The Hollow Ones(3)
Under the whine of the turbine, Evan heard a loud pop—and a simultaneous crunch.
He heard it again, struggling now to see the pilot, who was apparently working behind the Beechcraft’s fuselage. The tall man came around to the near wing, and Evan watched as he swung the large wrench at the running lamp—popping the seal on impact, crunching the red plastic casing, pieces of which fell to the tarmac as the lightbulb went dark.
Evan gasped audibly, so obscene was this act of violence against an aircraft worth millions of dollars. Evan stretched the phone cord to full length, the soft ballad “Lady” providing a weird counterpoint to the sight of a plane owner vandalizing his own property.
These high-end private jets were both babied like pampered pets and rigorously maintained like race cars. What this man was doing was tantamount to putting out the eyes of a champion racehorse with a screwdriver.
This couldn’t be an owner at all, Evan decided. Someone was causing thousands of dollars of damage to this aircraft…and perhaps stealing it.
“Mr. Aronson, I have your file in front of me…” came the insurance representative’s voice—but Evan had to drop the receiver, letting it clatter against the floor, its cord recoiling to the desk. He rushed out the office door straight into the needle-sharp drops of cold rain, looking left and right, hoping someone else was seeing this and could help him.
The tall man finished with the last lightbulb, the aircraft now cloaked in darkness. A small emergency light backlit the scene.
“HEY!” yelled Evan, waving his one good arm. He jogged a few steps toward the scene, yelling “HEY!” a few more times, both at the tall man and in either direction, hoping to rouse somebody with two working arms.
A hangar attendant approached the pilot, trying to stop him. Three downward wrench blows caved in the right side of the attendant’s head—the attack lasting only seconds. The attendant collapsed on the ground, rattled by death spasms.
The pilot crouched and went to work on the rest of the skull, like a caveman finishing his kill.
Evan froze. His mind could not process such violent terror.
The pilot tossed the wrench to the side with a great clanking and walked perilously close to the left propeller, rounding it, climbing up onto the wing, settling inside the glass cockpit.
The aircraft jerked forward and started rolling.
The only light in the plane was that of the cockpit avionics, a cool green-blue LCD Garmin G1000 display. Evan thought it lit the pilot’s face like an alien’s.
He was transfixed by the dead look in the man’s eyes.
Mechanically, the man reached for something in the cockpit beneath Evan’s line of sight. Suddenly there was an explosion of sound and flame, shattering the right-side window. Rounds from the AK-47 semiautomatic rifle ripped into Evan’s body like hot nails, buckling his knees, his body collapsing, his head smacking the tarmac, knocking him instantly unconscious.
As the darkened Beechcraft turned toward the taxiway, Evan bled to death peacefully.
Odessa had the steak salad. No onions, because she didn’t want the taste in her mouth all night. She ordered coffee because it was the middle of their shift and that is what FBI agents drink.
“Did you know,” Leppo said after the server left, “there is more trace amount of human feces on menus than anywhere else inside a restaurant?”
Odessa brought a tiny tube of hand sanitizer out of her bag, setting it upon the table as though she were attacking on a chessboard.
Leppo liked her, she could tell. He had a grown daughter of his own, so he projected and understood. He liked taking her under his wing. There were no assigned partners in the FBI. He wanted to show her the ropes, teach her “the right way” to do things. And she wanted to learn.
“My pop sold kitchen supplies everywhere in the five boroughs for thirty years until his pump gave out,” he said. “And he always said—and this might be the most important lesson I can teach you as a third-year agent—that the hallmark of a clean restaurant is its bathroom. If the bathroom is hygienic, orderly, and well maintained, you can be assured the food prep area is safe, too. Know why?”
She had a guess, but it was better to let him pontificate.
“Because the same underpaid Chilean or Salvadoran immigrant who cleans the restrooms also cleans the kitchen. The entire food service industry—and you could make an argument for civilization itself—hinges on the performance of these frontline workers.”
Odessa said, “Immigrants, they get the job done.”
“Heroes,” said Leppo, proposing a toast with his coffee mug. “Now if only they could do a better job cleaning menus.”
Odessa smiled, then tasted onion in her salad and made a disappointed face.
The first emergency call came from Teterboro, saying a private jet had taken off without tower authorization. The aircraft had banked due east, over Moonachie and across Interstate 95 toward the Hudson River. The aircraft was assumed stolen and flying in an erratic pattern, rising and falling a few thousand feet in altitude, occasionally disappearing below the range of the radar.
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey issued an emergency alert. Teterboro was shut down in accordance with FAA regulations, suspending all pending flights and redirecting inbound air traffic to Linden Municipal Airport, a small airfield in southern New Jersey used primarily for sightseeing tours and helicopters.