Chapter 5

The Mercedes reached a speed of almost eighty miles an hour and jumped into the left lane.  Lloyd gunned the Lincoln and got into position two cars behind the German sedan.  The Lincoln had plenty left to give but Lloyd didn't want to get too close.  Lloyd checked his gas gauge and pressed down the accelerator.  A line from a song he'd heard long ago popped into his head.

I want an American car, wanna go fast not far...

"God bless Henry Ford," Lloyd thought, his eye on the car in front of him.

The Mercedes swerved over three lanes and Lloyd almost took out a Toyota trying to follow.  The driver turned onto an off-ramp and Lloyd was right behind him.  The sign for the exit said "Miami International Airport".

                The undercarriage of the Lincoln scraped the pavement as Lloyd flew into step behind the Mercedes.  The black car swung into the lane marked 'Departures' and came to a stop in front of the Delta terminal.  The door opened and a tall man with sunglasses wearing a white uniform stepped out onto the pavement.  His skin looked gray in the morning sunlight.  The door of the Mercedes quickly closed and the car continued around the drop-off access road.

                Lloyd was faced with a decision.  He could follow the Mercedes, which he was convinced would lead him to Otto, or he could tail the strange looking passenger who had just disembarked.  Lloyd decided he didn't like the look of the man in the white uniform and it would serve him better to find out what the man was up to.  He could find Otto later, using the Cash Grocery as a starting point.

                He put the Lincoln in park and jumped out.  He headed towards the automatic door of the terminal, through which the gray skinned man had just passed.  An overweight cop yelled to him 'Hey Buddy, you can't park here!!"

                Lloyd sprinted towards the terminal.  The policeman took off in hot pursuit.  Lloyd entered the doorway just in time to see the tall man in white flash a badge and walk through the metal detectors at security.  Lloyd ran towards security, jumping a suitcase on the way.  The cop was puffing and running behind him.

                "Stop that guy!" the policeman yelled.

                Lloyd ran to the metal detectors and pushed his way through.  Three men in blue security uniforms grabbed him before he could make it.  Lloyd watched helplessly as the gray skinned man swiped his badge through a magnetic badge reader and entered a restricted area.

                "Easy buddy," one of the security men whispered to him.

                Lloyd was taken by the arm and led into a small room off of the gate area.  The cop who had chased him entered the room, red faced and sweating.

                "Car keys," he demanded with his palm out.

                Lloyd handed him the keys to the Lincoln which the man quickly handed to another policeman who had just entered.

                "Blue Continental, check it out," the cop said with a jerk of his thumb and the smaller policeman turned and walked out of the room.

                "What the hell do you think you're doing?" asked the cop.  His expression was one of anger at having been made to run.

                "Uh, my camera.  I forgot my camera," Lloyd said, trying to think of how he would work his way out of this one.

                "Your fucking camera?  Do you realize you could be charged with a federal crime for this?  You know what security is like now.  Is any camera worth that?"

                "I'm sorry, I overreacted, it's a Nikon SLR.  A present from my father," Lloyd said lamely.

                "Well the FBI will be here soon, and then we'll see about your camera," the officer said.

                At that moment one of the security men burst through the door.

                "There's a man on the tarmac.  A naked man!" he shouted.

                The cop turned to Lloyd and said "Wait right here.  Do not move a fucking muscle or it's the last muscle you will move."

                Lloyd nodded and as the cop turned and left he caught the door with his foot, just before it had closed completely.  He counted to ten and then rushed out of the room.

                Lloyd looked to his right and saw the crowd gathered at the window beside the first gate.  Several policemen were running in different directions.  A young cop in a blue airport authority uniform stood beside the gate door with a rag wrapped around his hand.

                "It's like it was just welded shut!" he screamed to no one in particular. 

                Lloyd made his way over to the glass.  A Delta Boeing 757 was sitting at the Jetway.  A young man in protective earphones was standing next to a refueling truck.  He had his back to the glass and didn't hear the frantic pounding of the police officers.  A hose ran from the truck into the fuselage of the plane.

                Walking towards the fuel technician was a tall naked man with gray skin.  His black hair was close cropped and instead of eyes he had empty black sockets.  Lloyd had no doubt it was the man he had seen in the white catering uniform.  He also had no doubt as to what this being was.  It was a Salamander, the same unholy union of smoke and spirit that Celia had turned into after the episode of self-immolation.

                Too late the young man noticed the movement behind him.  He turned and stepped backwards as the gray creature clasped him in a bear hug.  Lloyd watched as the man's face turned to an expression of horror.   Smoke began to rise from the young man's body.

                Two National Guardsmen who were pulling duty at the airport had worked their way down from the next gate and they appeared in the scene, slowly approaching the gray man with rifles raised.  Lloyd could see their mouths open as they shouted for the man to let go of the refueling technician. The Salamander and the young man danced about in a parody of a lover's embrace.  Then the young man ceased to be and in his place was a flaming mannequin.  The national guardsmen fired their rifles and you could see the Salamander twitch as each round entered his torso.  It did no good.

                Fire shot out from all sides as the young man crumbled into ashes in the arms of the foul creature.  A tongue of flame hit the refueling hose and it began to burn.  Lloyd knew what was coming next and turned to run from the terminal. 

Had Lloyd stayed at the window he would have seen the flames steadily climb the orange refueling hose towards the plane.  He would have seen the Salamander drop the charred remains of his victim and raise his hands to the sky shouting, "God is Great" in Pashtun. 

                Lloyd ran as fast as he could through security and out the automatic doors of the terminal.  His Lincoln was still parked in the place he had left it.  The keys dangled from the open trunk.  It looked as if it was being searched when the policeman doing the searching was called away.

                Lloyd grabbed the keys, slammed the trunk and jumped into the front seat.  He turned the engine over and gunned the accelerator without even closing the car door.  The Continental jumped into the pickup lane and began to gain speed as it swerved wildly away.

                Then the first explosion happened.  The fire had climbed up to the fuel tank and the plane burst into a huge fireball.  The glass in the terminal blew inward, decapitating several of the onlookers and embedding itself in the opposite wall.  Human beings were incinerated as a cloud of fiery jet fuel poured in through the gaping hole, vaporizing everything and everyone in its path.

                Lloyd's car was thrown against the curb by the force of the blast.  He looked through his rear window and saw the oily black smoke funneling out of the top of the terminal.  Lloyd turned his car back onto the road and was almost struck by a fire truck flying towards the airport.  Several more emergency vehicles streaked by, sirens blaring.

                Lloyd made his way to the highway before the second plane exploded.  A 727 waiting for a gate was caught in the blast of the first plane.  Eighty-three people were killed in an instant.  Lloyd saw the huge fireball and started to cry.  It was San Diego all over again.  He drove back to his hotel, crying the whole way.

A half-mile from the scene of the explosion a black car idled.  Soon a man crawled through a hole in the airport fence.  The door of the Mercedes was opened and a young man stepped out.  He threw an asbestos blanket over the Salamander who had emerged from the wall.  The Salamander's hair had been scorched off and green viscous fluid poured from three bullet holes in his back.  The young Arab pushed the Salamander into the car.  The car turned back towards the city.