by Diane Capri
“That’s not my problem; it’s yours. I want that airplane lined up for Runway 33 Left.”
Larry shook his head. “But as soon as the pilot listens to the ATIS, he’s going to expect to be vectored to the approach for 4 Right.”
The ATIS—Automated Terminal Information Service—was a radio broadcast running on a continuous loop, updated by the control tower at least once per hour. The pilot simply dialed in the appropriate ATIS frequency and was rewarded with a listing of the current weather conditions at the airport, what approach to expect and to what runway, and any other information that might affect the flight, such as airport construction or runway and taxiway closures. As soon as the pilot in command of Air Force One listened to the ATIS, he would immediately question why he was being vectored to a different runway than what was listed on the broadcast.
The man jammed the barrel of his gun under Larry’s jaw, his eyes burning with intensity. “Perhaps I have not made myself sufficiently clear. I do not care what you have to say or who you have to say it to, but if you are not successful in getting Air Force One where I want it and when I want it there, you will not draw another breath. Not one.”
“Okay, okay, I get it.” Larry’s voice cracked; no longer strong and steady, it sounded to him like someone else was speaking, someone who was completely terrified and might just piss his pants.
“Take the plane to 33 Left. Okay. I can do that.” Larry was panting like he had just run the Boston Marathon and could feel sweat soaking the back of his shirt, even though the temperature in the TRACON was always kept relatively low, more for the sake of all the expensive equipment than for the comfort of the controllers.
The man withdrew the gun from Larry’s neck and sat back, once again appearing calm and collected. The swiftness of his mood changes was breathtaking and unsettling. “You will direct the aircraft to intercept the final approach course at least fifteen miles from the airport and as low an altitude as possible without eliciting any suspicion on the part of the pilot.”
Larry nodded. “The minimum vectoring altitude southeast of Boston in that particular area is fifteen hundred feet.”
The man waved the gun dismissively. “I don’t care about your regulations. You will take the plane down to a thousand feet—do you understand?”
Larry did a quick calculation in his head and knew that he could break the MVA by five hundred feet and Air Force One would still be safe—minimum vectoring altitudes were assigned with the intention of allowing plenty of clearance for aircraft over any obstacles on the ground that could be a factor. “All right, a fifteen mile final to 33 Left at a thousand feet. I can do that. But why?”
The man laughed loudly. “Why? I’ll tell you why. We have a little gift waiting for your pig president, and he must be in the proper location to receive it. I only wish I could be there to see the wreckage of his airplane sitting at the bottom of a smoking hole in the ground, but unfortunately I will have to make do by visualizing it.” He sighed. “We all have our roles to play.”
Larry looked back up at the TSD—it was a reflexive action; he couldn’t help himself—and saw that the blue icon representing Air Force One had moved a bit closer to Logan Airport. It would be a little while before it arrived in BCT airspace, but it was coming. And there wasn’t a damned thing Larry could do to stop it.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Nick listened with mounting horror as the words spoken by the terrorist wafted through the air exchange grate loud and clear. The Stinger missiles that had been stolen from the United States Army—the very same weapons that he now knew had gotten Lisa killed—were in the hands of a group of fanatical lunatics and would be used to shoot down the airplane carrying the president of the United States.
The irony of both he and Lisa being affected by the very same crime was not lost on Nick. First, Lisa had stumbled upon the plot to sell the information regarding the missiles to some unknown group and had paid for that with her life. Now, members of the very group that had presumably purchased the information were here in Merrimack at the BCT, forcing Fitz to put the president’s plane in the proper location to allow members of the group to shoot it down with those missiles.
That had to be it. There was no other conceivable explanation as to why this man would insist on Air Force One being vectored so far out of position from Runway 4 Right, which was what Logan was utilizing for arrivals tonight. No other reason why he would crow about the “gift” they had waiting for President Cartwright. Nick had done some research on Stinger missiles after his conversation with the FBI agents at his home, and what he learned was terrifying.
Stinger missiles had been around in one incarnation or another for thirty years, maybe even longer, and had been used by the Russians in Afghanistan back in the 1980s as well as by the United States armed forces in various conflicts around the globe, starting with the Falkland Islands over a quarter-century ago.
Normally the missiles were fired by two-man teams, but it was possible for one person to operate the shoulder-fired weapons. They required a minimal amount of training, and modern versions of the Stinger were extremely accurate, combining visual acquisition of the target by the shooter with a heat-seeking component that allowed the missile to track its target even if the aircraft took evasive maneuvers.
Stingers could be used to shoot down targets at altitudes as high as ten thousand feet, but Nick guessed that the man wanted Fitz to get Air Force One to a thousand feet to provide the best possible odds of taking it down. Undoubtedly Air Force One was equipped with the most sophisticated countermeasures available against just such a weapon, but every aircraft, no matter how technologically advanced, eventually reached an altitude on final approach where it was extremely vulnerable.
At one thousand feet, the president’s plane would be “low and slow,” with flaps extended, traveling at the relatively slow speed of around one hundred thirty miles per hour. At that altitude and speed, Nick knew it would be virtually impossible for the flight crew to take any meaningful evasive action, even if they knew what was coming.
