Tracie Tanner Thrillers Box Set

by Allan Leverone

  She took another look at the living room clock. Its hands seemed to be moving at double speed.

  There was a lot to do. She only hoped she wasn’t too late.

  24

  May 31, 1987

  8:50 a.m.

  Bangor, Maine

  Shane drove along the roadway leading to the air traffic control facility at Bangor International Airport, which consisted of crumbling chunks of decades-old pavement that had at one time made up the runways and taxiways of the old Dow Air Force Base.

  The field had originally been a small civil airport, but had seen three runways hastily constructed at the onset of World War Two, and then a massive 11,400-foot runway added during the darkest days of the Cold War. Dow had been utilized as a Strategic Air Command base for two decades, launching B-52s and other military aircraft until its decommissioning in 1968.

  After it was taken over as a civilian airfield and renamed Bangor International, almost all of the runways and taxiways had been closed, deemed too expensive to maintain. The single remaining runway was long enough to accept any aircraft in the world, civilian or military, including the space shuttle.

  Many of those closed runways and taxiways were turned into access roads, resulting in some of the widest, if bumpiest, motorways a Maine driver would ever encounter. It was on one of these long-ago taxiways Shane was now bouncing along in his Volkswagen.

  The control tower loomed in the distance, ancient and drafty, sticking into the air like a giant’s middle finger. Next to the control tower was a squat base building, as old as the tower, which housed the TRACON, the terminal radar approach control facility, in addition to offices and conference rooms.

  Several hundred yards from the facility, a Bangor Police Department officer had angled his cruiser across the pavement. The vehicle didn’t come close to blocking the wide access road, but the officer standing next to his cruiser, hand resting lightly on the butt of his service weapon, made perfectly clear anyone approaching had better stop.

  Shane eased up next to the cruiser. Mirrored sunglasses hid the cop’s eyes and his face was impassive. He shook his head. “Sorry pal, no access today.”

  Shane help up his government ID. “I’m expected. My name is Shane Rowley. I work here, and I’ve come to assist in the accident investigation.”

  “Hold on,” the cop said. He opened the cruiser’s door, picked up a clipboard from the front seat, and glanced at it. After a moment he looked again at Shane’s ID and then he nodded, his face still a mask. “Go right on ahead, sir.”

  Shane, curious, asked, “Have you had a lot of people trying to get up here?”

  A trace of a smile flitted across the cop’s face. “Not since I turned away the first couple of media vans. I’m sure they’re waiting until I get pulled out of here, then they’ll be on you guys like flies on shit.”

  Shane chuckled. “Don’t be afraid to shoot ‘em if you have to.”

  As he was pulling away, the cop said, “I wish.”

  ***

  The parking lot was nearly full, with a half-dozen or so cars Shane didn’t recognize taking up the few available spaces.

  He found a spot closest to the outer edge and parked, a light breeze ruffling his hair as he crossed the lot to the base building’s front entrance. He punched the entry code, then pulled open the door and entered the building.

  Inside was a long hallway with doors running down each side. Immediately to the right was a small kitchen area, equipped with an ancient oven, a slightly newer microwave, a dual-tub sink, a coffeemaker, and a small round table nobody ever used. Twenty feet beyond the kitchen on the right a doorway opened into the radar control room, where on a typical workday a controller would spend half his time, with the other half spent working upstairs in the control tower.

  On the left side of the hallway were a series of administrative offices: first came the secretary’s, occupied during weekday business hours by a sweet, white-haired lady named Mrs. Sanderson, who was maybe sixty years old and who had worked at the facility as long as anyone could remember. This being a Sunday, her office was empty.

  Beyond Mrs. Sanderson’s office were the rest of the staff offices, beginning with that of the air traffic manager, Marty Hall. Hall’s name was just similar enough to the host of the popular game show, Let’s Make a Deal, Monty Hall, that it was his fate to be forever known as Monty—at least when he wasn’t around.

