Dallas noticed Kat’s agitation and moved over toward them. “What’s up, boys and girl?”
Robert held up a finger to silence her, then dashed to the far end of the window array and turned back. “Kat, there’s a section here with a ledge that leads to a fire escape!”
“Get it open. Break through with a chair if you have to.”
“Hey, what’s going on here?” Dallas was asking.
Kat took Dallas by the shoulders, her gaze moving rapidly between Dallas and the others in the room. “I’ve screwed up big-time, Dallas! These guys are not FBI. They’re the enemy. There’s no time to explain, but we’ve got to be gone before they come back.”
“I thought we were going over to the Air Force,” Dallas said.
“Dallas, if we get in their van, our bodies will never be found.”
Dallas swallowed hard. “Well, that’s pretty definitive. Let’s go!”
Robert and Steve had been struggling with a window lever. “Got it, Kat!”
“Okay. Graham, take Dan. Dallas, you and Steve go out together. Robert, lead us out of here. We need to get to the concourse unseen.”
Kat stopped and looked at her roll-on bag, trying to decide whether to risk bringing it. Graham, Dallas, and Dan had rescued nothing. Robert had his computer, and Steve his backpack. Steve noticed her hesitation and dashed over to get her bag.
“No, Steve! I’ll leave it,” Kat said.
“Not a problem,” Steve said, and shoved it through the window.
The balmy humidity of the Hawaiian air flooded into the room from the open window. They rapidly stepped out and onto the fire escape, following MacCabe as he moved quickly to a ladder. They descended two stories before running across a tar-and-gravel roof to a metal door that was already propped open.
“This way. Quick,” Robert said to each of them as they ran through the door. Kat pulled him along and shut the door behind them.
“Okay, hold up,” she said, moving past several closed office doors through a hall to a glass door that opened into one of the main concourses outside security.
Kat turned and motioned them together in a huddle. “We’re outside the security perimeter. I can’t get us all in by flipping my badge, and if we force open the wrong door, we’ll set off alarms. The concourse security screeners will act like morons, so our best bet is to come out of this door, go through security like normal, then regroup on the other side. There are three lanes there, so we split up.”
“Where on the other side do we meet?” Dallas asked.
Kat licked her lips and shook her head. “I don’t know. There’s a gate right over there. Let’s assemble in the waiting area, then we’ll go from there. Dallas? You and Dan and Steve first. We’ll follow. Hawkins is likely to find us gone any minute.”
Dallas nodded and opened the glass door, escorting Dan as Steve followed, carrying his own backpack along with Kat’s roll-on bag. When all three were safely through, Kat motioned for Robert and Graham to move.
“You coming?” Robert asked.
“Yeah,” Kat said. “I’m trying to decide what to do about my gun.”
“Use your badge. You don’t have a choice.”
Kat nodded and followed, staying back as first Robert, then Graham, cleared the metal detector and reclaimed their pocket change on the other side.
She stepped up to the guard and motioned toward the police officer standing in the background, flipping open her ID wallet. “FBI agent. Will you please ask your officer to step over here?”
The security woman’s eyes grew big. She disappeared and returned with the officer. Kat handed him the credential case, speaking in an urgent, low voice. “Whatever you do, do NOT call attention to me, okay? We’re on an active stakeout, something has gone wrong, and you’ll blow a federal investigation if you so much as raise an eyebrow. I am armed with a standard nine-millimeter weapon, but I am a federal peace officer and authorized to enter secure areas.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” he said, his eyes wide.
“When you’re satisfied with my ID, slip it quietly back in my handbag and instruct the security guard here to let me through without comment. Understand?”
“You got it, Agent Bronsky,” the officer said.
Kat could hear voices shouting and footsteps in a full run behind her as she cleared the security area and motioned to the others to follow her down the concourse. She chanced a look behind in time to see Hawkins skid to a halt at the same portal and pull out what was obviously a well-done fake ID.
There was a departure reader board next to them, and Kat scanned it quickly, choosing a Seattle-bound DC-10 several gates down that was boarding. “This way!” she commanded, breaking into a trot. The others followed. Hawkins and his two compatriots were streaking into the main concourse now, looking both directions. Kat slipped in front of Robert, and they moved as fast as possible without breaking into a full run.
“Don’t look back!” she told Robert as she peeked around him.
Hawkins had stopped and was jerking his head in both directions. He dispatched two of his men to the east concourse while he headed west. Kat realized Hawkins had not seen them, but he was coming in the same direction they were.
“Okay! In here!” Kat ordered, guiding the six of them to the right and out of sight behind a concrete wall that formed the boundary of one of the gates.
The gate was still open, and the airline gate agent was fanning the computer boarding cards she’d collected before closing the door.
Kat ran ahead and identified herself. “You don’t have time to think about this!” she told the agent. “On my authority, I’m commandeering us aboard this aircraft, and you must close the door behind us and say absolutely nothing to anyone else except your operations people.”
The woman’s eyes were huge, and her mouth was moving up and down. “I… I… don’t—”
“Is this flight full?”
“No, but—”
Kat motioned the others past her. “Get on! And have the lead flight attendant standing by to get me to the captain.”
She reached out and turned the agent’s face to hers. “This is a matter of life and death for the six of us. There is a man about to appear around the corner. He has fake FBI credentials and he is armed and dangerous. If he sees me here talking to you, or you help him in any way, he will probably end up killing you as well as me. Understood?”
The gate agent nodded and swallowed hard.
“Good. I’m gone. Remember, my last name is Bronsky. Call the local FBI office. They will validate me through Washington. Now put your head down, sort your cards, and wait a full minute. Close the door naturally.”
Kat turned and ran through the door, disappearing down the jet-way at the very moment Hawkins walked into view, scanning the gate and the agent as she worked with her boarding cards. He hesitated briefly, then moved on, having noticed a glut of people around the next gate.
Kat sailed through the entry door of the DC-10 and into the face of an agitated flight attendant holding on to Robert. Kat flipped open her credential case and explained.
“You say somebody’s chasing you, Agent?”
“Yes.”
“You say they’re pretending to be FBI, but they’re not?”
“Correct.”
“With guns?”
“Probably.”
Dan Wade had hesitated just inside the door, pulling Dallas back toward the sound of Kat’s voice. Kat could see him listening, then fumbling for his wallet and opening it as the lead flight attendant asked her questions.
The flight attendant shook her head. “Miss…”
“Bronsky. Special Agent Bronsky.”
“Look, you come running down here to board six disheveled people without tickets on the strength of an ID — how do I know you’re not the one with false ID?”