Final Vector

by Allan Leverone

  "Help me out of this fucking harness," Joe-Bob snarled to Dimitrios, who was still staring at the spot where they had last seen Air Force One like the plane was going to suddenly reappear. But they had already missed their chance, and Joe-Bob was determined to find out why.

  Within seconds he disentangled himself from the support harness and yanked his cell phone out of his pocket. He punched the only number stored in the memory of the disposable phone and waited for the call to go through to Tony, the man who had come up with this "perfect plan" and who had convinced him and the rest of the group that they could change the world.

  He held the phone to his ear and waited. Nothing. Tony wasn't answering, which could mean only one thing--somehow the entire plan had unraveled within the last few minutes and Tony was dead. Killing him was the only way he could have been stopped because he certainly would not have given up now, not when he was literally seconds away from achieving his goal.

  Joe-Bob looked at Dimitrios, who was staring back at him with almost comically wide eyes. At that moment Dimitrios looked like a scared little kid. Joe-Bob flipped his phone shut and said, "We've got to get out of here. Right now."

  "What are you talking about? What about shooting down the plane?"

  "The fucking plane is gone, you moron! And if it's gone, it's not coming back. Something has gone seriously wrong. Tony's not answering his phone, and the only explanation for why he wouldn't pick up is that everything's gone to shit. If that's the case, how long do you think it will be before the cops find us and we take the fall for this whole fucking disaster?"

  Dimitrios shrugged. "I don't know. Soon, I guess." He still didn't seem to grasp the significance of what had just happened. Or maybe he was even dumber than Joe-Bob had thought.

  "You're damn right it will be soon, and in case you've forgotten, there's a Jeep sitting sixty feet away right now with a dead guy you helped kill inside it."

  "I didn't kill anybody," Dimitrios protested.

  "Bullshit," Joe-Bob replied. "You were right here, and you're just as guilty as I am. You're a fucking accomplice to murder. If you want to avoid spending the rest of your life behind bars or maybe even taking a lethal injection, you had better get in this goddamn truck right now, because if you don't, I'm leaving without you."

  "What about Tony?"

  "Fuck Tony. If he survives, which I doubt, he'll make his way back to D.C. when he can, and we'll meet up with him there. I hope he does, because I'd love to kick his sorry ass all over the East Coast about now. In the meantime, though, we've got to worry about our own sorry asses. It's going to be daylight soon, and we can't hang around this frigging mud puddle much longer."

  Joe-Bob tossed the still assembled Stinger into the cargo bed of the pickup and leapt over the side, landing in the watery mud with a splash that peppered the side of the already filthy vehicle.

  The two men clambered into the Dakota, and Joe-Bob fired it up, four-wheeling to the road, the slipping, sliding tires spraying dirty water and brownish vegetation in all directions.

  They hit Shoreline Drive at thirty miles per hour and turned south, tires screeching, planning to head straight to Interstate 95.

  Tony big plan had gone to hell with shocking swiftness, but they were still alive and still free, and Joe-Bob aimed to keep it that way.

  Chapter 62

  There was almost no chance of Nick being spotted by the men pacing anxiously back and forth inside the Fishbowl. For one thing, their focus was on the BCT entrance exactly opposite the second-floor catwalk. And for another, the walkway holding Nick had been constructed with four-foot-high walls of the same blond wood panels used on all the interior walls in the foyer and the office areas.

  The very bottom portion of the wall on either side of the catwalk consisted of a one-foot-high steel mesh screen running the length of it underneath the wood solid panels. That mesh, which allowed an astute observer to see the feet of anyone walking across the walkway even if they had ducked under the protection of the panels, constituted the only possible vulnerability. Nick decided he was willing to take that minimal risk. The terrorists were unlikely to suddenly crane their necks and peer across the lobby toward the second floor for no reason, especially while so preoccupied with other pressing issues.

