Deadly Dozen: 12 Mysteries/Thrillers (286 page)

The initial burst of shock and terror Nick had felt at seeing the armed intruders strolling down the hallway of the BCT as if they owned the joint began morphing into something else. He felt a powerful surge of rage and bitterness and the intense desire to avenge Harry’s death, although he had no earthly idea how he might manage to do so.

Nick knew he was reacting not just to the current bewildering and terrifying situation but to the murder of Lisa as well—to the immense jagged hole that had been torn open in his heart with the loss of his wife, a hole he knew he would never be able to close completely. She had been murdered simply because she had stumbled onto something far bigger than she had been prepared to deal with. It was a lot like the situation Nick found himself confronted with now.

He gently eased Harry’s eyes closed. Time was of the essence, of course, but if the killers had not found him yet, their main area of concern was obviously not this section of the building, and he was probably relatively safe.

For now.

Nick swore softly that he would not allow these killers to escape; one way or another he would provide some semblance of justice.

He was surprised to discover he was crying softly. Tears dripped down his nose and fell onto Harry’s shirt, mixing with all the awful blood that was beginning to darken and thicken into a sludge-like goo. He whispered, “I’m sorry, Harry.”

Even in his state of confusion and anger and fear, he knew he was really talking to Lisa, expressing to his dead wife the overwhelming pain and regret he felt, the baseless guilt that ate at him every day, saying it should have been him and not her lying in the ground.

He wasn’t sure how long he stayed in that kneeling position, sobbing next to Harry’s body. Eventually the tears dried, and Nick knew he was leaving himself horribly exposed, sitting out in the open on the bloody floor of the equipment room. If the men who had butchered Harry returned, he would be a sitting duck, and although by now he didn’t particularly care whether he lived or died, he found himself burning with the desire to make a statement to these people to whom human life clearly meant nothing.

Nick concluded that the best statement he could make would be to summon help and stop the murderous fanatics from completing whatever awful task they had broken into the facility to accomplish. He rose silently and padded across the room toward the door. It was time to get help.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

“Connors 712, cleared visual approach Runway 4 Right, contact Boston Tower 123.7.” Larry was sitting ramrod straight at the scope. He had just worked a single arrival into Logan, glad for the momentary distraction from the tangible layer of tension building inside the ops room.

He thought about it and almost chuckled, a surprising and unlikely achievement considering the fact that his nerves were strung tight and he felt like he might puke at any moment. “Tangible layer of tension” was the understatement of the decade, and the clock was ticking. Hopefully Nick had been able to escape the facility and go for help, because the president’s plane would be leaving Andrews Air Force Base in less than an hour, and from there it was a short hop to Logan and directly into whatever shit sandwich these lunatics were planning on serving.

The man pointing the gun at him had not said in so many words that Air Force One would be targeted, but what the hell else could it possibly be? And with nothing much else to do except sit and think, Larry suddenly began to feel woozy and ill when he realized what the terrorists’ plan might be. Who was to say they didn’t have a group of conspirators in or around Logan? It would be simple and perfect.

The gunman lounged next to him in one of the controller chairs, feet propped up on the radar console to Larry’s right. The gun was still pointed steadily in his direction, but at least the barrel was no longer stuck into his neck. He would still be just as dead if the guy pulled the trigger, but somehow it didn’t feel quite as terrifying this way.

The man sitting next to Larry was apparently in charge, and earlier he’d had a short, intense conversation with the second terrorist. Larry had been unable to decipher anything that was said, even though they had been standing less than two feet behind him. After the brief conversation, the second terrorist had left the ops room.

Where that man had gone and what he was doing now, Larry couldn’t guess. Searching for Nick, maybe? He supposed it all depended upon whether they believed his lie about Nick calling in sick and the FAA not wanting to pay a controller overtime to cover the midnight shift.

That part was mostly true; they wouldn’t have wanted to spend the money. But in the current incarnation of the FAA, where the animosity between management and the controller workforce was all-encompassing, they likely would have forced one of the controllers scheduled to work tomorrow’s day shift to come in and work the mid instead, then worked one controller short on the day shift.

Allowing the Boston area to be staffed with less than two controllers on a midnight shift was considered a big no-no, although the Manchester area—which did the same job in the same room as Boston, albeit with less traffic—worked every single overnight with just one. Larry had no idea why that was, but it had always been that way. He hoped that this thug so casually waving a gun in his face wasn’t aware of that fact, although he certainly seemed to have a thorough knowledge about ATC in general and the Boston Consolidated TRACON specifically.

