Deadly Dozen: 12 Mysteries/Thrillers (288 page)

Nick thought again of Lisa, and of the horror of stumbling over Harry Tanner’s body, and the anger inside him flared brightly. The same men who had so sadistically sliced up Harry were now holding Fitz and Ron hostage and forcing him to hide like a cowardly mouse in the innards of the BCT. It took all of Nick’s willpower not to charge blindly up the stairs and into the ops room to confront the crazy bastards right now.

He forced himself to slow his thoughts. Breathe deeply. Concentrate. Rushing upstairs to a certain death was not something Lisa would have wanted for him, and if there was any kind of afterlife to look forward to, which Nick had always believed to be the case but was now beginning to doubt, he was pretty sure she would be waiting for him with a stern lecture that just might last for the remainder of eternity if he did something stupid.

Think.

There must be something he could do to wrest control of the situation away from the terrorists, but he couldn’t imagine what it might be. He had no weapon, no idea where the other two armed men were, no idea how many others might be in the building, no idea even exactly what the terrorists were planning. They were presumably versed in violence and guerrilla tactics; he was not. He was outnumbered at least three to one.

He thought desperately. Nothing came to mind.

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

Placed high on the walls of the operations room were nine TSDs—Terminal Situation Displays—each one roughly six feet in width by four feet in height. Depicted on two of these plasma monitors was a view of roughly seven hundred miles of airspace immediately surrounding Logan Airport.

Displayed on the screens were tiny airplane icons in several different colors. Each icon’s color was representative of a different type of aircraft, the icons symbolizing all the planes currently airborne that were scheduled to arrive at Logan Airport in roughly the next hour. The position of each airplane icon was updated several times per minute, giving the controllers and supervisors in the ops room a real-time picture of how much arrival traffic would be entering the facility’s airspace in the immediate future as well as which sectors were going to get the most airplanes, and when.

During a busy day or night shift, these screens would seem almost alive, pulsing with sometimes more than one hundred airplane icons, glowing in colors from white to red to green to yellow. Controllers joked that when the Boston area was busy, the screens looked like their very own electronic Christmas trees.

Right now, though, at just before four thirty in the morning on a Sunday, the screens were practically blank. Traffic at Boston was almost always slow after 1:00 a.m., and that was especially true of the Saturday night into Sunday morning mid shift.

Only three airplane icons graced the huge expanse of northeast airspace depicted on the monitors. Two were inbound on a northern arrival track. The other was inbound to Boston from the south, and this was the one that drew the attention of the man holding the pistol on Larry. It glowed a bright blue, indicating it was a “heavy” jet, or what a layman might consider a jumbo jet. Larry knew immediately that Air Force One had just departed Andrews Air Force Base, carrying President Robert Cartwright on the short hop from D.C. to Boston.

Larry glanced—casually, he hoped—from the TSD display to the terrorist and saw the man gazing back at him steadily. Any hope that the man would not be aware of the significance of that airplane icon glowing blue over Washington was lost. From the look in the man’s eyes and his mocking smile, Fitz could see that he was well aware his target was approaching, due to arrive in less than an hour’s time.

Larry had not voted for the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue—he disagreed with just about everything the man stood for—but still he could not process the notion that he might soon be partially responsible for the man’s impending violent death.

“Well,” the gunman said, still smiling, “we have some time yet before the esteemed Mr. Cartwright concludes the final airplane ride of his presidency, so perhaps now would be an appropriate time to discuss the duties you will be performing for me.”

“And what would those be?” Larry was surprised at how steady and strong his voice sounded, given how close he felt to a panic attack or maybe even a full-fledged nervous breakdown.

“When Air Force One enters your airspace, you will direct the plane to the final approach course for Runway 33 Left at Logan.”

“But we’re not landing on 33 Left. We’re using Runway 4 Right.”

“That’s not my problem; it’s yours. I want that airplane lined up for Runway 33 Left.”

