Chapter 1
"Look lively, here comes Flight 1147."
We pressed our noses to the one-way glass and the parade
began. A trickle at first, businessmen wheeling suitcases,
cell phones already pressed to their ears. Then young
couples in glitter platform shoes, bopping to Walkmans.
Well-heeled families carrying duty-free bags, squinting
into the fluorescent light to read the signs and line up
in the right queue.
Then a pause in the traffic, empty spaces stretching out
like ellipses. I scrutinized what the airplane's belly had
disgorged, scanning for stains under silk armpits,
restless eyes, hands clenching bags too tightly. They said
even a preternatural calm was suspect, since it was normal
to be frazzled after fourteen hours in the air, even if
you had the patience of a Buddhist monk. Speaking of
which, here came five of them, girded in saffron robes
that ended in sandaled feet.
An elbow nudged my arm.
"Plenty a' room for contraband inside those layers," U.S.
Customs Supervisor William Maxwell drawled lazily,
watching the monks plod past.
I fingered my notepad, thinking that the monks looked more
dazed than surreptitious.
"Don't you have dogs for that? Sniff out drugs and
explosives and stuff?"
I realized as soon as the words left my mouth that bombs
were a threat for those boarding, not getting off. If you
were going to blow up an airplane, you'd do it in midair.
"One day they'll invent robo-dogs that sniff out jewels,
cash, and illegals, but for now we still rely on good
instincts and bad paperwork," Maxwell said, scanning the
crowd.
His eyes shifted to an Asian woman walking behind the
monks, and I wondered if his interest wasprofessional. She
was tall, with a heart-shaped face and freshly applied
lipstick. She wore a pantsuit of raw raspberry silk and
carried a slumbering little girl over her shoulder. Behind
her came the husband, pushing an elephantine cart heaped
with luggage. Balancing precariously on top was a large
bag that said, TOKYO-DISNEYLAND.
"You really think those monks are carrying?" I asked, more
to make conversation than because I thought so.
"Prayer books, maybe," he said evenly. "But skepticism is
a virtue. We caught some grief last week for pulling apart
a Mexican grandma's wheelchair. She and the granddaughter
got on their cells, jabbering to the consulate about their
rights being violated. Had no idea what was packed inside
those hollow metal tubes."
"Granny was a drug mule?"
Maxwell snorted. "My black homegirl was hitching a ride."
I thought I might be missing something because we were
both staring out the window while trying to carry on a
conversation.
"'My black homegirl'?"
Now some businessmen moved past in trench coats. Tall and
blond, with glacier-blue eyes and the slanted cheekbones
of the Russian steppes. Behind them sauntered two young
Asian men, elaborately casual, their hair iced up. One had
a camera around his neck. The other clutched a map of
Hollywood. Props, I thought. Way too obvious. Here's a
pair I would watch. I looked to see if Maxwell had noticed
the same thing, but his gaze swept right past them.
"Heroin," Maxwell said. "Ten kilos of uncut tar. It's
black and sticky and La Eme moves a lot of it across the
border. Worth an easy five million on the street. They
call it 'my black homegirl' to throw off the FBI phone
intercepts."
La Eme was the Mexican Mafia. From the letter M. I knew
that much from growing up in L.A. La Eme's tentacles
snaked through the barrios and prisons of California and
they laundered their money through juice bars and video
stores.
"What about those guys?" I pointed to the Asian
punks. "There's something off about them. Like, if they're
so cool, why are they clutching all that tourist stuff?"
But he was watching three Asian women stroll past, big
rocks on manicured fingers, strands of pearls, designer
handbags. They were young but stout, in elegant, loose-
fitting dresses and matching jackets.
"How much you wanna bet they're Korean and ready to pop?"
Maxwell said.
I studied them. What crime slang was he lobbing at me now?
"Preggers," said Maxwell. "And loaded. They fly over here
to give birth so their babies will be U.S. citizens. Big-
time status. Shop and play tourist, stay at a fancy hotel
till they drop the kid. Then skedaddle on back to Seoul.
