Final Vector

by Allan Leverone

  ATTENTION READER

  This is an uncorrected proof. It is not a finished book and is not expected to look like one. Errors in spelling, page length, format, etc., will be corrected when the book is published several months from now. Direct quotes should be checked against the final printed book.

  ISBN# 978-1-60542-284-8

  Medallion Press, Inc.

  www.medallionpress.com

  FEBRUARY 2011

  Send completed reviews to reviews@medallionpress.com Atlas flight #317 is in trouble and needs to land immediately.

  Air traffic controller Nick Jensen is working the final vector position and must bring the plane in safely--but that's not his only problem.

  Unbeknownst to Nick, his wife, a Pentagon auditor, has just discovered potentially treasonous material on a fellow employee's computer. On her way home to Nick, she is followed . . . by an assassin.

  Reeling from the brutal murder of his wife, Nick throws himself into his work at the ATC facility of Boston's Logan International Airport. During another midnight shift, while returning to the ops room from a break, he sees three heavily armed men dressed head to toe in black fatigues and patrolling the corridors of the supposedly secure FAA facility. The terrorists have murdered two armed guards and, with the dead men's key cards, gained unfettered access.

  Meanwhile, the president of the United States is on his way to Logan's International Airport.

  To rescue a friend and dismantle the terrorists' assassination plot, Nick must risk everything.

  The clock is ticking as Air Force One approaches its final vector.

  ISBN# 978-1-60542-284-8

  US $7.95

  Thriller

  FEBRUARY 2011

  Jackie piped up, his normally high-pitched voice rising a couple of octaves. "So we're going to use these Stinger missiles to shoot down an airplane?"

  "That is exactly correct," Tony answered. "But not just any airplane. The president is flying into Logan International Airport in Boston very early next Sunday morning. We will be removing him from office. Permanently."

  "The president? The president of what?"

  "What do you think?"

  Stunned silence filled the room as the significance of Tony's statement began to sink in.

  "The president of the United States?" Joe-Bob whispered.

  "We're going to shoot down Air Force One?"

  Tony's eyes glittered like hard black diamonds as he turned his cool smile on his small band of revolutionaries--the group that was about to change the course of history. "That is correct.

  President Cartwright is scheduled to celebrate the reopening of a historic church in Boston. I have learned that he will be flying into the airport around 5:00 a.m. next Sunday in order to arrive at the church in time to attend a sunrise service. He is then scheduled to lunch in the city with some of his major political contributors before flying back to Washington in early afternoon.

  "Of course, as we now know, he will do none of those things, because he will be dead, lying at the bottom of a smoking hole in the ground just shy of Logan Airport. With a little bit of luck, perhaps people in the city will be killed as well, but that remains to be seen."

  Chaos erupted and then died down immediately when Tony held up a hand to silence his men.

  Brian shook his head. "But how will we know where the plane is going to be and when to fire the missile? It's a big sky out there."

  Tony smiled again. "We'll know because we're going to tell the pilot where we want him to go."

  Chapter 1

  "Boston Approach Control, this is Atlas 317. We've, uh, we've got a bit of a problem here."

  Nick Jensen swore lightly under his breath. "Great," he mumbled to no one in particular. "A problem. Just what I need to hear when I've got airplanes out the ass."

  It was Thursday night in the BCT--the Boston Consolidated TRACON--in Merrimack, New Hampshire, and the weather had been steadily deteriorating all afternoon. A massive low-pressure area was sweeping up the East Coast, carrying moist, unstable air and bringing high winds and heavy rains along for the ride.

  The dark room hummed with the murmured voices of eight air traffic controllers sitting side by side facing eight separate radar scopes. Each controller was working a piece of the airspace immediately surrounding Boston's Logan International Airport, and each one was solely responsible for maintaining a safe and orderly flow of the airborne traffic transiting his or her sector.

