Page 36 of Denied Access
But his pursuers couldn’t know that.
Smoke puffed from the plane’s landing gear as rubber met concrete at 170 miles per hour. The aircraft thundered past in a blur and then Rapp rocketed across the runway driving behind and perpendicular to the jet. He gritted his teeth against the jet blast as the wake turbulence created by the several-hundred-ton lifting body tried to tear him from the tractor. Gripping the steering wheel with white knuckles, he turned into the wind as the vortices rocked the tractor against its struts. For an instant the man-made tornado had the upper hand. Then the tractor’s front tires found purchase on the grass on the runway’s far side.
Cranking the wheel farther right, Rapp sought the protection of the more crowded secondary terminal. Steering like a madman, he roared under one stationary jet, in front of another taxiing aircraft, and then weaved between several parked planes like he was slaloming down his favorite ski run. The persistent warbling from the pursuing sedan’s siren faded. Risking a look over his shoulder, Rapp saw the patrol car still on the northern side of the active runway, apparently loath to cross the sacred ground.
Good.
Zooming past Terminal 1, he skirted the approach edge of the diagonally running Runway 020, and then shot across Runway 060Right, moments before a blue and white liveried Boeing with the Star of David featured prominently on the plane’s tail took the active. Rapp thought about waving to the El Al crew but decided that might make matters worse. The Israelis had enough problems back home without thinking that a madman on a baggage tractor had tried to ram one of their passenger planes.
Rapp bottomed out the accelerator as the vehicle’s wheels traded concrete for the sandy soil on the far side of Runway 060 Right. The little tractor certainly wasn’t designed with off-roading in mind, but he kept the pedal to the metal and hung on for dear life. The uneven terrain and the baggage cart’s lack of shocks conspired to nearly toss him from his seat, but after thirty seconds of hard riding, he arrived at the perimeter fence. Bringing the vehicle to a halt with the tractor’s blunt nose touching the fence’s metal chain links, Rapp grabbed the purse and then scrambled up and over the barrier. He landed in the soft dirt on the far side and bolted for the cover of the surrounding trees.
The smell of salt water saturated the air, and the ocean breeze tickled his face. The ground was sandy and crisscrossed with canals brimming with brackish water. He seemed to be in some sort of estuary, and he paused for a moment to take his bearings. A narrow road provided vehicular access to the marsh, but that wouldn’t do. Sure, the pavement would allow him to move faster, but the road probably tracked along the airfield’s perimeter with very few secondary branches.
If Rapp risked the road, he would be easy pickings for his pursuers.
Like a mosquito’s irritating buzzing, the warbling siren was back. Rapp darted into the estuary, trying to disguise his footprints by keeping to solid ground. He might be able to hide for a time among the scrub brush and stunted trees, but with a canal to his west and a large industrial area to his east, Rapp was effectively boxed in. Any competent team would erect roadblocks, construct a search grid, and eventually find him. It might take the searchers longer if they didn’t have access to canines, but either way, hiding in the marsh was a nonstarter.
Which left south.
The shouts echoing from behind him spurred Rapp to action.
He headed south in a distance-eating lope, his pace a product of countless training runs. Trail running wasn’t really his forte, but he only had half a mile or so of truly rough terrain to cover. The gritty soil was challenging, but Rapp kept to the rows of oak and catalpa trees. Their root structure helped to hold the earth in place, defeating the wind and water, which eroded the lower-lying stretches of land. The wood line at the estuary’s edge paralleled his intended direction of travel and for several hundred yards, Rapp just ran. Then the trees intersected a narrow west-east-running road. At barely two lanes, it was just wide enough to permit cars to travel in opposite directions, but the surface was largely gravel and littered with potholes.
Exactly the type of road one would expect to follow for beach access.
