"He's not trying to flush the john," Susy Douglas said. "He's not even trying to run the basin faucets. We'd hear them sucking air if he was. I hear something, but--"
"Leave," McDonald said curtly. His eyes flicked to Jane Dorning. "You too. We'll take care of this."
Jane turned to go, cheeks burning.
Susy said quietly: "Jane bird-dogged him and I spotted the bulges under his shirt. I think we'll stay, Captain McDonald. If you want to bring charges of insubordination, you can. But I want you to remember that you may be raping the hell out of what could be a really big DEA bust."
Their eyes locked, flint sparking off steel.
Susy said, "I've flown with you seventy, eighty times, Mac. I'm trying to be your friend."
McDonald looked at her a moment longer, then nodded. "Stay, then. But I want both of you back a step toward the cockpit."
He stood on his toes, looked back, and saw the end of the line now just emerging from tourist class into business. Two minutes, maybe three.
He turned to the gate agent at the mouth of the hatch, who was watching them closely. He must have sensed some sort of problem, because he had unholstered his walkie-talkie and was holding it in his hand.
"Tell him I want customs agents up here," McDonald said quietly to the navigator. "Three or four. Armed. Now."
The navigator made his way through the line of passengers, excusing himself with an easy grin, and spoke quietly to the gate agent, who raised his walkie-talkie to his mouth and spoke quietly into it.
McDonald--who had never put anything stronger than aspirin into his system in his entire life and that only rarely--turned to Deere. His lips were pressed into a thin white line like a scar.
"As soon as the last of the passengers are off, we're breaking that shithouse door open," he said. "I don't care if Customs is here or not. Do you understand?"
"Roger," Deere said, and watched the tail of the line make its way into first class.
15
"Get my knife," the gunslinger said. "It's in my purse."
He gestured toward a cracked leather bag lying on the sand. It looked more like a big packsack than a purse, the kind of thing you expected to see hippies carrying as they made their way along the Appalachian trail, getting high on nature (and maybe a bomber joint every now and then), except this looked like the real thing, not just a prop for some airhead's self-image; something that had done years and years of hard--maybe desperate--travelling.
Gestured, but did not point. Couldn't point. Eddie realized why the man had a swatch of dirty shirting wrapped around his right hand: some of his fingers were gone.
"Get it," he said. "Cut through the tape. Try not to cut yourself. It's easy to do. You'll have to be careful, but you'll have to move fast just the same. There isn't much time."
"I know that," Eddie said, and knelt on the sand. None of this was real. That was it, that was the answer. As Henry Dean, the great sage and eminent junkie would have put it, Flip-flop, hippety-hop, offa your rocker and over the top, life's a fiction and the world's a lie, so put on some Creedence and let's get high.
None of it was real, it was all just an extraordinarily vivid nodder, so the best thing was just to ride low and go with the flow.
It sure was a vivid nodder. He was reaching for the zipper--or maybe it would be a Velcro strip--on the man's "purse" when he saw it was held together by a crisscross pattern of rawhide thongs, some of which had broken and been carefully reknotted--reknotted small enough so they would still slide through the grommetted eyelets.
Eddie pulled the drag-knot at the top, spread the bag's opening, and found the knife beneath a slightly damp package that was the piece of shirting tied around the bullets. Just the handle was enough to take his breath away . . . it was the true mellow gray-white of pure silver, engraved with a complex series of patterns that caught the eye, drew it--
Pain exploded in his ear, roared across his head, and momentarily puffed a red cloud across his vision. He fell clumsily over the open purse, struck the sand, and looked up at the pale man in the cut-down boots. This was no nodder. The blue eyes blazing from that dying face were the eyes of all truth.
"Admire it later, prisoner," the gunslinger said. "For now just use it."
He could feel his ear throbbing, swelling.
"Why do you keep calling me that?"
"Cut the tape," the gunslinger said grimly. "If they break into yon privy while you're still over here, I've got a feeling you're going to be here for a very long time. And with a corpse for company before long."
Eddie pulled the knife out of the scabbard. Not old; more than old, more than ancient. The blade, honed almost to the point of invisibility, seemed to be all age caught in metal.
"Yeah, it looks sharp," he said, and his voice wasn't steady.
16
The last passengers were filing out into the jetway. One of them, a lady of some seventy summers with that exquisite look of confusion which only first-time fliers with too many years or too little English seem capable of wearing, stopped to show Jane Dorning her tickets. "How will I ever find my plane to Montreal?" she asked. "And what about my bags? Do they do my Customs here or there?"
"There will be a gate agent at the top of the jetway who can give you all the information you need, ma'am," Jane said.
"Well, I don't see why you can't give me the information I need," the old woman said. "That jetway thing is still full of people."
"Move on, please, madam," Captain McDonald said. "We have a problem."
"Well, pardon me for living," the old woman said huffily, "I guess I just fell off the hearse!"
And strode past them, nose tilted like the nose of a dog scenting a fire still some distance away, tote-bag clutched in one hand, ticket-folder (with so many boarding-pass stubs sticking out of it that one might have been tempted to believe the lady had come most of the way around the globe, changing planes at every stop along the way) in the other.
"There's a lady who may never fly Delta's big jets again," Susy murmured.
"I don't give a fuck if she flies stuffed down the front of Superman's Jockies," McDonald said. "She the last?"
Jane darted past them, glanced at the seats in business class, then poked her head into the main cabin. It was deserted.
She came back and reported the plane empty.
McDonald turned to the jetway and saw two uniformed Customs agents fighting their way through the crowd, excusing themselves but not bothering to look back at the people they jostled aside. The last of these was the old lady, who dropped her ticket-folder. Papers flew and fluttered everywhere and she shrilled after them like an angry crow.
"Okay," McDonald said, "you guys stop right there."
"Sir, we're Federal Customs officers--"
"That's right, and I requested you, and I'm glad you came so fast. Now you just stand right there because this is my plane and that guy in there is one of my geese. Once he's off the plane and into the jetway, he's your goose and you can cook him any way you want." He nodded to Deere. "I'm going to give the son of a bitch one more chance and then we're going to break the door in."
"Okay by me," Deere said.
McDonald whacked on the bathroom door with the heel of his hand and yelled, "Come on out, my friend! I'm done asking!"
There was no answer.
"Okay," McDonald said. "Let's do it."
17
Dimly, Eddie heard an old woman say: "Well, pardon me for living! I guess I just fell off the hearse!"
He had parted half the strapping tape. When the old woman spoke his hand jerked a little and he saw a trickle of blood run down his belly.
"Shit," Eddie said.
"It can't be helped now," the gunslinger said in his hoarse voice. "Finish the job. Or does the sight of blood make you sick?"
"Only when it's my own," Eddie said. The tape had started just above his belly. The higher he cut the harder it got to see. He got another three inches or so, and almost cut himself again whe
n he heard McDonald speaking to the Customs agents: "Okay, you guys stop right there."
"I can finish and maybe cut myself wide open or you can try," Eddie said. "I can't see what I'm doing. My fucking chin's in the way."
The gunslinger took the knife in his left hand. The hand was shaking. Watching that blade, honed to a suicidal sharpness, shaking like that made Eddie extremely nervous.
"Maybe I better chance it mys--"
"Wait."