Final Vector

by Allan Leverone

  The result of all this political maneuvering was a building two or three times bigger than it needed to be for the number of employees who worked in it. It was like Grandma rattling around in her massive old house after everyone else in the family had grown up, moved away, or died off. It was a colossal waste of taxpayer money.

  Nick strolled into the break room, not bothering to take the time to flip on the overhead lights. The glow from the television in one corner playing to an audience of zero provided more than enough illumination for someone who had been at the BCT as long as Nick. He paused at one of the vending machines lined up along the north wall like soldiers standing at attention and dropped three quarters into it.

  He grabbed a soft drink and a package of chips--if Lisa were alive, she would have had a fit to see how he was eating--and opened the break room door to take his food back into the TRACON. It was time to give Fitz a break. Stepping through the door, Nick glimpsed what looked like shadows flitting down the long hallway that completely encircled the Operations Room on the second floor.

  He started in surprise. It was beyond unusual to see anyone outside the Ops Room at this late hour, and as he focused on the far end of the corridor, he realized with shock that what he was seeing were not some amorphous shadows at all. Three men dressed head to toe in black combat fatigues walked in the opposite direction with what appeared to be rifles slung over their shoulders, holding handguns at their sides.

  Somehow Nick managed not to cry out; he had no idea how he pulled that one off. He slid sideways, instinctively taking cover in the corner of the hallway across from the break room. In a stroke of luck that he immediately recognized had probably saved his life, the three men were facing the other direction when he opened the door and thus remained unaware of his presence.

  Had he flipped the lights on when he entered the break room, Nick knew he would likely be dead right now. The three men must have walked right past the break room seconds ago while he was inside. Why they had not entered the room to investigate it Nick had no idea, but he concluded that since it appeared dark through the tiny window cut into the door, the men had decided not to waste their time.

  A surge of adrenaline coursed through Nick's body, instantly bringing him fully awake. It was stronger than any buzz he could have gotten from his soda. He slipped silently back into the darkened break room as the men in combat fatigues disappeared around the corner at the far end of the hallway. Who the hell were those guys? Something was obviously very wrong, and Nick knew he had to get help.

  Crossing the room in five hurried steps, Nick picked up a telephone extension sitting on a table next to one of the plush easy chairs. He lifted it to his ear and was unsurprised to discover that it was completely dead.

  His cell phone was the obvious next choice, but there was only one problem with that option--the FAA did not permit cell phones in the operating quarters

  Nick's phone, instead of hanging on his belt at his waist, was lying in his mailbox in the ready room down the hall. It was completely charged and completely operational and at the moment completely useless.

  He replaced the handset of the telephone gently on its cra-dle, almost as if there was a chance one of the unknown intruders might hear the noise and return to investigate. He stood frozen in place next to the phone, tapping its hard plastic casing absently with his fingers, lost in thought. What to do? He couldn't stay here forever, cowering in fear in the break room from the guys with the guns. Sooner or later he would be discovered.

  Plus, it seemed like a coincidence of the most unlikely and improbable magnitude that the BCT would be breached by guys with what appeared to be automatic weapons on the very same morning that the president of the United States was flying into Boston's airspace.

  Nick had no idea what it meant that the guys with guns were here in Merrimack when the leader of the free world would soon be landing nearly forty miles away in Boston, but he was dead certain that it meant something significant.

  Nick knew he had to notify the authorities. Escaping the TRACON and going for help didn't strike Nick as a reasonable plan, since it seemed unlikely in the extreme that the guys with guns (terrorists?) would have stormed the BCT and then left the exits wide open and uncovered. Even if he were able to escape the building undetected, Nick knew he would have to hike for miles just to get anywhere he could even hope to tell someone about the situation, and by that time, it would probably be too late.

  All of this went through Nick's racing mind in a matter of seconds as he stood next to the useless telephone, feeling helpless and exposed in the shadowy break room. There really was no choice.

  He had to get to his cell phone in the ready room and use it to call 911, but to do so meant walking fifty feet down the well-lit hallway running adjacent to the Operations Room. He would be completely exposed the entire time. If anyone should round the corner from either direction while he made the journey he would be toast. And then, assuming he made it all the way to the ready room alive and unharmed, what would he find when he entered it?

  Would another terrorist with an automatic weapon be standing sentry, ready to cut him down in a hail of bullets? Nick had no idea how many men with guns had actually entered the TRACON. Maybe the three he glimpsed were just one group of many; there was simply no way of knowing.

  One thing he did know, however, was that standing here in the dark going back and forth in his head was accomplishing nothing, other than to make him more afraid and less sure of his ability to survive the next few minutes. Already a strong sense of impending doom threatened to reduce him to mindless panic. It was an almost physical presence, something Nick felt he could practically reach out and touch. It was big. And it was growing.

  Nick took a deep breath, surprised by how loud the roaring in his ears sounded, and opened the break room door just a crack.

  He leaned forward and peeked out through the tiny opening. No one was there.

  He breathed a short prayer to whoever might be listening, then stepped through the doorway and started down the corridor.