There was no way to avoid it. The president was going to die.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Jackie sat in the guard shack on the edge of the BCT grounds, leaning back in the chair that hadn’t been splattered with the blood of the dead guard. His feet were propped on the console holding all of the CCTV monitors, and he was bored out of his mind. He had been dozing and was good and pissed off that he had been handed the most uninteresting assignment of all, especially after doing the dangerous and dirty work with the two guards.
Thanks, Jackie. You did a great job taking out the only two guys who could stop us from infiltrating this highly secure government facility. Now go and sit in the outhouse doing nothing while we get nice and comfy inside and prepare to assassinate the president. Oh, and don’t worry. We’ll be sure to let you know if we need you to handle something really distasteful again.
Assholes. Sometimes Jackie wondered why in the hell he ever listened to Tony anyway. Everyone else in the dysfunctional little group was scared to death of the guy because he came from the Middle East and wasn’t afraid to send people to their Maker. Well, he wasn’t afraid of Tony. The fucker pulled his pants on one leg at a time, just like everyone else, and Jackie knew that he could be as brutal as Tony if he wanted to. Hadn’t he already proven that by killing those two guards single-handedly?
So, fuck him. Jackie had half a mind to walk in the front door of the BCT and tell Tony to send Brian outside to sit in the guard shack and jerk off. That sissy kid had done nothing to earn his spot on the team anyway, and it was really beginning to irk Jackie. Not that he wasn’t going to enjoy fucking with the FBI dude when the time came, but until then he had nothing to do, and the time was dragging. There wasn’t even a real frigging television out here for Chrissakes, just these stupid tiny monitors.
He sat with his feet on the security console, mud dripping from his boots all over the closed circuit monitors, eyes
slowly closing, when a car turned into the entrance. The glare from its headlights hit Jackie square in the face, blinding him for a second. The driver of the car flipped off his high beams, then shut off the vehicle’s headlights entirely, per the nighttime protocol posted outside the guard shack. This allowed the security personnel to get a good look at the occupants of the vehicle before they stopped in front of the gate.
Procedure dictated that everyone entering the BCT stop at the gate to show his or her ID to the guard. When satisfied, the guard would wave his own ID in front of the reader installed next to the security building, raising the gate and allowing the vehicle to access the parking lot. The gate would then automatically lower behind the vehicle.
A large, dark sedan approached the building slowly, coasting to a stop next to the side door of the security shack, the same door Jackie had stood in when he gunned down Jim Shay a little while earlier.
Jackie strolled outside in his ill-fitting uniform to see two middle-aged men sitting in the front seat of the car, each holding a Styrofoam cup of steaming coffee, a box of donuts placed on the seat between them. Tony had briefed Jackie that an ATC supervisor as well as an operations manager—the supervisor’s supervisor—would be arriving shortly before 5:00 a.m. to oversee the facility and feign importance while the president was inside Boston’s airspace.
This car obviously contained those two men, who had apparently decided to carpool to work. Jackie decided that had been very thoughtful of them, because now he didn’t have to worry about one of them driving up to the gate while he was eliminating the other. It was like a two-for-one special.
The driver’s side window rolled smoothly down with a barely discernible whir. Peering out the window at him was a man with silver hair and glasses, holding a federal government ID out for inspection. It was obvious he was familiar with the routine. He blinked owlishly up at Jackie and said, “Hey, buddy, haven’t seen you before. New on the job?”
Jackie ignored the question and the ID the man was persistently waving in his face, instead sticking his head through the open window and asking, “Do either of you drink your coffee black?”
The two men looked at each other, confusion evident on their faces, and the man on the far side of the car said, “Well, yeah, mine’s black. Why do you ask?”
“Just curious, I guess. And to answer your question, yes, it’s my first day. Only been here for an hour or so. I gotta tell ya, I think this is going to be my last day, too, because this is one boring fucking job.” Then he raised his pistol and fired point-blank into the driver’s face.
The man’s head exploded, spraying bright crimson blood—interspersed with chunks of bone and brain matter—onto his passenger, who was so shocked he didn’t react at all. He just sat there, caught in a sudden downpour of blood and human tissue without an umbrella.
Jackie flicked the barrel of his gun a fraction to the right, and it suddenly dawned on the passenger that he was in danger. He dropped his coffee and scrabbled for the door handle in a desperate attempt to flee. His hand slipped on the blood coating the car’s interior, and instead of yanking the door open, his hand flew up and he nearly punched himself in the face. Jackie shook his head sadly—that was one pathetic display—and fired again.
The passenger’s head exploded just like the driver’s.
Jackie opened the driver’s side door and reached across the driver’s dead body, plucking the passenger’s coffee cup off the bench seat where it had fallen when he had made his abortive escape attempt. Hardly any coffee had leaked out through the tightly sealed plastic lid, and although the outside of the cup was soaked in blood and unidentifiable gore, Jackie was undeterred. He had never been what anyone would consider a picky eater. He wiped the cup as clean as possible with the sleeve of Morris Stapleton’s grimy uniform and drank deeply, savoring the rich brew.
