Forced Pair Read online

  V

  Dent clapped one hand over the girl’s mouth and secured the other around the back of her neck, halting the grating noise. But the damage had already been done.

  A woman walking down the small decline leading into the terminal took immediate notice. She had been lugging a small carry-on in one hand and rolling a bloated suitcase behind her and, at the sound of the scream, she dropped her carry-on and let go of the suitcase’s extended handle to cover her face with her hands. It was perhaps half of a second until the woman then cupped her hands on the outside of her mouth and issued out a wordless yell directed towards Dent and the package.

  Heavy, muted footsteps raced toward Dent, no doubt security officers, policemen or women without lethal weapons. He could leave the package and flee. His contingency plan would work with or without the package in tow. He would make better time, keep up a better pace without the package. But that would mean he would fail in his mission. Again.

  And without the package he had no leverage. Until he figured out why his employer had reneged on the agreed upon terms of the contract, the package was his.

  He let go of the package’s mouth, but not before applying gentle pressure to the back of her neck. She appeared to take the cue and kept her vocal chords still. Her eyes, though, still hummed in their sockets as they flicked between his, left and right and back again. He slipped the hand that was at the back of her neck down, under her armpit, and hefted her up off her feet as he stood.

  Package secured, he rushed forward, slightly off-balance by the hundred-some pounds at his right. Heads turned and eyes tracked his rapid movement. Behind him, he could hear the heavy footsteps coming closer. Dent aimed for the terminal exit leading into the heart of the airport. His course took him directly up to the woman who had earlier screamed. He hit the graded walkway, shouldered the woman to the carpet. He then scooped up the dropped carry-on bag, slung its single adjustable strap over his left shoulder, and grabbed the extended handle of the woman’s forgotten luggage.

  He ran on, up the incline, and the rubber wheels at the bottom of the luggage bounced and skid on the carpet until they found their direction and dutifully rolled along behind him. He spared a look behind him and found that two of the dark-blue polo shirts with “SECURITY” imprinted in gold across the chest had stopped briefly on the incline to help the woman up, making sure she was unharmed. One more dark-blue polo continued to give chase.

  The package’s legs slammed into his right thigh and the stolen carry-on repeatedly smacked into his backside as he burst into the main aorta of the airport. Souvenir shops, restaurants, bookstores, and numerous kiosks lined the walls of the pseudo-mall. Even here, heads were turning his way. The commotion the package had caused in the terminal apparently carried into the walkway, but the looks of the various travelers here were more open-eyed and slack-jawed than narrowed and clenched.

  The package struggled under his arm as he bullied his way through a group of Eastern Europeans. Shouts in a language that Dent was not privy to erupted in quick bursts of rising pitched words. He ran on, ignoring their animated gestures, fingers displayed in such a way as to have a universal meaning.

  The package began to struggle more aggressively. The faces closest to Dent morphed from soft features to harsh lines. Teeth were bared his way, eyes were slit, shoulders squared, muscles flexed, and chests were puffed out. From somewhere along the fringes of the mall nearer the various shops one man yelled out, “You should have arrived two hours earlier!” while another let out a bark of a laugh and urged Dent — who appeared to be nothing more than a man who was struggling to keep his luggage and child close to him as he raced for his connecting flight — to, “Run, Forrest, run!”

  People and faces became a wild blur, obstacles between Dent and his decided-upon exit. Oddly enough, and for no discernible reason, fights between strangers broke out just ahead of the racing Dent but ended just as abruptly as he left them behind. And now, for some other unknown reason, a growing number of travelers ran along with Dent and the package. Some, it seemed, had left their luggage behind in their sudden dash, others struggled to keep oversized leather bags clutched tight to their chests as they puffed alongside or even ahead of Dent.

