"Snake, Jesus," shouted Eddie, pointing down at Monica. "You shot a cop."

"That's right," shouted Snake. "Now I'm gonna shoot this punk."

"Snake," shouted Eddie, "You're f.u.c.kin' crazy. I don't wa ... "

Snake grabbed Eddie by the shirt, yanked him hard, pivoting and hurling him past Matt against the wall in the rear of the plane. Eddie's back hit the wall and slumped to the floor next to the suitcase.

"DON'T CALL ME CRAZY," shouted Snake.

"Snake," shouted Eddie, "When we land, I ain't goin' with you."

Snake fired the gun. Eddie screamed and rolled sideways, grabbing his thigh.

"That's right," shouted Snake. "You ain't goin' with me." He turned back toward Matt, raising the gun.

Jenny landed on Snake chest high, wrapping her legs around his waist, grabbing his hair with one hand and furiously clawing at his eyes with the other. He raised his left hand to shove her off and she bit into it, her teeth sinking in to the bone.

00:26 The F-16s were directly behind the target, in textbook firing position. The target was slow and taking no evasive measures. There was essentially zero chance the Sidewinders would miss.

00:24 Snake screamed and yanked his bleeding hand away from Jenny's mouth. He brought his other hand up hard, hitting Jenny with the gun barrel under her jaw. Her head snapped back and she dropped off of him, into the aisle.

"You f.u.c.kin' b.i.t.c.h," he screamed, kicking at her. "I'm gonna KILL YOU, YOU f.u.c.kIN' b.i.t.c.h." Jenny, on her back, tried to scrabble away up the aisle.

"YOU AIN'T GETTTN' AWAY, b.i.t.c.h," screamed Snake, raising the gun.

Then he heard it, over the plane noise, a thump behind him. He spun and looked. Eddie, blood spreading quickly over his thigh, had managed to shove the suitcase against the lower lip of the open doorway. His eyes closed, his teeth gritted, he was pushing it over the lip. It was leaning out now, into the shrieking wind.

"NO!" screamed Snake. He dove to the back of the plane. As he got there, Eddie gave the suitcase a last desperate shove, toppling it slowly over the lip. Kicking Eddie aside, Snake leaned out of the doorway and grabbed for the suitcase handle with his left hand. He caught the handle, and he almost got the suitcase pulled back. But he'd leaned forward a little too far, and the weight of the suitcase was a little too much. Snake felt it pulling him out of the plane. He grabbed for the side of the door with his right, but he still had the gun in that hand, and he couldn't get a good grip. If he'd have let go of the suitcase, he could have grabbed the stairs, could have stayed on the plane and saved himself. But he wanted that suitcase; that was his kingpin suitcase. Snake held on to it as it bounced down to the bottom of the hanging stairs, then off the last stair, dragging Snake along, into the rushing black nothingness, over the vast black ocean.

00:14 Justin heard the b.u.mps and felt the sudden weight change at the back of the plane. He looked back where the maniac had been, where the suitcase had been. He began shouting into his headset microphone.

00:11 Greer was shouting into the special phone, now, causing airline pa.s.sengers to stop on the concourse and stare at him.

"ABORT ABORT ABORT," he shouted. "DO YOU HEAR ME? ABORT ABORT ABORT."

00:06 Snake was falling, falling. He was very afraid, but he was still thinking clearly. He had not let go of the suitcase. He would not let go of the suitcase. This was his kingpin suitcase. He would hold on to it for the rest of his life.

CHAPTER fourteen

The next day's newspaper was full of news.

The big story was the rogue wave, estimated to be somewhere between eight and twelve feet high, that hit both South Florida and the Bahamas. The wave was felt by even the big freighters; it capsized a number of smaller boats, although fortunately n.o.body was hurt. It was also fortunate that the wave hit at night, when there were few people on the beaches. There were some scary moments and a fair amount of damage, but n.o.body drowned.

The cause of the wave was, for the moment, a mystery. The best guess from the experts was that it was caused by some freak seismic event on the seafloor under the Gulf Stream. Rogue waves had hit Florida before; Daytona Beach had had one in July of 1992. As one oceanographer quoted in the newspaper put it: "Every now and then, Mother Nature throws you a curve."