There's no law against it, but still..."
"You mean they don't want to stay?" For some reason, I was
insulted on behalf of my country. Wasn't this the Promised
Land?
Before he could answer, a large clot of tired humanity
poured into the room on the other side of the glass and
began to sort itself into lines. This was the last layer
of the plane to be excavated, and it revealed the pitiless
archaeology of overseas travel. First had come the rested
countenances of first class, airplane royalty from both
sides of the Pacific. Then the still-groomed, monogrammed,
and pampered business class. And now the flying rabble,
the pack I joined when I flew, we of the plasticine food
and cramped leg space, the great unruly masses of economy -
- cranky, disoriented, and sleep-deprived.
My gaze lingered over a swarthy man with black hair. His
clean-shaven face bore the unmistakable imprint of the
Levant. The plane had originated in Beijing, with stops in
Seoul and Tokyo with a final destination of LAX, where I
stood now. Would he be pulled aside automatically? I
wondered, getting an inkling, for the first time, how
difficult it must be to look at people's papers and faces
and make split-second decisions that could affect national
security.
Not that I was here on anything quite so exalted. I was a
reporter for the L.A. Times, and after the terrorist
attacks of September 11, inquiring minds wanted to know
how the government screened passengers. So U.S. Customs
had set me up with a high-ranking official named Maxwell.
I was shadowing him for a day before demystifying the
process for Times readers. And there would be plenty of
art. My star fotog, Ariel Delacorte, was out there among
the disembarking passengers, shooting away. Weighed down
by cameras and the shapeless khaki vests that all
shutterbugs love, Ariel still managed a casual elegance,
her posture erect as a ballet dancer's, her wavy black
hair cut smartly to her sculpted jaw.
I turned to ask Maxwell about the Middle Easterner but he
was halfway out the door, speaking into a crackling two-
way radio.
"Yeah, that's them," he said. "Pinkie and the luggage
coolie. Remember, it's hands-off. Send them through with a
smile. I'll be right over."
I took two steps after him. "Stay here," he said. He
pushed me back and I saw his hand go to his belt. "I won't
be a minute."
The door closed behind him. By the time I recovered enough
to run and yank it open, the hallway was empty.
I turned back to the one-way glass window. One of the
blond businessmen was gesticulating to a U.S. Customs
inspector. He dug into his bags and pulled out some
papers, which he threw down. The inspector shook her head.
The man looked around, as if enjoining his line-mates to
commiserate. People were packed in tight, blocked by
suitcases and carts, restrained into orderly lines by
shiny black nylon ropes, children running around.
Then without warning, he pushed through the crowd,
elbowing other passengers aside. At the same time, I saw
lights flash and felt the glass rattle in sharp, staccato
shivers. Someone out there was shooting.
As bodies crumpled to the floor, I wondered whether they
had been shot or were just taking cover. The crowd surged
and shoved as people tried to break loose of the
Immigration holding area. On the other side of the glass,
a jeweled hand rose up, vermilion nails clawing two inches
from my face, before sinking back into the roiling mass. I
saw a flash of raspberry as the smartly dressed Asian
woman and her husband floated past, propelled by the mob.
They slammed momentarily into the other blond businessman,
then bounced apart. I noticed the woman no longer held her
child.
On the other side of the glass, people were stampeding
past the kiosks as security guards sought to push them
back. One guard brandished a gun, then got down on one
knee, sharpshooter style. Good Lord, they can't shoot into
a crowd of people, it's going to be a massacre, I thought.
The glass rattled again, and I ducked instinctively,
hoping it was bulletproof as well as one-way.
Now here came one of the Asian punks, doing the Olympic
high hurdles as he sailed over mounds of luggage and
passengers who shielded their heads in 1950s duck-and-
cover style.
