Final Vector

by Allan Leverone

  Kristin said nothing, just glared at the man as he wheeled her car into a slot next to a large dark vehicle, the two cars looking lonely and lost in the huge, mostly empty lot, like they might get swallowed up. Far across the pavement, much nearer to the BCT

  entrance, four other vehicles sat in a neat row, presumably the cars belonging to the employees working the Saturday midnight shift.

  One of them was probably Nick Jensen's.

  The man shut down the engine and pocketed Kristin's keys.

  "Get out," he commanded, so she did. Then he walked Kristin across the lot and into the BCT, his gun pressed firmly against her spine the entire way, as if she might forget he was holding it. She didn't forget.

  Chapter 50

  The beeping noise signifying that Nick's ID card had successfully unlocked the door to the ETG lab was even louder than he had feared. It was magnified a bit by the fact that the big building was almost completely empty, and it sounded like someone had depressed the trigger on an air horn. He knew if any of the terrorists heard it he would likely be dead within the next five minutes.

  Maybe less than five. Maybe a lot less.

  He crept into the dark room and closed the door behind him, being careful to make as little noise as possible. The irony of trying to close a door silently after the loud electronic wail was not lost on Nick, but he figured there was no point in taking any unnecessary chances. Even if the intruders had heard the short burst of noise, maybe they wouldn't be able to track down where it had come from when they arrived to investigate.

  Nick shuffled backward in the dark until the backs of his legs came in contact with the console in front of the training scopes.

  The room was long and narrow, maybe thirty feet by eight feet, so he didn't have far to go. He stood motionless and counted to one hundred, listening to his heart thudding in his ears. It sounded so loud that he figured they might be able to find him based on that noise alone.

  After two or three minutes, when no one had come bursting through the door with guns blazing, Nick began to relax. He decided they had not heard the buzzing of the card reader after all. He risked turning on the interior light; there was no point in sneaking in here if he was just going to cower like a cornered rab-bit. He had work to do.

  The plan--Nick knew calling his idea a plan was giving it a lot more credibility than it deserved, since it was really not much more than a vague notion forged out of desperation--was to reprogram the radar scopes out in the Ops Room to show computer-generated traffic rather than actual live traffic. He would run a training scenario on the TRACON scopes in hopes of confusing the gunman.

  Nick knew there were holes in his so-called plan. The biggest one was that although he knew it was possible to run an ETG feed onto the Ops Room scopes, he didn't have the slightest clue how to do it. He was no computer genius; in fact, Lisa had handled all of the routine maintenance on their desktop at home as well as both of their laptops.

  If he figured out how to force the fake targets on to the live scopes, he had to find a way to let Fitz know the plan, so his friend could transmit on radio frequencies that weren't in use. There was no point in forcing the phony traffic onto Fitz's scope if Air Force One was going to call on the actual radio frequency and ask what the hell was going on.

  And then, even if they managed to handle all of those problems, there was the small issue of what would happen to the president's plane if the BCT was suddenly off-line. The Boston Air Route Traffic Control Center--the facility controlling the high-altitude traffic throughout New England that would be handing control of Air Force One over to the BCT--could not simply give up the airplane without having accomplished a radar handoff.

  A radar handoff was the term used when one controller told a controller working a different sector, either via automated methods or over a landline, that the airplane in question had been radar identified, and the receiving controller was prepared to accept separation responsibility for that aircraft. Until a handoff had been achieved, which would obviously never happen if the radar scopes at the BCT were no longer displaying live traffic, Boston Center would not be able to permit Air Force One to enter BCT's airspace.

  Under Nick's hastily conceived scenario, the president's plane would get diverted to another airport if Boston Center could not accomplish a handoff and if they were unable to raise the BCT on any of the available landlines to transfer control of Air Force One.

  There would be hell to pay until everyone figured out what had happened, but at least the president, not to mention everyone else on board Air Force One, would still be alive.

  There was another glaring drawback to Nick's desperate plan, too. It didn't necessarily ensure that anyone inside the BCT would survive--quite the opposite in all probability. But if nothing else, at least the terrorists' plans would be stopped and the president would survive. That was the best-case scenario, the result Nick was hoping for if everything proceeded smoothly. Beyond that, he tried not to think about the fate of himself and Fitz and Ron.

  Now, though, standing inside the ETG lab, fearing that an armed lunatic might come smashing through the door at any moment and shoot him, Nick reached the conclusion that even his minimal level of optimism had been groundless. The plan was falling apart before he could even get it rolling.

  Nick had no idea how to reprogram the ETG scopes.

  He desperately tried to remember the layout of the room. Fully certified controllers, unless they suffered an operational error--a situation where two airplanes were permitted to get closer to each other than standard separation allowed, known in controller parlance as a "deal"--only visited this room for refresher training on various emergency scenarios, none of which had ever involved trying to prevent a group of ruthless terrorists from blowing up Air Force One.

