Gut Instinct (5 page)

We were back on the Luzon Expressway before the Taskforce responded, telling us the phone was at the airport on the western side, in between terminal one and terminal two, meaning we’d have to drive all the way around. I said, “Get out your tablet. Find out what’s at that location, and find a way inside the perimeter. I want to take him from inside.”

I dialed Johnny. He answered with a weary tone. “Yes, Pike, I got the flash message. I’m evaluating it.”

“Forget that. We just went by Bayani’s house. The wife’s already called the police and—”

“You what? Pike, I’m getting a little sick of the meddling.”

“Well, get used to it, because I’m about to bring some more. The police hit the house and found nothing. No packages, no incriminating stuff.”

I heard nothing for a moment, Jennifer tugging on my arm. She said, “It’s a bonded warehouse for inbound customs.”

Johnny said, “Was Bayani there?”

“No. He’s at the airport right now at a bonded warehouse on the west side. By terminal two.”

He didn’t need a road map drawn out. I heard him shouting instructions, and he came back on. “What else do you have? What are his intentions with the packages?”

“You have everything I do. I don’t know what’s in the packages, but it won’t be doughnuts. We’re about ten minutes out. We’re going to penetrate the perimeter of the airport and try to roll him.”

He said, “I got the track. We’re on the way, but it’ll be about thirty. Pike, that warehouse will have a shit-ton of security because it’s a customs facility.”

“I know. We aren’t going through the front door. Jennifer’s looking now.”

He said, “See you on the X.” And hung up.

We were now going south, paralleling the eastern edge of the airport on Kaingin Road. I rounded the turn, entered Nino Aquino Avenue, and began heading north, seeing terminal one ahead of us. Jennifer said, “I got something. There’s an old park called Nayong Pilipino that butts right up to the airport. It used to be a tourist attraction showing all of the different cultures of the Philippines, but it’s since been closed due to expansion of the airport. I’m willing to bet we could jump the fence there.”

“How far away from the warehouse?”

“Looks like a couple of kilometers because we’ll have to wind our way around the tarmac.”

I saw the signs for terminal two and said, “How are we going to do that?”

“There are a couple of private hangars to the north. I don’t know. Steal a vehicle?”

That was a pathetic plan, but I couldn’t think of anything better.

She said, “Keep going straight. This road ends at the park. Take a right at the T and it’ll run to terminal two. Exit at the terminal two parking garage. It’s next to an abandoned hotel and it’s on the old park grounds.”

I did as she asked, and we were out and running as if we were late for a flight. She took the lead, starting to stretch it out, forcing me to shout, “Slow up. I can’t make it that fast on my leg.”

She did, and I felt like a pussy. We reached the edge of the parking garage and I saw a six-foot chain-link fence, trees and overgrown grass surrounding traditional Filipino buildings that were rapidly deteriorating.

She hit the fence on the run and was up and over in less than a second. I scaled it like a grandpa, my wounded leg screaming.

Jennifer kept us heading west. We circled around a giant fake volcano, now covered with grass, then a lake, the houses on stilts at the edge falling down into the water. We hit the far fence and saw the hangars on the other side. It was an open run to them, in full view of anyone looking.

No good.

Jennifer saw the same thing and said, “Let’s back up to the lake. It’s right up against the taxiway. Without any buildings.”

I nodded and we jogged down the fence line until there were no buildings in sight. Just a straight shot across the tarmac to the new terminal three, a steel-and-glass marvel rivaling any modern terminal on earth, but one that was torn so much with lawsuits and labor issues that it had yet to be used for anything other than domestic flights by Filipino airlines. There was little chance anyone would be using the empty restaurants and bars.

We scaled the fence and then walked back to the hangars, trying to act like we belonged but really just hoping nobody was looking. Who the hell walks along a flight line? Nobody that belongs, that’s for sure.

We turned the corner of the fence and saw the hangars ahead. Facing out, toward the flight line, the backs of the buildings were completely enclosed, but there were a couple of those tractor things that you see hauling baggage trains or driving across the runway. I went to the first one and saw why it was behind the building. It probably hadn’t run since 1960, but I mounted it anyway, taking a beat to study the controls and figure out how it would have run if it were serviceable.

We edged down the building, a giant metal structure made to house whole aircraft. As we reached the front, I touched Jennifer’s arm, holding her up. I slid past her, going the rest of the way to the end, and peeked around. I saw a couple of men working on an aircraft, and another tractor. Away from them. I couldn’t tell if it was theirs or just parked.