There was also a dramatic story of a hijacking attempt aboard an Air Impact! turboprop flight from Miami to Freeport. A man-described by one of a group of retirees who'd been on the plane as "a complete lunatic"-managed to smuggle a gun on board and ordered the pilot to take off without clearance. A Miami police officer, Monica Ramirez, had somehow-details were not yet available-gotten on the plane and tried to apprehend the hijacker, who had shot her. Other pa.s.sengers had also fought the hijacker, and during the struggle, he had apparently fallen from the plane to his certain death in the ocean. Officer Ramirez, who was described by the police chief as a hero, was still alive when the plane returned to Miami; she was in critical condition, but doctors said her chances for survival were good. A pa.s.senger identified as Edward Porter also sustained a gunshot wound to the leg; he was listed in satisfactory condition.

By bizarre coincidence, there was another, totally unrelated story involving the airport at around the same time. Somehow, a thirteen-foot python had gotten loose in the main concourse and attacked a pa.s.senger, identified as Leonard Pflund, a forty-two-year-old consultant from East Orange, New Jersey. He was rescued by his business a.s.sociate, identified as forty-seven-year-old Henry Algott, also of East Orange, who killed the snake with a handgun. Police had taken possession of the handgun and detained Algott pending further investigation of the incident. Police said they would file charges against the snake's owner, Neil Hart, when he was released from the hospital, where he was being treated for injuries sustained while resisting arrest.

Police reported two unusual incidents in Coconut Grove. In one, a man identified as Jack Pend.i.c.k, twenty-eight, of the Harbour Oakes Manour Trailer Court in Cutler Ridge, had been apprehended after firing a handgun several times near the Coco Walk shopping complex. n.o.body had been hurt, but the incident and subsequent apprehension of Pend.i.c.k had attracted a crowd of tourists, who had temporarily blocked Grand Avenue. A few hours later, in a residential section of the Grove, a Miami police officer identified as Walter Kramitz had been discovered in the middle of Garbanzo Street handcuffed to a large metal object, along with a local business executive identified as Arthur Herk. This apparently was the result of a home-invasion-style robbery at Herk's home, but the details of the incident, and especially how Kramitz and Herk ended up in the street, were still sketchy.

Finally, traffic on busy Le Jeune Road had been shut down completely for several hours when a group of goats had somehow gotten loose on the roadway.

The newspaper ran this story as a "bright" on the bottom right-hand comer of the front page, with a picture of a sweating animal-control officer, surrounded by cars, chasing a frisky, cheerful-looking goat. This picture produced identical reactions in thousands of readers: They shook their heads, smiled, and said, "Only in Miami."

epilogue

In the weeks that followed, oceanographers up the Atlantic coast detected elevated radioactivity levels in the waters of the Gulf Stream; in addition, some mariners noted an unusually large quant.i.ty of dead deepwater fish floating on the ocean surface. Various explanations were offered for these phenomena, including the possibility that they, and the rogue wave, were caused by a catastrophic malfunction aboard a nuclear submarine. This allegation was aggressively advanced on the Internet by a number of people, most notably Pierre Salinger; the fact that the U.S. government said there had been no submarines of any kind in that area only reinforced their belief that they were right. But no concrete evidence ever surfaced, and eventually the matter became just another random piece of conspiracy-nut lore.

The Federal Aviation Administration immediately suspended all flights on Air Impact!, which soon filed for bankruptcy. In response to outrage expressed by the public and political leaders over the apparently lax security at Miami International Airport, a high-level task force was formed to root out problems and recommend solutions. After months of hearings, a number of measures were implemented, the most significant being the hiring of an expert consulting firm to oversee pa.s.senger checkpoint operations. This lucrative contract was awarded to See-Cure Tech, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Penultimate, Inc.

Eddie Porter was visited at the hospital by investigators from various law-enforcement agencies, some of them quite curious about how he came to be on Flight 2038. But the FBI took over the investigation and ultimately found no reason to detain Eddie, who returned to Coconut Grove, where he joined the local Hare Krishna temple and became known as Ram Baba Ram.

n.o.body ever asked what happened to Snake.

