passing the escalators to Concourse C the trains ceased running, with an alert flashing that they were having mechanical issues.

“Good call,” Jennifer said. “Looks like you were right.”

“Yeah, but if the trains have stopped, we’re out of time. They know we’re loose. They’ll try to camouflage it for a couple of minutes to keep everyone calm, but eventually, this place is going to be covered in cops.”

As we moved toward Concourse B I saw the trains start to move again.
Huh. What’s that about?

We reached the escalator entrance to the B Concourse just as another train stopped, exploding out with about twenty police officers.
Oh, shit.

Instead of running past Concourse B, I pushed Jennifer to the escalator, going up into the concourse. Glancing back, I saw half of the force coming up with us, apparently not recognizing we were ahead of them.
No pictures out yet.
We reached the top and went left, away from the direction the police were headed. Unlike the tunnel, in the concourse the cameras looked like something out of a Vegas casino, one little dome sticking out of the ceiling every thirty feet.
Shit
.

I hugged the wall, attempting to cross the concourse to the down escalators on the far side, getting back to the tunnel while there was still a gap in the police presence. Before we reached it, a group of police crossed over, headed our way. I turned into an alcove, rotating in front of Jennifer and shielding her face with my body.

“Tell me when they’ve passed us. If they start walking toward us, the game is up.”

I saw Jennifer’s face blanch. “Shit,” she said. “One’s moving directly toward us. What do we do? Should we run?”

“Stay calm. If he’s headed to us, we’re done. Don’t assume that’s what he’s doing, though. We wait until he asks us a question.”

“He’s still coming. He’s walking right to us.”

“Okay . . . okay. Bend down and mess inside your bag. Anything to hide your face. Act like you’re looking for tickets or something.”

Squatting down, I began to rummage through my carry-on next to her. I could hear Jennifer muttering under her breath.

“Shit. I’m going to prison.... Mom’s going to love this.... Uncle’s fucking dead.... I’m a terrorist . . . the only man I know’s a nutcase. . . . All I try to do is the right thing.... Why does this stuff happen to
me. . . .
Who’d I piss off. . . .”

I saw the cop out of the corner of my eye. I waited for the tap on the shoulder. He moved right past me and kept going into the alcove. For the first time, I noticed it was a men’s room.
Whew. Too close for comfort.
I reached over to get Jennifer’s attention when I caught the tail end of her rambling.

“. . . Why don’t you just tie the fucker up butt-naked? Right here . . . get us out of this the same way you got us into it. . . .”

What a crybaby.
“You going to bitch all day, or can we get the hell out of here?”

She snapped out of it, saw we weren’t under arrest, and looked up at me with a sheepish grin. I saw her eyes focus on the sign above my head.

“Yeah. He went in to take a piss. We should go before he’s done.”

“Sorry. I didn’t mean any of that. Just letting off a little steam.”

I began walking down the concourse toward a restaurant, saying, “Well, you’ll have plenty of time for that, because we’re fucked. We can’t get out without getting to the far end, and I’m pretty sure there’s a platoon of cops at baggage claim by now. We need a way out that normal passengers don’t use.”

“I know a way.”

I looked at her face and saw she was serious. “What do you mean?”

“There’s a pilots’ lounge down below Concourse A. Get down there, and we can get on the Delta employee bus. It takes us right out of the airport grounds.”

“How do you know that? Are you sure?”

“My dad was a pilot for Delta. He was also a deadbeat sack-of-shit that I haven’t seen since I was seven. After my parents divorced, his idea of quality time was dragging me through here while he worked. I’ve spent plenty of time in that lounge.”

She had just earned her weight for the entire trip. “Can you find it? How do we get in? What’s the procedure?”

“I can find it, but that was way, way before 9/11. I have no idea about the procedure now.”

“You said A Concourse? That’s the next one up. Let’s go.”

We saw that the escalator was now free of police, and hurried to get to the tunnel below before they returned. The escalator was a long one, about sixty feet down to the ground. Halfway down, a cop sauntered over and positioned himself at the bottom, his back to us. He acted a little bored until he turned around and glanced up. Then he looked like he was going to shit his pants.
Damn. Pictures are out.

T
he cop pulled his weapon and aimed it up at us while we glided relentlessly toward him. Jennifer was in front of me, preventing any action. He was an older guy, about sixty, and I saw the pistol barrel shake with his adrenaline.
He’s liable to shoot out of reflex.

“Jennifer, raise your hands.”

We both did, and continued our glide, with him shouting all sorts of commands at us and into a radio. Every time he moved his other hand to key the mike on his shoulder, the gun hand would quake violently.
Right handed.
He backed up as we reached the end of the escalator, both hands back on his weapon, screaming at us to keep our hands in the air. I slipped in front of Jennifer at the end, attempting to calm him.

“We’re done. We’re done. Please don’t shoot.”

Once we were on the ground with him, and seeing our acquiescence, he seemed to grow more confident, saying, “Up against the wall.
Now.
”

He barked out orders like an overweight Dirty Harry. I turned to face the wall, making sure that Jennifer was to my left, away from the barrel I was about to move. I waited on him to key his mike, leaving one hand on his weapon. I heard him start talking.
Please be strong enough to take this.

