Payback

Beneath the covers she squeezed a bead-sized drop of the K-Y lubricant on her right index finger and, careful to replace the tube’s screw-on top so as not to get any on the sheet, she slowly applied it, working it in gently. She couldn’t fit a minnow in there. One of those dreadfully sex-obsessed women’s magazines— Cosmopolitan, if she remembered correctly — at the hairdresser’s had had an article in it about how virgins needed to use one of those “things” to widen the entrance.

It seemed such a lot of bother, but then sometimes alone in bed, or working alone in the garden, alone on her daily walk, she just ached — there was no other word for it — she ached to have a man inside her, hard and gentle and forceful until…until what she’d never known from a man would happen. How so-called modern women would laugh at her, she thought, a woman so traumatized by a fundamentalist upbringing that even satisfying yourself was such a mortal sin that she had always felt guilty — you had to save yourself, wait for marriage. She had waited — fifty-five long, aching years. Dear Lord, wasn’t it time? The awful vision of the dead from the plane crashes was before her, their lives ended, snuffed out like candles. Life itself was so tenuous — you never knew. If Douglas walked through her bedroom door, she’d cast her bedcovers aside and be blatant for once in her life. He could do what he wanted with her. He would be her lover. Her first.

The very thought of the word “lover” made her catch her breath, her eyes closing, then wide-awake in fright. The article in Cosmopolitan said you would need to insert one of those wax things daily for a week or two, or use your fingers with some lubricant, to ensure you were wide enough, because if the skin tore, it would hurt like the devil, as too many honeymoon-nighters had apparently discovered, a terrible way to start a relationship — and worse, put the man right off. Surely her lubricated fingers would serve to—

She tried to relax. Of course he wouldn’t approach her tonight. What was she thinking? They’d just broken the ice. Besides, he’d be too busy trying to help track down the unspeakable creatures who had murdered all those children and other passengers at JFK, at Los Angeles, and down in Dallas/Fort Worth, hundreds of people who’d been alive only hours before. Tomorrow she would go see a doctor — no, not her usual MD, but someone, a young woman doctor perhaps? No, a married middle-aged doctor, who could advise her. Surely there must be a quicker, more modern way to widen herself than one of those things Cosmopolitan talked about. Ugh.

The phone rang and she glanced at the clock on her bedside table. It was just after midnight as she picked it up. She heard a man’s voice — an Australian accent. “The products’ MID numbers—” Margaret replaced the phone.

In the living room, the kitchen’s cordless phone beside him by the laptop, Freeman was pressing Aussie Lewis for details. “What’s the problem?”

“Scuttlebutt from my buddies at the Pentagon is that there’s a jurisdictional scrap going on between National Transportation Safety Board investigators and the FBI over who has primary responsibility for detecting serial numbers.”

“For God’s sake!” thundered Freeman. “What are those suits doing? The President’s spent millions with Homeland Security, trying to get those wankers to stop competing against each other and start cooperating. Pride, Aussie, pride cometh before a fall.”

“You got it,” agreed Aussie, thinking of another adage, something about the pot calling the kettle black. Freeman’s legend, like Patton’s, was based on solid and, at times, brilliantly unorthodox tactics, such as the famous Russian tank-oil maneuver in the U.S.-led NATO mission in Siberia. But the legend was also built on an ego and a pride that, like Patton’s, thrived on media-fed public acclaim. What was it General Omar Bradley, Patton’s onetime subordinate, then his superior, had once said about the legendary Patton when his Third Army had broken out of the heavily fortified bocage, the hedgerow country in Normandy, slashing through the Nazi defenses? “Give George a headline and he’s good for another hundred miles.”

“Where do you think the product is coming from, General?”

“Don’t know. If we catch any of those bastards maybe we can have a little talk with them.”

“Roger that,” said Aussie with feeling. “I’d like to have five minutes with one of the bastards. I’ll keep in touch. By the way, General, no need to be hesitant about what we’re saying on the blower anymore. The networks are all yakking about MANPADs.”

