Seitz snorted.

"What?" asked Baker.

"What makes you think this is the first time?" said Seitz.

"This isn't the first time?" said Baker.

Seitz snorted again.

"Never mind which time this is," said Greer.

"Here's the thing. What I told you here, it's because, like I said, you're a cop, and you got cops involved. But what I'm also telling you is, when we get these sc.u.mbags, we take them, and the suitcase, and we leave, and that's the end of this as far as you are concerned, understand?"

"What do you mean?" asked Baker.

"What I mean," said Greer, "is that as far as the federal government is concerned-and I am talking about way, way, way the f.u.c.k high up in the federal government-none of this happened. There was no nuclear bomb in Miami. There never have been any nuclear bombs going around loose in suitcases anywhere in this great land of ours. Because if people start thinking there are, we are gonna have panic like you cannot imagine-people leaving for Montana, h.o.a.rding food, taking all their money outta the banks, lynching every guy with a beard, you get the picture. The economy goes into the toilet, civilization collapses, end of story. So this did not happen. Understand? Whatever happens, it did not happen."

Baker said, "But I have to report ... "

"You don't have to report s.h.i.t," said Greer. "You repeat any of this, Agent Seitz and I, backed by pretty much the entire federal government, will deny it. You push it, and we will push back on you, hard. Very hard. Nothing personal, because seems to me like you're a good cop, but we can and will f.u.c.k your career up so bad you won't be able to get a job policing Porta Potties."

Baker sat back in his seat, staring out the window again. He said, "What you said before, about if you told me what was going on, you might have to kill me ... "

Greer turned and looked back at him. "What about it?"

Baker said, "You weren't kidding, were you?"

Greer looked forward again. "Traffic's getting bad," he said.

CHAPTER eleven

Even veteran air travelers find Miami International Airport disorienting. It's often crowded, and it seems to have been designed so that every pa.s.senger, no matter where he or she is coming from or going to, has to jostle past every other pa.s.senger. The main concourse looks like a combination international bazaar and refugee camp. There are big clots of people everywhere-tour groups, school trips, salsa bands, soccer teams, vast extended families-all waiting for planes that will not leave for hours, maybe days. There aren't enough places to sit, so the clots plop down and sprawl on the mungy carpet, surrounded by Appalachian-foothill-sized mounds of luggage, including gigantic suitcases stuffed to bursting, as well as a vast array of consumer goods purchased in South Florida for transport back to Latin America, including TVs, stereos, toys, major appliances, and complete sets of tires. Many of these items have been wrapped in thick coc.o.o.ns of greenish stretch plastic to deter baggage theft, which is an important airport industry, another one being the constant "improvements" to the airport, which seem to consist mainly of the installation of permanent-looking signs asking the public to excuse the inconvenience while the airport is being improved.

The airport air smells of musty tropical rot, and it's filled with the sounds of various languages-Spanish, predominantly, but also English, Creole, German, French, Italian, and, perhaps most distinct of all, Cruise Ship Pa.s.senger. The cruisers just arriving are usually wearing brand-new cruisewear. They follow in groups close behind cruise-line employees holding signs displaying cruise-line names; they tell each other what other cruises they have been on, and they laugh loudly whenever anybody makes a joke-which somebody does every forty-five seconds-about how much they're going to drink, gamble, or buy. The cruisers heading home are more subdued-tired, sunburned, hungover, and bloated from eating eleven times per day, whether they were hungry or not, because ... it's all included! Some of the women have had their hair braided and beaded, a style that looks fine on young Caribbean girls, but on most women over sixteen looks comical or outright hideous. Some pa.s.sengers are clutching badly ma.s.s-produced "folk art"-large, unattractive, nonfunctional sticks are popular-and a great many of them are lugging boxes containing the ultimate cruise-ship pa.s.senger trophy: discount booze! Never mind that they spent thousands of dollars to take this vacation: They're thrilled to have saved as much as ten dollars a bottle on scotch and brandy and liqueurs that they will never actually drink, but which they lug through miles of airports, on and off various planes, so that when they get back home they can haul it out and display it proudly to visitors in the months and years to come ("We got this for twenty-three-fifty in the Virgin Islands! Guess what it costs here!").

