Ultimate Weapon (McClouds & Friends #6)(44)

The lines weren’t bad once they got to the terminal. She willed Rachel to stay asleep until the security gate. Not a chance that the kid would sleep through getting pulled out of her stroller, having her shoes removed and going through the bomb-puffing portal, but if Tam could hear herself think up until that point, she would count herself lucky.

Things went smoothly at the e-ticket kiosk as she put Rachel’s ticket info through, but it choked on her own. Tam hissed through her teeth as the message on the screen told her to talk to a ticket agent. Now for an interminable f*cking wait in a long, slow line. The back of her neck was crawling madly as it was.

She spent the time in line analyzing everyone she could see, including the airline personnel, identifying potential attackers. One never knew. She wished she could have disguised herself, but then again, why bother? Rachel was a dead giveaway. It wasn’t as if she could pass the kid off as a bag lady or a Hasidic banker.

When she got to the head of the line, Rachel was awake, and starting to fuss. The apple-cheeked woman at the counter looked over their passports, tapped into her computer, and frowned.

She tapped some more, blinked, and shot a furtive glance at Tam. The woman’s eyes slid quickly away. Tam’s stomach clenched.

This, too. Janos must have accessed her computer, intercepted the data somehow. He’d red-flagged her. Shit. Tens of thousands invested in travel documents for Rachel and herself squashed in one deft move, and now what the f*ck was she going to do?

This meant that Janos and God knew who else knew exactly where she was right now. Her heart sped up. She looked over her shoulder and reassessed everyone she’d studied before.

“Um, ma’am? I’m sorry, but there’s a problem with your passport.” The woman blinked nervously, as if expecting Tam to sprout horns. “I’m afraid you’ll have to, um, talk to security.”

“Security?” Tam made her eyes innocently big, and pulled Rachel out of her stroller. The toddler wrapped her arms around Tam’s neck in her octopus hug. “What seems to be the problem?”

“Oh, I’m sure it’s just a little glitch in the system,” the lady assured her. “But if you’d just step over there to the side and wait, I’ll have ’em come right on over and sort this out for ya right away, OK?”

Tam exchanged big, fake, golly-gee-aren’t-these-machines-a-pain-in-the-behind smiles with the woman and walked the way she’d been pointed. Leaving behind the survival suitcase full of medicines, toys, equipment. Leaving behind the stroller and the compromised passports. Keeping only the diaper bag, her purse, and Rachel. Snip, snip went the bolt cutters. She walked past the place the woman had indicated.

“Um, ma’am? Wait right there, please,” the woman called out anxiously. “Security’ll be right with ya!”

“Sorry, but my daughter needs the bathroom,” Tam called back. “Urgently, or we’ll have an accident. I’ll be right back, OK? Gotta scoot!”

She ducked around the corner, circled a crowd of Japanese tourists being herded into the ticket line by a harrassed tour operator, and sprinted down the escalator to the ground transportation area. There were several people in line for the taxis, and no taxis to be seen. She could not wait in that line. They would be on her in minutes.

The shuttle to the other terminals and the long-term parking lot was in the far lane. She darted across the road and climbed aboard the short bus, slumping down in the seat to be less visible. A minute or so later, a tall guy in an army jacket with a battered knapsack, long tangled brown hair and a bushy beard climbed aboard. She’d seen him in the terminal, asleep in one of the chairs, legs sprawled, mouth hanging open. Shaded John Lennon glasses covered his eyes.

He slouched promptly down into his seat and fell asleep again. The reek of his patchouli and marijuana filled the shuttle. He must be going somewhere in Asia, to smoke massive quantities of weed and dream his days away in the Himalayas, or the sun-drenched beaches of Phuket. The lucky bastard.

“Is this bus leaving?” She couldn’t control the edge in her voice.

“Two minutes,” the guy said.

Two minutes were a goddamn eternity. The next passenger to board was a tall, burly guy with a square chin, and a thick neck, and a swollen, reddened face that screamed steroids. Late thirties. Long, layered blond hair. Big white teeth. Hulking shoulders. No suitcase, just a knapsack. He slumped into the seat opposite hers. His thick thigh muscles bulged, straining his tight jeans.

Tam’s neck crawled. She had no guns or knives. They were out of the question for anyone hoping to fly. She had nothing helpful on her except a topaz-studded sopor-spray barrette with a very small reservoir. A one-squirt deal. Maybe two squirts, if she was lucky.

Rachel was starting to tug at Tam’s coat and ask questions she could not focus on sufficiently to answer. Two more guys got on the shuttle, both suspiciously young, fit and unencumbered. One was a lanky black man with a hooded sweatshirt, a duffel bag over his shoulder. The other was a crewcut jock type in polar fleece with a backpack. Both of them had cold, hard faces. Neither looked at her.

That, in itself, was strange enough to warrant alarm, even at an airport at the crack of dawn. In the normal universe, any straight man who saw her looked at her and then looked again. It wasn’t vanity, just a simple fact of life. The fact that three men in a row had not done so was a very bad sign.

In the very second in which Tam decided that throwing herself on the mercy of airport security was preferable to the ominous possibilities of these strange men, the bus lurched abruptly out onto the road.