Deadly Dozen: 12 Mysteries/Thrillers (287 page)

He cringed as a barely perceptible snick indicated that the equipment room door’s latch had reengaged in the strike plate as it closed automatically behind him. The noise was almost nothing. Normally he would never even have noticed it, but tonight, with three armed-to-the-teeth murderers roaming the halls of the BCT, it sounded like the beeping of an air horn or a thunderbolt crashing over his head.

Sighing softly, he turned and peered down the long hallway as he moved toward the exterior door, half expecting to be greeted by the grinning visage of one of the lunatics training an automatic weapon between his eyes. But the hallway was empty.

Nick tried to calm his nerves but abandoned the effort almost immediately. He was breathing heavily and his hands would not stop shaking. His plan, if you could call it that, was simple. Sneak the few feet to the exterior door, preferably without getting shot in the back, open the door as quietly as possible, and continue into the night, where he would then stick to the shadows, exiting the BCT grounds and going for help.

He hadn’t yet decided whether he dared jump in his car, which would be sitting in the parking lot a couple of hundred feet from the door, or if it would be smarter to try to get away on foot. The obvious dilemma was that if he started his car and the terrorists had someone stationed in the guard shack, he would never make it off the property.

On the other hand, if he
was
able to get off the property on foot, it would be a long and difficult hike to any location where he could access a telephone.

He thought about it quickly and supposed he would have to take his chances on foot. His car was equipped with daytime running lights, which would blaze on as soon as the transmission was shifted into Drive, so sneaking past the guard shack in the dark would be out of the question.

But first, Nick had to make it out of the building alive. He took a deep breath and slipped quietly down the remainder of the corridor. Reaching the door in less than two seconds, he pushed hard against the bar running the entire width of it at waist height. Silence now was an impossibility; this door would make noise as it opened no matter how careful Nick was, so he hit it at a fast walk, hoping that if the door made enough clatter to raise the suspicions of the wrong person, he would be long gone by the time that person came to investigate.

The bar didn’t move at all, and Nick smashed into the door with a thud. He smacked his forehead and twisted his wrist. “Shit,” he muttered.

He looked down at the silver bar and was dismayed to see that the right side was completely destroyed, twisted metal puckering around a jagged hole where a bullet had quite clearly been fired into it. The mechanism had been jammed with the obvious intention of preventing anyone from leaving or entering. If Nick hadn’t been so preoccupied, he would have seen the damage as soon as he had burst out of the equipment room; it was that obvious.

He cursed bitterly. He should have expected this. It was a stark testament to how rattled he had been by tripping over Harry’s lifeless body that he thought he was just going to waltz out the door and into the safety of the night.
Of course
the terrorists had disabled the door; otherwise Harry would have run right out of it when he had spotted them. He must have smashed into the disabled door just as Nick had done. He had then turned and tried to escape his pursuers through the equipment room. And he hadn’t been quick enough.

Nick backtracked, trotting down the center of the hallway, too rattled to slink along the side wall. He hit the door and disappeared back into the equipment room. Nick tried not to look at Harry’s body as he racked his brains in an attempt to figure out what the hell to do next.

He had no luck accomplishing either objective.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

The ops room felt incredibly quiet to Larry, although in reality the noise created by the scopes, the air-conditioning, and other equipment resulted in a constant low hum—a white noise that was not really noticeable until it wasn’t there anymore.

The terrorist with the gun pointed in Larry’s direction continued lounging next to him, a situation Larry had come to accept was not going to change until this whole thing was over, and he was beginning to suspect that would be soon. Air Force One would have to depart Andrews Air Force Base for Boston within the next few minutes, Larry guessed, if the president was going to arrive at Logan in time to make his scheduled early morning ceremony.

The terrorist seemed to have no problem with the silence in the room, although it was driving Larry nuts. When Larry had gotten the man talking, it was much easier to pretend the guy was just a visitor, maybe a pilot or someone else with an interest in aviation, rather than a homicidal extremist. But when they sat side by side without talking, Larry could feel panic building inside him, threatening to overwhelm him and make him do something foolish, like bolt for the door or try to attack the man and get control of his gun.

Doing either of those things would be a guaranteed ticket to an early grave. There was no way he could outrun a bullet to the door, and he knew the man sprawled so casually on the controller chair was paying much more attention to his every move than it appeared. If he took any action that the man interpreted as a threat, Larry had no doubt the guy would simply shoot him right between the eyes.

Finally he could stand the screaming silence no longer. He had to try again. He cleared his throat. “May I ask you a question?” He felt ridiculous speaking so formally to this cold-blooded killer, but he didn’t want to appear overly aggressive and get his head blown off as a result.

The man studied him for a moment before answering. Larry was certain he was going to tell him to shut up, so he was surprised when he said, “Of course.” The gun never wavered.

“Are you here because of a certain VIP arrival at Logan later this morning?”

The man continued staring at him as a smile spread slowly across his face. Larry knew that was as clear an affirmative response as if he had leapt up and shouted, “Yes, yes, death to the president!”

