Repairman Jack [09]-Infernal (3 page)

Blood… blood everywhere… lakes of red on the floor… even the carousel was red… a man’s feet and legs hung out of the baggage chute… the bloody rag-doll body of a baby girl sprawled among the endlessly circling luggage.

No other movement, no crying, no screams or wails of the wounded. Just silence. Not one of the victims so much as stirred.

Jack stood frozen and stared, numb, paralyzed…

Dad…?

Where was his father? He’d left him standing right over there by the—

There! Shit! A body, a gray-haired man in a green and white coat.

No-no-no-no!

As Jack forced himself forward a voice shouted from somewhere to his left.

“Freeze!”

Jack heard the word but it didn’t register. Stiff and slow, he kept moving, a living zombie.

“Freeze, goddammit, or I’ll drop you where you stand!”

Jack kept moving, forcing himself forward a few more steps until he reached the corpse. He dropped to his knees in a pool of still-warm blood, grabbed one of the shoulders, and rolled him over.

The face—his lips were pulled back in a horrific, agonized grimace, but his glazed eyes left no doubt about it.

Dad.

Dead.

Jack felt as if his chest might explode. He let out a sound that was equal parts moan and sob.

He shook his father. It couldn’t be. They’d been talking just a few minutes ago. He couldn’t be dead!

“Dad! Dad, it’s me, Jack! Can you hear me?”

The voice said, “Are you fuckin’ deaf? I told you to freeze!”

Jack looked up into the muzzle of a pistol held by a mustached security guard.

“This… this is my father.”

“I don’t give a fuck, I told you to—”

“That will be enough!”

An older man had come up behind the guard. He looked to be about fifty and wore a blue NYPD uniform with sergeant stripes. His nameplate read DRISCOLL.

The guard backed off a step. “I found this guy wandering around. He could be—”

Sergeant Driscoll’s voice dripped scorn. “He wasn’t wandering around. I saw him come in. He was looking for someone.” His eyes dropped to Jack’s father’s inert form. “And he found him.”

“But—”

“But nothing.” He shoved the guard away. “Get over by the door in case anyone else tries to wander in.”

The guard moved off.

Driscoll muttered, “Asshole,” then squatted beside Jack. “Look, I’m sorry about your dad, but you’ve got to go outside.”

“What happened?” His own voice sounded far away. “I left him here just a few minutes ago… we were talking about going to the Empire State Build—”

“I’m really sorry, but you’re going to have to wait outside. This whole area is a crime scene and you’re contaminating it, so you’ve got to leave.”

“But—”

He pointed to the floor beneath Jack. “Look at what you’re kneeling in. If we’re gonna catch these guys, we need every scrap of evidence we can get.” He slipped a hand into Jack’s armpit and lifted. “Come on. If you want to help us catch the fucks who did this to your dad, wait outside.”

The cop’s touch lit a flicker of rage that flashed through the dead, dumb grayness that filled Jack, but he quickly doused it. Lashing out at this man who was trying to do the decent thing would solve nothing. He could walk away or be carried away; either way, he’d be leaving his dad behind. And if he was carried away, they’d find his ankle holster and the unregistered AMT .380 it held.

So he let the cop help him to his feet and shuffled toward the shattered doorway where the security guard stood.

He watched Jack’s approach.

“Hey, sorry about back there. Case like this, you don’t know who’s friend or foe.”

Jack nodded without making eye contact.

Outside—chaos. EMS trucks screeching to a halt, shuttles trying to get out of the way, limos inching out from the curb, hundreds of people milling about, some weeping, some hysterical, some in slack-faced shock.

He saw a harried-looking cop standing by the Vic, shouting, “One last time: Who owns this?”

Jack hesitated, unsure of what he might be getting himself into, then decided that stepping forward would be less complicated, especially since his fingerprints were all over the car and it was registered in someone else’s name—someone unaware of that.

Jack waved and hurried toward the cop. “Me! It’s mine!”

“Then move it! You’re blocking the—hey, you hurt?”

“What?”

He pointed to Jack’s legs. “You’re bleeding.”

Jack looked down and saw the wet red splotches on his knees. For a few seconds, he didn’t understand. Then—

“No…” His voice caught. “No, that’s my father’s.”

“Jesus. He all right?”

Jack wanted to tell him what a stupid fucking question that was but bit it back. He simply shook his head.

“Listen, I’m sorry.” The cop pointed to the Vic. “But ya still gotta move it. Just drive it into the garage. Then you can come back and wait with the rest.”

“Wait for what?” Dad was dead.

The cop shrugged. “I dunno. News about survivors, I guess. Not like you gotta choice. Airport’s locked down. Nobody out, nobody in.”

Jack said nothing as he slipped behind the wheel and pulled away.

5

Dad… gone…

The words registered but his mind couldn’t get a grip on it, the… finality.

He’d returned to the garage, found a spot on the perimeter of an upper level, and parked facing west. The falling December sun gleamed through the crystalline sky and stabbed his eyes. The sky had no right being so bright. It should be dark, with wind and hail and lightning.

Numb, he lowered the visor and… just… sat.

Gone… one minute alive and full of plans and enthusiasm, the next a cooling lump of meat in a pool of blood. Part of Jack insisted it was all a bad dream, but the rest of him knew he wouldn’t wake up from this.

Knowing nothing made it worse. Who? Why? Some al-Qaeda strike? Or maybe al-Qaeda wannabes massacring a crowd of Orthodox Jews? Was that what this was all about? Made a sick sort of sense. But what made no sense was why, with all the flights from Miami to New York, his father had to wind up on
that
one.

