Final Vector

by Allan Leverone

  He closed his eyes and pictured himself plunging the razor-sharp blade into the neck of the terrorist and realized that as tempting as the utility knife appeared to be as a potential weapon, it suffered from the identical problem as that of the screwdrivers: he would have to be much more precise than he was capable of in order to have any chance of success.

  In the hands of a competent fighter, the utility knife or any of the other tools he had considered may have been able to subdue the terrorist in the TRACON, especially when combined with the element of surprise. But Nick knew he was far from a competent fighter. The last time he had even been involved in a physical altercation was in fifth grade when he had been thoroughly whipped on the playground. By a fourth grader.

  Frustrated and afraid, Nick's temper boiled over. He thumbed the metal switch to retract the blade on the knife, then turned and threw it as hard as he could at the back wall. It thumped into the plastic tarp hanging from ceiling to floor that was being used to segregate the construction zone from the rest of the room and fell harmlessly to the floor. The knife clattered onto the ceramic tile a couple of feet from Harry's lifeless body.

  Nick stared at Harry, overwhelmed by a feeling of desolate hopelessness. What had been done to him was horrific, brutal, the ultimate violation. Suddenly it seemed of utmost importance to cover him somehow, to take some action to lessen the obscenity that had been perpetrated upon him. Eventually his body would be found, and the thought of countless investigators, all of them dis-interested strangers, seeing this quiet, kind man lying on the floor where he had been brutally hacked to death, so horribly exposed, dried blood crusting the tile around him, seemed like an insult to the man's memory. He deserved at least a little dignity.

  Nick knew that he had bigger issues to worry about, things that at the moment were far more critical than some lame attempt at preserving the dignity of a man who was beyond caring about his appearance. Maybe this suddenly seemed so important because Nick was exhausted and the situation taking place just one floor above him seemed so utterly bleak. He was fresh out of ideas about how to handle the terrorist, so perhaps this was just a way for him to avoid dealing with the terrifying reality of the president's plane being shot down, with the corresponding likelihood that he would also be a casualty, another lifeless corpse leaking blood all over the federal government's property.

  Regardless, whatever the reason, Nick could not ignore the growing feeling, the compulsion really, that he needed to cover Harry. It was risky, sure, because if a terrorist were to reenter this room and see Harry's body covered with a shroud, it would be clear that someone was here; there was a person running around the building unaccounted for. The terrorists would undoubtedly begin searching for him and would find him easily. The only reason he had avoided capture this long was due to the simple fact that they were unaware of his presence.

  Still, what was the likelihood that they would return to this unimportant room tucked away on the ground floor? As far as the terrorists were concerned, they had eliminated the only potential threat: the technician who had been working down here. There was no one else alive in the building that they were aware of, and their focus was going to be on the Operations Room, especially now that Air Force One had to be getting very close to Boston's airspace.

  The risk seemed relatively small, and Nick could not shake the feeling that it was critical he take care of Harry. He looked over at the tarp hanging just a few feet from the body. It would be perfect to drape over Harry, so he would not be on display like some gruesome mannequin out of a Roger Corman nightmare for every single person who came through here to gawk at when this was all over.

  Time was of the essence. He should not be wasting what precious little of it he had left by worrying about Harry, who was beyond help. But to Nick, that lifeless, desecrated body represented every horrifying second that had passed since he saw the three men walking down the hall.

  His mind was made up. Nick grabbed the utility knife and walked two steps to the tarp. Reaching as high as he could above his head, he sliced the heavy plastic in a horizontal line, stopping and sawing through the reinforced seam at each edge. The large piece of plastic drifted down, momentarily covering Nick and making him look like a poorly conceived Halloween ghost.

  He turned and draped the tarp over Harry's body, choking off a sob as he did so. It was more than big enough to cover the entire area, including the puddle of blood that had worked its way a couple of feet in every direction from Harry's chest.

  Nick knelt beside the body, now fuzzy and indistinct under the makeshift shroud, a shapeless lump on the floor. "I'm so sorry,"

  he whispered, knowing the words were hopelessly insufficient but unable to stop himself from saying them.

  For some reason, Nick felt better, more at ease, which was crazy. His situation was no better than it had been a few minutes ago; it was worse, in fact, because as he had been caring for Harry's body, the clock continued to tick. The president was now a little bit closer to Boston and a date with a Stinger missile, and Nick, Larry, and Ron were undoubtedly a few minutes closer to being massacred themselves.

  Still, Nick felt irrationally calm and clearheaded. He stood and turned toward the door, and as he did so, his gaze swept across the construction site that had been cordoned off and concealed by the plastic tarp.

  He stopped in his tracks and did a double take, then stood perfectly still and stared, frozen in wonder. Among the tools and supplies stored neatly on a rudimentary table made up of a two-by-eight plank placed across a pair of sawhorses was the weapon Nick had been searching for.

  Chapter 53

  Larry's hands were shaking so badly he wasn't sure he would physically be capable of taking the handoff Boston Center was attempting to give him on Air Force One. As the high-altitude facility controlling traffic over all of New England, plus a portion of New York State, Boston Center was the last link before Boston's airspace in the air traffic control chain that had begun working the giant Boeing 747 from the time it began taxiing for departure at Andrews Air Force Base.