The second Asian punk came into view, running for the
exit. He had a gun and was yelling something. Nobody paid
any attention. People pushed through the door, faces
contorted in terror. After the July Fourth LAX massacre at
the El Al counter, no one was taking any chances.
I realized I had been crouched at the window, peeking
through my hands like a frightened toddler at the
pandemonium on the other side of the glass. But I was a
reporter, I needed to get in there. I ran to the door,
threw it open, and stepped into a corridor, only to find a
mass of people fleeing toward me, wild-eyed and disheveled.
"No," a man panted, grabbing my arm. "Go back. Terrorists.
Shooting."
Ignoring him, I ran the way he had just come. Bursting
through a set of double doors into the large room I had
just been observing from the one-way glass, I saw a middle-
aged man with blood on his face and a dazed expression. A
teenaged girl sobbed and knelt on the dirty floor by a
woman who looked unconscious. Sirens split the air, and a
recorded voice calmly urged passengers to keep moving in
an orderly manner.
On the other side of the room, I saw several crumpled
bodies. I recognized the Slav man who had bolted. He lay
on the ground with one arm outstretched, as if felled
while playing tag. A morbid curiosity propelled me closer.
Bright red blood matted his flaxen hair. One cheek was
pressed against the linoleum, and I noticed grayish gunk
splattered across the pale skin and clinging to his suit
lapels. With a start, I realized it was the man's brains.
Five feet away, the second Slav businessman lay in a
tangle of limbs and blood, entwined with the pretty Asian
mother. It looked as though they had collided while trying
to flee. The front of the woman's raspberry silk outfit
was spotted with blood, fibers charred where the bullets
had gone in. My eyes flickered over to the man. An
explosion had detonated on his chest. I force myself to
stare, to record every detail, ignoring the prickles of
fear radiating outward from my spine. The "bolt" reflex
was coming on strong. More than anything, I wanted to
flee, to run out of this terminal, back to my car, and out
of the airport. What if at this very moment someone with a
dirty bomb was preparing to detonate it? Part of me did
run screaming out of that airport, shaking with fear and
babbling incoherently. I let her go. Then I stepped
forward. I had a job to do.
Where was the little girl this dead woman had been
carrying just moments earlier as she stepped blithely
toward Customs? I prayed she was still alive. There were
more police and security now, their bodies beginning to
block the carnage, but as they moved and space opened in
odd geometric angles, I looked for a snub nose. A tiny
arm. A head I could cup in one palm. And saw nothing.
My fingers hurt from gripping the pen so tightly.
Unclenching them, I jotted down what I had seen. First
impressions were important, even scattered and disjointed
ones. Later, we'd unravel them for clues. Something
teetered in the upper corner of my vision and I flinched.
But it was just Ariel, who had climbed atop a pile of
suitcases for a better shooting angle. As the machine-gun
patter of her film advanced, people dove behind luggage
and covered children with their bodies until they realized
that the noise came from a camera.
On the other side of the room, Maxwell was screaming into
his two-way. I walked over and saw that his men had the
Asian punks on the ground, hands cuffed behind their
backs. They writhed on their bellies, heads cranked
sideways, jaws gaping as if they were some weird pupae
begging to be fed. Seeing this, Ariel leapt off her
luggage mountain and ran to photograph them. This seemed
to enrage the men, who hollered at her to stop and averted
their faces.
"Three dead," Maxwell was saying urgently into his
radio, "Asian female and two Caucasian males. We're
checking. Yeah."
There was a long pause. Part of me expected Maxwell to
blow his whistle any minute now and announce that the
emergency preparedness drill was over. Then the "bodies"
would get up, dust themselves off, strip off the shirts
with the paintball blood, and go back to their usual
business.
"Don't know about the males," Maxwell said into the
radio, "but Interpol Tokyo alerted us about the family. I
called INS but then all hell broke loose. And now Mom's
dead and Crypto-Dad's MIA."
"Are you charging them with murder?" I asked, looking at
the guys on the ground.
