Deadly Dozen: 12 Mysteries/Thrillers (267 page)

Nick keyed his mike. Despite the skyrocketing stress level and the chaotic situation unfolding on the radar scope in front of him, he maintained a calm demeanor on the frequency. Sounding in control meant being in control. “Atlas 317, you’re only about eight miles from the ILS final approach fix. Will you be able to get down from there?” Turning the plane toward the airport too soon and then finding out the pilot would not be able to descend rapidly enough to land would be the worst thing Nick could do.

“We’re doing our best,” came the answer. “It’s getting really hard to see the instruments in here with all the smoke. Yeah, we’ll make the descent because we have to.”

“Atlas 317, roger. Turn right heading zero-two-zero and intercept the Runway 4 Right localizer. I know you’re very busy up there, but when you can get to it, we need souls on board and fuel remaining.”

“Zero-two-zero to join the localizer, and we have … let’s see … one hundred seventeen people with a little over two hours of fuel.”

“Roger that, Atlas 317. You’re doing great with the descent. Your position is five miles from the final approach fix. Descend and maintain two thousand until established on the localizer, cleared ILS Runway 4 Right approach.”

Nick inclined his head slightly toward Earl without taking his eyes off the scope. “One hundred seventeen people and two hours of fuel.”

He didn’t wait for a response from the supervisor; he was already busy formulating a plan to deal with the other arrivals, all of which were now completely out of position thanks to the emergency. Hopefully Atlas Air 317 would be safely on the ground soon, but Nick’s work was just beginning. “Liberty Air 5, you’re now going to follow a Boeing 757 on final. Caution for wake turbulence.”

“Liberty 5, roger, we’ll be careful.”

“North American 28, continue your left turn heading two-three-zero. I’ll get you right back in as soon as I can.”

“North American 28, left to two-thirty. We understand.”

“Swift 400, you can also turn left heading two-three-zero. Thanks a lot for the fast climb to four thousand feet.”

“Left to two-three-zero. You’re welcome.”

“Atlas 317, how are you doing, sir?”

“We’re struggling, but I think we’ll be able to make it.”

“Okay, Atlas 317, contact Boston Tower now on frequency 123.7. Good luck to you.”

“Tower on twenty-three-seven. Thanks a lot for the help.”

Behind him, Earl said, “Nice job, Nick.”

Nick didn’t answer; he had already turned his attention to the mess he had yet to sort out—the nearly one dozen airplanes whose sequences had been disrupted by the sudden emergency and who were now nowhere near where they should be in Nick’s airspace. There was a lot of catching up to do.

Nick took a deep breath and started barking out commands as the control tower supervisor called on a landline to tell Earl that Atlas 317 had landed safely and the aircraft was being evacuated on a taxiway.

The traffic kept coming. The controllers kept talking. The Thursday night shift continued.

CHAPTER THREE

Lisa Jensen blinked rapidly, attempting without any measurable level of success to maintain her concentration as she navigated the rain-slicked highway. Alone and overtired, she had already tried every trick she could think of for remaining alert while traveling late at night, including cranking her music up to earsplitting levels and rolling her window down. She was fading fast, though.

Rain slanted at a forty-five degree angle out of the coal black sky, pelting the area as it had been doing virtually nonstop since Lisa had left D.C. The headlights of the passing traffic cast the landscape surrounding Interstate 95 in a shimmering, almost surreal muted glow. Hours ago, she had reached the conclusion that the sensible decision would have been to stay the night in the city and drive back to New Hampshire tomorrow morning after the storm passed through the area. But her time with Nick was already limited enough, and Lisa couldn’t stand the thought of spending even one more night away from her husband.
Hell,
she thought,
we don’t see enough of each other as it is.

Lisa gazed longingly at the Styrofoam coffee cup perched in the holder directly in front of her Toyota’s gearshift, its emptiness taunting her, and blinked again, hard. Her scratchy and bloodshot eyes began to water. She forced herself to sing along with the radio.

A fully loaded eighteen-wheel automobile carrier passed her in the left lane, moving much too fast for the conditions, rocking her little car on its springs and spraying a solid sheet of water onto the windshield in its wake. The Toyota’s overmatched wipers worked at clearing it all away, the rapid
whup-whup-whup
of the wiper blades trying to lull Lisa back into the state of intense drowsiness she was trying so hard to avoid

Lisa’s gaze snapped immediately into focus as her car plunged into a long, deep, and nearly invisible pool of black water stretching into the travel lane. Instantly the car began to hydroplane. She wrenched the wheel to the left as the Toyota slewed out of control toward the guardrail, water splashing in massive fountain-like arcs outward from both sides of the vehicle.

She knew enough not to hit the brakes, although the temptation to stomp on them was almost overwhelming. Instead, she concentrated on steering out of the slide, allowing the car’s momentum to slow on its own. She held her breath as the guardrail crept closer and closer. After seconds that felt like hours, the Toyota was back under control, and Lisa gradually began to increase her speed. She checked her mirrors and then angled out of the breakdown lane.

Chuckling nervously and breathing hard, Lisa muttered, “Well, at least now I’ll be wide awake for a while. Nothing like the occasional near-death experience to give you a jolt of adrenaline!”

She was no longer drowsy but still longed to be home with Nick, couldn’t wait to be in his arms. A Pentagon auditor, Lisa spent every Monday through Thursday in Washington away from her husband, who was forced to stay alone at the couple’s Merrimack, New Hampshire, house. Nick was employed as an air traffic controller at one of the busiest airports in the country, unable to relocate to a city nearly five hundred miles away.

