Bowen kicked the tube through the falls, just seconds behind her. His mind worked double-time, pondering ways he could prolong this conversation, thinking of when they might meet again.
But when he pushed the yellow tube into the calm water, Ronnie Garcia was gone.
Chapter 38
IDTF agent Roy Gant bounced on his feet behind a scrawny oak, a hundred meters to the west of the water park. He was a heavy guy with a big belly that the tree did little to hide — but he had bigger problems than that now. He’d been assigned to follow the deputy marshal, didn’t know why, didn’t care — especially once he’d had the happy accident of stumbling on this meeting with the girl. Every ID agent within two hundred miles of the Beltway knew what she’d done to Lindale and Maloney. They all wanted to get her in their crosshairs. Gant had literally jumped up and down like a kid on his birthday when he’d realized he had Garcia in his sights. He’d called it in right away so he could bask in the praise of his superiors, giving none of the credit to his partner, a former FBI agent named Miller.
And now the girl had disappeared.
“Tell me you have eyes on,” Gant said into the small mike attached to his iPhone.
“That’s a negative,” Miller said, from his vantage point fifty meters away, nearer the parking lot. “I never did have a clear view. You get all the credit for this one.”
Gant stomped his foot. They should have been closer, but how was he supposed to know he’d need a pair of swimming trunks in order to blend in? Besides, he was not a small man and if he’d stripped down to his shorts, some wise guy might have harpooned him as the great white whale.
“Keep watching the parking lot,” Gant said. “She’ll have to leave the area sometime.”
“What about the deputy?” Miller said. “He’s a hard one to miss with that head full of gray.”
“You’re tryin’ to tell me Veronica Garcia is easy to miss?” Gant snapped.
“No,” Miller said. “I’m telling you that I have a visual on Bowen. If we can’t find the girl, I say we stay with him. She met him once. She’ll meet him again. Looks to me like they may have a little thing for each other.”
Gant leaned against the rough bark of the tree, steadying his arms as he played the binoculars back and forth among the crowd. He searched frantically for any sign of the curvaceous Latina. His heart rose for a moment when he saw a girl in a dark swimsuit and large white hat — until she scooped up a little kid and took him to the wading pool.
“I am so screwed,” Gant muttered to himself. She couldn’t have just vanished — but that is exactly what she had done. Backup teams were speeding in his direction at that very moment, ready to make him a hero when they swept in and arrested Garcia. “Forget the deputy,” he said to his partner. “Keep looking for the girl. She has to be here. She’s the priority.”
“Roger that,” Miller said, the shrug evident in his tone. He’d received none of the credit, so he wasn’t about to share any of the blame. “Just sayin’, the deputy is walking to his car right now.”
“Is he by himself?”
“Affirmative.”
“Then forget him,” Gant said, fighting back the rising panic. “Keep looking for her.”
“You want me to slam a car door on your leg?” Miller said. “It worked to get Lindale out of hot water when he lost her.”
Gant chewed on the inside of his cheek as he kept up his search with the binoculars — and seriously considered Miller’s offer.
Chapter 39
A faulty gear indicator on the Alaska Airlines plane carrying Tang Dalu and his team from Las Vegas to Anchorage kept them on the ground in Seattle an hour longer than planned. His entire team was sweating by the time they made it to the North Terminal. They reached security with less than fifteen minutes until boarding, which, Tang supposed, helped their cause. The Anchorage TSA officers, though watchful as ever, showed a modicum of compassion and hurried them along so they would not miss their flight.
The last-minute change in plans had set everyone on edge, but their rushed demeanor had masked their nervousness. Ma Zhen, the most pious among then, attributed the delay to the will of Allah. Tang wondered why this same Allah that would reach down with his merciful finger to break a tiny gear light had not chosen to save his daughter. The others might be doing this as part of some personal jihad. Tang had other reasons.
Anchorage International’s North Terminal was minuscule compared to the Las Vegas airport, with only eight gates — and the massive Airbus A380 took up two of them. All two stories of her loomed outside the windows like a great white whale with her nose to the glass. At once bloated and sleek, the “super jumbo” was the largest plane in the sky. The Global CEO’s wife was French, giving him the impetus to stray from their usual fleet of American-made Boeing 747s, making this Airbus an even richer target in the eyes of the man from Pakistan. Bringing it down would not only destroy the company that had gambled on something European, but enrage American nationalism.
Tang had read the statistics on the airplane while he’d waited for their connection in Vegas. Seven stories tall at the tail, the Airbus was three quarters of a football field in length and had an interior almost seven meters wide. Most airports placed an eighty-meter wingspan limit in order for a plane to use their runways. The A380 made it under that with just inches to spare. Promotional literature said the wings were so large that seventy passenger cars could be parked on each one. Each of the four Rolls-Royce turbofan engines weighed more than six tons, providing a combined total of over a quarter million pounds of thrust.
Tang had never read the Christian Bible, but he knew enough of the stories to recognize this airplane as a potential Goliath that would, despite its enormous size, be brought down by something extremely small.
With the plane’s capacity at nearly 600 people, the boarding area was packed with passengers and carry-on baggage. Lin found one of the only empty seats along the windows looking out at the runway and fell into it, shutting her eyes. Her boarding pass slipped out of her jacket pocket and fluttered to the carpet. Tang moved to pick it up, but a small girl with dark hair and a broad smile rushed forward, beating him to it.
“Ni chi fan le ma?” The little girl asked, handing the ticket back to Lin. It literally meant have you eaten?, but was colloquial for hello.
Lin opened her eyes. She took the boarding pass and shoved it back in her pocket. Even Tang was dumbfounded by the child’s grasp of Chinese.
“Wo chi le.” Lin nodded. I have eaten.
“Ni okay ma?” The little girl said. “Nide lianse weishenme bu gaoxing?” Are you okay? You seem sad — literally, Why is your face color not excited?
Lin sat up straighter in the chair. Tang was horrified when he saw a smile perk the corners of his wife’s lips.
“You are a cute little thing,” Lin said in heavily accented English. “How did you learn to speak Mandarin so well?”
“My school,” the little girl said, beaming at having been understood. “We can start in kindergarten.”