In football, it’s called “clipping,” and at first, Chan didn’t know what hit him, as Angel performed a perfect clip from behind. The big Chinese American detective went sprawling, and Angel rolled next to him. As Chan tried to stand, Angel grabbed his legs, babbling in Puerto Rican Spanish like a maniacal, terrified little boy.
“Acho men! A juyir, man! Mui a la loco apretao!”
“Settle down, sir, settle down!” said Chan, irritated. He spoke Mexican Spanish, but wasn’t sure what this person was saying; some gibberish about a madman chasing him, or something. Chan yanked himself free of Angel’s grasp and moved toward the exit, but Detective Ron Franklin, an athletic black man in his mid-thirties, sprinted past him and reached the door far ahead of Chan.
Franklin barreled through the sliding glass doors, into the sunlight, and caught sight of Kit Bennings and Yulana Petkova getting into the side doors of a white panel van on World Way South as airport police cars with sirens blaring screeched into the drop-off lanes.
Franklin cut through the herd as fast as possible, but throngs of terrified people blocked his path.
“Franklin!” called Chan, emerging from the arrivals hall.
Franklin turned back to the big detective and yelled, “They’re in the white van!” Franklin then shoved and pushed through the crowd. “Police officer, stand aside!”
He accidentally knocked an old Asian lady down but kept moving. He finally broke into the clear, and with Chan huffing and puffing right behind him, ran up to a white van stopped in traffic. Franklin flung open the side door.
But the van was empty, except for the driver, who, unknown to the policemen, just so happened to be a navy SEAL.
“Where are the man and woman who got in here?!” demanded Franklin.
“Hey, what the hell! Close my door!” said the driver. “Are you crazy?”
Franklin noticed the van had side doors on both sides. “They went out the other side!” he said to Bobby Chan. The men ran around the van in time to see two more identical white panel vans driving away, rounding the bend toward terminal 4. Then the van they’d just looked into pulled away, too.
Chan looked at Franklin. “You sure about this?”
Suddenly Franklin didn’t look so sure. “Well, I…”
Just then Chan spotted two tough-looking men in black leather coats who had jogged up. The men stopped when they saw the detectives.
“You two!” yelled Chan, taking a step toward the men. “Police! Get your hands up!”
As one of the Russians reached inside his jacket, Chan drew his weapon in a flash and leveled it at the men. Franklin did the same.
“I said hands up! Kneel down! Get on your knees!” The two men reluctantly complied. “Lace your fingers behind your head.”
Airport cops came running up. Chan flashed his ID as Franklin cuffed the Russians. A quick search found they both had concealed firearms. The airport cops called for backup, which arrived in seconds.
“This is your jurisdiction so it’s your bust,” said Chan to the ranking airport officer, “but I’d like a word with these guys.”
“Not a problem,” said the officer.
Franklin examined the men’s IDs. “Yuri Rugov and Vitaly Dubinin.” Franklin looked to Chan. “So what the hell is going on?”
“Wish I knew,” said Detective Bobby Chan.
Kit Bennings allowed himself a real smile, not the fake ones he’d used at the embassy party. He sat on the hard steel floor of a panel van driven by Buzz Van Wyke’s navy SEAL son, Randy.
“You okay, Major Bennings?” asked Randy Van Wyke, who looked a lot like his dad, except Randy had hair and a short blond beard.
“Roger that. You’re Buzz’s son, Randy?”
“Yes, sir. Honor to meet you.”
“Believe me, the pleasure is all mine. Thanks for your help, because those cops almost nabbed me.” Kit checked his watch. “Nothing like making an entrance. Or in this case, an exit. Right, Jen?”
Kit turned to face First Lieutenant Jennifer Huffman, who sat across from him, next to a bewildered Yulana Petkova. “Pixie-ish” was the word—to Huffman’s great displeasure—that best described her. At age twenty-seven she stood five feet two with boots on, weighed a hundred pounds dripping wet, wore her sandy blond hair cropped short because it was easier to keep clean that way, and still bore a chip on her shoulder about not being allowed to try out for the Special Forces Qualification Course due to her gender. She was cute yet at the same time quite androgynous.
Much more important to note, Jen Huffman was a brilliant IT specialist who always traveled with at least three laptops. She’d been both a white hat and a black hat hacker in her past and made miracles happen with a computer. Oh, and she was a germaphobe to the extent that she made Lady Macbeth’s hand washing seem tame.
“I’m so sorry about your loss, and everything else, Kit,” said Jen, as she squeezed hand sanitizer onto her hands from a small bottle.
“Thanks. And thanks for being here. How did you arrange it?”
“Simple. I took leave, same as Angel. I’m yours for three weeks, if it takes that long,” said Jen, with a slight northern accent that betrayed her Minnesota upbringing.
Jen was in the Activity for one reason and one reason only: Kit Bennings had gone to bat for her. After a stint at NSA, she’d been assigned to the 3rd Special Forces Group Headquarters and Headquarters company, where her skills were not being utilized, when Kit first met her. He staked everything on convincing Col. Larry Bing to bring her aboard.
The problem was that the army had revoked her security clearance after learning that at age fourteen she’d hacked into Bank of America and defaced some of their Web pages. The FBI had tracked her down and she was convicted of a misdemeanor under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986. Because she was a minor, her record was sealed. By age sixteen she was a contract-hacker for the FBI. At eighteen, she joined the army and got slotted right to NSA. When she left the No Such Agency, a jilted lover dropped a dime on her about her hacking arrest, and so she lost her clearance.
Bing eventually got her clearance reinstated and she’d been one of the Activity’s best IT people ever since. And she never forgot that Kit Bennings was the reason for it all.
“We’ll catch up later, Jen, but would you mind taking care of our Russian guest?” Kit crawled up into the front and sat next to Randy Van Wyke.
Jen tugged on blue latex gloves as she looked at Yulana. “Please don’t take this wrong, but I need you to strip naked.”
Two of the white vans turned south onto Pacific Coast Highway, drove through the tunnel under runways and taxiways, and then turned west onto Imperial Highway. The vans pulled over, and Jen bounded out with Yulana’s suitcase, purse, and other effects. She got into the other van with the items, and they sped off. The van driven by Randy, with Kit and Yulana as passengers, made a U-turn at the first intersection and drove in the opposite direction.
Kit returned to the back of the van and sat across from Yulana, who now wore jeans, sandals, and a pink shirt. Her jewelry was gone, all of her things were gone.
“There were personal items in my luggage,” said Yulana.
“Your belongings will be carefully checked. Anything we deem safe will be returned to you.”
Yulana started to say something, then stopped.
“Want to tell me where the tracking devices are?”
She shrugged. “I can tell you that they gave me the suitcase.”