Jack had a blood-red urge to gun up and shoot down every Arab he could find. He knew that insanity would pass, but he reveled in the fantasy until it reminded him of the backup piece strapped to his ankle.

He glanced around, saw no one about, so he reached down and pulled the little AMT .380 from its holster. When the FBI and CIA and NYPD and Homeland Security and whoever else would be involved began allowing people to leave the airport, he’d bet the ranch they’d be searching every person, every car. He wasn’t sure his tried-and-true John Tyleski ID would hold up—Ernie was painstakingly thorough when he created an identity, but no fake was perfect.

And even if it did pass, he couldn’t risk carrying. Had to dump the pistol.

He turned the little backup over in his hands. He’d bought it from Abe six months ago after his trusty old Semmerling had been connected to the subway massacre. Hadn’t had to pull it once since. Now he was going to have to toss it away unused.

Unused… he wondered if it could have made a difference in there. The shooter—probably more than one—must have used an automatic, machine pistol, most likely. He couldn’t have killed so many in so little time with a single-shot weapon.

I should’ve been there, goddamn it.

He didn’t know what use his little six-shot .380 would have been against Mac-l0s or HK-5s. Not much, probably, but you never knew.

Another fantasy… taking down a single shooter with a couple of .380s into his face… or, if there’d been two or three, taking one down, tossing his AMT to Dad, then grabbing the downed shooter’s weapon and the two of them taking on the others… just as they’d taken on Semelee’s clan in the Everglades.

More likely he’d now be lying dead beside his dad.

At least they’d have put up a fight, kept whoever it was from getting clean away.

And maybe being dead wouldn’t be as bad as dealing with this blistering guilt for not being there when his father needed him most.

Jack forced himself out of the fantasy to deal with the reality of the moment: The gun had to go.

He popped out the magazine, removed the chambered cartridge, then pulled out the old, oil-stained rag he kept in the glove compartment. He emptied the magazine, wiped it down, then did the same with each casing.

He removed the leather ankle holster and wiped that down. Then he removed the slide assembly from the pistol frame and wiped each part.

He opened the car door. A look around showed no one in sight, so he got out and leaned over the edge of the parapet. No one below. He dropped the slide onto the pavement six stories down.

He began walking the perimeter of the level, tossing a cartridge every hundred feet or so, then finally the frame and the holster.

When he returned to his car he moved it to a more centrally located slot.

Then he crossed the skyway back toward the terminal. At the end he turned the corner and found himself in the middle of a crowd. Security personnel were blocking the escalators down to the ticketing and baggage levels.

Jack tapped a heavyset woman on her arm.

“What’s going on?”

She looked at him—bloodshot eyes, blotchy face, tear-smeared mascara.

“They won’t let us down! My daughter was due in! I—I don’t know if she’s alive or dead!”

At least you still have hope, Jack thought.

6

He’d been standing on the glass-walled skyway for two hours. Dark now—the sun had set around four thirty. He’d called Gia to tell her he was okay. She said she’d heard the news and had been worried sick. When he told her about his father she broke down. Listening to her sob, he’d almost lost it himself.

Two hours with the crowd of mourners and stranded passengers watching a seemingly endless parade of stretchers wheeled back and forth from the terminal to the ambulances below. All carried bagged bodies. He saw no wounded and wondered why.

No matter. Dad wouldn’t be among them. It ate at Jack that he hadn’t known which bag contained his father.

And finally the stretchers stopped rolling, and the last of the ambulances pulled away.

“Where are the survivors?” said a forty-something woman nearby. “Aren’t there any survivors?”

“Maybe they were taken out another way.”

“No way,” she said with an emphatic shake of her head. “I know this airport, everything at this end has to funnel through directly below us. I’ve watched the ambulances coming and going, and right down there was the only spot they stopped.”

“There
have
to be
some
survivors,” said a man in a herringbone overcoat. “I mean, they couldn’t have killed
everybody
.”

Seemed logical, but Jack couldn’t remember seeing anyone stirring amid the bloodbath.

He kept that to himself, however. He was concerned with where they’d taken his father… and how he was going to claim the body when he didn’t own a single piece of ID under his real name.

He wandered back to the escalators. Still blocked, but he spotted a familiar-looking cop—the older one from inside—giving instructions to the security men.

“Sergeant?” he called. “Hey, sergeant?”

The cop didn’t turn.

What was his name? He’d seen the nameplate but had been in shock—wait. Driscoll. Yeah.

“Sergeant Driscoll?”

When he turned Jack waved to him. He looked as if he couldn’t place Jack’s face.

“We met inside. Where can I claim my father’s body?”

As Jack’s question was echoed by other voices, Driscoll stepped closer.

“Call the one-one-five—”

“Precinct?” someone said.

“Right. They’ll have a procedure in place.”

“What about the wounded?” a woman asked. “What hospital were—?”

Driscoll shook his head. His grim expression became grimmer.

“We have no wounded.”

“No wounded!” the woman cried, her voice edging into a wail. “They can’t
all
be dead!”

“We have survivors who saw what happened, and they’re being debriefed, but we have no wounded.”

“How can that 6e?”

“We’re working on that, ma’am.”

“What happened?” someone else said as horrified cries rose all around. “Who did this? Who’s responsible?”

He shook his head. “I can’t answer that. The mayor and the commissioner will be holding a press conference at City Hall soon. You’ll have to wait till then.”

“But—”

He held up his hand. “I’ve told you all I can.”

“When can we leave?” someone shouted as he turned.