  Nick was working Boston's Final Vector position, so he was responsible for sequencing and spacing all of Logan's arrival traffic, which was being fed to him by the surrounding sectors. For the hour and a half or so that he would be assigned to the position, it was his job to literally get all his ducks in a row. Using altitude separation, speed control, and unique headings issued to each pilot, called vectors, Nick was systematically turning each arrival onto the ILS--instrument landing system--that served Runway 4

  Right at Logan. The Final Vector controller was tasked with maintaining the minimum separation legally permissible, but absolutely no less than that, in order to get all the traffic on the ground with the least possible delays.

  With the low overcast ceilings and reduced visibility caused by the wind-driven rain, every arrival into Logan as well as all the arrivals into the smaller airports in Boston's airspace were being vectored for the precision approach guidance that ILS systems provided. At the moment a dozen airplanes clogged Nick's tiny chunk of airspace, and the last thing he wanted to hear was that one of those planes was experiencing some difficulty. The strained urgency in the voice of the Global Airlines pilot, though, told him that this wasn't your garden-variety equipment issue--this might be serious.

  Nick pushed the foot pedal on the floor, keying the mike on his headset that allowed him to speak to all the airplanes on the discrete radio frequency assigned to his sector. "Global 317, go ahead. What's the nature of your problem?"

  "Ah, we've got smoke in the cabin." The pilot's voice came back professional but clearly tense. "And it's getting thick in here very quickly. We are either on fire or are experiencing a serious electrical problem. We need to get this crate on the ground. Now. "

  Nick half turned in his wheeled swivel chair and yelled across the room to the watch supervisor, Earl Washington, seated at a desk behind the row of controllers manning the radar scopes.

  "Hey, Earl, I've got an emergency here, and I think it might be a bad one."

  He pressed the foot pedal again. "Roger, Atlas 317. We'll get you right in. Descend and maintain three thousand, and turn right heading three-one-zero." He was turning the Global Air Boeing 757 directly at Logan's final approach course and would be forced to break out at least two other airplanes already established on the final, which at the moment extended nearly thirty miles to the southwest of Logan Airport.

  As Earl coordinated with the supervisor on duty in the Logan control tower--the facility located right on the airfield responsible for separating the traffic on the surface of the airport--Nick rapidly issued a series of turns to all of the airplanes affected by the unexpected emergency, taking them off the final approach course and explaining the situation as he went. Time was a valuable commodity if the Atlas flight really was on fire. "Rapid Air 400, cancel your approach clearance, turn left heading two-seven-zero, and climb immediately to maintain four thousand. I'm giving your spot to an aircraft inbound with an emergency."

  "Rapid 400, roger. Left to two-seventy and hurry on up to four thousand."

  "North American 28, cancel your approach clearance and maintain three thousand. Turn left heading two-seven-zero. This is a vector off the final for inbound emergency traffic."

  "North American 28, roger. Left to west and we'll maintain three thousand."

 
By now Earl had positioned himself directly behind Nick's chair. The normally chaotic buzz of voices in the TRACON--Terminal Radar Approach Control--had dropped to an almost rev-erential, churchlike quiet as all the other controllers in the room recognized that a serious situation had developed on the Final Vector position. The sectors feeding arrivals to Nick immediately began "spinning" their airplanes, turning them away from Nick's airspace and holding them in their own sectors. They knew Nick was juggling far too much traffic now to take any more until the emergency situation was resolved.

  Earl bent down and spoke quietly in Nick's ear, "When you can get it, we're going to need--"

  "I know," Nick replied. "Souls on board and amount of fuel remaining. I'm getting to that." Standard emergency protocol dictated that the number of people on board the aircraft and the amount of fuel remaining in its tanks get passed to the emergency response personnel on the ground as soon as possible. The rescue crews needed to prepare for the potential worst-case scenario--a plane crash at the airport.

  Nick keyed his mike. Despite the skyrocketing stress level and the chaotic situation unfolding on the radar scope in front of him, he maintained a calm demeanor on the frequency. Sounding in control meant being in control. "Global 317, you're only about eight miles from the ILS final approach fix. Will you be able to get down from there?" Turning the plane toward the airport too soon and then finding out the pilot would not be able to descend rapidly enough to land would be the worst thing Nick could do.