  At least that was Nick's sincere hope. In the end he had no other choice, really, since it was imperative that he get to the south side of the building, where the Fishbowl was. The only other way to accomplish that would be to backtrack all the way to the north side of the BCT and descend the stairs there, then cross the first-floor foyer right in front of the very men he was hoping to surprise.

  Nick scuttled along the catwalk, drawing no gunfire and no apparent notice from below. The far end of the walkway was almost directly above the east wall of the Fishbowl, meaning any risk of being seen by the men downstairs vanished as he disappeared from view into the corridor leading to the administrative wing.

  After passing the restrooms on the left side of the hallway, Nick opened a heavy steel door at the southeasternmost corner of the building, turning left at the point where the corridor went right, and disappearing into a stairwell identical to the one he had climbed up thirty minutes ago in his failed attempt to confuse the terrorist in the Operations Room by reconfiguring the radar scopes inside the ETG lab.

  He moved quickly now, betting his life on the assumption that the men inside the Fishbowl were the only two terrorists still alive in the building. He felt increasingly woozy and faint as the pain from the gunshot wound in his shoulder came and went in sickening waves. His blood-soaked T-shirt stuck to his chest and back, and he shivered violently. If he didn't complete his task soon, he might simply pass out and collapse where he stood.

  At the bottom of the stairwell, Nick paused and cracked the door a couple of inches, peering out into the first-floor nest of offices that housed the BCT big shots. None of these empty offices concerned Nick. Their doors were all closed and presumably locked. He stood in the doorway and focused on the short hallway to the right. This corridor led to the foyer and was located under the catwalk he had just crossed to reach the stairwell. The end of the fifteen-foot corridor on the left made up the east wall of the Fishbowl.

  The Fishbowl was wide open on the side facing the foyer, allowing the armed men a virtually unobstructed view of the main entrance to the BCT as well as of the entire foyer.

  What the Fishbowl didn't provide for the terrorists, however, was a window on any of the other three sides, including the east side, where Nick was now creeping along the hallway with his back against the wall. He paused at a gigantic support pillar just outside the conference room's east entrance. The pillar ran from the floor of the foyer to the ceiling of the BCT, towering three stories above.

  Its circumference was easily three feet and provided perfect cover.

  Nick leaned against it, trying to catch his breath.

  He felt as though he had just run the Boston Marathon and immediately upon reaching the finish line had been advised he would have to run it again in the other direction. His breathing came in short gasps, and it was becoming increasingly difficult to focus.

  A few feet away, on the other side of the pillar and through the door, were the two men Nick needed to neutralize. He squeezed the terrorist's gun in his right hand.

  These men knew what time Air Force One was supposed to have arrived at Logan Airport; therefore, they would know that their missile should have knocked the Boeing 747 out of the sky by now. Nick was afraid that one or both of them would leave the conference room at any moment to check on the progress, although with their seemingly extensive knowledge of the facility, he figured there was a good chance they would just call the Ops Room extension.

  He guessed they hadn't done so yet. If they had, it stood to reason that at least one of them would have sprinted upstairs immediately when the call was answered by Larry or Ron rather than by their fellow lunatic. Nick shuddered to think what would happen then. Even though Fitz was arme
d with the dead terrorist's backup weapon, he figured the two controllers in the Ops Room would be no match for either of these men in a shoot-out, particularly given the ordeal they had just gone through.

  Of course, neither would he, but he did his best to push that disturbing realization to the back of his mind as he tried to decide how to proceed from here.

  Chapter 63

  Officer Ray Reid rolled slowly down Shoreline Drive in Hull, Massachusetts, on routine patrol. Working the overnight shift for the Hull Police Department wasn't exactly what he had envisioned himself doing after mustering out of the Army, where he had served two tours of duty as an MP in Iraq, but what the hell. At least he had a job, which was more than a lot of guys who had spent time in the godforsaken blast furnace that was the Middle East could say, and as an added bonus he was actually doing what he wanted to do: earning a living in the field of law enforcement.

