It was time, in any event, for him to get out of the Company. Time to try normalizing his life. Time, as she’d often said, to join the human race.
When they reached the Pan Am terminal, the aircraft’s cabin lights were switched on, the curtain separating first class from coach was pulled aside, and the other passengers began streaming tiredly by. Carrick motioned for McAllister to wait. From his window he could see the boarding tunnel that led into the terminal. A pair of ground crewmen dressed in white coveralls stood at the base of the stairs. One of them was smoking a cigarette, which McAllister found odd.
After all the passengers were gone, McAllister fell in between Carrick and Maas as they got off the plane. Instead of going down the boarding tunnel, Carrick opened the outside door and they took the stairs down to the tarmac. The air was very cold and smelled strongly of burned jet fuel. The 747’s engines had been shut down. On the opposite side of the plane the baggage handlers had opened the cargo bays and were off-loading the luggage, the engine of the baggage train clattering noisily in the crisp air.
“We have a car coming for us,” Carrick said over his shoulder. “What about customs?” McAllister asked. “Forget about it,” Maas said from behind him. When they got to the bottom of the stairs, McAllister looked for the two ground crewmen he’d seen from the plane, but they had disappeared.
Carrick looked at his watch. “They were supposed to be here by now,” he said. “What the hell are we supposed to do, stand out here freezing our balls off?”
McAllister glanced up at the terminal windows. Two New York City cops stood talking, their backs to the window. Something was not quite right. It was the cigarette the one crewman had been smoking. Tiredness, or his internal warning system?
He turned to say something to Carrick when the legman started to swing left as he reached inside his coat. McAllister caught a movement out of the corner of his eye, and he began to turn at the same moment the two crewmen he’d seen before, came out of the shadows, big pistols in their hands, silencers on the barrels.
Both men opened fire at the same time, the noise of the silenced gunshots lost to the sounds of the baggage train’s engine.
Carrick was shoved violently back, off his feet, his head bouncing on the pavement. Maas had pushed McAllister aside, and was pulling out his gun when he went down, taking at least three bullets to the torso, his body crumpling in a heap on the boarding tunnel’s stairs.
McAllister, on his hands and knees, scrambled to Carrick’s body and pulled the dead agent’s gun out of his hand, then rolled left, snapping off two shots as he came around. He was sure that he had hit one of the assassins, but then they disappeared into the maintenance basement of the terminal.
It had all happened in a second or two, and as McAllister jumped to his feet he glanced up at the window. One of the cops was looking down at him, a walkie-talkie raised to his lips, a frantic expression on his face. McAllister stepped back a pace, realizing that he was holding Carrick’s gun, and what it must look like to the cop who could not have seen the two gunmen who had never stepped out from beneath the overhang.
His head was spinning from the remnants of the drugs still in his system, and from the alcohol he had consumed on the flight.
They thought he was a traitor, and now there was at least one witness who would swear that he was a killer.
Chapter 5
The cop with the walkie-talkie disappeared from the window; the other one was already on his way down here, probably through the boarding tunnel, and they would shoot before they stopped to ask questions.
McAllister moved quickly away from the aircraft and hurried beneath the overhang to the broad service doors leading into the Pan Am baggage handling area. He was in time to see two crewmen in white coveralls heading away in a small electric-driven cart. His eyes swept past them toward two other crewmen busy loading out-going baggage onto a train. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. No one was rushing away. No sounds of alarm had been raised.
He looked again down the broad corridor in time to see one of the crewmen in the retreating cart slump forward and hold his shoulder. It was them. The assassins. And he had wounded one of them. Stay or run? The situation here would only last for a few moments longer. He could put down the gun, raise his hands and wait for the police. Or he could go after the killers.
Carrick and Maas had thought he was a traitor and now they were dead. At least two New York City cops knew that he was a murderer. They had seen it with their own eyes.
What the hell was happening?
McAllister stepped the rest of the way into the baggage-handling area, and concealing the pistol behind his leg edged away from the brightly lit central corridor into the shadows, and then raced after the slowly retreating service cart, careful to make no noise, or expose himself to the other crewmen at work.
The killers were professionals who understood that to rush away would mark them as out of the ordinary, a force to reckon with. Because of this McAllister was able to gain on them. No doubt they had a car parked somewhere outside the international terminal area. There was possibly a driver waiting for them. The operation had been smooth. They had waited for the flight knowing that their targets would be getting off the plane last and would come down the stairs from the boarding tunnel. But Cartick had said they would be met by a car. Had the signals been crossed innocently, or had their pickup’s absence been arranged?
By whom? How? Why? A dozen dark possibilities, each more ominous than the last, crowded into McAllister’s head as he darted in and around piles of boxes and tow carts filled with baggage. The assassins passed through the Pan Am baggage area into Eastern’s, crossed a broad, well-lit tarmac, then turned sharply left through the big service doors that led back outside.
McAllister pulled up short, ducking behind a large crate as someone shouted something from behind him. The two cops had raced into the Pan Am baggage area and were questioning the two crewmen. They were obviously frantic, gesticulating and pointing first in the opposite direction, and then this way. Getting out of here was suddenly impossible. The moment he moved out of hiding he would be spotted.
The baggage train from the Pan Am flight came noisily through the service doors, passing directly in front of the two cops, momentarily blocking their view. McAllister stepped out of the shadows and walked at a normal pace into Eastern’s baggage area. To move any faster would be to attract attention to himself. So far the alarms had not spread, only the two cops behind him had taken up the hunt. So far.
Reaching the service doors, he stepped outside. A big Eastern Airlines jet was getting ready for departure. There was a lot of activity around the aircraft; last-minute fueling, baggage loading, provisioning through a rear hatch. He hung back for a few moments, searching for the killers. He thought they would be moving directly away from the terminal, so he didn’t immediately spot the service cart parked off to the right in the shadows beyond an empty baggage train. They had stopped. He stepped forward out of the shadows as two men, dressed in dark jackets and trousers stepped around from behind the baggage train, and climbed into the back seat of a black Chevrolet sedan.
McAllister knew that he could not use Carrick’s gun. It was not silenced and the noise of the gunshots would mark him immediately. He could feel blind panic rising up inside of him. Already a crowd had gathered around the Pan Am aircraft, and in the distance he could hear the sounds of the first sirens. He was going to have to get out of here now, or else he would be trapped.
He shoved the gun in his pocket as the big car turned and headed off into the night, its taillights winking. He had caught enough of a glimpse of the license plate to see that it was a New York tag; nongovernmental, nondiplomatic.
Even more people were racing to the Pan Am plane as McAllister forced himself to walk calmly to where the service cart was parked. Two sets of coveralls were stuffed behind the seats. One of them had a lot of blood on the shoulder, the other was clean. Airport identification badges were still clipped to the pockets. looking around to make certain that no one had noticed him yet, he took the clean set of coveralls out of the cart and stepped around behind a big truck where he hurriedly pulled them on. By the time he walked back around to the service cart the two cops from the window had raced up from the Pan Am baggage area, and had emerged from the Eastern’s service
