6

He’d been standing on the glass-walled skyway for two hours. Dark now—the sun had set around four thirty. He’d called Gia to tell her he was okay. She said she’d heard the news and had been worried sick. When he told her about his father she broke down. Listening to her sob, he’d almost lost it himself.

Two hours with the crowd of mourners and stranded passengers watching a seemingly endless parade of stretchers wheeled back and forth from the terminal to the ambulances below. All carried bagged bodies. He saw no wounded and wondered why.

No matter. Dad wouldn’t be among them. It ate at Jack that he hadn’t known which bag contained his father.

And finally the stretchers stopped rolling, and the last of the ambulances pulled away.

“Where are the survivors?” said a forty-something woman nearby. “Aren’t there any survivors?”

“Maybe they were taken out another way.”

“No way,” she said with an emphatic shake of her head. “I know this airport, everything at this end has to funnel through directly below us. I’ve watched the ambulances coming and going, and right down there was the only spot they stopped.”

“There have to be some survivors,” said a man in a herringbone overcoat. “I mean, they couldn’t have killed everybody.”

Seemed logical, but Jack couldn’t remember seeing anyone stirring amid the bloodbath.

He kept that to himself, however. He was concerned with where they’d taken his father… and how he was going to claim the body when he didn’t own a single piece of ID under his real name.

He wandered back to the escalators. Still blocked, but he spotted a familiar-looking cop—the older one from inside—giving instructions to the security men.

“Sergeant?” he called. “Hey, sergeant?”

The cop didn’t turn.

What was his name? He’d seen the nameplate but had been in shock—wait. Driscoll. Yeah.

“Sergeant Driscoll?”

When he turned Jack waved to him. He looked as if he couldn’t place Jack’s face.

“We met inside. Where can I claim my father’s body?”

As Jack’s question was echoed by other voices, Driscoll stepped closer.

“Call the one-one-five—”

“Precinct?” someone said.

“Right. They’ll have a procedure in place.”

“What about the wounded?” a woman asked. “What hospital were—?”

Driscoll shook his head. His grim expression became grimmer.

“We have no wounded.”

“No wounded!” the woman cried, her voice edging into a wail. “They can’t all be dead!”

“We have survivors who saw what happened, and they’re being debriefed, but we have no wounded.”

“How can that 6e?”

“We’re working on that, ma’am.”

“What happened?” someone else said as horrified cries rose all around. “Who did this? Who’s responsible?”

He shook his head. “I can’t answer that. The mayor and the commissioner will be holding a press conference at City Hall soon. You’ll have to wait till then.”

“But—”

He held up his hand. “I’ve told you all I can.”

“When can we leave?” someone shouted as he turned.

“The checkpoints are in place now. You can start to head out.”

And then his back was to them and he was walking away. If he heard any of the questions called out after him, he gave no sign.

Jack too barely heard them. The word “checkpoints” was blaring though his mind.

His earlier misgivings about his Tyleski ID withstanding full-bore scrutiny had became full-blown doubt. But even if it did pass muster, his car was another story. A check of the registration would raise a horde of questions. Like why was he driving a car registered to someone else? And to Vinny “the Donut” Donato, of all people? If someone checked with the owner they’d learn that the black Crown Vic in question was sitting in his garage in Brooklyn.

Then even more shit would hit the fan.

Bad enough to be bagged for false ID, but to be suspected of being connected to the terrorists who’d killed his own father… a father he couldn’t officially claim as his own…

Had to find another way out.