  "We're doing our best," came the answer. "It's getting really hard to see the instruments in here with all the smoke. Yeah, we'll get down because we have to. We need to put this big tin can on the ground."

  "Atlas 317, roger. Turn right heading zero-two-zero and intercept the Runway 4 Right localizer. I know you're very busy up there, but when you can get to it, we need souls on board and fuel remaining."

  "Zero-two-zero to join the localizer, and we have . . . let's see . .

  . one hundred seventeen people with a little over two hours of fuel."

  "Roger that, Atlas 317. You're doing great with the descent.

  Your position is five miles from the final approach fix. Descend and maintain two thousand until established on the localizer, cleared ILS Runway 4 Right approach."

  Nick inclined his head slightly toward Earl without taking his eyes off the scope. "One hundred seventeen people and two hours of fuel."

  He didn't wait for a response from the supervisor; he was already busy formulating a plan to deal with the other arrivals, all of which were now completely out of position thanks to the emergency. Hopefully Global Air 317 would be safely on the ground soon, but Nick's work was just beginning. "Liberty Air 5, you're now gon-na follow a Boeing 757 on the final. Caution for wake turbulence."

  "Liberty 5, roger. We'll be careful."

  "North American 28, continue your left turn heading two-three-zero. I'll get you right back in as soon as I can."

  "North American 28, left to two-thirty. No problem. We understand."

  "Swift 400, you can also turn left heading two-three-zero.

  Thanks a lot for the fast climb to four thousand feet."

  "Left to two-three-zero. You're welcome."

  "Global 317, how are you doing, sir?"

  "We're struggling, but I think we'll be able to make it."

  "Okay, Global 317, contact Boston Tower now on frequency 123.7. Good luck to you."

  "Tower on twenty-three-seven. Thanks a lot for the help."

  Behind him, Earl said, "Nice job, Nick."

  Nick returned his attention to the mess he had yet to sort out--the nearly one dozen airplanes whose sequences had been disrupted by the sudden emergency and who were now nowhere near where they should be in Nick's airspace. There was a lot of catching up to do.

  Nick took a deep breath and started barking out commands as the control tower supervisor called on a landline to tell Earl that Global 317 had landed safely and the aircraft was being evacuated on a taxiway.

  The traffic kept coming. The controllers kept talking. The Thursday night shift continued.

  Chapter 2

  Lisa Jensen blinked rapidly, attempting without any measurable level of success to maintain her concentration as she navigated the rain-slicked highway. Alone and overtired, she had already tried every trick she could think of for remaining alert while traveling late at night, including cranking her music up to earsplitting deci-bel levels and rolling her side window down. She knew she was fading fast, though.

  Rain slanted at a forty-five degree angle out of the coal black sky, pelting the area as it had been doing virtually nonstop since Lisa had left D.C. The headlights of the passing traffic cast the landscape surrounding Interstate 95 in a shimmering, almost surreal muted glow. Hours ago, she had reached the conclusion that the sensible decision would have been to stay the night in the city and drive back to New Hampshire tomorrow morning after the storm passed through the area. But her time with Nick was already limited enough, and Lisa couldn't stand the thought of spending even one more night away from her husband. Hell, she thought, we don't see enough of each other as it is.

  Lisa gazed longingly at the Styrofoam cup of coffee perched in the cup holder directly in front of the gearshift in her Toyota, taunting her with its emptiness, and blinked again hard, feeling her scratchy and bloodshot eyes begin to water. She forced herself to start singing along with the song on the radio.

  A fully loaded eighteen-wheel automobile carrier passed her in the left lane, moving much too fast for the conditions, rocking her little car on its springs and spraying a solid sheet of water onto the windshield in its wake. The Toyota's overmatched wipers worked at clearing it all away, the rapid whup-whup-whup of the wiper blades doing their best to lull Lisa back into the state of intense drowsiness she was trying so hard to avoid.