  Giving and taking handoffs on airplanes in the NAS--the National Airspace System--was almost entirely an automated af-fair, especially at busy, high-density facilities. In order to transfer control of an aircraft to another facility, or to another sector within his own facility, the controller simply made a keystroke entry and then manipulated what was known as a "slewball," similar in design and purpose to a video game controller, to move a cursor across the radar scope to the target representing that airplane. Then he would simply punch a button on the keyboard, initiating the radar handoff.

  The target would begin flashing on the receiving controller's radar scope and would continue flashing until the receiving controller used his own slewball to move his cursor to the target and press the button on his own console. The target would stop flashing on the receiving controller's scope and would begin flashing on the scope of the controller initiating the handoff, indicating that the receiving controller was now prepared to accept separation responsibility for that airplane. The handoff was then considered complete, and the airplane would be permitted to enter the receiving controller's airspace. Communications transfer would follow.

  It was a simple automated procedure that controllers performed hundreds of times during the typical workday, so ordinary that to seasoned radar controllers it was as natural as taking a breath of air. See a flashing data block, observe the digitized radar target and recognize the airplane, and take the handoff.

  The controller initiating the handoff would instruct the pilot to contact the receiving controller on his or her specific radio frequency. When the pilot checked in on that frequency, the controller would issue specific instructions to ensure the separation and sequencing necessary for that airplane to depart, land, or transit the airspace.

  Taking a handoff. Simple.

  But not for Larry, not today. Operations Manager Don Trent, First-Line Supervisor Dean Winters, and at least one representative of
the FBI or the U.S. Secret Service were supposed to have arrived in the facility by now to oversee things. None of them had shown up, which could mean only one thing--they had been stopped by the other terrorist, the one who had duct taped Ron to his chair and then left the room. It was inconceivable to think it could be a coincidence; they had all run into traffic or overslept, not with Air Force One flying into Boston. Screwing up in that way was a career ender in the FAA and undoubtedly even more so in the FBI or Secret Service.

  Larry wondered if any of them were still alive or if they had simply been murdered and disposed of, and his hand began shaking even more. He could feel the irresistible force and sheer brutal power of the gun pressed against his neck just under his ear. The terrorist stood behind him now and seemed nearly as tense as Larry, although Larry didn't see how that could possibly be the case.

  He heard the man whip a cell phone out of a pocket and punch a key. Moments later he said, "It's time . . . Yes. Ten minutes."

  It would take approximately ten minutes for Air Force One to reach the point in Boston's airspace where the terrorist with the gun was insisting Larry vector it. The president of the United States had roughly ten minutes to live.

  Larry rolled his cursor out to the target representing the president's airplane. Normally the data tag corresponding to an airplane read something like ABC123, which represented aviation short-hand for ABC Airlines flight 123. Air Force One was represented in air traffic control facilities everywhere simply as AF1.

  The cursor reached the target, still flashing patiently as the data block moved steadily toward Boston's airspace, and Larry stabbed at the button that would alert the Boston Center controller that Boston Approach Control was accepting the handoff on Air Force One. He missed the button entirely. He tried again and managed to strike the button, but this time the cursor wasn't placed directly over the target, so nothing happened.

  "Damn it," Larry muttered softly.

  The man rapped the gun against the side of his head.

  Bright colored lights exploded in Larry's head. It felt as though he had been clubbed with a baseball bat.

  "Do it," the man commanded, his voice a harsh rasp.

  "I'm trying," Larry answered desperately, wondering what it would feel like when the bullet crashed into his skull and began making scrambled eggs out of his brain. Sweat flowed freely down his face, and he vaguely registered the sound of heavy, ragged breathing, realizing dully that it was his own. He thought of his wife and two children and wondered if he would ever see them again, if they could ever forgive him for contributing to the assassination of President Cartwright.

  One more attempt at taking the handoff. This time the cursor reached its intended destination and the flashing stopped.

  Air Force One entered Boston Approach Control's airspace.

  Chapter 54

  The floor rushed up to greet Kristin, and she could feel blood dribbling out a ragged hole in her new dark blue pants, which had set her back nearly a hundred bucks. Now these pants are ruined, she thought crazily for a second, before a rolling wave of intense pain overwhelmed her, blotting out everything else, beginning at her right knee and radiating outward.

  Kristin was childless, but she had it on very good authority that the worst pain a human being would ever endure was that of childbirth. If that was really the case and bearing children was even worse than this, then she was definitely out.

  When the terrorist demanded she call her team at Logan and tell them everything was okay here, she had known immediately that refusing to do so would earn her some sort of negative reinforcement--you didn't have to be an FBI agent to figure that one out--but this was much more than she ever expected.

  She gasped and sucked in a breath through clenched teeth, trying to maintain consciousness in the face of her body's rebellion against the sudden trauma inflicted upon it. She looked up from the floor and saw a man looming above her. It was the man who had shot her, and he was telling her something she could not make out in a voice that seemed unnaturally reedy.