Freeman had no sooner put the phone, or “blower,” as Aussie called it, down than he was thinking again about the MANPADs’ backblast. He immediately called Eleanor Prenty, explaining to the National Security Advisor something that the mujahideen and later the anti-U.S. Taliban had never had to do in Afghanistan: change clothes after firing their MANPADs. The terrorists’ drill, having fired their weapons in such a high-density area, would be first to dump their launchers and disappear into the airport crowds, as he’d already told her; then they’d probably try to shower down before they donned their replacement clothing, in order to get rid of any scent of cordite, sulfur, et cetera, lest a K-9 dog squad sniff them out at the airport.

The general advised her to order NYPD and their counterparts in LAX and Dallas/Fort Worth to immediately shut off all water flow to airport shower stalls, detain anyone who was found using one, and go over them and the washbasins with the police’s handheld NBC sensor. Even if the terrorists had dumped the clothes they’d used while firing the MANPADs, the backblast was so pervasive it was like passing another vehicle on a dusty road with your windows open; particles wedged themselves into ears, nostrils, and especially in your hair. Even if their hair was shampooed, the particles could still be detected in trace amounts by the handheld sensors and, if necessary, analyzed by spectrometers either in the FBI’s portable field labs or in Homeland Security’s downtown forensic labs.

The order from Eleanor Prenty was out to all three airports within two minutes, and within another seven to ten minutes — it taking longer because of the endless corridors at Dallas/Fort Worth and an argument over who had first call on the electric carts, federal or local police — dozens of astonished, irritated, and some downright outraged citizens, most already fatigued by long flights from Alaska and South America, found themselves being ordered out of executive club and public coin-operated shower stalls into Immigration holding rooms, where they were being “swept” by NBC sensors and searched — some would complain violated — by no-nonsense AO, all- orifice, examinations.

Meanwhile, all waiting passengers, air crew, and airport staff were being sniffed by K-9 squads. At Dallas/Fort Worth, two Guatemalans, seeing the dogs approaching, made a dash through a packed waiting lounge for the nearest exit, police running after them, converging on them. One of the pair, a dark, mustachioed man in his early twenties, stopped and threw up his hands. The other, an older man, held a tubular map case close to his body with his left hand, one end on the floor, his right hand grasping the tube’s other end, which seemed to be either a screw- or pull-up top. “I have bomb! Nobody move!”

Nobody did, except for a terrified elderly woman who made to get up from her waiting-lounge seat but couldn’t unaided. A cop eased her back into the seat. “Don’t worry, ma’am. Just stay still. It’ll be fine. Just stay still.”

“It’s a bluff!” an FBI agent on the periphery of the overcrowded waiting lounge whispered into his voice- activated shirt-button mike to the just-arrived SWAT team, which had been swiftly summoned from patrolling the airport perimeter. “Ten to one he’s carrying dope.”

“You certain?” came the SWAT team’s CO’s response.

“Not a hundred percent.”

“Then we do it by the book. Bomb squad and negotiator are en route. Tell this guy someone’s coming — we’ll work it out. How’s he look?”

“Like they all do, sweating like a pig.” The agent held up his hands and called out to the Guatemalan, “Just relax! We’re gonna work this out, okay? You understand? We’ll work it out.”

“Nobody moves,” shouted the Guatemalan.

“Nobody moves,” the agent assured him. “Absolutely.”

The other Guatemalan with his hands up wasn’t moving, but he was talking rapidly to his partner in Spanish. But one of the words he used was “SWAT,” so then the one with the map case told a half-dozen passengers to “come here.” Most of them were taller than he. He told them to stand face-out in a circle about him, and told his ring of hostages, “Anyone turns around, anyone touches me, the bomb goes. You understand?”

Everyone understood, and it meant that for the SWAT team moving quickly, quietly into the airport, it was going to be virtually impossible to get a head shot — or any other shot, for that matter. Now the other Guatemalan, seeing how his buddy had brought temporary immunity with the threat of a bomb, got cocky, put his hands down,