He pondered how to frame his next question. The faint smell of stale sweat drifted up to his nose, and Larry realized it was coming from him. He wondered for just a moment whether the terrorist could smell it.

Finally Larry spoke again. “You do understand, I assume, that at no time is the VIP’s flight ever going to come within thirty miles of this building, right?”

The man laughed boisterously and continued to aim his gun at Larry. It was amazing he could laugh that hard and hold his hand as steady as he did. “We both know we are discussing President Cartwright. Why do you refer to him as VIP?”

Larry felt a flash of irritation. “Okay, then, fine. President Cartwright. But my question remains the same—do you realize Air Force One is not going to fly anywhere near this building?”

The terrorist laughed again, but this time it came out short and bitter, almost a cough of disdain. “Oh yes, I do realize that. But thank you so much for your concern.”

Larry waited for him to expand on his answer, and when it became clear he wasn’t going to, he pushed on. “If you’ve researched aviation as extensively as you told me earlier, then you know that with modern advances in safety equipment such as TCAS, the Terminal Collision Avoidance System, which all modern airliners are equipped with, it would be virtually impossible for me to direct the president’s plane to crash into another airplane or into the side of a mountain, if that’s your intention. Even if you forced me to do that, the equipment in the airplane would tell the pilot that something was not right, and he would have ample time to escape the imminent danger.”

The terrorist’s feet landed on the floor with a thud. He stood and faced Larry, his eyes black and angry and devoid of any trace of his previous apparent good humor. “Do not presume to understand what is going on here. I do not need or want your advice. Keep your mouth shut and your comments to yourself, and do not make the mistake of assuming that I will not kill you just for the fun of it. I have devoted my entire life to accomplishing what we are going to achieve here soon, so do not treat me like an idiot.”

The man sat heavily back down in the controller chair. His hooded eyes regarded Larry steadily. He seemed to have regained control of his emotions, and it suddenly occurred to Larry that this man was feeling the pressure of the situation nearly as much as he was, regardless of how cool and collected he appeared to be. It was not a comforting feeling, considering the other guy was the one holding the lethal weapon.

Larry swallowed hard and felt the click of his dry throat. He returned his attention to the radar scope, which was again devoid of traffic. The situation was hopeless.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

The old Boston TRACON, which had housed the facility prior to the construction of the brand-new forty-four million dollar BCT building christened in February 2004, had been a dingy little radar room located on the sixth floor of the Logan Airport control tower base building. Compared to the fancy structure now housing the Boston and Manchester controllers, the old facility hadn’t been much more than a dusty broom closet.

Everything had been ancient. Radar scopes from the 1950s crammed so closely together that the controllers had practically been sitting in each other’s laps; threadbare carpeting; air filtration systems so clogged with dust that controllers tried their damnedest never to turn the lights on for fear they might contract some dread disease just by
looking
at the ceiling.

Naturally, the controllers loved it.

When they arrived at the new facility and began working with their state-of-the-art radar scopes displaying digitally enhanced targets, the place was almost universally despised. It was cold and antiseptic, the equipment wasn’t as good, and internal communication was much more difficult thanks to the increased distances between the controllers. The litany of complaints went on and on, some of them legitimate and some not.

The longtime controllers especially—of which Nick was one, despite his relative youth—had a hard time adjusting to the changes. Many of them had been forced to move to New Hampshire from their homes on the Massachusetts South Shore, and most of those with families had bitterly resented being forced to uproot their children.

Nick wasn’t one of the people forced to move, since he had already been living in New Hampshire. In fact, his commute had been cut from nearly two hours a day to less than twenty minutes. He had been ecstatic about it, although not too impressed with much of anything else about the BCT.

But right now, he had to admit they had gotten a few things right when they built this place. In the old Boston TRACON, the area directly behind the radar scopes had been a messy tangle of cables and wires and ancient electrical connections, dirty and dusty and often confusing, even to the technicians whose job it had been to keep the stuff working.

However, when the BCT was constructed, the operations room had been placed on the second floor, in an area that was so high above the ground floor that it might as well have been a third story. Under the floor of the ops room was a work area. The wiring and cables for each radar scope were fed through slots in the floor down into the workspace, where it was all organized and easily accessed by the techs for repair and maintenance.

It was a clever bit of engineering, and it was in this area that Nick now stood, listening to the terrifying conversation between one of the terrorists and Larry. Nick was listening through the air ventilation exchanges built into the floor. He stood less than six feet beneath the two men—three if you counted Ron, immobilized and duct taped to his chair at the other end of the room—and could clearly hear everything being said, but he was completely invisible to them.

He wondered if Fitz was buying the terrorist’s line of bullshit that cooperation in whatever they were planning would result in his freedom when all was said and done. He doubted it. This wasn’t the first time around the block for Larry Fitzgerald. He had to know something big was going down involving President Cartwright, and whatever it was, the odds of the perpetrators leaving any witnesses alive who could earn them a death sentence were pretty much nil. Of course, Nick had seen the terrorists’ handiwork up close and personal, and Fitz presumably had not.