On the night that Snake and his party walked in with a nuclear bomb, the airport was even more chaotic than usual. There was bad weather in Chicago, which of course meant that virtually every flight in the western hemisphere, including s.p.a.ce shuttle launches, had been delayed. And now some airlines were noticing a problem getting clearance for outgoing flights to push back, although the control tower was not saying why. Most airline ticket counters had sprouted long lines of p.i.s.sed-off pa.s.sengers shoving to get to the counter so they could argue fruitlessly with p.i.s.sed-off airline employees. Police had already been summoned to arrest one returning cruise pa.s.senger who had threatened a ticket agent with his souvenir stick.

Eddie came through the airport door first, followed by Puggy, lugging the suitcase, and then Snake, who had one hand under the sweatshirt and the other holding Jenny's arm. Like Eddie and Puggy, Snake had never been inside MIA before, and for a moment, when he saw the roiling mob, he thought about turning and running. But then he squeezed his gun, his wand, and the moment pa.s.sed. He was not going back to scamming dimes.

"Where we goin' ?" asked Eddie, staring at the airport scene. He had never felt less like he belonged somewhere, and Eddie was the kind of person who never felt he belonged anywhere.

"That way," said Snake, pointing, pretty much randomly, toward a line of ticket counters. He jabbed the barrel of the sweatshirt-swathed gun into Puggy's back and said, "You stay close, punk. You don't go one step farther away from me'n you are now."

They moved slowly through the crowd-first Eddie, then Puggy lugging the suitcase, followed closely by Snake, who limped next to Jenny, who shuffled her feet and stared ahead, zombie-like. The first airline they came to had a name Snake did not understand and a sign listing departures for cities that Snake had never heard of; everyone at the counter was talking in Spanish. Snake jerked his head to indicate to Eddie that he should move ahead. They went past a half dozen more airlines that Snake found incomprehensible, then came to a small counter with a half dozen people waiting in line for a lone agent. Over the counter was an orange sign that said: AIR IMPACT!

You're Gateway to the Bahamas Sheduled Departures Daily Snake felt a good-vibe jolt. The Bahamas! He motioned Eddie to get in line. They shuffled forward, Snake keeping his grip on Jenny and periodically letting Puggy feel the gun in his back. In ten minutes, they were standing in front of the agent.

The agent was a single mom named Sheila who had been on duty for fourteen hours without a break, because two of her three coworkers had quit that very day. Air Impact! had trouble keeping employees because its paychecks were behind schedule as often as its flights, which was quite often. Air Impact! was owned by two brothers from North Miami Beach who had done well in the pest-control business and had hatched the plan of starting an airline so that they would have a legitimate business excuse to fly to the Bahamas and gamble and have s.e.x with women who were not technically their wives. The airline was in its second year, and the brothers were spending more and more time in the Bahamas and less and less time on business details such as payroll and schedules and hiring competent personnel.

The Federal Aviation Administration had begun to take a special interest in Air Impact! after receiving an unusually high number of pa.s.senger complaints about flight delays and cancellations. Eyebrows had also been raised two weeks earlier when an Air Impact! flight from Miami to Na.s.sau, flown by pilots with questionable credentials, had in fact landed in Key West, which even non-aviators noted was several hundred miles in the diametrically opposite direction. Rumor had it that the FAA was about to shut Air Impact! down, and morale was very low among the employees who had not already quit. n.o.body's morale was any lower than Sheila's; aside from having been on her feet for what seemed like forever dealing with unhappy customers, she had just received a call from the baby-sitter she could barely afford telling her that her two-year-old daughter was throwing up, this coming on top of the call from the mechanic telling her that her 1987 Taurus, which always needed something, needed major transmission work.

Had Sheila been in a state of higher morale, she probably would have cared enough to be suspicious of the quartet now standing at the counter-a zoned-out young woman with three scuzzy-looking men. But Sheila had long since pa.s.sed the point of giving a s.h.i.t.

"Yes?" she said to Snake.

"We need four tickets to the Bahamas, one-way, next flight you got," said Snake.

"Na.s.sau or Freeport?" she asked.

Snake frowned. "The Bahamas," he said.

"Na.s.sau and Freeport are in the Bahamas," said Sheila, mentally adding you moron.

Snake thought about it.

"Freeport," he said. He liked the sound of it.

"There's a ten-ten flight," said Sheila, checking her watch, which said nine-fifteen. "Four one-way tickets is"-she tapped the computer keyboard-"three hundred sixty dollars."