Maxwell ignored me.
He listened as a faint voice crackled on the other end of
the two-way. His lips drew together into a thin line and
he seemed to whiten under his L.A. tan.
"Son of a bitch," he said softly. He hooked the radio back
onto his belt, turned slowly, and glared at the captives.
Then he shook his head.
"Help these gentlemen up," he ordered, drawing the word
out with a sneer.
"Are they terrorists or what?" I asked.
I knew al-Qaeda didn't just recruit Middle Easterners. The
South Asian archipelagos were said to be awash with Muslim
fundamentalists.
Maxwell focused on me. It looked as if he was trying to
remember who I was. He scratched an ear.
"We are in the middle of a triple-murder investigation as
well as two undercover-criminal operations. You'll have to
leave. And you," he turned to Ariel, "will have to hand
over that film."
Ariel Delacorte removed the camera from her face. Her eyes
were a deep, translucent green. She slid the camera into
her shoulder bag, tucked a strand of hair behind her ear,
and said, "You'll get their names for the captions, won't
you, Eve?" Then she turned on her booted heel and strode
out the door without a backward glance.
"Fine," Maxwell yelled after her. "We'll let the lawyers
duke it out."
He turned back and I nodded, eager to appear more
sympathetic than frosty Ariel. I would never do such a
thing.
"What happened back there?" I asked, shifting nervously as
the Customs police roughly hauled up the two Asian men.
They wore a look of angry vindication that confused me.
Here I was, a reporter, an eyewitness, but I had no idea
what had just gone down. All I knew was that suddenly the
place had exploded into gunfire and chaos.
Maxwell regarded the men.
"Let 'em loose. Yeah, that's right," he told his startled
colleagues. "You heard what I said."
One of the freed men brushed off his jacket, took a step
forward, and jabbed the air with a forefinger.
"That was fucked-up, Customs," he said. "Real fucked-up.
Your career is over. Starting tomorrow, you'll be lucky to
find work as a six-dollar-an-hour rent-a-cop."
Maxwell jeered. "That's your future, G-boy, not mine.
Bigfoot blew it bad.
"These guys," he said wearily, turning to me, "are not
terrorists. They are not murderers. They are undercover
agents for the FBI. Fucking feds were tailing two mobsters
from Vladivostok who are now lying here dead, and they
neglected to inform us. Little lack of interagency
communication by Bigfoot. Who doesn't care who they stomp
on so long as they get theirs. Meanwhile, we're doing our
own tail, some nasty folks out of Bangkok traveling with a
kid. Couple weeks more and we'd a'taken down the whole
operation. But these cowboys," he hooked a thumb at the
FBI men, "blew everything sky-high when their guys tried
to run. And now one of my little chickens is dead and the
other's flown the coop. Goddamn it!"
He swept his cap off his head and hurled it onto the
linoleum floor with a slap that made me start.
A heavyset woman in a white uniform and a name tag walked
toward us. She was holding the groggy toddler with the
designer clothes who belonged to the dead raspberry lady
and her missing husband. The child couldn't have been more
than two. Her pale cheek lay against the woman's blouse
and she observed us with slack eyes. Her breathing was
thick and rheumy. When she coughed, her thin frame shook
and her plastic diaper crackled. But that was the only
sound. Separated from her beautiful and dead mama, witness
to the massacre that had just erupted, held tight by a
total stranger, the child didn't cry. She didn't wail. She
didn't utter a word. One impossibly small hand curled
around the woman's neck. In the other, she clutched a
teddy bear.
"She'll have a Japanese passport, but my guess is she
won't speak a word of Japanese," Maxwell said. "Her papers
will show she's traveled widely in the last six months,
but never stayed anywhere long. She jets around with
loving parents who give her anything that money can buy,
but she don't look too happy to me.
"Who are you, little girl?" he asked softly. "And why did
they leave you behind?"
Copyright © 2004 by Denise Hamilton