“Okay, here we go. Follow me and act like you belong.”

“Pike, maybe we should call Johnny. We won’t do any good if we get arrested. We have no badges or anything else to explain why we’re here.”

I said, “Yeah, I thought about that before. Then you came up with the great idea about stealing a vehicle. Let’s go.”

I grabbed her hand and dragged her into the sun. Once around the corner, I let go and started walking at a brisk pace. The men looked at us curiously but made no move to interfere. We walked straight to the tractor thing and I settled into the saddle, finding the key in place. I turned on the glow plug and waited for it to heat up. Standing on the side, Jennifer said, “One of those guys is looking at us.”

“Get on.”

“He’s coming toward us.”

“Get
on.
”

She mounted behind me and the man shouted in Tagalog. I ignored him, willing the damn glow plug to light.

“Jesus, Pike, this is stupid. We’re on a riding lawn mower.”

“Too late. He’s going to ask what we’re doing no matter what, and we don’t have an answer.”

He shouted again, and I turned and waved, all smiles. It confused him. I could hear his brain ticking.
Who are they? They’re inside the security zone, so they must belong. But they don’t look like they belong.

In the end, the average person doesn’t want to believe something bad is happening, preferring to find the reason that makes sense. This man was no different. The glow plug finally lit, and I fired up the engine, then drove away. The man stared and I waved again, shouting absolute gibberish. He waved back, a confused look on his face.

I hit the gas and Jennifer clawed at my waist, almost falling off the back. When she was seated again I said, “Get the tablet up. Where’s the phone?”

She fiddled with it a bit, waiting on the 3G connection to lock, then said, “He’s no longer at the warehouse. He’s on the move. Coming down the tarmac.”

“Are we going to pass him?”

She studied the track, which wasn’t real-time. There was a delay, forcing her to predict. “Yeah, he’s driving north. We’ll hit him when we make the turn toward terminal two.”

Vehicles were passing us left and right, but so far nobody thought it odd that a baggage cart was riding two-up with a man in the front, without a uniform, and a chick on the back looking like she was going to a motorcycle rally.

We rounded the corner, passing terminal two, and Jennifer said, “He’s here. Right here.”

I started looking back and forth, seeing vehicles from pickups to fire-rescue, all with Filipinos driving. We’d both seen Bayani’s picture, but it was hard identifying the drivers at speed.

Jennifer jerked my arm, “There! Right there. The guy on the Gator.”

I looked and saw a man driving a four-by-four vehicle with a bed in the back. Something that looked like a cross between an ATV and a golf cart. I continued forward and focused on the face.

That’s him.

He was approaching at an angle, and I went through options. We were out on the tarmac, so any action would cause a reaction from the official folks who worked the airport.

Unless you make it look like an accident.

I veered toward the Gator and floored it. He saw me coming and tried to avoid the accident, but I anticipated and caught him turning right. I slammed into his left rear tire at the relatively slow pace of about fifteen miles an hour, throwing us both forward. I started cursing immediately, pointing at him and waving my arms.

He studied both of us, his eyes seeing things that I’d hoped to hide. He grabbed a black Cordura nylon bag and took off running. I leapt out of the saddle, hitting the ground and feeling my thigh scream.

“Jennifer, get him!”

She was already on the pavement, running flat out. I followed as fast as I could, hating my damn wound and willing Jennifer to take him like she had Chase. I needn’t have worried.

She caught him, clamping an arm on his shoulder. He wheeled around, shouting and swinging a fist. She ducked and nailed him underneath the chin, dropping him flat out. She was searching him by the time I got my gimpy leg to the fight. I went to the bag. And felt the fear spread at what was inside.

It was a bomb. But not just any bomb. An improvised explosive device with a barometric trigger, set to fire at thirty thousand feet. Designed to remain inert until the aircraft crested that altitude, with the unpressurized cargo hold causing the death of everyone aboard. At first, I breathed a sigh of relief, because the cargo holds of all commercial aircraft were pressurized, just like the passenger section. Then I remembered where he worked. What he did for a living. He would know that, which meant he’d found a way to emplace it into a section of the plane that wasn’t pressurized.

And there was only one.

I turned to Jennifer, seeing she’d subdued Bayani by holding him on the ground with a joint lock. I strode over to him and said, “Where’s the other one?”