  So even though he would much rather have been sleeping in the arms of his wife, Melissa, getting up in the middle of the night to change their daughter Margaret's diaper for the third or fourth time, Ray wasn't about to complain. He would spend a couple of years building his resume here, then move on to a better job somewhere else, maybe in a bigger town, maybe with the staties, or maybe he would even try to catch on with the FBI or a similar high-profile outfit.

  That was all in the future, though. For now, Ray was a small-town cop, and that was good enough for him. For as long as he could remember, his goal had been to serve as a peace officer. As a little boy he had become enthralled with the sharply creased dark blue uniform police officers wore, the shiny black sidearm that dangled on their hips, and the way everyone seemed to treat them with awe and respect and maybe even a little bit of fear.

  He was a good cop, too. He didn't push people around and try to intimidate regular citizens like some of the guys he knew, who seemed to be drawn to the job because they wanted the chance to swagger and bust people over the head with their nightsticks. Not that he wouldn't do exactly that if necessary. But Ray wanted to help people, plain and simple. And at six foot three, two hundred sixty pounds, Ray was physically imposing enough that he rarely needed much more than his considerable bulk to convince people that his way was the right way.

  The sky was beginning to lighten over the water, gradually changing from pitch-black to a fuzzy gunmetal grey, as he maneuvered his cruiser down the deserted thoroughfare, driving at a speed that was barely faster than a brisk walk. This was one of Ray's favorite places in the world, and he always tried to patrol it close to the end of his shift whenever possible. If he rolled his window down and really listened carefully, he felt he could almost hear the waves lapping against the shore, which was impossible at this distance but still a pleasant thought.

  His shift ended in less than two hours. Melissa wouldn't be up yet unless Margaret was being unusually fussy, so there was no reason to rush home. Maybe he would stop at the diner downtown for an omelet before going home to bed, and then there would be no question about being able to sleep. With a full stomach, Ray would be out like a light for hours.

  He was trying to decide whether to risk a cup of coffee with his western omelet. Would it keep him awake and defeat the point of eating in the first place? Lost in his reverie, Ray started in surprise as an old Dodge Dakota, dented and caked in mud, barreled out of the marsh and shot onto the road about forty feet ahead of him.

  The truck roared off toward the center of Hull, tires squealing and mud flying off the undercarriage as it picked up speed.

  Ray blinked, almost unable to believe what he was seeing.

  What the hell these idiots had been doing out in the flats at this time of the early morning he didn't know, but it was pretty clear what they were doing now--driving recklessly. He flipped the switch on his dashboard, illuminating the flashing blue light bar on the roof, and goosed the big Police Interceptor engine.

  As he sped down Shoreline Drive, Ray radioed dispatch of his location and that he was in pursuit of a speeding truck. It was obvious to him that the people inside the Dakota were trying to run, only pulling to the side of the road when it became clear their vehicle, while perfectly suited for mucking around in the marshy flats, was no match in power or speed for the Hull PD Crown Vic-toria cruiser rapidly gaining on them.

  After the truck pulled to the side of the road, emergency hazard lights dutifully flashing, Ray followed procedure, calling the plates in to the dispatcher but being told, as he had known he would, that there would be a delay in getting any information back regarding the Virginia tags on the truck. Sometimes information moved slowly in a small police department.

  Ray sighed and stepped out of his cruiser. Moving slowly and with routine caution but not too much concern, he had gotten almost all the way to the truck's window, sticking close to the side of the vehicle to present as small a target as possible in the event something went wrong, when he saw someone lean way out of the window and turn to face him. It was a man, and a wooden smile was plastered on his face as he looked at the approaching officer.

  The smile stopped well short of the man's eyes.

  Ray instinctively knew that something was very wrong. He hadn't survived two tours in Iraq by wandering blindly into danger, and he stopped in his tracks, freezing a second too late as the driver held out a semiautomatic pistol. As Ray dropped into a crouch and attempted to draw his service weapon, the man twisted around to get a better angle and fired three shots in rapid succession, two of them hitting Ray and slamming him to the cold pavement.