Planting his left foot on the tarmac outside the car door, Jackie used his right combat boot to shove the driver’s body into the corpse of the passenger, slumped against the door. Then he pushed both of them to the floor. Blood was everywhere; the interior of the car looked exactly like what it was—the scene of a brutal double homicide—but that wouldn’t matter. By the time anyone saw the carnage, this job would be over and Tony and his team would be dead like these two or well on their way to safety. Jackie was laying two to one odds on dead over escaped, but he didn’t much care either way.
Now that he took a good look at the car, Jackie could see that it was dark blue. Midnight blue, he thought they called it, which in his opinion was stupid. He figured if you were going to name a color midnight, it should be black, not blue.
He slid into the car and closed the door. Blood soaked into the seat of his uniform trousers immediately. He reached out through the window and waved Jim Shay’s ID in front of the card reader. The gate rose, and Jackie eased the big car straight past the guard shack and into the employee parking lot, where he parked the vehicle off by itself on the west side of the lot.
The passenger side window had shattered, apparently from the force of the second victim’s skull smashing into it when he had been shot, so Jackie didn’t bother to lock the car. With a broken front window, what would be the point? Instead, he simply closed the door and walked away.
He took another deep pull on the coffee. It was still hot and strong, containing only the tiniest hint of that distinctive coppery blood taste. Jackie walked leisurely back toward the guard shack, now fully awake, his senses tingling. It was good to be alive.
Maybe that crazy towelhead Andretti had known what he was doing after all when he gave this assignment to Jackie. There was no way Brian could have managed it, the weak-assed surfer dude pussy, and besides, Jackie had enjoyed it far too much to allow anyone else to handle it.
Now all he had left to do was hang out at the guard shack for a few more minutes. The next victim would be cruising up to the gate anytime now.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Nick was reluctant to leave the relative safety of the small space underneath the floor of the ops room. It was highly unlikely the terrorists were aware of its existence, and even if they were, their minds were on other things, so the likelihood of Nick being discovered was slim. The problem, of course, was that as long as Nick remained here, hidden out of sight, he would be neutralized, unable to do anything to stop the impending tragedy that was gathering momentum like an out-of-control freight train.
He moved cautiously back through the equipment room where Harry’s body lay face down in a pool of his own blood. Nick passed Harry purposefully, telling himself to avoid looking at the murdered technician but not managing to do so. Harry’s blood was congealing where it contacted his clothing or the floor like thick maroon water gradually freezing and hardening into black ice.
After arriving at the first-floor hallway and the damaged exit door, Nick crossed quickly, paying no attention to the useless exit. Instead, he opened another heavy metal door on the opposite side of the hallway and started up a flight of stairs. These stairs were identical to the ones he had descended earlier after first seeing the men in the black fatigues; they were simply located on the opposite side of the building.
The stairs and handrails were metal, and there were metal pipes running along the ceiling and down the side walls. All this metal combined to form an acoustic nightmare, an enclosed area where the slightest noises echoed and boomed. One man climbing the stairs might sound like an army, and that was something Nick wanted to avoid at all costs—unless, of course, he could actually find an army to climb the stairs with him.
He reached the second floor without incident and opened the door leading to the carpeted hallway running adjacent to the ETG lab, a small radar training room consisting of five scopes. Inside this room, new controller trainees, called developmentals, were given computer-generated scenarios to run involving the airspace and procedures peculiar to Boston, allowing the controllers to become as familiar with them as possible before beginning their training on live tra
ffic.
Nick slipped into the cubicles across the hallway from the lab where the contractors who performed briefings and conducted training for the FAA were stationed during administrative hours. He gazed across the hallway, trying to decide how he could access the lab without being seen or heard by someone carrying a gun who might want to use it on him.
The ETG lab, like most areas inside the BCT, was accessible only by swiping an employee’s ID card in front of one of the ubiquitous card readers. Nick’s ID would get him into the lab; that would not be a problem. The problem would be the annoyingly loud beep that accompanied the reader’s recognition of an ID and the associated unlocking of the door. If one of the terrorists was anywhere in the vicinity, he could not help but hear the sound and would undoubtedly come running.
If the men had somehow gotten their hands on an ID and had been able to access the BCT—and Nick assumed they had; the very fact that they were here in the building seemed to prove it—they would also be able to enter the ETG lab, and then the game would be up. Nick would be trapped. He would be captured or killed and, worse, whatever slim chance he had of somehow stopping the assassination of President Cartwright would vanish.
Nick checked his watch, frustrated. Air Force One had departed Andrews and was in the air, and the minutes were passing by with astonishing speed. If he was going to put his hastily contrived plan into effect, he had to get into that lab now. He took a deep breath, then walked across the hall.
CHAPTER FIFTY
At a franchise donut shop a mile from the BCT, Kristin Cunningham stirred her usual three creams and five sugars into her coffee, breathing deeply, enjoying the rich aroma she hoped would help wake her up. She was nearly ten years into her law enforcement career, with the last five spent as an FBI Special Agent, so working odd hours was nothing new to her, nor were uninteresting assignments like the one she had drawn today.