  She shook her head and blinked to clear her fuzzy vision and tried to focus on what the man was saying, but it was so difficult.

  She couldn't get past the unbelievable fiery agony burning through her leg.

  Call. He was saying something about a telephone call. He wanted her to make the call to her superiors.

  The man fished her cell phone out of the holster on her hip and placed it on the floor in front of her. Behind it, in front of the absurdly large plate-glass windows of the conference room, a thin grey cord ran out the back of a telephone's base like a rat's tail and snaked its way along the floor, disappearing behind a table.

  From this angle, Kristin could see dust bunnies and a sprinkling of crumbs that had gathered on the carpet under the table; it was clear the janitorial service contracted to clean the BCT had not been doing a thorough job.

  Kristin reached out to pick up her cell. It seemed as though her hand stretched out for ten or twelve feet before it reached the phone, like she was looking at it through the wrong end of a tele-scope. She was surprised to see how much her hand was shaking. It occurred to her that she was going into shock, and she wondered in a detached way if she was dying.

  "Call your supervisor," the man told her again. It sounded like he was talking underwater.

  The man kneeled down and placed his gun at her temple. He leaned close to her ear. "I'm going to scatter your few simple brains all over this beautiful conference room if you don't make the call right now."

  Kristin believed him. She punched the speed dial with her trembling hands.

  On the first ring a voice said, "Watkins."

  "This is Cunningham," she said in a voice that sounded like someone else's. Someone she didn't know. Someone who was dying.

  "Hey, how's life up in the wilds of New Hamster?"

  "Great," she said, concentrating on remaining conscious and keeping her voice steady. She felt increasingly woozy and thought she might throw up at any moment. The pain was immense.

  "Are you okay?"

  "Just . . . just not feeling very well," she mumbled, feeling sick and scared and ashamed of herself. She knew she should be trying to pass a message to Lieutenant Watkins, but she could barely think at all.

  "Everything's all right up there?"

  "Yeah, sure. Everything's fine."

  "Okay, thanks for checking in. We'll give you a call as soon as the president's motorcade is moving into the city. Talk to you soon."

  "Yes, soon," Kristin repeated hollowly, her leg feeling like it was being blasted by a blowtorch.

  "Take care of yourself; you don't sound too good," Watkins told her.

  For some reason she found that very funny. "I will," she said with a high-pitched laugh that sounded just short of hysterical, even to her.

  The connection broke, and the terrorist removed the gun from her head as he rose. "See? That wasn't so hard, was it?"

  The room was spinning now, twisting around and around like the antigravity wheel she used to love to ride every fall when the county fair passed through her tiny town. Kristin guessed she had spent easily a couple hundred dollars on that ride when she was a teenager. Who knew you could get the same effect without spending any money at all?

  Of course, there was the small matter of being shot, of having a chunk of lead traveling at near supersonic speed blast your knee apart. But what the hell? There's no such thing as a free ride in this world, as her old man liked to say.

  She tried to focus on the man with the gun, but he was spinning just like the room, and now Kristin knew she was going to be sick. He was saying something else that she could not make out.

  He was so damned far away.

  He must have gotten tired of trying to make her understand because he prodded her right leg with the toe of his combat boot.

  Instantly the world exploded in an atomic blast of pain, and then everything went black.

  Chapter 55

  Nick stood just inside
the door on the west side of the TRACON

  Ops Room, holding his weapon in both hands and watching, sick with fear, as the terrorist held a pistol steadfastly against the side of Larry's head.

  It had been a stroke of good fortune--probably his first since this whole nightmare began unfolding--finding the fully charged, battery-operated nail gun lying in the first-floor construction site.

  The thing was filled with heavy-gauge nails, maybe tenpenny?

  Nick had seen a video once of the injuries a roofer had suffered when he fell off a house and reflexively squeezed the trigger of his nail gun on the way down to the ground, firing three nails into his skull. The damage had been extensive, with X-rays depict-ing the spikes protruding well into the man's brain after punching holes right through the thick protective plate of the skull. Nick was hopeful that if he could fire even one shot into the guy's head, the man would be incapacitated and maybe even killed; he certainly would be unable to hold his gun on Fitz as he was crashing to the floor with a thick nail stabbing into his brain.

  Larry was seated in his controller chair, facing his scope. The terrorist stood behind him, facing the scope as well. They had their backs turned toward Nick, and he could see the flashing data tag displayed on Larry's scope that must surely represent Air Force One. Nick was too far away to read the information contained in the tag, but judging from the intensity with which the terrorist was watching the radar display, he knew there was no other possibility.

  Far off on the other side of the big room, Ron sat duct taped to his chair. His eyes were closed, and Nick hoped he was simply dozing. There was no obvious sign of a gunshot wound or any other kind of wound for that matter, nothing resembling the damage that had been done to Harry, but Nick knew these men were cold-blooded fanatics and would not be above killing another defense-less man.

  He noticed Larry struggling to accept the automated handoff on Air Force One. Larry's hands were shaking so badly he could barely control the slewball. Nick felt sorry for him and for the fact that he had a loaded weapon aimed at him. Then he looked down at his own hands and realized they were shaking just as badly as Fitz's, maybe worse.