  All this Dent ignored as he ran through his contingency plan. If it were him waiting for the target, he would have all exits covered, regardless of flight information. Just because the target arrived on an American Airlines flight, it did not necessarily mean said target would exit the American Airlines curbside. So, he would need a very unconventional exit, one that he himself would not readily think of covering.

  The immediate vicinity was total chaos that seemed to follow Dent as he pumped his legs, but the confusion died down as he passed by. It seemed the chaos was localized to his position. He needed to get out of the chaos, to isolate the package from the unknown variables. He saw the universal sign for the men’s restroom up on the left and he veered that way.

  There were no doors leading in to the institutionally lit and decorated bathroom and as he wove around the blind corner into the restroom proper, he almost lost his footing on the pine-scented floor, nearly knocking down the yellow plastic sign warning of just such a danger.

  He came to a stop, placed the package down, and shrugged off the carry-on bag. The rollaway luggage he’d left on the carpet just before he had ducked in to the restroom. Three men occupied the deep, narrow room. Two were washing their hands in the sinks set in faux marble to the right, while another was standing before a urinal, mid-business. One of the hand washers was dressed in a formal suit, the other in cargo pants and threadbare off-white T-shirt. All three men looked his way, and then at the young Japanese girl at his side.

  The package slowly looked around the restroom. There was a high probability that this was the first time she had ever stepped foot inside a gentleman’s bathroom. The sound of falling liquid, from both the running sinks and the man before the urinal, was the only sound as the Japanese girl finally settled her gaze on the man with his back to her at the urinal. Her head quickly shot down and she averted her eyes.

  The man at the urinal made a squeak of a sound, zippered up, and then rushed out between Dent and the package, hiding his face as he did. The other two men slumped their shoulders and looked down or at the walls and wide mirror atop the sink countertop, anywhere but at another human being.

  “Look at me,” said Dent. If the package continued to struggle with him it would make his escape that much harder.

  The package did.

  “What is wrong with you?”

  “Really?!” She stomped her foot down as her voice echoed harshly off the sterile walls. “What’s wrong with me?”

  Before Dent could reply the entire sink countertop shook with a retort, the result of The Suit slamming his clenched fist down upon it. Dent looked from package to Suit and then to T-shirt. All three had hands in tight balls, either at their sides or on the countertop.

  “Leave,” he directed to the hand washers.

  The Suit looked at the package once and then grabbed his carry-on and walked out of the men’s restroom with heavy feet. T-shirt turned off the faucet with a swipe of his fist and planted his feet on the tile. Somewhere a silent alarm had been triggered, resulting in a red-and-white flashing emergency light overhead, bathing the remaining occupants in harsh and sporadic artificial light.

  “Leave,” Dent repeated.

  A vein pulsed at T-shirt’s temple. And then, unexpectedly, the man suddenly rushed forward, at Dent. He raised his right arm, intent on perhaps clasping his fingers around Dent’s throat, but Dent would offer the man no such chance.

  Dent sidestepped to his left, brought his own right arm up and then quickly down, snaking it over and around T-shirt’s outstretched arm. Dent worked his hand and wrist under the man’s armpit even as the man continued his forward momentum. Dent stepped forward, maneuvering his right arm down and around the man’s back, forcing the trapped arm to bend back at a painful angle. Us
ing his newly-gained leverage and the man’s own impetus, Dent shifted his hips to the right, changing the man’s direction so he smacked face first into the bathroom wall behind Dent.

  Dent slipped his arm free as the man rebounded off the wall to fall back to the tile, arms splayed wide, smacking his head for the second time in as many seconds, this time on the opposite side. Dent dropped down, right knee pushing down on the man’s sternum, and began delivering devastating one-two punches to his face, careful not to bruise his knuckles on the man’s cheekbones.

  “Stop it!”

  Dent paused in his work and looked over at the package. From his perch they stood almost level with each other. A tear ran down her left cheek, another tempted to join it on her right.

  “Leave him alone.” Her voice came out as a hushed whisper.

  “He can warn the authorities.”