At the close of administrative hours at the Pentagon every Thursday, Lisa’s standard routine was to eat dinner in a small café a few blocks from the mammoth office building and wait for the Beltway area traffic congestion to ease. Then she would hit the road in her trusty Toyota, which was only three years old but which had already racked up well over 150,000 miles. She would work her way up Interstate 95 to New England, then zigzag various interstate highways to Route 3 into New Hampshire, eventually reuniting with the other half of her tiny family. Lisa’s ten-hour workdays Monday through Thursday allowed her to spend a couple of full days every weekend with Nick.

It certainly wasn’t the perfect arrangement. Making a marriage work was enough of a strain for a husband and wife who were together every day, but the challenges faced by a couple forced to spend nearly three quarters of their lives apart sometimes seemed insurmountable.

The Jensens had been enduring exactly that situation, though, for most of their married life, and the plan was to continue in a similar fashion for several more years. By then they estimated they would have enough money set aside for Lisa to quit her job and stay at home to raise a family full-time. That was the theory, anyway. At moments like this, she wondered about the wisdom of The Plan, but the prospect of that happy family, complete with two or three children running around their home, was the carrot dangling on the end of the stick that kept her going even when things were the most difficult.

As she drove, Lisa’s mind wandered inexorably back to the mess she had somehow gotten mixed up in at work, to the intrigue that seemed to reverberate within the dozens of miles of passageways running through the Pentagon. She wished she could discuss it with Nick. She hated deceiving him, but knew in her heart it was best to keep him in the dark, even though he was a valuable sounding board and never failed to give her good advice when she asked for it—and sometimes even when she didn’t.

She wondered what a relationship expert would say about the fact that she was how hiding things from her husband, the person with whom she was supposed to have a closer relationship than anyone else in the world. After all, everyone knew honesty was the foundation of a good marriage. Lisa chewed on her lower lip, a habit she had developed as a youngster when confronted with stress. Hiding things from Nick. She detested the idea and considered what it said about her.

Ensuring Nick’s safety was paramount, though, and Lisa’s work situation was potentially explosive, even when compared with the enormity of some of the other secrets held inside the walls of the massive Pentagon building.

As hard as it was for her to believe, there seemed to be the very real possibility of people getting hurt or even killed because of her discovery. Hell, killing seemed to be the whole
point
of it, and she was determined not to do or say anything that might put Nick’s life at risk. Lisa pursed her lips and shook her head firmly as she drove, trying to bury the small nugget of guilt eating away at her insides.

This afternoon Lisa had come to the conclusion that it was time to involve her supervisor. She had been dealing with the situation on her own for the last two weeks, quietly digging, searching for evidence of a serious—perhaps even treasonous—criminal conspiracy.

Against her better judgment, Lisa had agreed to allow Nelson W. Michaels, one of the men she suspected of heavy involvement in the activity, an opportunity to explain himself when she returned to D.C. next week. The evidence she had uncovered against Michaels was so damaging that it could ruin Nelson’s life. She knew she would never be able to look herself in the mirror every day if she allowed a man’s career to be destroyed without first giving him the chance to prove his innocence.

But there was a
lot
of evidence. Some of it was tucked securely away in the hard drive of her laptop, the one she was careful to keep in her possession at all times when she was at work. The rest was stowed safely in the back of the walk-in closet of their home in Merrimack. Lisa had stacked it all behind a pile of sweaters and parkas. Attempting to safeguard the evidence in her office at the Pentagon would be foolhardy, even if it were kept under lock and key, and the same thing went for trying to hide it in the studio apartment she rented outside D.C. There simply wasn’t any place to secure enough to conceal the papers in the three tiny rooms.

She didn’t like the idea of storing potentially dangerous material in their home, but she reasoned that it would be there for only a few more days. Besides, what was the likelihood that anyone searching for the evidence would even know she had a husband and a home in New Hampshire, anyway?

Lisa sighed. She couldn’t wait for Monday, when she could haul everything back down to D.C. and dump it all into her boss’s lap. She would leave it up to him to figure out how to pursue the investigation. The implications of her discovery, if correct, were far above her pay grade. She decided to schedule a consultation with her supervisor immediately following her planned meeting with Nelson Michaels Monday morning. If by some miracle Nelson was able to convince her that her concerns were groundless, she would simply cancel the meeting and appear silly in her boss’s eyes. She wouldn’t mind that in the least.

By now Lisa had nearly completed the long drive home. It was almost three o’clock in the morning, and she had been so wrapped up in the consideration of her work situation that the miles had flown by. She knew Nick would be waiting up for her, a cup of steaming tea in one hand and some sexy lingerie he had picked out for her in the other. “To get to know each other again,” he would say with a mischievous smile, in what had become a part of their weekly routine they both looked forward to.

Lisa smiled at the picture in her head and accelerated through the traffic light at the end of the long, winding off-ramp leading from the highway to the surface streets of Merrimack. It was still pouring; to Lisa’s amazement the rain had gotten heavier over the course of the last eight hours as the storm moved up the East Coast and gained in intensity. She stopped at the red light, even though it was ludicrous to think that any other cars would be out at this late hour, especially in such miserable weather.

She pulled through the intersection when the traffic light flashed green, planning to make a left turn toward her home. As she did, her side window was filled with the bright white headlights of an eighteen-wheel semi hauling beer from the Budweiser brewery that was one of the town’s biggest employers. The massive rig had run the red light, its driver obviously thinking exactly what Lisa had been thinking just seconds before—that no one would be out in Merrimack this late.

The huge vehicle lost traction on the slick road, its driver locking up the brakes in a desperate attempt to avoid running down the little car. The truck barely slowed, its own momentum and the water-covered pavement combining to thwart the efforts of the frantic driver.