  Shane lifted the carafe off the Mr. Coffee machine and sniffed warily. He could really use another cup of coffee, but the liquid inside the facility’s pot was usually so old it had the consistency and taste of used motor oil. Today was no exception, and Shane grimaced and returned the carafe to the hot plate. He decided he wasn’t quite that desperate for caffeine.

  He left the kitchen and wandered down the hallway, moving toward the sound of voices coming from Marty Hall’s office. He stopped at the open doorway and glanced inside. The facility manager was seated behind his desk, with a half-dozen people Shane did not recognize sitting in folding metal chairs arranged in a semicircle around Hall’s desk. Everyone seemed to be talking at once and for a moment nobody noticed Shane.

  When it seemed like this stalemate might go on forever, and mindful that this was his day off, Shane cleared his throat.

  Finally Marty Hall noticed him and waved him in. Everyone stopped talking and turned to stare at the new arrival.

  Hall said, “Gentlemen, this is my controller, Shane Rowley, the man who witnessed the crash while on his way to work last night.”

  Shane nodded at the group while Hall continued. “Shane, this is the NTSB Accident Investigation team. They only just arrived about fifteen minutes ago. I’ll let each member of the team introduce himself.”

  They all did, Shane shaking hands with each in turn, and then the lead investigator pointed to an empty chair and said, “We’re still awaiting the arrival of the Air Force representatives. Obviously, they wouldn’t be part of the investigation if a military aircraft hadn’t been involved, but it’s their airplane and they will take part as well. It will undoubtedly complicate matters, but we welcome their involvement.”

  Shane sat, amused. It was plain by the tone of the investigator’s voice that he was anything but welcoming of more investigators, but that he knew full well there was nothing he could do about it.

  “How long before you expect the Air Force guys to show up?” Shane asked, picturing Tracie Tanner fast asleep in his bed back home. He felt a strong attraction to the beautiful—if enigmatic—young woman, not that he expected anything to come of it. She had made abundantly clear her desire to leave Bangor in her rearview mirror, and as soon as possible. But if nothing else, he wanted to see her one more time to say goodbye in person, and the longer this interview took, the less likely that was to happen.

  “They’ll be here soon,” the lead investigator said, glancing at his watch.

  Shane noticed for the first time that each of the men surrounding Hall’s desk had a plastic nameplate pinned to the lapel of his suit, like children on the first day of school, and the man addressing him was named Paul Fiore.

  Fiore said, “The Air Force investigators are flying here from Andrews Air Force Base and are in the air as we speak. But I’d like to start now and then catch the other folks up when they arrive. You’ll probably have to go over your statement more than once, but my guess is you’re going to be telling the story more than a few times, anyway.”

  “That’s fine,” Shane said, although it really wasn’t. There was no way he was going to get out of here anytime soon.

  “So,” Fiore said, leaning back in his chair and lacing his fingers behind his head. “Take it from the top. You were driving to work last night and the damned B-52 fell out of the sky next to you?”

  “More or less,” Shane said. “This part of Maine is so heavily wooded I didn’t actually see the plane crash. I caught a flash of the aircraft almost directly overhead, much too low to be on normal approach to Bangor, and then it was
gone. A second or two later—barely enough time to register what I’d seen—I heard and felt the impact and knew immediately what had happened. That was when I pulled my car to the side of the road and went into the woods to see if I could find the accident site.”

  The questioning continued, each investigator asking for clarification of various points at various times.

  After maybe twenty minutes, Fiore got around to the subject Shane had expected him to address right off the bat. “I understand you pulled a survivor out of the wreckage. I admire your bravery, Mr. Rowley. It is imperative we speak to this young woman also, and as soon as possible. We’ve checked all of the hospitals within a fifty-mile radius of Bangor and no one has any record of treating a crash survivor. Where is this woman now?”

  This was the question Shane had been dreading. He understood the need of the investigators to question her. After all, who better to describe the circumstances of an airplane accident than someone who’d been aboard the plane?