  “If he’s not breathing he can’t.”

  “Exactly.”

  A pause, as her eyes shimmered. “What’s wrong with you?”

  Dent looked at himself and then at his slightly bruised knuckles. “It’s nothing.”

  The package shook her head.

  “We need to get you out of here,” he announced. He lifted himself from the prone, but still breathing, body and fished out his wallet once again. He pulled out a credit card that was slightly thicker than normal. This one was beige with an amber trim. He tugged on one side and it slid apart, revealing an assortment of four narrow metal tools. Normally used for manipulating mechanical locks, Dent had another use in mind. He found the nearest electrical plug socket in the bathroom wall and slid one of the metal picks into the plastic hole, careful not to push it too deep. The false-credit card stayed angled in the socket as Dent let go.

  He looked to the package, who had backed up and now stood with her back to the countertop, and then reached down and removed the unconscious man’s faded T-shirt. This he threw over his head for protection before he kicked the metal pick further into the socket with his rubber-soled boot. For a brief moment nothing happened. Then a yellow diode on the edge of the false credit card lit up and a hiss and crackle erupted from the socket.

  The girl’s eyes went wide and she ducked and threw herself under the countertop as every single light in the restroom exploded with a flash of light and a spray of glass shards. Dent waited for the tinkling of glass hitting tile to stop and then threw the T-shirt from his head. For three seconds, the bathroom and the hallway leading into it, was pitch black. And then a separate emergency light, one that had not been on during the amplified surge, clicked on. It spun around, bathing the room in red and then white, the rhythmic tick-tick-tick it made with each revolution the only sound.

  And then the shouts from the people in the airport began.

  VI

  Dent moved to the sink, glass crunching with each step. He bent down to haul the package out but stopped himself short, not wanting to elicit another scream from her. He instead lowered his left hand and spread his fingers before the girl’s face. When she didn’t respond as he had expected, he waggled his hand back and forth quickly.

  Small fingers closed around his hand and thumb and he pulled her up. He led her out of the echoing dark room.

  Outside the bathroom, a similar scene had presented itself. All the light fixtures had exploded, the only light coming from flashing emergency lights up on high and a few beams from flashlights, phones, or EBs. Sporadic sparkles from the sweeping washes of light littered the floor of the large hallway.

  Dent turned left, pulling the girl along with him. “Don’t walk too fast,” he told her. “We don’t want to draw unwanted attention.”

  The girl may have nodded to Dent in the dark.

  As they walked, voices rose from the dark. Questions concerning the lights, flights, family, and friends. Those closest to Dent and the package had higher frequencies and erratic inflections. The voices seemed to ripple away from the pair.

  “Why?” the girl asked from slightly behind and to the left of him.

  “Why what?”

  “Why do we want to avoid unwanted attention?”

  Dent continued to look straight ahead into the gloom and the occasional flash of bobbing light. “No attention means no immediate threat.” He spoke the words as if he were reading from a how-to manual. “No threat means we make it outside. Safely. Unharmed.”

  The girl’s hand tightened around his once and then eased.

  The erratic voices in the dark, those closest to them, calmed and stilled. An unseen woman said to an unseen child, “Everything will be okay now.” An elderly man’s voice reached out to say, “I’m sure we can make the next flight with no problem.”

  Up ahead, where the airport made a ninety-degree to the right, was Dent’s target. He approached the door with the brass push-bar. In the gloom he could just make out “AIRPORT PERSONNEL ONLY” printed at eye level. Below that read in smaller font, “ALARM WILL SOUND.” With the power effectively cut, the second warning had no weight behind it. But the main thing was that with the power outage, the strong electromagnetic lock was suitably disabled. It was a security measure of which he’d take advantage.

