recognized Springsteen, and then remembered that expanding his range of classic rock music was the only debt besides Charlotte he owed his ex.
Night filled the terminal windows. Ads landscaped its walls. The musician in Middleton found melody in crowd movements synced with his rhythmic march to a bus for the main terminal. From there, he’d find his car in Long Term Parking, race to Scotland, working his cell phone the whole way. He saw all that with the absolute clarity of what is and what would be.
Looming beyond the shuffling first-class couple, Middleton saw a cop hurrying toward him. Saw the cop’s blue uniform. Saw his shoulder-holstered black automatic. Saw a second pistol on the cop’s black-leather belt along with handcuffs, ammo pouches, an empty loop for a radio.
They were 10 steps apart when Middleton matched the cop’s face to photos he’d seen in Poland of a murderer.
The fake cop unsnapped his hip holster.
Middleton shoved the first-class woman into the pistol-drawing cop.
The fragile jewel case popped out of her grasp and flew toward the cop, who knocked it away. The case burst open. Glittering objects rained on the airport crowd.
First-class woman clawed at the cop: “Mine! Mine!”
Her bumped husband fell into an empty chair.
The fake cop pointed his gun at Middleton’s face, as the woman continued to flail at him.
The gunshot reverberated through the terminal to Gate 67 some 40 feet off to Middleton’s left where FBI Agent M. T. Connolly was snapping a handcuff onto her own wrist. The handcuffs’ other clamp already circled the wrist of Dan Kohrman, who wore a second set of handcuffs shackling his wrists in front of him. Connolly’s close- cropped brass hair came up to the shoulder of the husky Kohrman who’d been apprehended in Chicago on a federal Flight To Avoid Prosecution charge and extradited to D.C. Chicago cops passed him off.
Connolly hadn’t needed to double cuff Kohrman. True, he was a felony fugitive, but he’d embezzled funds as a lawyer. Not the kind of bad boy who’d give “14-years-on-the-bricks her” any trouble. No, she cuffed her left hand to his right hand because she didn’t feel like talking to the scum-bag. Easier to jerk him where she wanted him to go.
He’d protested his innocence as Windy City cops led him off the plane toward Connolly and a uniformed Virginia state trooper who had been assigned to accompany the FBI during custodial transferals through the state’s jurisdiction to a federal lockup. After that…
Well, after that, the state trooper had the easy smile of a Dixie scamp. He seemed like a possible diversion from the storm of empty howling in Connolly. His eyes twinkled while they waited for the Chicago plane, indicating to her that he harbored similar thoughts. He introduced himself as George, and she knew he wouldn’t be around long enough for her to need to remember his last name.
“Look,” Kohrman had said as she clicked her handcuff on his wrist. “Have you asked yourself why I would be so stupid as to steal that money?”
As she tightened the handcuff on her left wrist, Connolly replied, “Like I care about why.”
Then she heard the high-caliber pistol shot crackle behind her. Crowd reacting. Trooper George facing the sound source. Screams and she turned, her.40 Glock filling her right hand.
She saw travelers stampeding.
Sensed the taller, trooper-uniformed George draw his gun.
Glimpsed a thick, black-haired American crashing onto a cop.
The roar of the gun in Middleton’s face deafened him. The muzzle flash novaed his eyes. But as the bullet cut wide, Middleton fell onto his would-be killer and the crazed woman from first class, and they crashed to the floor. The gun flew from the killer’s hand as hordes of airline travelers panicked in a 21st century terrorism nightmare.
Middleton’s vision returned. But why can’t I hear? Why is there no noise?
He scrambled after a 9mm Beretta gliding silently across a jewel-strewn floor.
The fake cop chopped at the first-class woman’s throat. Jumped to his feet. Reached for his shoulder- holstered second pistol.
Middleton heard only the hammering of his own heart. He grabbed the Beretta and fired at the man who was drawing a second gun.
A glowing green neon Starbucks sign exploded on a wall beyond as the fake cop to a marksman’s stance and acquired his target. His black shoes crunched white pearls scattered on the floor.
The fake cop and Middleton fired at the same time.
His arm unsteady, Middleton’s bullet missed.
The fake cop’s bullet missed too because he slipped on pearls and tumbled back through the air.
Off to Middleton’s left, State Trooper George saw a uniformed police officer in trouble. Saw the cop fall. Panicked civilians ran between Trooper George and the gun battle. George glimpsed his target-tapped out two snap shots.
Missed!
Middleton saw a nearby black plastic chair shatter.
Instantly knew why, whirled. His eyes locked on a man wearing a blue uniform like the enemy’s. Middleton fired four slugs at that second uniform.
Connolly heard the whine of bullets, the roar of a gun.
As the fugitive Kohrman screamed, Connolly saw Trooper George. Flat on his back, a hole at the collar of the blue-uniformed shirt over his bulletproof vest. A red stream flowed from George’s neck. His eyes stared at the ceiling
Connolly lunged toward the fallen trooper, but Kohrman jerked her handcuffed left arm and she tipped back toward him.
“I wanted to make it big!” screamed Kohrman. “All right? I admit it! Just don’t shoot-”
“Shut up!” Connolly shouted as she broke his nose with the butt of her pistol.
Kohrman crumpled, dead weight she dragged to Trooper George bleeding on the floor. Dropped her gun, pressed her free right hand over the gushing hole in the trooper’s neck.
“You’re going to make it!” she screamed at the fallen officer.
But she knew that was a lie.
Can’t hear!
Middleton saw the second uniformed man who’d tried to shoot him crash to the floor. Middleton whirled his deaf attention to the nearby fake cop, who scrambled to his feet on the floor’s glittering debris and fled through an emergency exit door.
Get him before he gets me! Or my daughter!
Battling in a world of silence, Middleton saw men and women dive for cover behind waiting room chairs. He saw their muted screaming faces.
First-class husband slumped in a black plastic chair, his face contorted like a laughing clown, staring at the tiled floor where his buxom wife lay gasping for air.
Middleton’s eyes followed the husband’s focus.
Saw flecks of gold paint on the tiles.
Saw broken shards of red and green and white stones.
Saw glittering glass ground to dust.
Saw a fallen cell phone spinning to a stop amid the rainbow rubble.
Middleton scooped up the cell phone as he burst to the emergency exit, broke out to the night from a facility designed by Homeland Security to prevent people from storming into it and its planes, not to keep people from running away.
Swallowed by cool air, Middleton stood at the top of metal stairs leading to the vast fields of runways where jets taxied, landed, took off-all in terrible silence.
A baggage caravan rolled silently across the dark tarmac. No sign of the fake cop. Middleton suddenly realized
