Deadly Dozen: 12 Mysteries/Thrillers (266 page)

THE END

#

Look for DEAD CELEB #2 coming soon in 2014!

Suggested Play List While Reading

Dead Celeb

Waiting on a Friend (Rolling Stones)

Rumor Has It (Adele)

Beautiful Day (U2)

Buffalo Soldier (Bob Marley and The Wailers)

Just a Girl (No Doubt)

No Woman No Cry (Bob Marley and The Wailers)

Positive Vibration (Bob Marley and The Wailers)

One Love (Bob Marley and The Wailers)

Lights (Ellie Goulding)

Fade Into You (Mazzy Starr)

Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door (Johnny Cash)

Edge of Seventeen (Stevie Nicks)

Careless Love (Janis Joplin)

Piece of My Heart (Janis Joplin)

A Note From Michele

A note to my readers:

Readers are the lifeblood of what fuels a writer’s career. They graciously spread the word when they love a book, and I am so grateful to have some amazing people who read my books. They send me e-mails letting me know they enjoyed reading my work and also sharing their lives with me. Readers make my passion as a writer that much more sweet. It is always my goal when I start a new book that that book will be a touch point of joy–a book that will entertain and allow a bit of escape from everyday life.

I hope you enjoy DEAD CELEB. I loved writing it and have been excited to see it get out into the world.

I also love hearing from readers, so please e-mail me at
[email protected]
and share with me!

Cheers,

Michele

FINAL VECTOR

ALLAN LEVERONE

Third Edition

© 2013 by Allan Leverone

Cover design by Scott Carpenter

To be notified of new releases, as well as to gain access to exclusive content and qualify for free stuff, please sign up for Allan’s semi-regular email newsletter via the “Contact” tab at
www.AllanLeverone.com

DEDICATION

For my beautiful wife, Sue, who, luckily for me, took that whole “for better or worse” thing to heart, who has believed in me every step of the way, and who is my best friend.

CHAPTER ONE

“Hello?”

“Uh…hello…is this—?”

“No names!
You know damn well who this is, and you know you are prohibited from calling this number except in an emergency.”

“I know, I know, but this
is
an emergency.”

Silence.

“Well, get on with it, then. What is the emergency?”

“She…uh…she knows.”

“How much does she know?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe everything.”

“She doesn’t know everything, you idiot. If she knew everything, you would be in jail right now, and I would be residing in Guantanamo. The place isn’t closed yet, you know.”

“Nevertheless, she knows enough, I’m certain of it. I tried to gain us some time, though. I told her it was all a misunderstanding and that I could explain everything. I begged her not to turn me in to her superiors until I had the opportunity to do so.”

“Okay. How much time did she give you?”

“Until Monday.”

“This coming Monday? That’s all?”

“Yes. I…I’m sorry…”

“You’re sorry. Right. Of course you are. I’ll take care of it, you untrustworthy fool.”

“Are…are we…still on?”

“Of course we’re still on. Nothing has changed. And don’t call this number again.”

“But…”

The line went dead.

CHAPTER TWO

“Boston Approach Control, this is Atlas 317. We’ve, uh, we’ve got a bit of a problem here.”

Nick Jensen swore lightly under his breath. “Great,” he mumbled to no one in particular. “A problem. Just what I need to hear when I’ve got airplanes out the ass.”

It was Thursday night in the BCT—the Boston Consolidated Tracon—in Merrimack, New Hampshire, and the weather had been steadily deteriorating all afternoon. A massive low-pressure area was sweeping up the East Coast, carrying moist, unstable air and bringing high winds and heavy rain along for the ride.

The dark room hummed with the murmured voices of eight air traffic controllers sitting side by side facing eight separate radar scopes. Each controller was working a piece of the airspace immediately surrounding Boston’s Logan International Airport, with each responsible for maintaining a safe and orderly flow of the airborne traffic transiting his or her sector.