  But by the same token, the girl had made it quite clear she was in serious trouble and did not want to be found.

  Shane didn’t believe for one second Tracie Tanner had done anything to contribute to that B-52 going down, but he also wasn’t about to admit the subject of their search was even now sleeping, injured, in his bed. He took a deep breath and opened his mouth to speak, still with no idea what he would say, when a Crash out in the hallway diverted everyone’s attention.

  And everything went to hell.

  Shane craned his head toward the door, as did everyone in the room, just in time to see fellow controller Jimmy Roberts, on duty in the radar room this morning, stomp angrily past the office door in the direction of the facility entrance.

  “Who the hell do you think you are? And what the hell is up with all the noise?” Roberts asked, continuing down the hallway and disappearing from view.

  Shane heard a phht sound, followed in rapid succession by another, and Jimmy stumbled backward into view. He wavered unsteadily in the hallway before crumpling in a heap outside the office door. A spreading ring of crimson stained the front of Jimmy’s shirt, and he lay on the floor gasping for breath.

  Chaos erupted in the office. Chairs toppled over as everyone stood, jostling and banging into each other, some moving to help the injured man, others backing away from the door.

  A half-second later a pair of large men filled the doorway, standing over the fallen Jimmy Roberts. They were dressed in suits remarkably similar to the ones worn by everyone in Hall’s office except Shane, and he had the absurd thought that maybe more investigators had arrived.

  Then he saw their handguns.

  The two investigators closest to the door saw the guns as well and they shoved backward, hard, plowing into Marty Hall, who had gotten up and rounded his desk at the sight of the injured Jimmy Roberts. He toppled directly into Shane, knocking him to the floor.

  Shane pushed immediately to his feet, still stunned by the suddenness of the onslaught. The men inside the room were cursing and shouting.

  Shane looked toward the doorway and saw the intruder to the right scan the room. The man wore thick glasses and his eyes widened when he looked at Shane. He nudged his friend, gesturing in Shane’s direction with his gun, which was big and black and fitted with a sound suppressor on the business end.

  “Everybody sit down,” the man on the left said with an Eastern European accent. He was muscular, with a blocky head that seemed to melt directly into his shoulders. “No one needs to get hurt.”

  And Shane exploded. He knew he should do as he was told, slow things down, try to figure a way out of this. But Jimmy Roberts was his friend, they had started out as air traffic control trainees at Bangor on the very same day six years ago, had worked traffic together, gone drinking and fishing together, and double-dated with their wives, back before each man’s marriage had crumbled.

  Jimmy Roberts was his friend, and Jimmy Roberts was lying on the floor at the feet of these men, dying or already dead.

  “No one needs to get hurt?” he spat angrily. “It’s too late for that, wouldn’t you say? Or do you get a mulligan on your first victim and you only start counting after number one?”

  “Easy, Shane,” Marty Hall said softly.

  The man with the glasses snarled, “Shut your mouth right now.”

  Shane realized he had taken two steps forward without thinking. He was lost in his rage and his grief and wanted nothing more than to get his hands on the man who had taken Jimmy down. Somewhere in the back of his mind he knew he was making a mistake, but at this exact moment he just didn’t care.

  And in that instant, things went from bad to much worse.

  The guy with the glasses was saying something about everyone calming down and shutting the fuck up, that they only wanted to talk to Shane Rowley—Shane thought, how the hell do they know my name?—and then they would go away and leave everyone else alone, and that was when Paul Fiore, the lead NTSB investigator, leapt forward and let loose a roundhouse right, catching the guy doing the talking in the side of the head.

  The man went down like a sack of Aroostook County potatoes and the room, which had gone silent, erupted in chaos again.

  The no-neck guy pivoted and fired. The slug caught Fiore in the face and his head exploded in a spray of blood, and everyone was screaming and scrambling for cover, trying to escape the hail of bullets as the guy continued shooting.