  The driver's head disappeared into the vehicle, and seconds later the old Dakota took off again, black smoke rising from its tires, peppering Ray with gravel and dirt. He thought of Iraq and the absurdity of the notion that he had survived that madhouse only to be gunned down in the tiny town of Hull, Massachusetts, where nothing ever happened to anyone, especially not to police officers patrolling the streets in the wee hours of a Sunday morning.

  Operating on adrenaline and instinct, not even feeling any pain yet, although he knew that was coming, Ray shielded his face with his hands, protecting it from the worst of the flying debris.

  Then he opened fire on the rapidly retreating truck. He knew he was injured, maybe badly, but in those first few moments, he could think of nothing besides returning fire. He grunted in satisfaction as one of his shots blew out the fat left rear tire of the pickup, then watched it careen off the road and back into the marsh from where it had so recently appeared.

  The Dakota landed with a loud muddy splash, steam rising instantly from the engine compartment as the hot motor impacted the dirty standing water.

  Ray keyed the mike pinned to his collar, advising the dispatcher that he had been shot and needed assistance immediately, all without taking his eyes off the disabled truck.

  He was pretty sure he had seen at least one other occupant inside the vehicle besides the driver, and he figured that the men inside would be attempting to flee any second now. Whatever they had been up to, it was serious enough that they were willing to shoot a police officer to facilitate their escape, so they certainly wouldn't be waiting docilely inside their vehicle for even more cops to arrive.

  He didn't have to wait long to find out. Both doors in the Dakota flew open at the same time, and a man tumbled out of each. They hit the muddy ground running as fast as possible given the lack of traction, using the bulk of the truck as a barrier so that Ray was unable to manage a clear shot at either of them. This meant they were headed deeper into the marsh and away from the road and their only viable escape route, so after about a hundred feet, both men made a sharp right turn and splashed back toward Shoreline Drive.

  By now they were too far away for Ray to have any kind of reasonable expectation of hitting either of them, so he simply held his fire, cursing like the ex-Army grunt he was and feeling weaker by the second. He knew help would arrive soon; Hull was a small town, area wise as well as in terms of population, so it wouldn't take long for John Landry in cruiser two to
come screaming up Shoreline Drive. He crawled to the gravel shoulder of the road and waited.

  Ray hoped the ambulance wouldn't be too far behind John.

  He thought about his beautiful Melissa and little baby Margaret and prayed that Mel wouldn't freak out too badly when she heard he had been shot. Maybe he could get treated at the hospital on an outpatient basis and go home before she ever woke up; she would still be pissed, but at least she wouldn't worry. He pictured her face as he slipped into unconsciousness, the darkness overwhelming him as the dim wail of approaching sirens sounded in the distance.

  Chapter 64

  Brian sat at the head of the fancy table running almost the entire length of the conference room and wondered how badly all of this was going to end. They had killed half a dozen or so people already--he had lost track of the exact number--and by now the total probably included the president, not to mention everyone else aboard the president's airplane. He tried to imagine how many people that might be. Fifteen? Twenty? He didn't know.

  Brian knew that Tony had planned an escape, but he had expected all along that they would die in this operation, regardless of how it turned out. It just didn't seem possible to Brian that they could manage to assassinate a sitting U.S. president and still escape with their lives. They were never going to get out of this building, and even if they did, the five of them would be hunted relentlessly until they were all either captured or killed, most likely the latter.

  He didn't care about dying. He didn't have anything to live for, anyway. He felt kind of bad about the FBI chick lying on the floor, moaning occasionally as the life slipped out of her, but he couldn't say anything to that bastard Jackie. He knew Jackie didn't care if she lived or died. In fact, he undoubtedly preferred that she die so there would be one less witness to this whole thing. He was probably going to kill her soon anyway.