Snake let go of Jenny for a moment while he dug his free hand into his pocket He pulled out the fat wad of bills he'd taken from Arthur Herk at the house. He set it on the counter, in front of Sheila, and, one-handed, started counting off twenties out loud ... "twenty, forty, sixty ... " At 120, his brain fogged up-he'd always struggled with arithmetic-and he had to start again. He did this twice, said "f.u.c.k," and pushed the wad off the counter, scattering bills across Sheila's keyboard.

"Take it outta there," he said.

Sheila gathered up the wad, feeling the heft of it, this big bunch of money being carried around by this guy who didn't even know how to count it. Sheila peeled off $360. Then, after glancing at Snake, who was looking around nervously, she peeled off another $480, which was what she needed to get her transmission fixed, and then another $140, which was roughly what she owed the baby-sitter for the past week. She put the rest of the wad back on the counter. Snake looked at it. He almost said something, but he didn't want any trouble here. Plus he figured he had plenty of money left. Plus a suitcase full of drugs. Maybe emeralds.

"I need the names of the pa.s.sengers," said Sheila, tapping on her terminal.

Snake hesitated, then said, "John Smith."

Sheila looked up for a second, then went back to tapping.

"And the other pa.s.sengers?" she said.

"John Smith," said Snake.

Sheila looked up again, at Eddie, Puggy, Snake, and Jenny. "You're all John Smith?" she asked.

"Everybody," said Snake "I need to see photo IDs," said Sheila.

Snake grabbed a handful of bills and dropped them on her keyboard.

"Here you go," he said.

Sheila looked at the bills. It looked to be at least two hundred.

"OK, then, Mr. Smith," she said.

Monica, leaning on the horn, swerved the Kia past a car-rental courtesy shuttle on the airport access road.

"OK, listen," she said. "We're looking for the police car. You see it, you yell, OK?"

"OK," said Matt and Eliot. Anna was quiet. Nina was praying.

"Once we see the car," said Monica-who was thinking, Jesus, I hope we see the car-"if they're not in it, we go into the terminal and we look for them. There will be police officers at the airport to help us. It's gonna be OK, Mrs. Herk."

In the back, Anna said nothing.

Monica gunned the Kia up the ramp under the Departures sign. They were approaching the terminal building now, Monica, Matt, and Eliot scanning the ma.s.s of cars ahead. It was Matt who saw the cruiser in the unfinished garage.

"Over there," he said, pointing.

Monica swerved left into the garage, screeching to a stop behind the cruiser. She was out of the Kia before it stopped rocking. She saw that the cruiser was empty, slammed her hand on the trunk, spun around, and raced, dodging traffic, across the roadway into the terminal. Matt was right behind her, followed by Eliot, holding Anna's hand.

"This ain't gonna work," said Seitz, looking at the string of unmoving brake lights disappearing into the distance northbound on Le Jeune.

"If you can make a right up there," said Baker, "you can swing over to Douglas, go up that way."

"See if that guy'll let me squeeze in front of him," said Seitz, nodding toward a Humvee in the right-hand lane next to their rental. Humvees are a common sight in Miami. They're especially popular with wealthy trend-followers who like to cruise the streets in these large, impractical pseudomilitary vehicles, as though awaiting orders to proceed to Baghdad. The Humvee next to the FBI rental car was occupied by three young males whose buzz-cut heads bobbed simultaneously to the whomping, churning ba.s.s notes blasting from a speaker the size of a doghouse filling the entire rear of the vehicle. The driver had received the car two days earlier as a nineteenth-birthday present from his father, a prosperous and respected local cocaine importer.

The Humvee occupants didn't hear Seitz honk his horn, so Greer lowered his window and waved to get the driver's attention. When the Humvee driver looked over, Greer made a cranking signal with his hand. The driver lowered his window; Greer, Seitz, and Baker winced as they were pounded by the music.

I want your s.e.x pootie!

I want your s.e.x pootie!

I want your s.e.x pootie!

I want your s.e.x pootie!

Greer, squinting into the howling gale of sound, made a gesture to the Humvee driver asking him to let the rental car squeeze in front. The Humvee driver made a gesture indicating that Greer should go f.u.c.k himself. The driver raised his window; he and his friends were laughing.

"Ah, youth," said Greer.