  Chapter 34

  Dimitrios and Joe-Bob stood in the marshy wetlands of the Hull Peninsula, frozen in the glare of the Jeep's bright headlights, their shadows stretching in the opposite direction, fuzzy and indistinct on the muddy ground. They waited calmly to see what would happen next. The situation felt oddly similar to the one last week when the Tucson cop had stumbled onto them as they loaded the Stingers from the Army transport vehicle into their unmarked panel truck.

  This time, Tony was not stationed somewhere in the darkness with an automatic weapon, ready to cut these people in half.

  But on the bright side, the Jeep obviously contained stupid kids looking for a little privacy so they could finish getting drunk and stoned. The chances that they were armed were slim, and even if they were, it appeared highly unlikely they were sober enough to hit anything they were aiming at anyway, at least not on purpose.

  Dimitrios and Joe-Bob could clearly hear babbling coming from the Jeep. It was one of the old CJ models, with the removable canvas top that was nowhere to be seen, so the interior was open to the elements. Staring straight into the headlights, the two terrorists were effectively blinded and thus could not tell how many people the vehicle held. It sounded like there might be three separate voices.

  Finally it became clear that the kids sitting inside the Jeep had no idea what to do. They had Dimitrios and Joe-Bob pinned in the glare of their headlights, but they had not spoken a word to them or shut the lights off or done anything at all for close to two minutes.

  Fuck it, thought Joe-Bob. We don't have time for this. He arranged his face into what he hoped was his most disarming smile and affected his strongest Forrest Gump good ol' boy Southern drawl. "Hey there, fellas, y'all mind turning down them headlights? All that brightness is givin' me a headache, you know?"

  "What the hell are you doing out here?" came the shouted reply from the Jeep. It sounded aggressive and much too loud.

&n
bsp; "Same as you, I would imagine. Relaxin'." Joe-Bob kept his voice nice and soft, placating and nonconfrontational.

  After a moment the Jeep's headlights were extinguished. All Joe-Bob could see now was a slowly fading blue image burned onto his retinas. Not good, but certainly better than before.

  "You're in our spot." The tension seemed to have drained from the kid's voice, and the statement was spoken softly rather than shouted. The kids inside the Jeep seemed to have decided that they had the situation well in hand and that it was no big deal, which was just the way Joe-Bob wanted it.

  "Well, I'm sorry about that, boys," Joe-Bob replied. "We'll just be on our way, then. Find us another spot. We didn't mean to step on any toes or nuthin'." He exaggerated his drawl.

  There was no reply from the Jeep, so Joe-Bob continued. "As a peace offerin', how 'bout we leave a couple beers with you fellas?

  No harm, no foul, right?"

  "Works for us."

  Joe-Bob sloshed over to the cab of their Dakota, reaching in through the door and grabbing two water bottles. He held them against his chest, using one big arm to shield them from view, so that the occupants of the Jeep would not be able to see that they weren't actually beer bottles until it was much too late. As he splashed past on his way to the Jeep, Joe-Bob growled softly to Dimitrios, "Grab the duct tape."

  By the time he reached the Jeep, Joe-Bob's vision had returned more or less to normal. He could see now that the vehicle held three young men in their late teens, two in front and one in back.

  He reached over the Jeep's passenger side door, and as he did, he flung the two half-full water bottles hard into the face of the kid unfortunate enough to be sitting in there. He pulled a thirteen-inch tactical combat knife out of its nylon sheath at his waist and in one smooth motion gutted the kid, plunging the razor-sharp CTV2 stainless blade into his ample belly and pulling up, using its serrated upper edge to slice him jaggedly open between his ribs.

  Joe-Bob heard a sharp, surprised intake of breath followed immediately by a weak, watery "Ahhhhhh." The kid's voice sounded bubbly and far away, and he was dying with unbelievable sudden-ness.

  Blood dripped from the black titanium carbonitride blade, looking almost as inky as the blade itself in the near-total darkness. Joe-Bob lifted his hand to shoulder height, using his massive bulk and the unexpectedly terrifying sight of the knife to intimidate both of the vehicle's other stunned occupants. The attack had occurred with such savage swiftness that it seemed neither kid had a chance to grasp what had just happened to their friend. Their reflexes dulled by alcohol and drugs, both young men stared stupidly at Joe-Bob, mouths hanging open in identical displays of shock.

  "So, who wants to be next?" Joe-Bob asked quietly with a half grin.

  No one answered, so he motioned Dimitrios forward with the knife, still held shoulder high in plain sight of both kids.

  By now the critically injured young man was panting as if he had just sprinted a great distance, his breathing rapid and shallow.

  Each outward expulsion of breath sounded bubbly and wet, accompanied by a low moan, and he had his arms wrapped tightly around the front of his body as if trying to keep his entrails from spilling out of the gaping wound in his belly and chest. He was mostly failing in that regard. He was also fading fast and would be dead within minutes.

  Dimitrios wrapped the duct tape around the driver's head twice and slapping it on the seam. He taped the man's hands to the steering wheel, then shut off the Jeep's engine and pocketed the key. He repeated the drill with the backseat occupant, taping that man's hands to the driver's side headrest since there was no steering wheel back there.