He said nothing. I leaned in and punched his face. “Where’s the fucking other one?”

He shouted in Tagalog.

I grabbed the arm Jennifer held, telling her to back off. I began to work it against the joint.

“You’re done. The only thing remaining is whether you get to use this arm in prison. Where is it?”

He screamed but said nothing. I felt the time ticking, wondering if there was an aircraft now floating to earth in pieces. I cranked again. “Where the fuck is it!”

Jennifer shouted. “Pike, I’ve got his phone. He’s got text messages in it with flight numbers.”

“What are they?”

She ran to me and I couldn’t believe what I saw.

“Jesus Christ, that’s our flight.”

I looked at my watch, seeing it was ten o’clock. “Damn. It’s on our plane and that thing is taking off right now.”

I scanned the field, seeing a multitude of aircraft, one leaving the confines of earth into the sky.

I dialed my phone. “Johnny, where are you?”

“Entering the airport. What’s the status of the target?”

“He’s down, but there’s a flight leaving with a barometric IED on it. Set to thirty thousand feet. We have to get that plane down.”

I heard him curse before coming back on. “Pike, how are we going to do that? We can’t bust in like the Lone Ranger. It’ll burn the Taskforce. There’s no way to explain how we know.”

What he said was correct. We were about to demolish an enormously complex and diverse counterterrorism apparatus and destroy a few political careers in the process. But there were probably two hundred souls on the aircraft that would appreciate the gesture.

“Fuck the Taskforce. Get to the tower. Contact that plane before it leaves radio range of Manila. Before it reaches thirty grand.”

I watched the contrails of the jet and wondered if I was going to see a fireball. Jennifer said, “Are we good?”

“No. We’re bad all the way around. That plane is probably going to explode. And bring the Taskforce down with it.”

Jennifer said, “Let’s get to the tower. The plane won’t reach thirty thousand for at least twenty minutes.”

“What, are you an airline pilot now?”

“My dad was. Remember, I know about such things.”

That was true. A few years ago, when we’d first met, we were being chased by the Transportation Security Administration inside the Atlanta airport because of mistaken identity. Jennifer had provided the way out using a Delta pilot’s lounge she knew about because of her father. I dropped Bayani’s arm, jumped on our tractor, and fired it up. He remained on the ground, wondering if the gift he was seeing was real. It was, and I’d kick myself if it ended in disaster and he was allowed to go free. I had no other choice.

We raced across the tarmac as fast as the tractor would go, finally alerting the authorities that something strange was going on as we crossed an active runway, wide-bodied jet captains screaming into their radios. I saw lights on vehicles and wondered how long it would take to get the plane to level off once I got someone with an official radio.

We might make it.

Behind me, Jennifer leaned into my ear, “Pike, tell them we’re Department of Homeland Security. Tell them we’re on the trail of a terrorist. Let the Taskforce clean up the mess.”

I kept driving, saying, “Department of Homeland Security? They’ll see right through that. Those guys do nothing overseas.”

I swerved around a pothole and she wrapped her hands around my chest. “Jesus. Watch where you’re going.”

I straightened out and she said, “Nobody knows what DHS does. Not even them. It’ll work. Make it out like we’ve tracked him from the States. It’s a Delta flight. A U.S. flag carrier. Just don’t let them see a passport. Nothing about Grolier Services.”

Yeah, that would be a little hard to explain. An archeological firm running around the airfield chasing terrorists.

I saw an SUV headed our way, lights spinning on top, and called Johnny, relaying the weak-ass plan. Before hanging up with him I said, “Just leave it bland. DHS all the way. When they ask questions, tell them you’ll answer after the threat’s gone. Get to a radio in the tower.”

The SUV pulled up and I stopped, leaping out and acting like I owned the place. They had no weapons drawn, but their hands hovered over the butts of their pistols. I started shouting and waving my arms. The commander of the vehicle approached, and I gave him my line of shit. He asked for a badge.

Shit.

Jennifer stepped into the breach, shouting about the threat and poking him in the chest for results. The action took him aback. He paused, then began shouting in Tagalog at his men, getting them back into the vehicles.

I couldn’t believe it.
You don’t trust me, but you believe her.

I hollered at the captain and told him about Bayani, getting one vehicle moving toward his last known location. Maybe they’d catch him, maybe they wouldn’t, but it was worth a shot.