Nick was working Boston’s Final Vector position, so he was responsible for sequencing and spacing all of Logan’s arrival traffic, being fed to him by the surrounding sectors. For the hour and a half or so that he would be assigned to the position, his job was literally to get all his ducks in a row. Using altitude separation, speed control, and unique headings assigned to each pilot, called radar vectors, Nick was systematically turning each arrival onto the ILS—Instrument Landing System—that served Runway 4 Right at Logan. The Final Vector controller was tasked with maintaining the minimum separation legally permissible, but absolutely no less than that, in order to get all the traffic on the ground with the least possible overall delays.

With the low overcast ceilings and reduced visibility caused by the wind-driven rain, every arrival into Logan as well as all the arrivals into the smaller airports in Boston’s airspace were being vectored for the precision approach guidance provided by the ILS system. At the moment a dozen airplanes clogged Nick’s tiny chunk of airspace, and the last thing he wanted to hear was that one of those planes was experiencing some difficulty. The strained urgency in the voice of the Atlas Airlines pilot, though, told him this wasn’t your garden-variety equipment issue—this might be serious.

Nick pushed the foot pedal to the floor, keying the mike on his headset allowing him to speak to all the airplanes on the discrete radio frequency assigned to his sector. “Atlas 317, go ahead. What’s the nature of your problem?”

“Ah, we’ve got smoke in the cabin.” The pilot’s voice came back professional but clearly tense. “And it’s getting thick in here very quickly. We are either on fire or are experiencing a serious electrical problem. We need to get this crate on the ground.
Now.
”

Nick half turned in his wheeled swivel chair and yelled across the room to the watch supervisor, Earl Washington, seated at a desk behind the row of controllers manning the radar scopes. “Hey, Earl, I’ve got an emergency here, and I think it might be a bad one.”

He pressed the foot pedal again. “Roger, Atlas 317. We’ll get you right in. Descend and maintain three thousand, and turn right heading three-one-zero.” He was turning the Atlas Airlines Boeing 757 directly at Logan’s final approach course and would be forced to break out at least two other airplanes already established on the final, which at the moment extended nearly thirty miles to the southwest of Logan Airport.

As Earl coordinated with the supervisor on duty in the Logan control tower—the facility located right on the airfield responsible for separating the traffic on the surface of the airport—Nick rapidly issued a series of turns to all of the airplanes affected by the unexpected emergency, taking them off the final approach course and explaining the situation as he went. Time was a valuable commodity if the Atlas flight really was on fire. “Rapid Air 400, cancel your approach clearance, turn left heading two-seven-zero and climb
immediately
to maintain four thousand. I’m giving your spot to an aircraft inbound with an emergency.”

“Rapid 400, roger. Left to two-seventy and hurry on up to four thousand.”

“North American 28, cancel your approach clearance and maintain three thousand. Turn left heading two-seven-zero. This is a vector off the final for inbound emergency traffic.”

“North American 28, roger. Left to west and we’ll maintain three thousand.”

By now Earl had positioned himself directly behind Nick’s chair. The normally chaotic buzz of voices in the TRACON—Terminal Radar Approach Control—had dropped to an almost reverential, churchlike quiet as the other controllers in the room recognized that a serious situation had developed on the Final Vector position. The sectors feeding arrivals to Nick immediately began “spinning” their airplanes, turning them away from Nick’s airspace and holding them in their own sectors. They knew Nick was juggling far too much traffic now to take any more until the emergency situation was resolved.

Earl bent down and spoke quietly in Nick’s ear. “When you can get it, we’re going to need”—

“I know,” Nick replied. “Souls on board and amount of fuel remaining. I’m getting to that.” Standard emergency protocol dictated that the number of people on board the aircraft and the amount of fuel remaining in its tanks get passed to the emergency response personnel on the ground as soon as possible. The rescue crews needed to prepare for the potential worst-case scenario—a plane crash at the airport.