Rapp considered using it, but didn’t. While the road boasted plenty of parked cars and beachgoers walked along it in twos and threes, Rapp felt too exposed. The earlier trees and scrub brush that had provided at least a modicum of cover were gone. The south side of the road boasted the occasional hedge or palm tree, but the open expanse was mostly grass. He would be easy to spot on the long stretch of road, especially since he wasn’t dressed like the other beachgoers.
Rapp crouched beside a bush as he surveyed the open no-man’s-land separating him from the beckoning ocean. His clothes were a liability. The linen slacks, button-down shirt, and loafers weren’t beach attire.
He needed to improvise.
For the first time, Rapp opened the woman’s handbag. As he’d expected, the purse was configured with surveillance in mind. The interior was surprisingly roomy and featured a plastic liner that could be cinched closed to ward off moisture—a necessity when running surveillance in the rain. Several cleverly placed zippers permitted the purse’s size and shape to be reconfigured on the fly, another surveillance must.A quick inventory of the contents turned up several interesting items—a spare cell phone, a wallet complete with a picture ID, and a couple of benign things like a key chain, makeup compact, and lipstick and the like. Some of the innocent items probably concealed something more sinister that he might be able to suss out with more time.
Unfortunately, time was not something he had in abundance.
Though he hadn’t heard or seen his pursuers, Rapp knew they were out there. One did not careen across an airfield in a stolen baggage tractor and expect to waltz away scot-free. If nothing else, sheer embarrassment would motivate the national police and airport security officers to continue to look for him. Rapp needed to disappear, and while he had the beginnings of a plan, something had to be done about his appearance. It would do him no good to elude his pursuers just to have a helpful bystander explain to the police exactly where he’d gone. The ocean was the solution to his problems, but unless he came up with a way to escape into its welcoming embrace, the waves might as well have been four hundred miles distant rather than four hundred feet.
Rapp was considering threading the needle by attempting to follow the road east while remaining concealed in the spotty hedges when salvation arrived in the form of a man.
A very old, very naked man.
Surprise and revulsion blinded Rapp to the possibilities at first. The image of sagging, wrinkled things was now forever seared into his mind. For a long moment, Rapp couldn’t fathom why an eighty-year-old man would be strutting down to the ocean in just his birthday suit.
Then he got it.
A nudist beach. After monitoring the old man’s progress all the way to the water to ensure that he didn’t elicit any outraged reactions from fellow sunbathers, Rapp got busy. Shucking his shoes, clothes, and underwear, he bundled everything together, placed it in the watertight container, and cinched the bag shut. Then he looped the carrying strap over his shoulder and started across the street.
Rapp was not particularly prudish, but neither was he anexhibitionist. Figuring that blushing cheeks would be a dead giveaway, Rapp kept his eyes on the surf crashing against the beach and pointedly ignored a trio of rather attractive young ladies sunbathing to his left. As he drew even with them, one of the women lowered her sunglasses and let loose a burst of Spanish. The words might have been indecipherable, but the woman’s tone left no doubt as to her intentions.
Rapp flashed her a smile and then jogged the remaining distance to the water. Without breaking stride, he dove into the breaking waves, doing his best to ignore the chill. While the swim trunks he normally used weren’t insulated, the water still felt bracingly cold to his unprotected nether regions. He tempered his strokes in acknowledgment of the still-healing gunshot wound in his shoulder, but before long he’d swum beyond the surf break and into open ocean. After tightening the bag’s strap across his shoulder and back, Rapp turned right and settled into an easy rhythm.
Ninety minutes later, Rapp walked from the surf.
His chest heaved as salt water ran down his skin in rivulets. Between his still-sore shoulder and the drag induced by the handbag, the swim had been more strenuous than he’d anticipated.
A lot more strenuous.
Rapp had originally considered swimming east, against the current, in favor exiting the water in one of the less populated coastal areas, but he’d rejected the idea. He would attract much less attention coming ashore in front of one of the many resort hotels than if a random person saw him emerge from the water on one of the secluded sections of sand that bordered the industrial area around the port. Besides, if he swam too far east, he might accidentally wander into the commercial shipping lanes.
