WASHINGTON, Oct. 12 (UPI) -- Fridays can be terrifying enough at Washington's area airports as people flee the city for parts outside the Beltway. Politicians and business travelers head home, residents leave on vacations and tourists drag souvenir-laden luggage through huddled masses, yearning to breathe free.
But now, with American warplanes bombing Afghanistan, terrorist suspect No. 1 Osama bin Laden threatening more mayhem against Americans around the world, the FBI taking him seriously enough to warn of "imminent threats to American interests" and other anthrax cases reported in New York and Nevada, the terror just might be real.
Airport police and operations officers refuse to discuss specific security measures, but some are apparent: There are uniforms everywhere, and those uniformed have guns on their hips, radios in their hands and no-nonsense scowls.
At Washington Dulles Airport, about 20 miles west of the capital in the former farmland of northern Virginia, interwoven lines snaked through the terminal as people waited first for tickets, then for the tougher security checks.
At Reagan National, within eyesight and 10 to 15 minutes from Capitol Hill offices, the normal madhouse of Friday was replaced by a roaring silence.
At Dulles, police -- the two airports share their own federal police department -- have been working overtime shifts since the international airport reopened several days after hijackers crashed planes into the World Trade Center Towers in New York. And, yes, a plane from Dulles slammed into the Pentagon less than 20 miles away as the crow flies.
The trip out to Dulles from downtown can take you past the Pentagon, but nothing looks amiss. The plane hit the world's largest office building from the north and the route takes drivers by the building -- and past Arlington National Cemetery on the left, where some of the victims have been buried in the weeks since the Sept. 11 disaster.
The route also takes you near a now-gone building several hundred yards off the airport road, which had housed a laboratory in Reston, Va., where an outbreak of the Ebola virus -- a particularly nasty bug -- led to fear and a best selling book.
As a doctor told the Independent newspaper of Britain last week while treating Afghan refugees suffering from a variant in camps along the Pakistani border, "It makes your insides melt."
Another two exits toward the airport is a CIA building, with all manner of shielding and security, tucked in among high-tech firms doing contract work for the Department of Defense and other government agencies.
And then the airport rises in the distance.
It's what the ex-military talking heads on cable television would call a "target-rich environment."
Taxis speed pell-mell toward the airport. Airport police normally are all over the road -- and hiding in the occasional clump of bushes with radar guns -- ensuring a begrudging discipline among travelers.
Now, the drivers know, the police are all around and in the terminal providing extra security for the planes and passengers.
"We've been going non-stop since the 11th," one officer says as she eyes the growing line of bag-toting passengers waiting to be scanned and allowed to board airplanes. "But it's for a good cause."
At Dulles, named for late Cold Warrior and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles whose brother had been CIA chief Allen Dulles, the lines have a life of their own, moving as one. Waiting, at least for those headed for New York, can be longer than the flight.
The lines snake past shops and newstands hawking newspapers with banner headlines about "imminent attacks" and magazines with covers featuring gas masks and pre-teens with Kalishnikov machine guns. People look down, look away quickly. They are waiting to get onto a plane, and one from that runway seen from huge sloping windows plowed into the Pentagon -- and into the American psyche.
Most people accept the lines, even if they don't like them. Signs warn of prohibited this, prohibited that, and order travelers to have all their tickets and other paperwork ready and their laptop computers out of the case ready for inspection.
"Most of 'em are OK with it all," says Officer O.F. Zepeda. "Every once in awhile we get somebody a bit cranky. But we get people like that anyway."
"Most people understand. They don't like it a whole lot, they just understand," Zepeda says, returning to his scan of the shuffling crowd.
There's an indication of the tighter security security that goes unseen, because it's missing. The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, a multi-state board which runs the two federally owned airports, removed all mail boxes from the main terminal.
"Bombs," a police officer says tersely. "Go over to the other terminal if you need to mail something."
Trash cans, too, are fewer and farther between.
A 20-something woman with an overstuffed black backpack looks in dismay at the lines. She's from Srbska -- "One of the republics of former Yugoslavia," she says with an accent -- and is headed for Phoenix, Ariz. "This is as bad as Yugoslavia -- er, Srbska," she says. "But this is America."
Greg Godlewski owns a little shop along the main concourse, a good spot to see what's happening most of the time. And he says he happier than he was several weeks ago.
"It was so quiet," he says, both right after the attacks and for a week or 10 days. But now people have started flying again, and it's good for his soul -- and his business.
Godlewski sells all manner of airplane models and toys, from plastic models (glue included) to inflatables to small replicas. On display near the front of his little shop hang authentic-looking toy versions of the planes U.S. pilots are flying over Afghanistan.
"Yeh," he says, "The military stuff is doing well, the B-52, the F-18."
"Thankfully, things have gotten back to normal," Godlewski says.
Through the teeming masses, an occasional gray Smokey Bear hat bobs and weaves above the crowd. It's a Virginia State Trooper, and they have been assigned to help out at Dulles and National. "The more the merrier," says a grim-faced trooper.
Well-dressed men hold signs with names near the international arrivals area outside the Customs office. The limousine drivers have the look of practiced boredom achieved by those who serve and wait -- except for one.
One has the sign, the suit, the shiny shoes -- and quickly moving eyes and a bulge in his coat.
"Yeh. Waiting. Client. First-timer," clips the no-name bodyguard/driver. "Secretary said he was worried. No more. I'm here."
On Fridays, National usually is a teeming mass of people leaving the city. Buses, subways, taxis, cars and other motorized mayhem bring them across the Potomac River to this smaller airport minutes from downtown Washington.
National -- Reagan National -- is a pet of Congress. Members like it because it's close to the Capitol for their trips back to their home states -- and they have parking reserved for members of congress and the Supreme Court. Occasionally. Congress has micromanaged the airport to allow flights to their home districts, over objections of local residents.
But this Friday, the new terminal is a tomb. The normally packed gates and ticket lines are mere 5-minute waits. The parking garages have two dozen cars per level, barely enough for one ticket taker.
The raucous crowd noise is absent, replaced by the heard footfall, the identifiable individual conversations. At the restaurants and bars, employees outnumber customers. Clerks at upscale stores rest elbows on checkout counters or perk up hopefully as a suitcase-wielding potential passenger walks through the nearly empty hall.
There's lots of police here, too. Officers stand outside where taxis usually crowd in to drop and pick up passengers. The troopers are here, too. And so are National Guard military police officers, their camouflage a little out of place, not even a match for the flowery Hawaiian shirt one man wears as he picks up his luggage and heads for a cab.
Security at National is tight. It seems as if there's more guards than guarded.
And there's no mailboxes.
