“How are we going to handle this?” Jack said, nodding his head towards the locked steel door.
“We only heard a single voice asking who was there,” I said. “Maureen was scared of our pistols until she thought we weren’t going to use them. I suggest we open the door again and let him know we are armed to the teeth, and will shoot immediately if he tries anything.”
“He might even be in a cell,” Linda suggested.
“Yeah, that’s a good point, he hasn’t tried to burst through the door,” Bernie said.
“Okay, Linda, you watch Maureen. Jack, you take the Glock off Bernie and stand with me. Bernie, you open the door and tell him he’d better stay back.”
Jack and Bernie exchanged weapons. Bernie walked over to the door but before he turned the key, he looked back at me. “What if he jumps out and attacks?”
“We shoot him.”
Everyone in the room agreed, apart from the taped up Maureen whose muffled protests were ignored.
“Go for it, Bernie,” Jack said.
We braced ourselves for action.
Bernie opened up the door slightly.
“Please, help me. I’ve been stuck in here for hours and want some water.”
“If you try to come through the door, we’ll shoot you, do you understand?” Bernie shouted through the gap.
“I couldn’t even if I wanted to. I’m in a cell. The police arrested me in the airport this morning for being drunk.”
“Push the door open, Bernie,” I said.
It swung open to reveal a prison cage at the end of the room. The cage was split into three individual sections; the cell on the left contained a single adult male. He looked about thirty years of age, had a greasy brown mullet hairstyle, and was wearing a bright blue Hawaiian shirt.
The man behind the bars blinked. “Who are you? You’re not the police.”
“Get to the back of your cage, now, or we’ll shoot,” I shouted.
The man scrambled back, I went up quickly and rattled the door. It was locked.
“Can you let me out, please? I’m sober now.”
None of us were in the mood to believe anything we heard from anyone outside our own group.
“Why? So you can try and kill us?” Bernie shouted.
“What do you mean, kill you? What the fuck are you talking about?” The prisoner replied, raising his arms in the air.
“Get the keys, Jack,” I said. “We’ll throw Maureen in the right hand cell, have a coffee in the other room, and decide what we’re going to do.”
“Can I at least have some water?”
The request fell on deaf ears. He may have been genuine, but we were taking no chances, yet.
After Maureen was safely locked away, Jack shut the steel door and finally sat down in relative safety. Linda made use of the reception area coffee maker and brewed a fresh pot. It was good to have a warm drink and the chance to think.
I stripped off my sweater and t-shirt, and then looked down at my arm, the cut was nasty and probably needed stitches.
“Here, Harry,” Linda said, “I’ve found some bandages in the cupboard.”
She washed my arm with a stinging antiseptic, and blood continued to flow until a large padded bandage was placed over the wound and strapped with tape.
“Thanks, Linda,” I said.
I inspected my arm and slipped my t-shirt back on.
“I think we should just leave the door locked until the police get here. It’s not worth the risk of letting him out, is it?” she said.
“I agree, what good will it do? We’ve seen the results of giving people the benefit of the doubt so far. God only knows what happened outside the terminal. We don’t want to run into more of that,” Bernie said.
“And inside the terminal,” Jack added, “we couldn’t spot any movement, so would you bet against everyone in there being dead? The guy in the cell could be a handful if we let him out and he turned against us.”
“Why don’t we test him?” I said.
“Test him?” Bernie replied with a blank expression on his face.
“We can drag Maureen right up to the edge of his cage and see if he tries to do anything through the gaps. If he’s like her, he’ll probably try to attack.”
“You want to experiment with humans?” Linda replied, with a look of slight disgust.
“Don’t look at it as experimenting, look at it as humane. If the man doesn’t want to kill her, then we’ll find out and save an innocent life. Maureen has already tried to kill us, so if he is like her, then we need to know.”
“Let’s get it out of the way, now then, come on,” Jack said.
I unlocked the steel door and we all walked through into the back room, the prisoner jumped to his feet.
“Guys, let me out. This isn’t funny anymore. Please?”
Jack and I dragged Maureen in front of his section of the cage.
“What the hell are you doing?” the man asked.
I looked between the bars and into his eyes, trying to get a sense of his intent.
“We’ve got something for you,” I said.
“What? Have you brought me some water? Food?”
“Nope, but here’s an old lady’s throat for you to throttle if you like. Can you get your hands through the gaps?”
Maureen was wriggling around and making muffled noises as we pushed her face up to the bars.
“The poor old thing. You guys are hurting her. Let me check her pulse.”
Check her pulse? She was wriggling and moaning.
The man licked his lips, then thrust his hands through the cage and tried to crush each side of Maureen’s windpipe. I smashed the grip of the Sig on his fingers, and he jumped back in pain.
Jack dragged Maureen back into the other caged section.
“So we were right all along,” Bernie said. “Come on; let’s leave these crazy bastards to rot.”
I hadn’t finished yet and crouched in front of the bars.
“Why did you try to kill her?”
“I didn’t. I was trying to check her pulse. You are the ones who have an old lady handcuffed and taped up.”
“Stop bullshitting us. The game’s up. That little old lady tried to kill us, and then you tried to kill her. Why are you doing it?”
Jack grabbed my arm. “You’re wasting your time, Harry. Bernie and Linda are right, we should leave them here.”
They had been right, but I had one more card to play. “I’ve got a deal for you, if you are prepared to listen and speak honestly.”
“A deal? What deal?” He sat up while rubbing his fingers.
“I’ll give you Maureen if you tell us the truth about why you want to kill her. What do you say?”
“No way, Harry,” Bernie shouted, “I cannot allow you to do this. Let’s just get the hell—”
“Give her to me and I’ll tell you afterwards,” the man replied.
We all stood in silence for a moment and stared at him. I think Bernie and Linda were still shocked, but I knew Jack and I were curious about what he had to say.
“Think about the security guard at the bottom of the slide. I’m not saying these people will all act in the same way, but if we give him Maureen first, he might try and kill himself straight after,” Jack said.
“No deal,” I replied to the man. “You either tell us, or we leave you and Maureen to starve to death in here.”
I thought this would put him at his breaking point.
“I am not a killer. Let me out, please.”
“I’m going to the other room. This is a waste of time,” Linda said, and Bernie followed her out.
Jack put his hand on my shoulder. “It was a good try. We nearly had him. Let’s go.”
He had been an inch from cracking and I felt suddenly angry at this man’s death wish.