Apaches - Lorenzo Carcaterra [117]
She and Boomer had made it through LaGuardia with the help of two friends, former cops now working for the FBI, who waited for them by the checkpoint, flashed their shields, unfolded a few sheets of doctored documents, and ushered them through separately, bypassing the X-ray detectors, which would have been sure to spot the cargo in Mrs. Columbo’s arms and the guns in Boomer’s satchel.
She and Boomer sat three rows apart on the small plane and avoided eye contact throughout the flight. The passenger seated to her right, a square-shouldered woman dressed in head-to-toe L. L. Bean, had asked to peek at her sleeping baby.
“I don’t think that would be a good idea,” Mrs. Columbo told her, the harsh tone of her voice and the cold snap to her eyes backing the woman away. “She’s a light sleeper.”
Mrs. Columbo spent the rest of the flight with her head back and her eyes closed, running through all that had happened over the past few weeks. She had done a zero to sixty, going from an ex-cop with a sour disposition to a key member of an illegal unit bent on the takedown of a cocaine queen. In the process, Mrs. Columbo found herself on the verge of a messy divorce, marked as a target by an on-the-pad cop, and now jammed inside a too-tight seat holding a prop baby stuffed with eight sticks of dynamite timed to kick in less than three hours.
It was exactly where she felt she belonged.
• • •
BOOMER WAS FIRST off the plane, rushing past the handful of people waiting at the arrival gate, their eager faces searching for friends and relatives. He stopped briefly in front of Mrs. Columbo’s grim-looking party, brushing against the short man’s tan leather jacket, eyes connecting for the briefest of moments before he made his way to the car rental booth.
“Your plane was late,” Angela said in tones as sharp as the cut of her skirt.
“If you’ve got a beef,” Mrs. Columbo said, shielding the baby from Angela’s line of vision, “the pilot should be coming out in a couple of minutes. Give his ear a bend.”
Angela’s lips curled into what for her could have passed as either a smile or a sneer. As she whirled away, it was clear that she expected Mrs. Columbo and the silent man in the tan leather to follow close on her floppy heels, which they did.
“She a real bitch or just acting the part?” Mrs. Columbo asked her escort.
“Believe me, my wife is for real,” the quiet little man said in a voice befitting his size. “It would be foolish for anyone to think otherwise.”
“I guess you’d be the one to know,” Mrs. Columbo said, and she shook her head as the man now walked at a faster pace, trying to catch up to Angela.
• • •
GERONIMO AND PINS were a quarter of a mile up from the black van, hidden by clumps of trees and a circle of large rocks. Pins had his back to the movement down below, legs folded under him, headphones on, picking up the conversation coming to him from the wire he had run down the prop baby’s back. Geronimo put down his small binoculars and checked his watch.
“They smell anything yet?” he asked Pins.
“Not anything that I can pick up,” Pins said. “But these guys make their moves with looks, not words.”
“Boomer and Dead-Eye should be here in about three minutes,” Geronimo said.
“And how long before that doll blows?” Pins asked.
“Six minutes,” Geronimo said, lifting two bolt-action rifles and recoil pads from a large black case by his sneakers. He handed one of the rifles to Pins. “Worry about the ones by the van,” he said. “I’ll take the team in the car. That leaves Boomer with the two around Mrs. Columbo.”
“That car looks parked too close to the van,” Pins said. “What if the dyno blows them both?”
“It shouldn’t,” Geronimo said. “Not if Mrs. Columbo centers the doll under the van the way I showed her. Besides, on top of that, I left thirty seconds for Rev. Jim to move the car away.”
“Next time