Alien Tango

missing something. Besides, I had the adrenaline harpoon case in my purse, so if it got too bad I could revive him. In five months I’d had to do it enough that I was a pro. I didn’t like this skill, but it kept him alive, so it was worth it.
    Martini had four burly human security guards assigned to him, and Gower had called in a complement of ten more A-Cs working as backup as well. Anyone Martini indicated was going to be considered the highest-level threat, and we didn’t want them escaping or grabbing a hostage.
    The passengers filed out. We let them keep their bags—if we could identify who the terrorists were, we could dispense with a full-on bag search. Whatever was happening in Florida was going to be done and handled before we ever arrived, but I felt our getting there alive was the preferable option.
    Our only change was that there were two bomb dogs and their handlers next to Tim and Reader. The Bomb Squad had insisted on this, and no one had any objection. The rest of the dogs were in the section we’d set aside for main suspects. We had another holding area for passengers we thought were clean. All of this was still within view of our main gate area.
    It was a big plane, and there were a lot of passengers. Tim and Reader pulled some obvious choices aside, and the searching began. We weren’t providing a great deal of privacy—there were screens set up for men and women, but they were right in the same area we were. I didn’t care about lawsuits—mass hallucinations had a great way of changing what people thought they’d gone through. Besides, once we found the means to make a bomb, most of the other passengers would be complaining they’d sat in the plane too long, not that we’d searched them later.
    We kept on, pulling some men, a few women. I studied everyone who went by. Kevin and I were playing the baddest of our three sets of bad cops, and I made sure I didn’t look friendly.
    An elderly couple moved through our line. My first reaction was to smile in a kindly manner and then to ignore them. Especially after the little old lady patted Tim’s hand and thanked him for protecting them.
    But there was something wrong about them. I wasn’t sure what bothered me, but I examined them more closely than anyone else who’d gone past so far. They gave me weak smiles and kept on staggering through our line.
    They still bothered me, to the point where I turned around to watch them. Martini caught my eye and gave me an almost imperceptible nod. They moved past him, and he gave a signal to his security gaggle. The oldsters were stopped.
    And instantly started protesting. Loudly. The woman in particular was making quite the scene. They were taken over with our other suspects and separated. The woman was wailing about how she was being manhandled. She garnered a lot of sympathetic looks from the passengers who weren’t corralled with our main suspects.
    The next one to have his suspicions raised was Kevin. A young man came out, wearing his iPod headphones and seeming to be just sort of bouncing to the beat. He didn’t look dangerous, and our first two lines let him through. Kevin grabbed him, flung him to the ground, and ripped the iPod and headphones off. “Check these, right now,” he barked to one of the Bomb Squad.
    Kevin let the kid up, but he kept the guy’s arm twisted behind his back. An officer came over and slammed hand-cuffs onto the young man. “Yep,” he said to Kevin, then dragged our boy over to our confirmed suspects area.
    “What was in the iPod?” I asked him quietly, while more passengers crept through.
    “Probably a plastic of some kind.”
    “How’d you spot him?”
    “He was trying too hard.”
    That was it. I spun around and went over to Martini. “There’s something really wrong with those old people.”
    He nodded. “Not sure what, but boy did they feel like they’d won the lottery when they got past you.” He gave me a half-smile. “Your new boyfriend seems to be working out well.”
    “Oh, stop it.”
    Martini grinned. “Amazingly, I’m not jealous.”
    “Yeah, he’s happily married.”
    “Nah. I liked that you were proud of me for knowing what you were thinking. Made up for your panting after the Fed.” He nodded toward the line. “Back to work, baby. More are coming.”
    I returned to my post and more filtered through. A couple of the flight attendants came out now, one blonde, one brunette. The dogs started barking at the blonde’s bag. She