  Nick had never been charged with an operational error, so he had not had occasion to spend very much time at all in this strangely shaped room. In fact, he could not even remember the last time he had been in here, but he was quite certain he had merely sat back and half dozed while the controller with the lowest seniority in the group ran the emergency scenario.

  Nick had a vague notion that there was a set of operator manuals stored in a small bookcase on the console next to the row of scopes on the far left side of the room. He hoped the set of books included a programming guide that would walk him through the steps to accomplish his task.

  He searched frantically through the detritus of dozens of training sessions, finding discarded partially written training sheets, a couple of pens, even a half-full cup of old coffee with a chunk of greenish brown mold floating in the middle like a tiny island.

  There was a computer--you couldn't go anywhere in the facility without running across a computer--but the manuals he thought he remembered were nowhere to be seen.

  Nick swore under his breath and felt a bead of sweat trickle down the back of his neck. Time was rapidly running out, and he was no closer to putting a stop to the president's assassination than he had been when the terrorists had first stormed the BCT, an event that felt like it had taken place days ago, rather than the hour or so it had really been.

  He had been dreaming anyway if he thought he could piece together some sort of MacGyver-like phony traffic scenario that would fool the guy holding the gun to Fitz's head. He had heard the man tell Fitz that he was more than a little familiar with ATC

  procedures and phraseology. He probably would have seen through the ruse immediately, and then things would have been even worse than they were right now.

  He paced up and down the little room, the second hand sweeping around the face of his watch with frightening speed.

  He couldn't even turn the ETG scopes on, never mind reprogram them, without a manual to follow. And there was nothing here.

  Nick wondered where Air Force One was now. The president's plane was getting close to Boston's airspace. They were truly screwed.

  Chapter 51

  Kristin was not exactly what she appea
red to be on the surface.

  Petite and pretty, with a face framed by wavy auburn hair falling almost to her shoulders, Kristin had been defying the expectations of others ever since graduating high school in Manchester, New Hampshire, a decade ago. Her parents, not to mention her teach-ers and even her closest friends, had fully expected Kristin to go off to college after graduation and study something esoteric, like art history, the rise and fall of the Roman empire, or something equally brainy.

  It was a natural expectation. Kristin had earned outstanding grades in school her entire life; she loved reading and studying.

  Although she had played and been reasonably successful at a number of different sports, she was nobody's idea of a tomboy and had always seemed more comfortable sitting in a study carrel than ca-vorting on a playing field.

  This personal history made it all the more surprising when immediately upon graduating high school--during her graduation dinner, in fact--Kristin announced that she would not be attending college after all. A career in law enforcement was what she wanted to pursue, and she would begin working toward that goal right away. To say her parents were shocked would be an understatement, but Kristin was undeterred and eventually even turned her father's skepticism into enthusiastic support with her hard work and unflagging energy.

  She attended the police academy and was hired by the Manchester Police Department upon graduating and had never looked back. After spending five years on the force, the FBI came calling, prizing her for her independence and ability to think on her feet, two traits not always in abundant supply in government service, as well as for her fearlessness and spotless record.

  Working out of the southern New Hampshire field office, Kristin was able to live near her parents in the area she loved, while performing work that she knew was important and occasionally even made a difference. She never once regretted the decision to pursue a career path that diverged wildly from the one her friends and family had expected of her.

  Now, with the barrel of a semiautomatic pistol pressed into her back, being pushed as a captive into the air traffic control facility she had been assigned to monitor, Kristin felt ashamed. She had allowed this moron to get the drop on her, and what had she been doing at the time? Mooning like some love-struck junior high girl about this Nick Jensen character. And now that lapse of attentive-ness was probably going to cost both her and Nick their lives, assuming he wasn't dead already.

  She shook her head and mumbled, "Goddamn it" through clenched teeth.

  The guy shoved her in the back with the gun. "Shut up."

  They approached the double doors, and the man reached around her to wave his stolen ID in front of the card reader. As his hand hovered momentarily in front of the reader, Kristin considered stomping on his foot or grabbing his hand and twisting it, hopefully taking the man to the ground and wrestling his gun away from him.

  The only problem was, the man still had the gun pressed firmly into the middle of her back, and she knew there was no possible way she would be able to knock him down fast enough to disable him before he could fire at least one shot, which would probably kill or paralyze her, and what would that accomplish?

  She took a deep breath and blew it out in frustration as the big reinforced glass door swung open and the pair entered the BCT. Kristin knew the Ops Room was on the second floor.

  The man with the gun, though, steered her toward a glass-fronted conference room that looked out of place, like it had been lifted out of a decent-sized private corporation and plunked down in the middle of this federal government building.

  Kristin could see a man pacing back and forth inside it. He was dressed in black from his watch cap to his combat boots, with dark greasepaint on his face. It was jarring and seemed almost surreal: these comfortable surroundings, about as nice as you could expect in government service, taken over by armed thugs.

  The man pushed Kristin through the door.

  The moment they entered, the guy dressed in black said, "Are you kidding me? A chick? Are you sure this is the right person?"