  The wounded man in the front passenger seat slumped sideways against the door, his head lolling out the open window. He was still breathing shallowly but had slipped into unconsciousness.

  Joe-Bob used the kid's denim jacket to wipe some of the blood and gore off his knife, which he then slid back into his scabbard. He told Dimitrios matter-of-factly, "Luckily this little misadventure didn't cost us too much time, but we really need to start getting set up. Let's move our asses." Without looking back, he trudged back to the Dakota. The Forrest Gump good ol' boy accent was almost completely gone.

  Chapter 35

  Larry looked at his watch again and sighed. Where the hell was Futz, and what was taking him so long to get his goddamned snack? He should have been back ten minutes ago. It wasn't like Larry minded sitting and staring at a mostly empty radar scope, especially since the federal government was paying him a 10 percent premium on top of an already handsome salary for working in the middle of the night, but he could feel his reflexes slowing and his eyes beginning to droop. He knew he needed a break; even just a few minutes to take a walk and stretch his legs would be enough.

  He thought about what had happened to Lisa and wondered how he would react if he had been in Nick's position. Wife brutally murdered and now buried in the ground, without the opportunity to even say good-bye. Life sucks; then you die.

  Larry had married Sharon a few years before Nick and Lisa tied the knot, and although he and Sharon certainly didn't have the perfect marriage--at least not when you compared it to Nick and Lisa's--Larry knew he would be lost without his wife. He couldn't imagine how Nick was going to cope. He had tried talking to his friend about it a few times, just to get him to open up a little, and Nick had politely but firmly rebuffed him every time. He said he wasn't ready to talk about it yet. Larry supposed he could understand that.

  As he was deciding whether it was worth making another attempt to raise the subject with Nick, he heard the loud click of the main TRACON door opening behind him. Larry was a little surprised that Nick would enter from the door at the other end of the Ops Room rather than the side door he had used when he left, but maybe he had gone to his cubicle in the ready room to grab a book to read while he sat at the scope doing nothing. At least he was finally back, and Larry could get started on his own break.

  He sat resting his chin on his hand with his elbow propped on the console in front of the scope, watching the lone target representing ChekPro Air flight 112 move slowly but steadily toward Logan Airport. In the old days, airplanes running checks for the banking industry were a staple of overnight traffic at facilities all over the country, but with the advent of electronic banking, the check runners were becoming a dying breed. Larry figured within a few years they would be gone entirely. He wondered what the pilot of ChekPro 112 would do then.

  Larry felt rather than heard the presence of a person standing behind him. Without turning around, he started a position relief briefing. "Okay, here's what's going on--" He stopped in midsen-tence as he felt the cold, insistent pressure of a gun barrel being jammed into his neck.

  "No, here is what is going on," came a deep, unfamiliar voice.

  His diction carried no trace of an accent that Larry could discern.

  Then whoever was holding the gun pushed harder until it was all he could feel. It was right beneath his ear. It defined his existence.

  "You will be quiet. You will do exactly as you're told. If you cooper-ate, you will live. If you do not, you will die an extremely unpleasant and painfully messy death. Do we understand each other?"

  Larry swallowed heavily and gave an almost imperceptible nod, afraid that if he moved, the gun would go off and blow his head all over the front of the radar scope.

  "Good," came the voice, cold and hard. "Now, where is the other controller?"

  Lifting his hand slowly, still staring straight ahead, Larry pointed behind himto the Manchester Area, where their midnight controller was sitting.

  "I'm not talking about him. He is already being taken care of.

  See for yourself."

  Larry swiveled his head, still moving slowly, aware of the constant pressure of the gun barrel on his neck. He looked across the big, dark room to the Manchester Area and saw a man dressed all in black, with black greasepaint covering his face, duct taping Ron Johnson to his chair. Ron's mouth
was invisible under a slash of silver tape, and he looked petrified, his wide, panicked eyes staring back at Larry. He wondered if he looked as frightened as Ron and figured he probably did.

  "Now, back to my original question, and please bear in mind I am a man blessed with many good qualities, but patience is not one of them. Where is the other controller? I know the Boston Area employs two controllers on the midnight shift. Where is your partner?"

  These guys hadn't seen Nick yet. Larry hesitated, not sure how to answer the question, knowing his life was probably hanging in the balance. They were aware that the Boston Area used two controllers to cover the midnight shift, so they were obviously pretty knowledgeable about the operation, but if Nick hadn't been captured, there was always the possibility he could somehow escape and bring help.

  "Answer the question!"

  Larry closed his eyes and thought hard before answering.

  "There is no other controller in my area tonight. He called in sick before the shift started, and the government refuses to pay overtime for a controller just to sit around on the midnight shift, so tonight I'm here alone." He licked his lips nervously and winced, half expecting to see a split second of bright light and hear the beginning of the gunshot roar that would end his life, but nothing happened.

  One second went by and then two. Larry assumed the guy was digesting the information and trying to decide whether to believe him.

  "So it is just you and this other man tonight?" The man gestured with the gun barrel at Ron, now completely immobilized in his chair across the room, before returning it to its now customary spot just under Larry's ear.