Payback

and moved over to his map-case friend.

“Shit!” said the FBI agent into his wrist mike, a profanity that would never have been condoned in Hoover’s day. “His accomplice is getting a ring of more people around them. Now we’ve got double trouble. Who’s our negotiator?”

“Ralph Fiennes,” cut in the SWAT commander. His real name was Ralph Fine but they called him “Fiennes” because he had the same lean build and intense eyes as the movie actor.

“We don’t want him,” snapped the FBI agent. “We need casual cool with these two, not Sigmund Freud.”

“Here he is,” cut in the SWAT commander from behind a ticket counter. “He’s riding a cart. No necktie — looks like he’s gonna do his casual serious bit.”

Fine was undoing the top button of his shirt. “This place stinks like a locker room. Everybody’s sweating. Where’s the bomb squad?”

“En route,” the SWAT commander told him. “What’s the matter? You sweating, Mr. Fine?”

“Just a little,” Fine said. “It’s hot. You think you might get a shot at him?”

“Dunno, there’s a lot of people around him.”

“Around them,” cut in the FBI agent. “Don’t forget the second guy.”

“I won’t,” said Fine. “We’ll know more when—”

“Hey!” shouted the second Guatemalan. “Those cameras. Turn those stinking cameras off.”

“They are off,” said the FBI agent.

“No, they’re not,” said Fine, alighting the cart about thirty feet from the ring of terrified hostages, his body language that of a golfer approaching the nineteenth hole, his eyes, however, never moving from the Guatemalan with the map case. “We’ll duct-tape ’em — the cameras. How’s that?”

“Yeah,” said the one with the map case. “You do that. Duct-tape ’em right now.”

“That wasn’t any help,” said Fine, talking to the FBI agent who was standing off to his right. “You lying about the cameras. Makes them nervous. Let me handle this. You go over to that newsstand and get some tape, plastic carrying bags, anything, to stick over those security cameras. Stand on someone’s shoulders if you have to!”

“It isn’t a bomb,” said the FBI agent. “He’s a druggie. Saw the sniffer dogs and panicked. Nowhere to run.”

“You might be right,” said Fine. He looked over at the one holding the map case. “I’m Agent Fine. Mr. — ?”

The Guatemalan hesitated. “Gonzales.”

“What do you want, Mr. Gonzales?”

“I want you should get a plane for me an’ my frien’. Right now. These people come with me — us — to Cuba.”

Ralph Fine scratched his head. “That’s going to take a little while to organize, Mr.—”

“Bullshit! I wan’ that plane. Honda jet, eh?” The Honda Executive jets had displaced the Lear as a status symbol. “Half an hour,” he added. “Half an hour.” His friend whispered to him. “Yeah, an’ two million dollars!” The friend whispered to Gonzales again, who nodded eagerly, his voice infused with bravado. “Yeah, an’ no dye, no sequential noombers. You understan’?”

“I understand, Mr. Gonzales, but you don’t,” said Fine, his arms unfolded unthreateningly, his hands clearly visible, to show he wasn’t holding anything. “We can get you the plane, but the money — that’s two hours minimum, Mr. Gonzales.”

“Bullshit. Half an hour or these people are gonna die. You understan’? Half an hour.”

“Impossible,” said Fine calmly. “An hour, we can do it.”

A putrid smell invaded the air, a not unusual occurrence in a group of hostages terrified that they were going to die.

The two Guatemalans conferred. “Okay,” said Gonzales. “One hour maximum. You understan’?”

CHAPTER FOUR

It was 4:00 A.M. at Margaret’s house in Monterey when Douglas Freeman saw the CNN Headline News story of the “alleged” bomber in Dallas/Fort Worth. Marte Price, looking her usual unflappable sexy self, even at this late hour, revealed — in the absence of visuals — that the two “Central Americans,” believed to be either Guatemalan or Honduran, were rumored to be holding a map case that they were claiming was a bomb. Freeman tried to get through to the CNN newsroom to speak to Marte during a commercial break.

“General who?”

“Douglas Freeman, General Douglas Freeman.” These kids, he mused, didn’t know squat about American history or any other history. He recalled the latest “National Geographic” test given to eighteen- to twenty-four- year-old high school— and college-educated kids throughout Europe, the U.S., and Russia, asking them to identify ten countries on a world map. The U.S. kids came second last. And the present generation’s knowledge of history, of their own country’s history, was even worse. If they knew squat about the Civil War, they sure as hell weren’t going to remember him.

“Douglas?” It was Marte on the line. “I’ve only got thirty seconds till I’m back on air. What’s up?”

“Marte, that map case this nut at Dallas/Fort Worth is holding. I need to know how long it is.”

“How long — oh Jesus, you think it could be another shoulder-fired — amber light’s on, Douglas. Gotta go. I’ll try to find out.”

“Don’t broadcast it. It’ll freak everyone out.”

“And a bomb wouldn’t?”

She was right. Hostages at the airport’d probably feel safer if they thought it was a missile. A missile doesn’t blow up on the spot. It had to travel before exploding. Hell, it didn’t matter; the waiting room in question at the Dallas/Fort Worth terminal was tightly packed, including the protective double ring of hostages. Shrapnel alone from a missile fired in such a confined space and hitting a wall would cause carnage. Freeman’s indomitable pop-up icon in the margin of his new laptop was smiling, bowing in joyful obsequiousness, informing the general that he had mail.

The e-mail was from Choir Williams, in response to the general’s e-mail informing Choir about the general and Aussie identifying the Igla and Vanguard missiles.

“Police, Homeland Security, et al.,” wrote Choir, “are saying that they’re looking for three-man teams. But the missiles you and Aussie have ID’d — a Chinese Vanguard 3D and a Russian Igla 2C — are one-operator MANPADs. We maybe should be looking for two-man teams at each airport? A spotter-driver and a shooter. What do you think, General?”

Freeman shook his head in admiration at Choir Williams’s observation, and while he waited for CNN to take a commercial break so that Marte could call him back about the size of the map case, he forwarded Choir’s conclusion directly to Homeland Security while keeping one eye on Marte. She was easy to watch, had a figure like Margaret’s. Both examples of women who, to borrow a self-righteous yuppie phrase that he’d grown thoroughly sick of, had not only “worked out, eaten right,” but had also protected their alabaster skin from the ravages of the sun.

He was tired, but wanted to wait for Marte’s call or e-mail about the length of the Guatemalan’s so-called map tube before he informed Eleanor Prenty that the airport at Dallas Fort Worth might have another MANPAD on their hands, or, just as likely, an empty MANPAD-launcher case, because if you were a terrorist and had fired off a missile, surely you would have already dumped the case, like the launchers found at JFK and LAX?

The general moved quietly through the living room, past the vase of hothouse roses and into the kitchen to pour himself another coffee. It was the best Columbian java he’d ever tasted. Margaret ground the beans with the same thoroughness with which she did everything else. Dangerous stuff — so velvety, not a trace of that iron-filing detritus crap they brewed in every church basement and military camp in America. Margaret’s coffee was so smooth, you’d drink three or four cups before you knew it. Keep you up for a week. Strange thing — while standing there looking out at the dark, star-spangled sky, he experienced a psychological phenomenon he’d undergone