  The man Fiore had punched pushed himself up off the floor, shaking his head, as the square-headed guy began picking off investigators one by one, like shooting fish in a barrel, Shane thought.

  He dived behind Hall’s desk, banging heads with the facility manager and barely noticing the resulting flash of pain.

  Hall was panting like he’d just run the Boston Marathon. “What do we do now?” he wheezed.

  “Good question,” Shane said, trying desperately to think. He knew they had just seconds left before everyone in front of the desk would be dead and the men with the guns came for them.

  He looked around for something they could use as a weapon. The metal chairs were scattered around on the floor and Shane wondered how long he might survive if he charged the men using a chair as a makeshift shield.

  Not long, he thought.

  He squinted against the sunlight streaming in through the window behind Hall’s desk, making it almost impossible to see.

  The sun. It was coming through the window.

  And Shane knew what to do.

  He told Hall, “I’ll go first, just in case there are still shards of glass sticking out of the window frame. My body should pull most of them out as I go through, but we’ll only have a second or two before the guys with the guns react. You gotta follow right behind me.”

  Hall said, “What are you talking about?” but there wasn’t time to explain. The gunshots were dying out and the screams were dying out, which meant the investigators were dying out.

  They were out of time.

  Shane lifted one of the metal chairs right beside the desk and took a deep breath, then stood quickly and heaved it through the picture window. He dived out the jagged window opening right behind the chair, praying Hall had understood.

  He landed on the chair and felt a slash of pain as his elbow struck the metal seat. He rolled onto his back and looked expectantly up at the window, waiting for Marty Hall. The air traffic manager appeared at the window and grabbed hold of the frame, but he was moving much too slowly. He wasn’t going to make it.

  Shane screamed, “Never mind climbing, just dive out! Dive, get out now!”

  He watched in horror as Hall began stuttering like a marionette, bullets peppering his body, slamming it down onto the window frame.

  “Goddammit!” Shane screamed in fear and frustration, watching as his boss slumped half in and half out the window, bloody and unmoving.

  There was nothing he could do for Marty Hall, or for anyone inside the building. The slaughter had taken no more than a minute, although it had se
emed much longer, and Shane knew he had just seconds left before the men with the guns appeared at the window and took him out, too.

  He rolled to his feet and started racing toward the parking lot. He would use the cars for cover and try to make his way to his Beetle. Maybe he could start it up and get down to the cop who had set up the roadblock at the access road. It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was a hell of a lot better than standing around waiting to be killed.

  Shane sprinted into the lot, half expecting to be shot in the back, and ran straight into a third man in a suit. The man was holding a gun fitted with a sound suppressor that looked identical to the ones carried by the two men inside the facility, and he placed it squarely against Shane’s forehead as he skidded to a stop.

  The man eyed him coldly and Shane knew he was going to die.

  25

  May 31, 1987

  9:10 a.m.

  Bangor, Maine

  Tracie jammed the accelerator to the floor and turned the stolen Datsun toward Bangor International Airport. The little car was built for fuel economy, not speed, and it reacted sluggishly.

  She pounded the steering wheel in frustration, wishing she had stolen a livelier car, but hadn’t wanted to risk hot-wiring a vehicle equipped with an alarm system. The ancient cream-colored Datsun, pocked with rust spots and plastered with bumper stickers, had seemed the safest choice.

  She had glanced around the apartment parking lot, trying not to be too obvious, and when she hadn’t spotted any observers, picked up a brick-sized rock and tossed it through the driver’s side window. Then she flipped the door lock, opened the door, and threw a blanket she had taken from Shane’s apartment across the seat.

  From there it had taken less than thirty seconds to hotwire the car—chalk one up for CIA training—and chug out of the parking lot. She guessed Bangor International was roughly a ten-minute ride from Shane’s apartment, and the woman broadcasting the live news report had said Shane’s NTSB interview was to take place at the ATC facility at nine.