Suddenly a sickening thought occurred to Larry that was so obvious he wondered why he hadn’t had it sooner. He was assuming Nick had seen the terrorists when they entered the building and had been able to avoid them somehow, that even now he had escaped the building and was well on his way to alerting the authorities.

But how likely was that, really? Wouldn’t a much more credible scenario be that Nick had been wandering down the hallway on his way back to the TRACON from the break room, bag of corn chips in one hand and coffee or soda in the other, when these Rambo-looking dudes had come around a corner with their fatigues and their black greasepaint and their guns and put a bullet in his brain? The odds that Nick had seen them coming and had been able to avoid being captured or killed were pretty frigging slim.

Larry could almost hear the inexorable tick-tick-ticking of the invisible clock in his head. He wasn’t sure precisely what these people were planning, but they had gone to a whole lot of trouble and had risked their lives to storm a secure federal government facility protected 24/7 by armed guards, so it was obviously something major. He wondered whether he would still be alive when the sun rose. He felt queasy and washed-out.

The invisible clock in his head continued to tick.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

Brian paced back and forth inside the large conference room adjacent to the foyer, located just inside the BCT’s main entrance. The side of the room fronting the foyer was constructed of six glass panels, each three feet wide and six feet high, making it the perfect location from which to maintain surveillance on the main entrance, now the only way into or out of the facility.

Brian wasn’t clear on exactly why the entrance needed to be watched. The security guards were both dead, and Jackie was sitting in the guard shack at the front gate looking ridiculous in the uniform he had taken off one of the dead guards. Jackie’s job was to ambush the FBI agent who would arrive soon to monitor the BCT. The only people inside the building were either being held in the operations room at gunpoint or were already dead.

So the idea of cooling his heels in this glass-walled conference room, guarding the entrance to the facility and waiting for—what, exactly?—seemed more than a little unnecessary to Brian. But this was his assignment from Tony, and one thing Brian had learned early in this little adventure was that you did not deviate from the plan if the plan had been developed by Tony. Their leader seemed perfectly calm and rational, if a little intense for Brian’s taste, but behind that calm rationality was a calculating coldness that did not suffer disloyalty.

Ever.

Brian thought about how Tony had dealt with the gang bangers that had tried to disrupt their operation when they had been getting set up in D.C. and shuddered. Tony had matter-of-factly gutted several dangerous men, leaving them for dead, just to send a message. That message had been received loud and clear, and the remaining gang members had steered clear of Tony and his men ever since. Brian had decided right then and there that he would not allow himself to become Tony’s message to anyone else if he could help it.

Besides, there were worse things he could be doing than hanging out in this cozy little conference room. A long, highly-polished table ran virtually the entire length of the room, with comfortable leather business chairs orbiting it like satellites. A retractable white screen hanging from the ceiling filled one of the smaller walls of the rectangular office.

If the room had only contained a television, Brian would have been perfectly satisfied to stay here the rest of the night, but unfortunately for him, that particular amenity had not been supplied. He sighed deeply. Nobody said this job would be easy.

In a little while, Jackie would come trudging through the front door, holding at gunpoint whatever unfortunate representative the FBI had sent over to spend the day monitoring the activities of the air traffic controllers who would be working Air Force One into and out of Logan Airport.

Brian had no doubt that Jackie would get the jump on the FBI guy. Jackie was pretty good with weapons, and Brian figured the agent would probably be a low-seniority rookie. The FBI wouldn’t bother wasting an experienced field agent on a secure federal facility located nearly forty miles from Boston, where Air Force One was going to be landing and where President Cartwright would be spending the day.

Brian didn’t trust Jackie any farther than he could throw him. Under normal circumstances, he doubted whether Jackie would even bother keeping the agent alive. But Tony had said that the feeb would be coordinating with the rest of the law enforcement monkeys down in Boston after his arrival at the BCT, so killing him would put the whole operation in jeopardy. Brian knew Jackie was just as intimidated by Tony as everyone else on the team was, so he would damn well keep the agent alive. Fear could be a powerful motivator.

But the arrival of the anonymous and doomed FBI agent would not occur for a little while yet, which was why Brian paced restlessly across the soft pile carpeting of the conference room. He was keyed up and had no way of dissipating all his nervous energy. He wished he had something to eat as he stopped and peered through the big plate glass windows at the front entrance.

He didn’t expect to see anything moving, and he didn’t. He stared at the door for a moment and then continued his relentless pacing.

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

Nick burst into the hallway at almost a dead run. After seeing what had been done to Harry, his only thought was to
do
something. He needed to get to the exterior door and go for help.