We raced to the tower and exited like a pot boiling over, Jennifer in the lead with me struggling to keep up. I caught her at the elevator, wincing from the pain. The elevator arrived and we spent a surreal time riding up with Michael Bolton music playing. The door opened and I saw Johnny across the tower, two teammates behind him, the plate glass windows offering a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view of the entire airfield.

He was shouting at a controller, who apparently wasn’t listening. We jogged over and I turned to the cop who’d met us on the tarmac. “Get him to relay. Right now.”

The cop said, “Wait, wait. We cannot interfere with the flights. This is above my position. Let me call my supervisor.”

I looked at the air traffic controller’s scope, identified the flight number, and saw he was cresting twenty-five thousand feet. I had no idea how accurate that barometric detonator was. I grabbed the cop’s collar and shouted, “Get him to call. Tell the pilot to level off, or you’re going to have a dead airplane from
your
airport. Because
you
sat on your ass.”

He shouted in Tagalog to the controller, and the controller started talking to the plane in English. I heard the captain come back, asking why the correction. I knew what was going on immediately.

That damn pilot thinks this guy is a chucklehead.

And we had seconds to correct it.

I’d never met a pilot that didn’t think they were the grace of the earth. They all thought the tower was full of idiots. But in this case the back-and-forth would cost him his aircraft. Along with his life.

Jennifer said, “Tell him that he has a—”

I jerked the headset off the guy and slapped it on my head, saying “Delta pilot, Delta pilot, this is the Department of Homeland Security. Level your aircraft right now. Do not continue to ascend.”

He came back, “Who is this? What’s your callsign and why are you on the radio?”

I saw him passing twenty-eight thousand feet and said, “You stupid shit, you have a bomb on your aircraft! Level the fuck off or die. Is that plain enough for you?”

I got nothing back. We waited, me looking at Jennifer and seeing the fear on her face. I called again but received no response. I knew what that meant. I was pulling the headset off when the pilot came back.

“Okay. I’m level at twenty-eight. What do you want me to do?”

Johnny sagged against the control panel and Jennifer actually clapped, like she’d just seen a fabulous golf shot.

I said, “Drop lower. Get it down to twenty thousand. And get your ass back to Manila.”

The controller heard my words and freaked out, screaming that I couldn’t tell him that with all the aircraft in the air. I passed him the headset and said, “You figure it out, but he’s not going any higher than twenty thousand.”

I rubbed my face, the adrenaline beginning to subside. When I pulled my hands away, Jennifer was in front of me, a smile splitting her face.

“We did it.”

I grinned. “Yeah, I guess we did. Meaning you.”

The cop that had let us up said, “I’m going to need to see some identification now.”

I looked at Johnny and he said, “They were undercover. Your Department of Homeland Security has been working with them from the start. I’ll vouch for them.”

He looked bewildered, saying, “
Our
Department of Homeland Security? Who is that?”

“Jesus. I thought you guys were on board with counterterrorism. The person who placed the bombs was a Filipino. Surely you’re tied into the security apparatus on the threat. We called your department a week ago about it. I thought this was a big win for you considering how quickly you reacted. You saved the day. Are you saying you don’t know who we are?”

The man looked at me, then at him, and said, “Yes, of course I do.”

Behind his back, I mouthed to Johnny,
Getting out now.

He nodded and continued to engage the cop. I was glad I didn’t have to do cleanup, because it was going to be a mess. We reached the door leading to the elevator and he shouted my name.

I turned and he jogged up. I said, “What,
now
you want my help? Might I remind you that this is
your
mission?”

He grinned and said, “I got nothing for you, Pike. You mess with a mission of mine again, and I’ll rip your dick off.”

He turned to Jennifer, clearly uncomfortable. “This pains me more than you could possibly know, but your gut was right. I won’t make that mistake again.”

She smiled, a conciliatory expression that set him at ease. She said, “Trust me, I know how hard it is for you guys to say you were wrong. I started here with this man. He’s
never
wrong.”

Johnny said, “Hey, I didn’t say I was wrong . . .”

She said, “I know. And I appreciate it.”

He grinned, nodded at me, then walked away. We entered the elevator. I waited until the doors closed and said, “Honey badger don’t quit, huh?”

She smiled again, the radiance shining off her face at what she had done. By preventing both bombs from detonating, she’d saved the lives of more than three hundred people.

She slid her hand into mine and squeezed, then let go. Watching the elevator numbers tick down, she said, “No. Honey badger don’t quit.”

•  •  •

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