We arrived at the airport a good hour before Merritt and Lucy’s flight.

I’d already recovered from all my initial annoyance with Denver International Airport. It is halfway to Kansas, there is no getting around that, but once you get there, the place works. DIA is attractive, spacious, and efficient. Every trip out there costs twenty extra minutes by car; every flight in or out saves at least that much aggravation. Every time I land at another airport I appreciate DIA more and more.

But in all my trips I had never checked a bag at DIA. My carry-on habit wasn’t a protest against DIA’s oft-maligned automated baggage system but was, rather, more philosophical. My feelings are this: if I can’t fit it in a carry-on, I figure I don’t need it. Merritt’s packing philosophy was a little more liberal. She was traveling with a duffel bag the size of a pregnant sow and a suitcase that didn’t have a prayer of fitting in the overhead compartment.

Sam pulled his car up to the curb of the check-in level on the United Airline’s side of the huge tented terminal so we could check Merritt’s bags. Lucy and Simon would meet us later in the train station down below the terminal. She figured Simon would enjoy watching the trains come and go.

A Skycap grabbed Merritt’s bags from Sam’s trunk and I waved Sam off to park the car. The Skycap perused Merritt’s tickets to discover her destination, and quickly attached computer-generated tags to her luggage. He placed the bags, one after the other, on a nearby conveyor belt and the luggage immediately disappeared into a rubber-toothed tunnel.

The baggage system at DIA is the stuff of local and national legend. Being a carry-on devotee, I’d never examined it up close before and was fascinated watching its humble curbside beginnings. This was, I decided, like viewing one of the headwaters of the mighty Mississippi.

“Where do they go?” I asked the closest Skycap, pointing at some disappearing suitcases.

“The bags? Down a floor. Underneath the terminal, there’s six big stations that collect bags from the curb, six more that collect bags inside at the ticket counters. Automated scanners read the tags to discover where the bags are supposed to be goin’, then they get loaded on these tele-cars, like little railroad cars you might see in a, you know, coal mine, and then it shoots ’em, the tele-cars, right down to your gate on tracks. More tracks down there than at Gran’ Central Station. The tracks go every which way for a while, then they all join in the middle of the terminal and scoot straight down a tunnel to the concourses. Those bags be in your plane before you’re off the train.”

“It really works?”

“You bet.”

“What’s that?” I pointed at a separate setup a few steps away. A large flat gray bin, maybe eight feet by four feet and a foot high, sat empty on a big stainless steel tray.

He smiled a toothy grin. “You recover your manners and get around to showing me some ’preciation for my help with the young lady’s bags, I’ll show you how it all works.”

I gave him five bucks and he placed another customer’s ski bag in the flat gray bin. “This one’s already tagged. These skis are going home to Omaha.” He punched a code on an adjacent keypad, a stainless steel door slid open, and a stainless steel cradle carried the gray tray in the same general direction Merritt’s bags had just traveled. A moment later, another empty gray tray automatically slid into the place of the one that was schussing the skis to Omaha.

He said, “Oversized bags, skis, golf clubs, and stuff like that go in those gray trays. I punch in a code. Elevator takes ’em down and puts ’em in the system. They get loaded on double cars and go right to the concourse.”

“Same system?”

“Same one. But the cars be different. They use big double tele-cars for these oversize bins. This stuff’s too big for the beige bins on the single tele-cars. But the same system.”

“And it really works?”

“God be my witness. It does.”

I realized I’d lost track of Merritt. I looked around and spotted her thirty or forty yards down the curb talking to someone whose back was to me. I thought it was a man. I started down the sidewalk to join her so we could go inside to find Sam and get in line to retrieve our boarding passes.

With his left hand, the man was pointing at a car, a recent-model, dark blue Lincoln Continental, that was idling beside them at the curb. His right hand was on Merritt’s back.

She took a step away-toward the terminal, not the car-and, with a quick move, he grabbed her arm. To me, it didn’t look like a friendly gesture, but she didn’t scream at first. A second later, though, she was mounting a vigorous effort to try to shake free. Failing, she looked my way. I knew what terror looked like when it was reflected in Merritt’s eyes, and I decided she was terrified right then, and I started to run toward her. My first thought was that the man was a particularly aggressive reporter who had somehow tracked Merritt to DIA.

I closed about half the distance and watched Merritt try to free herself from the man’s grasp with a violent shove to his chest. It didn’t work. Then she lifted her left foot and pounded hard on the man’s instep. He released his grip for a split second and she leapt backwards, sidestepping a large woman cradling a large child. The man recovered quickly and was no more than a yard behind her. Merritt saw him, and without hesitation dove headfirst into one of the big gray four-by-eight trays that carry oversize luggage into the automated baggage system. This one was just beginning its journey to the concourses. In addition to Merritt, that particular tray’s cargo was an aluminum tube almost a foot in diameter and five feet long.

Poof! In a blink, Merritt and the tube disappeared into the automated baggage system.

I wasn’t even sure the Skycap saw her go.

I yelled, “Hey!” or something equally incisive. The man who had been holding Merritt was struggling to be inconspicuous, but I was pretty sure I saw something shiny and metallic in his hand. Fearful that it was a gun, I yelled again, “Get down! Everybody get down!” Everyone, of course, looked my way-assessing me for signs of mental instability and for indications that I might be dangerous-but nobody got down, and the man who was after Merritt took advantage of the diversion I provided. He edged to the back of the group at curbside and lowered himself onto the conveyor that carried individual suitcases into the system. In a blink, he disappeared through a tunnel, in pursuit of Merritt.

Impulsively, I went after him but a Skycap had me by the ankles before I could get down the conveyor. Somebody asked if they should call for security and I allowed myself a moment of hope before I realized that the most likely target of security’s interest was me.

I stood up and said to the Skycap, “Okay, okay, listen. Two people just disappeared into the baggage system. A man is after a girl, a teenage girl. I think he might be armed. She’s in trouble.”

The Skycap had heard better stories recently. He made a sound like a pony neighing and said, “I didn’t see anybody go in, George, did you?”

George, the other Skycap, said, “Not me.”

A little girl, maybe six, maybe seven, stepped forward and raised her hand like a well-behaved schoolgirl. She said, “I did. I saw them. She went down that hole.” She pointed at the elevator with the big gray trays, then moved her outstretched arm in the direction of the conveyor. “And he went down that hole. There.”

I said, “Thank you.”

The next voice I heard was Sam’s. He was behind me. “Where is she, Alan?”

“Down there, Sam, the baggage system. Somebody’s after her with a gun.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know, a man, I didn’t get a good look at him. White, my size. Brown hair, bomber jacket.”