'Forty-five,' said Greer. 'We think the True Believer was planning to hop a subway, be up in the Bronx, facing north, by the time it blew.'
'And now it's here,' said Baker, staring out the window.
'Looks like it,' said Greer.
'Jesus,' said Baker, shaking his head. 'I mean, you see this shit in the movies, and you think it's fiction, but I guess it was bound to happen one day.'
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 scumbags, 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 fuck 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, hoarding 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 shit,' 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 fuck 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.
eleven
Even veteran air travelers find Miami International Airport disorienting. It's often crowded, and it seems to have been designed so that every passenger, no matter where he or she is coming from or going to, has to jostle past every other passenger. 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 cocoons 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 Passenger. 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 passengers are clutching badly mass-produced 'folk art'—large, unattractive, nonfunctional sticks are popular—and a great many of them are lugging boxes containing the ultimate cruise-ship passenger 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 space 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 pissed-off passengers shoving to get to the counter so they could argue fruitlessly with pissed-off airline employees. Police had already been summoned to arrest one returning cruise passenger 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 passed. 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