  Lisa's wandering attention snapped immediately into focus as her car plunged into a long, deep, and nearly invisible pool of black water stretching across the breakdown lane and into the highway's right travel lane. Instantly the vehicle began to hydroplane. She wrenched the wheel to the left as the Toyota slewed out of control toward the guardrail, water splashing in massive fountainlike arcs outward from both sides of the vehicle.

  Lisa knew enough not to hit the brakes, although the temptation to stomp on them was almost overwhelming. Instead, she concentrated on steering out of the slide, holding her breath as the guardrail crept closer and closer, allowing the car's momentum to slow on its own. In seconds that felt like hours, she had the Toyota under control and gradually began to increase her speed once again, checking her mirrors and then angling left out of the breakdown lane.

  Chuckling nervously and breathing hard, her throat suddenly as dry and scratchy as her eyes, Lisa muttered, "Well, at least now I'll be wide awake for a while. Nothing like the occasional near-death experience to snap things back into focus!"

  She was no longer drowsy but still longed to be home with Nick, couldn't wait to be in his arms. A civilian auditor at the Pentagon, Lisa spent every Monday through Thursday in Washington away from her husband, who was forced to stay alone at the couple's Merrimack, New Hampshire, house. Nick was an air traffic controller at one of the busiest airports in the country and was thus obviously unable to relocate to a city nearly five hundred miles away.

  7

  At the close of administrative hours at the Pentagon every Thursday, Lisa's standard routine was to eat dinner in a small cafe just a few blocks from the mammoth office building and wait for the Beltway area traffic congestion to ease. Then she would hit the road in her trusty Toyota, which was only three years old but had already racked up well over 150,000 miles. She would work her way up Interstate 95 to New England, then zigzag various interstate highways to Route 3 into New Hampshire, eventually reunit-ing with the other half of her tiny family. Lisa worked ten-hour days Monday through Thursday in order to have a couple of full days every weekend with Nick.

  It certainly wasn't the perfect
arrangement. Lisa knew that making a marriage work was enough of a strain for a husband and wife who were together every day, but the challenges faced by a couple forced to spend nearly three quarters of their lives apart sometimes seemed nearly insurmountable.

  The Jensens had been enduring exactly that situation, though, for most of their married life, and their plan was to continue in a similar fashion for several more years. By then they estimated they would have enough money set aside so Lisa could quit her job and stay at home to raise a family full-time. That was the theory, anyway. At moments like this, Lisa wondered about the wisdom of The Plan, but the prospect of that happy family, complete with two or three children running around their home, was the carrot dangling on the end of the stick that kept her going even when things were at their most difficult.

  As she drove, Lisa's mind wandered inexorably back to the mess she had gotten mixed up in at work, to the intrigue that seemed to reverberate within the dozens of miles of passageways running through the Pentagon. She wished she could discuss it with Nick. She hated deceiving him, but she knew in her heart it was best to keep him in the dark, even though he was a valuable sounding board and never failed to give her good advice when she asked for it--and sometimes even when she didn't.

  She wondered what a relationship expert would say about the fact that she was now hiding things from her husband, the person with whom she was supposed to have a closer relationship than anyone else in the world. After all, everyone knew honesty was the foundation of a good marriage. Lisa chewed on her lower lip, a habit she had developed as a youngster when confronted with stress. Hiding things from Nick. She detested the idea and considered what it said about her.

  Ensuring Nick's safety was paramount, though, and the situation Lisa found herself involved in recently was much more serious than she had ever expected or imagined possible, even when you considered the enormity of some of the secrets held inside the walls of the massive five-sided building in which she worked.

  It was real and it was big and it was trouble, and as hard as it was for her to believe, there seemed to be the very real possibility of people getting hurt or even killed because of her discovery. Hell, killing was the whole point of it, and she was determined not to do or say anything that might put Nick's life at risk. Lisa pursed her lips and shook her head firmly as she drove, trying to bury the nugget of guilt eating away at her insides.