Henry Algott was arrested and tried on several weapons-related charges stemming from the incident in front of the Delta counter. At the trial, the prosecution introduced evidence showing that Algott was a convicted felon and suggesting that he was linked to organized crime. Henry's lawyer-who coincidentally was one of the lawyers Henry had lectured on cigar etiquette, specifically Lawyer C-received permission from the judge, over heated prosecution objections, to bring a mature python into the courtroom, so the jury could appreciate the threat Henry had courageously confronted in the airport. The snake somehow-the prosecution claimed it was intentional-got loose and had to be subdued in a struggle that left the courtroom in a shambles and one bailiff with a dislocated shoulder. The jury took less than ten minutes to return a "not guilty" verdict. Henry returned to East Orange, where he and Leonard continued to operate a successful freelance business killing people, although they refused to take any more jobs in South Florida.

Daphne's owner sued Dade County for pain and suffering related to getting knocked out, plus the loss of a beloved pet. A jury awarded him $3.2 million.

After Arthur Herk got out of the mental hospital, he went to the U.S. attorney's office and told a wild story about corruption and payoffs and hit men and a place in Coconut Grove that sold bombs and missiles. But when investigators went to the address, all they found was a deserted, boarded-up bar, with nothing inside but old beer signs and a busted TV. Arthur died a few months later in what was ruled a fishing accident, which seemed odd because n.o.body could ever remember his having gone fishing before.

Ivan Chukov and Leonid Yudanski were taken to a secure federal facility and questioned for several weeks. Then they were deported to Moscow, where they opened a very successful Starbucks.

Walter Kramitz finally grew tired of hearing snide comments from his fellow police officers and quit the force to become a dancer at a nightclub for women called "Thrust." His stage name is Buck Lance.

Jack Pend.i.c.k pleaded no contest to a number of charges related to the Coconut Grove shootings. He served a year in prison, and after an early release because of good behavior, he eventually found a job as a security guard.

Monica Ramirez recovered slowly but steadily. Once she got out of intensive care, she was visited regularly by Harvey Baker, and when she got out of the hospital, they started dating. One night, after they finished a bottle of wine-the first time her doctor had allowed her to have alcohol-he proposed to her, and she accepted, and then they made love, and then, after she promised, cross her heart, that she would not tell anybody ever, he told her what had been inside the suitcase. And she said, you're telling me they let a scuzzball get through airport security with a gun and a nuclear weapon? And he said, yup. And she said, what a world. And they hardly ever talked about it again.

Eliot Arnold fell even deeper into debt, and came very close to being evicted from his office for nonpayment of rent. On the day that his landlord had intended to kick him out, he got a visit in his office from two young partners of the hottest advertising agency in New York. They asked him if he was the guy who'd done the Hammerhead Beer ads, and he started to say it wasn't really his idea, but before he could get the words out, they told him they LOVED those ads, they were so RUDE, and they wanted to hire Eliot to do a national campaign, print and TV, with a huge budget, for a new type of nonalcoholic youth beverage called SpewTum, which was going to feature a high-profile involvement by the Seminal Fluids.

Anna filed for, and quickly got, a divorce from Arthur. He didn't have much in the way of a.s.sets, but she did get to keep the house. She and Eliot had agreed that they would not jump into anything, that they would take it slow and be really sure. They were married four days later.

Jenny and Matt dated for a while and went to the prom together, but they decided it was just too weird, their mom and dad being married and all, and they decided to be good friends, which they remained for the rest of their lives.

The enemy toad, perhaps traumatized by its encounter with Arthur, hopped away and never returned. Roger could never say so in so many words, but the truth was he kind of missed it.

Puggy moved in with Nina in the maid's room, although every now and then, for old time's sake, they slept in the tree. Puggy did odd jobs around the house for Eliot and Anna; sometimes he earned extra money by voting in Miami munic.i.p.al elections, which were ordered by the courts at frequent intervals. He wanted Nina to teach him Spanish, but all he ever learned to say was Te quiero Te quiero. Which turned out to be all he ever really needed.