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.
"The checkpoints are in place now. You can start to head out."
And then his back was to them and he was walking away. If he heard any of the questions called out after him, he gave no sign.
Jack too barely heard them. The word "checkpoints" was blaring though his mind.
His earlier misgivings about his Tyleski ID withstanding full-bore scrutiny had became full-blown doubt. But even if it did pass muster, his car was another story. A check of the registration would raise a horde of questions. Like why was he driving a car registered to someone else? And to Vinny "the Donut" Donato, of all people? If someone checked with the owner they'd learn that the black Crown Vic in question was sitting in his garage in Brooklyn.
Then even more shit would hit the fan.
Bad enough to be bagged for false ID, but to be suspected of being connected to the terrorists who'd killed his own father… a father he couldn't officially claim as his own…
Had to find another way out.
7
Jack fought the numbness his mind yearned to yield to and forced it to focus. He shuttled between the garage and the skyway, getting the lay of the land and not finding much in the way of potential escape routes.
To the north lay the runways, the East River, and Rikers Island. If he didn't get out of here soon, Rikers might be his new home.
To the south, past Ditmars Boulevard and Grand Central Parkway, the glowing house windows of Jackson Heights beckoned.
East offered only dark expanses of marsh and more of the East River. The west had possibilities, but involved long stretches of exposure.
He had to get down to the highway.
Jack fell in with a group heading from the skyway to the garage. No one spoke. Shock was the order of the day.
As they entered the fourth level and scattered toward their respective cars, Jack took the elevator down to the ground floor. Crossed to the outer rim and hopped over the wall. Cut across an access lane to a low concrete wall. Hopped that, landing on a patch of bare ground. Directly ahead, across a scraggly winter lawn, lay Grand Central Parkway.
All that stood between Jack and freedom was an eight-foot, chain-link fence with a barbed-wire crown.
Blue-and-white police units and sinister black SUVs kept roaring in and out along the airport access roads.
That fence… that damn fence…
Couldn't go over it. No big deal physically—he could easily climb the links and throw his sweatshirt over the barbed wire—but he'd be spotted for sure.
Had to find another way.
Jack lay flat and began to belly crawl through the cold, dead grass. When he reached the fence he turned and crept along its base, feeling his way, searching for—
His hand slipped into a depression in the dirt. Knew he'd find one somewhere along the line. Inevitable that some dog at some time would want to get past the fence. To do that it would dig. And one had dug here.
Not deep enough to allow Jack through, but okay. The dog trough gave him a head start. All he had to do was make it a little deeper, strip down to his underwear, and slip through.
He pulled out his knife and flipped it open. A sin to use a Spyderco Endura as a digging tool, but…
At least the ground was still soft. Though cold, winter was a couple weeks off, and the ground hadn't frozen yet.
He began to dig, loosening the dirt with the knife blade and scooping it out with his free hand…
8
Jack crouched in the shadows under an overpass. He punched Abe's number into his phone and prayed he was still at the store. He released a breath when he heard him pick up.
"Abe? It's me."
"Hello, Me. I don't recall ever meeting a Me. I should know you?"
"Hold the jokes, okay. I need a favor."
"Always with the favors."
"This is serious."