  "Christ. Of course it's the right person," the other man said dismissively, his voice dripping sarcasm. "I know what a fucking FBI ID looks like, okay? Besides, the back of her jacket says 'FBI.'

  Who else would she be?"

  The other man looked unconvinced.

  "What? You don't think there are any lady FBI agents? Don't you watch TV? They're everywhere on the tube. It's the latest thing."

  "I suppose. It's just that she looks so . . ."

  "Small?"

  "Well, yeah."

  "Who gives a shit about that?" the man answered, his gun still poking Kristin in the back. "It'll make her that much easier to control."

  Kristin could see immediately that the man stationed inside the conference room was the one she was going to have to work on to get out of this mess. He was barely older than a kid, and he seemed much less sure of himself, less hardened, than the other guy.

  She turned to him and said quietly, "It's not too late to put a stop to whatever it is you're doing here. No one has gotten hurt yet--"

  The man standing behind her laughed. "Oh, really? That's a good one. Tell that to the two dead security guards or the two FAA guys who rolled up to the gate just before you and died about ten seconds later. Tell that to the electronics technician cooling in a pool of his own blood right now. You have no fucking clue what's going on here, missy, so just shut your friggin' mouth before I blow your pretty head off. One more dead asshole makes no difference to me whatsoever."

  Kristin's blood ran cold. The man was dressed in a torn and filthy security uniform, which he had undoubtedly taken off one of the guards he had killed, so presumably he was telling the truth about the other dead as well. That meant these people had murdered at least five innocent men tonight. This changed everything.

  They had nothing to lose and thus could not be reasoned with.

  What could you offer a person like that?

  Nothing.

  She decided to try a different tactic to gather a little information that she might be able to use to her advantage later, assuming she lived that long. "How many of you guys are in here? Is it just the two of you?"

  The man behind her said, "Shut up. You're not in charge here; we are. The only reason you're still alive is because we can use you, but if you piss me off, I'll shoot you in the back of the head right where you stand. One shot. End of pretty FBI agent. We can do what we need to do without you, so don't go getting the idea that you're going to stay alive just because you're a cute little thing wearing a Windbreaker that says FBI on the back."

  Kristin swallowed hard and said nothing.

  "That's better, baby," the man said mockingly. "Now, let's do a little business, shall we?"

  She didn't answer so he continued. "We know that you need to coordinate with your superiors and notify them that everything is hunky-dory up here in the sticks before President Cartwright's plane enters Boston's airspace. Do that now."

  With mounting horror, it dawned on Kristin that the armed invasion had nothing to do with this facility, at least not specifically. It was all about Air Force One. These men were part of a much bigger plot involving the president.

  Shaking her head, Kristin said, "Come on, guys. Be reasonable. You know I can't do that." She smiled at the man in black and then turned the same reassuring, high-wattage smile on the man standing behind her.

  He stepped around her and moved to the conference table, his gun never wavering. It was now pointed directly at her chest. With the pistol, he gestured at the cell phone hanging in a leather holster at her hip. "Make the call."

  She locked eyes with him. "I can't do that."

  He nodded, taking two steps forward and then stopping. He was now standing directly in front of her, invading her personal space. He smelled of sweat and blood and death.

  Kristin refused to look away. "I can't do it," she repeated.

  Without another word, the man lowered his gun and shot her
in the knee.

  Chapter 52

  Nick was back in the technicians' equipment room, searching with increasing desperation for something to use as a weapon against the man holding Larry hostage in the Ops Room.

  As he dug through the stockpile of tools and equipment, his gaze fell on a soldering gun, propped in its stand with the metal tip used to melt lead sticking straight up in the air. If Nick could get close enough, maybe he could use it to burn the man, but although it would certainly be painful to the guy, the soldering iron would not even come close to providing the kind of knockout blow Nick needed. If anything, it would probably just piss the man off, and he'd kill Nick slowly and painfully, instead of shooting him between the eyes. He shook his head. The soldering gun was definitely out.

  A pile of screwdrivers lay heaped in two big bins, one containing the standard, slotted kind and the other filled with Phillips head models. These looked a little more promising. Nick found several of both types of screwdrivers which were heavy and at least twelve inches long, clearly designed to allow the technician access to hard-to-reach areas. Maybe he could use one of these.

  Still, Nick knew that the odds of him taking down an armed terrorist with a screwdriver were slim. Even if he were able to get close enough to bury the screwdriver in the man's head or neck, a possibility that seemed unlikely in the extreme, what were the chances he could hit the exact spot he needed to incapacitate the man? Especially since he didn't have any idea where that spot might be. The basic problem was the same as it was with the soldering iron--he could probably inflict some damage on the man, but it would likely not be enough. Nick knew he would get only one chance. Once the advantage of surprise was lost, the fight would be over quickly.

  A utility knife lay open on a workspace, its one-inch blade exposed. Whoever had been using the tool had never retracted the blade when he was finished with it.