5

Dad… gone…

The words registered but his mind couldn’t get a grip on it, the… finality.

He’d returned to the garage, found a spot on the perimeter of an upper level, and parked facing west. The falling December sun gleamed through the crystalline sky and stabbed his eyes. The sky had no right being so bright. It should be dark, with wind and hail and lightning.

Numb, he lowered the visor and… just… sat.

Gone… one minute alive and full of plans and enthusiasm, the next a cooling lump of meat in a pool of blood. Part of Jack insisted it was all a bad dream, but the rest of him knew he wouldn’t wake up from this.

Knowing nothing made it worse. Who? Why? Some al-Qaeda strike? Or maybe al-Qaeda wannabes massacring a crowd of Orthodox Jews? Was that what this was all about? Made a sick sort of sense. But what made no sense was why, with all the flights from Miami to New York, his father had to wind up on that one.

Jack had a blood-red urge to gun up and shoot down every Arab he could find. He knew that insanity would pass, but he reveled in the fantasy until it reminded him of the backup piece strapped to his ankle.

He glanced around, saw no one about, so he reached down and pulled the little AMT .380 from its holster. When the FBI and CIA and NYPD and Homeland Security and whoever else would be involved began allowing people to leave the airport, he’d bet the ranch they’d be searching every person, every car. He wasn’t sure his tried-and-true John Tyleski ID would hold up—Ernie was painstakingly thorough when he created an identity, but no fake was perfect.

And even if it did pass, he couldn’t risk carrying. Had to dump the pistol.

He turned the little backup over in his hands. He’d bought it from Abe six months ago after his trusty old Semmerling had been connected to the subway massacre. Hadn’t had to pull it once since. Now he was going to have to toss it away unused.

Unused… he wondered if it could have made a difference in there. The shooter—probably more than one—must have used an automatic, machine pistol, most likely. He couldn’t have killed so many in so little time with a single-shot weapon.

I should’ve been there, goddamn it.

He didn’t know what use his little six-shot .380 would have been against Mac-l0s or HK-5s. Not much, probably, but you never knew.

Another fantasy… taking down a single shooter with a couple of .380s into his face… or, if there’d been two or three, taking one down, tossing his AMT to Dad, then grabbing the downed shooter’s weapon and the two of them taking on the others… just as they’d taken on Semelee’s clan in the Everglades.

More likely he’d now be lying dead beside his dad.

At least they’d have put up a fight, kept whoever it was from getting clean away.

And maybe being dead wouldn’t be as bad as dealing with this blistering guilt for not being there when his father needed him most.

Jack forced himself out of the fantasy to deal with the reality of the moment: The gun had to go.

He popped out the magazine, removed the chambered cartridge, then pulled out the old, oil-stained rag he kept in the glove compartment. He emptied the magazine, wiped it down, then did the same with each casing.

He removed the leather ankle holster and wiped that down. Then he removed the slide assembly from the pistol frame and wiped each part.

He opened the car door. A look around showed no one in sight, so he got out and leaned over the edge of the parapet. No one below. He dropped the slide onto the pavement six stories down.

He began walking the perimeter of the level, tossing a cartridge every hundred feet or so, then finally the frame and the holster.

When he returned to his car he moved it to a more centrally located slot.

Then he crossed the skyway back toward the terminal. At the end he turned the corner and found himself in the middle of a crowd. Security personnel were blocking the escalators down to the ticketing and baggage levels.

Jack tapped a heavyset woman on her arm.

“What’s going on?”

She looked at him—bloodshot eyes, blotchy face, tear-smeared mascara.

“They won’t let us down! My daughter was due in! I—I don’t know if she’s alive or dead!”

At least you still have hope, Jack thought.