by Diane Capri
On the bright side, he finally had a real weapon to rely on as opposed to a rechargeable pneumatic power tool, but the other side of that particular coin was that he had never fired a handgun in his life and had no clue whether he could actually hit anything with it.
Didn’t matter. By now Larry would certainly have notified the authorities. Undoubtedly the cavalry would be arriving en masse in just a few minutes, which normally would be a good thing.
But Nick had no doubt that every exit had been disabled by the terrorists, meaning that the only way into the building was via the front door—the entrance that the two heavily armed terrorists were currently covering from their spot in the fishbowl. A protracted standoff would be inevitable after the first responders got cut down in a hail of bullets.
Plus, there was no way of knowing whether these lunatics had booby-trapped the entrance with explosives. Maybe the entryway would blow sky-high as soon as the good guys tried to storm the BCT. For that matter, who was to say the whole building wasn’t rigged to explode at any moment? Who really knew what these guys were thinking?
So there was no benefit in crouching up here at the top of the stairs, waiting for help to arrive and for someone else to handle the situation. Nick decided he must be completely out of his mind, because he had just talked himself into another armed confrontation, his second in a matter of minutes.
But how should he approach it? He thought about trying to pick the two men off from here, only to quickly discard that idea. He was easily sixty feet away and would be shooting at a downward angle through thick plate glass with a handgun. A weapon he had never fired before. The odds of hitting anything under those circumstances were infinitesimal, and that was for someone who knew what he was doing. Hell, from up here there was just as good a chance he would end up shooting Agent Cunningham as either of the two men he was aiming at.
Even if he hit one of them, the other guy would have ample time to take cover, and then they were back to the drawing board—a standoff that would likely cost the FBI agent her life.
Nick shuddered involuntarily, the sudden motion sending a wake-up call through his injured shoulder. How appropriate. I get shot, and I actually get a shooting pain at the site of the injury.
He chuckled and the pain intensified.
Sweat rolled down his face and he felt queasy.
His vision blurred and then cleared.
He got off his knees and moved carefully along the catwalk suspended high above the foyer and the fishbowl below.
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
Nearly fifteen minutes had elapsed since Joe-Bob answered the call from Tony at the BCT, telling him Air Force One would be within missile range inside of ten minutes. When the call came in, he and Dimitrios scrambled into the back of the truck and made final preparations, readying the Stinger to fire the shot that would make history.
Ninety seconds after that they were ready. Since then they had stood, tense and silent, in the Dakota’s cargo bed, waiting to get a visual on the Boeing 747 carrying President Cartwright and his staff. The plane would lumber overhead as it approached the airport, flying low and slow in preparation for landing, making it an inviting target that was nearly impossible to miss. It would be like shooting fish in a barrel.
Joe-Bob was strapped in, harnessed to the homemade support rigging the group had fashioned out of scrap iron, steel, and nylon netting when the plane came into view. Its landing lights were shining brightly in the southeast sky as it popped suddenly out of the bases of the clouds, appearing in a completely different location than he and Dimitrios had seen the arrivals show up all night. There was no question about it; this was the right airplane. This was Air Force One.
Joe-Bob and Dimitrios watched the plane approach with mounting excitement. It seemed to hang unmoving in the sky, a trick of perspective caused by the fact that it was flying so slowly and directly toward them.
The plan was for Joe-Bob to wait as long as possible before firing the shot that would take down the leader of the free world, ideally pulling the trigger when the jumbo jet was maybe a quarter mile away, slightly to the side and still approaching. The Stinger would then take a path straight into the belly of the behemoth, impacting the airplane before the sophisticated countermeasures built into Air Force One could do more than perhaps sound an alarm on the flight deck. The crew would know they were about to get hit but would be unable to do anything to avoid it.
The tension was palpable. Joe-Bob tried to calm his nerves and slow his breathing, glancing to the north over the Atlantic Ocean where the airplanes had been descending all night long. The sky was devoid of any landing lights. Either there was no other traffic destined for Boston this early in the morning, or the controllers had stopped all the other airplanes in anticipation of the president’s arrival. Joe-Bob didn’t know which it was and didn’t care.
He turned his attention back toward the three bright yellow lights in the sky, expecting to see that they had grown a bit in size as the Boeing 747 approached.
He gasped.
The lights had disappeared. Scanning frantically from the horizon upward, Joe-Bob finally spotted a single strobe. He spat a curse. Air Force One was banking sharply east in a steep climb, gaining speed and altitude, already in a position that made it virtually impossible to hit with the Stinger.
What the hell had happened? He had diverted his attention for only a few seconds, and in that time, the crew flying the airplane must have been alerted to the danger that awaited them below. Air Force One was clearly climbing up and away, perhaps leaving Boston entirely but definitely climbing out of danger.
Joe-Bob cursed again and smashed his fist into the brace that had been meant to provide support for the missile shot that would make history. All their planning had gone to waste in the blink of an eye. Tony was going to be pissed. Joe-Bob watched as the strobe from the retreating Air Force One, already difficult to see, faded into the grey shroud of gradually brightening sky northeast of Boston and disappeared. His fist was throbbing, and he wondered absently how many knuckles he had just broken.
“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 as if perhaps 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’ll be before the cops find us and we take the fall for this whole cluster fuck?”
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 no
w 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, where it landed with a crash. Then he 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 Ocean Drive at thirty miles per hour and turned south, tires screeching, planning to head straight to Interstate 95. Tony big plan had turned to shit, but they were still alive and still free, and Joe-Bob aimed to keep it that way.
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
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 crossing 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 issues.
At least that was Nick’s fervent hope.
In the end, he had no other choice, since it was imperative that he get to the south side of the building, where the fishbowl was located. 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 radar room by reconfiguring the radar scopes inside the ETG lab.
He moved quickly now. 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 was still shaking violently, and every time he did, more of the lightning bolts of pain ripped through his shoulder and down his left arm, which was now almost totally useless and hanging limply at his side. He was sweating profusely but nevertheless felt freezing cold, like someone had turned the building’s thermostat down to twenty degrees.
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 of their operation, 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 armed 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 thought to the back of his mind as he rested against the support pillar and tried to decide how to proceed from here.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
Officer Ray Reid rolled slowly down Ocean 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 of 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 résumé 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.
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 Reid was physically imposing enough that he rarely needed more than his considerable bulk to convince obstinate 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. This was one of Ray’s favorite places in the world, and he liked 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 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.
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 engine.
As he sped down Ocean 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 cruiser rapidly gaining on them.