"You want me to show 'em my badge?" asked Baker.

"Nah," said Greer, opening the door and getting out.

"You ever hear of Special Executive Order 768 dash 4?" Seitz asked Baker.

"No," said Baker. "What's that?"

"Powerful law-enforcement tool," said Seitz.

Greer rapped his knuckles on the Humvee window. The driver glanced sideways, then again flipped Greer the bird. He and his buddies laughed. They stopped when Greer drove the b.u.t.t of his revolver through the window with his right hand, then reached in with his left, grabbed the driver by the front of his Tommy Hilfiger shirt, and yanked him out the window and onto the street. The driver broke his fall with his hands, scrambled to his feet, and ran ahead into the ma.s.s of traffic without looking back. The other two young males exited on the pa.s.senger side without being asked. Greer climbed into the driver's seat, ejected the CD, turned off the sound system, and drove the Humvee up over the sidewalk and into a Burger King parking lot, clearing a path for Seitz to move over. Then he climbed out of the Humvee, dropped the CD onto the pavement, stepped on it, and got back in the rental.

"I could've just showed 'em my badge," said Baker.

"Nah," said Greer.

Seitz, aided by the helpful maneuvers of surrounding drivers who had watched Greer in action and did not wish to be viewed as uncooperative, was able to squeeze around to the right and onto a cross street, heading east to Douglas. When they were northbound again, Baker said, "What do you think this guy's gonna do? I mean, why's he going to the airport?"

"My guess," said Greer, "based on crime-fighter deductions, he's gonna try to get on a plane."

"How?" asked Baker. "I mean, there's security at the airport, right?"

That got a large snort from Seitz.

When Snake and his small, unhappy group reached the concourse for their Air Impact! flight, they found a long line of people waiting to go through the security checkpoint.

"Hold it," said Snake, pulling back on Jenny's arm. He wanted to watch a little bit, see what was going on.

It was the standard airport-security operation, which meant it appeared to have been designed to ha.s.sle law-abiding pa.s.sengers just enough to rea.s.sure them, while at the same time providing virtually no protection against criminals with an IQ higher than celery. Pa.s.sengers put their belongings on a conveyor belt that went through the X-ray machine; they put their phones, keys, beepers, and other metal objects on a little pa.s.s-through shelf; then they walked through the metal detector. This operation was being overseen by harried, distracted employees who seemed primarily concerned with keeping the line moving.

It took Snake, who had never before seen an airport security checkpoint, about two minutes to figure out how he would get his gun through. He actually had three guns on him, one in his hand and one in each side pocket. He thought he could probably get them all through, but decided not to get greedy. He herded his group over to a trash can and, after glancing around to make sure n.o.body was looking, dropped Monica's and Walter's official-issue Clocks into the slot. Then he waited for another minute, until he saw a businessman with a laptop-computer bag slung over his shoulder approaching the checkpoint line. As the man walked past, Snake shoved Puggy after him, into the line. As they shuffled forward, Snake whispered to Puggy and Jenny: "We get up there, you"-he jabbed Puggy-"put that suitcase on that belt and then you walk through. Girlie, you walk through right after. I will be right f.u.c.king behind you. Either one a ya says a f.u.c.kin' word, you are both f.u.c.kin' dead, unnerstan'?"

"Snake," said Eddie. "This ain't gonna work, man. They got machines up there and s.h.i.t."

"Shut up," said Snake. He was sick of Eddie's att.i.tude.

They were now almost to the checkpoint. Just on the other side of the metal detector was a rotund man whose job, as he interpreted it, was to wave people through as fast as possible.

"Step through, please!" he said, over and over, waving at the pa.s.sengers.

The businessman in front of Puggy put his laptop bag on the belt, and the rotund man waved him through, then started waving Puggy through. Puggy, prodded by the feel of the gun under Snake's sweatshirt, hefted the suitcase onto the belt and went through the metal detector. As he did this, the woman operating the X-ray machine, seeing the businessman's laptop, said, "Computer check!" They were very vigilant about computers at the security checkpoint.

The rotund man turned toward a stern-looking woman at a table at the end of the conveyor belt and said, "Computer check!" The woman waved the businessman over. She would make him turn on the computer. That was the heart of her job: making people turn on their computers. In the world of the security checkpoint, the fact that a computer could be turned on served as absolute proof that it was not a bomb.