I rotated to my left, pushing his gun hand away from me while grabbing on to the wrist. I drove a light, stunning palm strike into his nose with my right hand, then closed it over my left, controlling the pistol. I rotated the wrist, locking up the joints in his arm like a twisted rubber band. I didn’t move fast enough to destroy his arm but did move with enough speed to force his body to react, literally doing a flip to prevent his arm from being damaged. He hit the ground hard, the wind knocked out of him. I felt like shit.

“Sorry about that.”

I picked up his weapon, ripped his radio from his belt, and took off in the direction of Concourse A, leaving him gasping for air on the ground. Jennifer stumbled after me.

“Holy fuck. We are definitely going to jail now.”

“Yeah, probably so, because if we face another police officer, I’m not doing that again. We give up.”

I shoved the weapon into the first trash can I could find but kept the radio. I saw Concourse A ahead, and the cops moving around it.
Need another way up.

Luckily, the lack of trains had caused everyone to use the walkway, so the tunnel was starting to swell with people still attempting to go about their daily lives. We intermingled with a group headed toward the concourse, listening to them talk about terrorists on the loose. I saw a handicapped elevator ahead, without any police presence. When we came abreast of it, I stopped and pressed the button, the door opening while the group still flowed around us. As we rode up, the cop’s radio crackled with the news that we were at Concourse B.
Perfect
. Within seconds we were standing outside of Gate A19, no police in sight, looking at the entrance to the pilots’ lounge. The news wasn’t good.
Fuckin’ bin Laden.

“That figures. Everyone has to swipe their badge before keying in a code.”

The good news was that the door was down a small hallway, so we wouldn’t be seen doing something unless someone was in the hallway with us. The bad news was that Delta Airlines was serious about security. Nobody entered the door without badging in. Not even when someone already had the door open. Everyone waited, one at a time, to key in their code.
Fucking pilots never listen to anybody. Why now?

“We need a reason for someone to hold open the door. And we need to do it quick, before the police realize we aren’t at Concourse B. They’ll be back in force.”

“What are we going to do?”

I watched a purser push an old man down the concourse in a wheelchair, and came up with an idea.
It worked on the exercise before Tbilisi. Nobody suspects the disabled.

“Follow me.”

I hugged the walls, staying out of the fisheye of the cameras every thirty feet. Getting to a smoking lounge, I found what I was looking for.

“Get in.”

“What?”

“Get in and act like you need this chair.”

Jennifer scrunched up her eyes, clearly wondering if maybe we weren’t now on the desperate side of things, which we were. She sat down in the wheelchair.

“I’m going back to the ATM next to Gate 19. I’ll mess around there until someone goes into the hallway. If he’s alone, I’m going to wait until he opens the door, then holler at him to hold it.”

“This will never work. Delta doesn’t have pilots in wheelchairs.”

I began pushing. “Yeah, you might be right, but you’d be surprised at the number of times ridiculous shit I’ve pulled out of my ass has worked.”

“Ahh . . . no. I don’t think I would. Pulling stuff out of your ass seems to be your way of life.”

We reached the ATM just as a single pilot began walking down the hallway. I pushed her forward.

“It’s worked out pretty well so far.”

“H
ey! Hold that door, please. Let me get her through and I’ll badge in.”

The pilot looked at me, trying to decide, then held it open.

“Thanks. I appreciate it. Just let me get her inside.”

I could tell he was wondering why a guy in civilian clothes wanted to take a female in a wheelchair into the pilots’ lounge, but his chivalry took precedence.

He said, “You sure you’re in the right place? You know there’s no elevator in here, don’t you?”

I pushed Jennifer through, saying, “Yeah, I know. She can walk short distances. She’ll be okay. We’re just catching the bus.”

I saw the door close and said, “Give me a hand with her leg braces, will you?”

He came to the front of the wheelchair, where I was fiddling with the leg platforms. I stood up and grabbed the conveniently thick polyester collar of his uniform and cut off the blood flow to his brain. Once he was down, I ripped off his badge and stuffed him into an empty closet designed to hold the carry-on luggage of pilots coming and going.

“Okay. What now? Where do we go?”

Jennifer was stunned, looking at me like I was the Terminator.

“Come on! Where do we go?”

She snapped out of it, saying, “Down. There’s a stewardesses’ lounge on the right and a pilots’ lounge on the left. Once we get in there, we need to move straight to the exit. There’s a bus stop underneath the concourse.”

Two minutes later we were waiting with a bunch of other Delta employees for the shuttle to the Delta parking lot, me wearing the pilot’s badge around my neck with the picture side conveniently against my chest. After the longest three minutes of my life, we were on the next bus headed out of the airport. We sat in the back, away from anyone else, Jennifer still trembling from our narrow miss.

She said, “I don’t think I’m cut out for this law-breaking stuff. It’s going to give me a nervous breakdown.”

I said, “Trust me; I didn’t think it was fun either. You get used to it.”

“What do we do now? Are we still going to D.C., or are we headed to Mexico to find a cheap house to spend the rest of our lives?”

“If you’re game, I think we should continue on to D.C. Still want to do that?”

“Well, shit, we’re outlaws now. It looks like the choices are turn ourselves in, run for the rest of our lives, or try to solve this thing. That’s probably the only way to get any mercy. Maybe cut the jail term to half of our lives.”