Repairman Jack [09]-Infernal Read Online Free PDF Page A

close enough to see the massacre, but far enough away to stay clear:
    Two gunmen wearing airport coveralls, ski masks, and Arab headdress—described as “the kind of thing Arafat wore”—had entered baggage claim through an employees-only doorway and opened up on the passengers of American Airlines flight 715. The result was one hundred and fifty-two dead—men, women, children, passengers, relatives, limo drivers, security guards—everyone who’d been anywhere near the carousel.
    Among the dead were forty-seven members of the ultra-orthodox Satmar Hasidic sect returning to Crown Heights from a gathering in Miami. Since the killers did not attack any of the other nearby carousels, the news heads speculated that the presence of such a sizable group of Hasidim might have been why that particular flight was targeted.
    After finishing their bloody work, the killers had fled through the same doorway. In the hallway beyond they’d discarded their coveralls, their masks and kufiyas , as well as their assault pistols. Word had leaked that both pistols were Tavor-2 models, manufactured in Israel. That started speculation that the choice of weapon might have been a way of adding insult to injury. Jews slaughtered by Israeli-made weapons.
    But the question most asked by the news heads to their endless parade of experts on terrorism and Arabs and Islam, singly or on panels, was why there were no wounded. How could every wound be fatal? Finally someone offered the possibility that the terrorists might have used cyanide-filled hollow-point rounds.
    “Oh, my God!” Gia said. “How could they?” Then she shook her head. “Sorry. Stupid question.”
    “I figured it might be something like that.”
    “Why? How?”
    As he’d knelt next to his dead father, Jack’s reeling mind hadn’t been able to process all the surrounding sights and sounds. But as he’d waited in the cold darkness for Abe, he’d slowed and corralled his chaotic thoughts, and painstakingly pieced together what he had seen.
    Dad hadn’t been lying in a pool of blood—he’d been lying next to one that seemed to have come from the uniformed woman beside him. His body wasn’t bullet riddled; in fact Jack had seen only one wound, a bloody hole near the left buttock, but not much bleeding from that.
    “My father’s wound—at least the one I could see—seemed to be a flesh wound. Of course the bullet could have ricocheted off a bone and cut through a major artery. But after I heard there were no wounded, that everyone who’d been shot was dead, I began to suspect cyanide.”
    None of this had been confirmed, but Jack was pretty sure it would turn out to be something along those lines.
    Gia shivered against him. “I’ve never heard of—I mean, what hideous sort of mind dreams up these things?”
    “Cyanide bullets aren’t new. They’re a terrorist favorite, but usually when they’re out to assassinate a specific target. The poison guarantees that an otherwise nonlethal wound will be fatal. First I ever heard of them was back when we were kids—when those Symbionese Liberation Army nuts used cyanide-tipped bullets to kill that school superintendent. But for mass murder? Never heard of them being used for that. At least until now.”
    Gia closed her eyes as a tear slid from each. “So if they’d used regular bullets your father could have lived… if he’d laid still and played dead, he might have survived, and we’d be standing around his hospital bed now talking about how lucky he was.”
    Thinking about what could have been and might have been never worked for Jack. Seemed like self-torture, and he felt tortured enough right now.
    “I doubt it.”
    Gia opened her eyes. “What do you mean?”
    “I saw a smear of blood about the length of his leg on the floor beside him. His hand was on the holster of a dead security guard. I think—no, I’m sure he was going after her gun. Dad wasn’t the type to sit and wait to be killed. He was an