  He pushed the bar and the door swung easily, allowing the pair to walk into the slightly humid night. A short open-roofed walkway led to a wrought iron fence enclosure. To their right, the runway was a flurry of emergency vehicles, sirens, and the deep thrum of low-flying aircraft that were either being diverted or sent back up to maintain a holding pattern. With only the emergency lights on the runway, the risk of landing had to be minimized.

  “Will any crash?” the package asked, her voice sounding very small.

  He looked up, scanned the skies, observed the flashing lights. “Odds are that they won’t. They have reserve fuel to burn for this exact reason.”

  “Oh.”

  “And there is another airstrip not more than fifteen miles from here. Mostly for private aircraft and shows, but planes that need to be diverted can be sent there.”

  “Okay.”

  Their steady walk took them away from the sights of the airstrip and through two more doors with electronic locks disengaged. They emerged just east of the last vehicular loading and unloading zone. The concrete and asphalt still held the warmth from the Southern California sun.

  Dent stopped.

  “Now what?” the package asked.

  Dent looked to the press of cars to the left, along the curb painted in bright, semi-reflective white. His head swiveled, scanning for the second part of his contingency plan.

  “Now what?” she repeated, adding a sharp tug on his arm.

  “Contingency plan.” He made his way to where a black SUV sat running, its emergency flashers ticking away.

  “Meaning?” She had to quicken her pace to keep from being dragged.

  Dent ignored her, instead focused on the vehicle as they approached. The driver side window was down, doors unlocked. A woman with short blond hair sat in the driver’s seat, chatting away on her phone. Distracted. Eyes fixed on some spot ahead and to her left.

  The pair closed the rest of the distance and Dent boldly stepped up to the SUV, opened the passenger door, and then bodily lifted the package and placed her in the vacant seat. He closed the door, cutting her off from saying whatever she had planned on saying, and proceeded to walk across the front of the car. He thought he heard both females say, “What?” almost in unison.

  He flashed through one headlight beam and then the other, the woman’s eyes fixed on him now, but still jawing into the phone at her ear. For some reason the phrase, “A deer in headlights,” came to Dent’s mind.

  He made it to the driver side door, opened it, reached in, and threw the woman to the asphalt. He hopped in the now empty seat and closed the door. The woman began screaming at about the same time the package did.

  “What are you doing? You can’t just steal a car!”

  He shifted into drive.

  “What about the woman? She might be hurt!”

>   He shifted back to park.

  He got out to stand above the woman, who, for some reason unknown to him, stayed seated on the warm asphalt, phone in hand. She stopped screaming and looked up to him. He bent toward her, snatched her phone, and ended the call, interrupting a fast-talking man on the other end.

  He made for the SUV again, ignoring the screams of, “My baby!” at his back.

  He got back into the SUV, closed the door, and put it in drive. He eased forward, careful not to let the tires squeal, and pulled into the main road that encircled the entire airport complex. They began to pass by the short-term parking lots, the lights out here somehow unaffected by his earlier diversion.

  The package began to scream, ranting about what he was doing was wrong. She tried to open her door, but he’d engaged the childproof locks, circumventing her escape. She renewed her vocal tirade and it began to distract him. But when the baby strapped in the backseat began to join in the auditory assault it became too much and he began thinking of options.

  Twisting in her seat, the package looked back at the screaming child and yelled, “You can’t kidnap a baby!”

  “I’m not kidnapping the baby.”

  “Yes, you jerk, yes you are!”

  The next parking lot was coming up on the left, indicated by flashing yellow lights and black arrows on yellow backgrounds. One more lot after that and a quarter mile further on was the main exit from the complex.

  Both passengers continued to wail until Dent could take it no more. He slammed on the brakes and turned to face the package. Her mouth snapped shut, lips forming a rigid line. The baby continued to scream nothing coherent very loudly.

  Dent hopped out, flashed in the dual beams in front of the SUV, and made his way to the passenger door. He opened it, picked the package up, put her down. He then began to walk at a steady pace into the nearest parking lot. The sound of the wailing baby faded in the distance.