Larry shook his head. “But as soon as the pilot listens to the ATIS, he’s going to expect to be vectored to the approach for 4 Right.”

The ATIS—Automated Terminal Information Service—was a radio broadcast running on a continuous loop, updated by the control tower at least once per hour. The pilot simply dialed in the appropriate ATIS frequency and was rewarded with a listing of the current weather conditions at the airport, what approach to expect and to what runway, and any other information that might affect the flight, such as airport construction or runway and taxiway closures. As soon as the pilot in command of Air Force One listened to the ATIS, he would immediately question why he was being vectored to a different runway than what was listed on the broadcast.

The man jammed the barrel of his gun under Larry’s jaw, his eyes burning with intensity. “Perhaps I have not made myself sufficiently clear. I do not care what you have to say or who you have to say it to, but if you are not successful in getting Air Force One where I want it and when I want it there, you will not draw another breath. Not one.”

“Okay, okay, I get it.” Larry’s voice cracked; no longer strong and steady, it sounded to him like someone else was speaking, someone who was completely terrified and might just piss his pants.

“Take the plane to 33 Left. Okay. I can do that.” Larry was panting like he had just run the Boston Marathon and could feel sweat soaking the back of his shirt, even though the temperature in the TRACON was always kept relatively low, more for the sake of all the expensive equipment than for the comfort of the controllers.

The man withdrew the gun from Larry’s neck and sat back, once again appearing calm and collected. The swiftness of his mood changes was breathtaking and unsettling. “You will direct the aircraft to intercept the final approach course at least fifteen miles from the airport and as low an altitude as possible without eliciting any suspicion on the part of the pilot.”

Larry nodded. “The minimum vectoring altitude southeast of Boston in that particular area is fifteen hundred feet.”

The man waved the gun dismissively. “I don’t care about your regulations. You will take the plane down to a thousand feet—do you understand?”

Larry did a quick calculation in his head and knew that he could break the MVA by five hundred feet and Air Force One would still be safe—minimum vectoring altitudes were assigned with the intention of allowing plenty of clearance for aircraft over any obstacles on the ground that could be a factor. “All right, a fifteen mile final to 33 Left at a thousand feet. I can do that. But why?”

The man laughed loudly. “Why? I’ll tell you why. We have a little gift waiting for your pig president, and he must be in the proper location to receive it. I only wish I could be there to see the wreckage of his airplane sitting at the bottom of a smoking hole in the ground, but unfortunately I will have to make do by visualizing it.” He sighed. “We all have our roles to play.”

Larry looked back up at the TSD—it was a reflexive action; he couldn’t help himself—and saw that the blue icon representing Air Force One had moved a bit closer to Logan Airport. It would be a little while before it arrived in BCT airspace, but it was coming. And there wasn’t a damned thing Larry could do to stop it.

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

Nick listened with mounting horror as the words spoken by the terrorist wafted through the air exchange grate loud and clear. The Stinger missiles that had been stolen from the United States Army—the very same weapons that he now knew had gotten Lisa killed—were in the hands of a group of fanatical lunatics and would be used to shoot down the airplane carrying the president of the United States.

The irony of both he and Lisa being affected by the very same crime was not lost on Nick. First, Lisa had stumbled upon the plot to sell the information regarding the missiles to some unknown group and had paid for that with her life. Now, members of the very group that had presumably purchased the information were here in Merrimack at the BCT, forcing Fitz to put the president’s plane in the proper location to allow members of the group to shoot it down with those missiles.

That had to be it. There was no other conceivable explanation as to why this man would insist on Air Force One being vectored so far out of position from Runway 4 Right, which was what Logan was utilizing for arrivals tonight. No other reason why he would crow about the “gift” they had waiting for President Cartwright. Nick had done some research on Stinger missiles after his conversation with the FBI agents at his home, and what he learned was terrifying.

Stinger missiles had been around in one incarnation or another for thirty years, maybe even longer, and had been used by the Russians in Afghanistan back in the 1980s as well as by the United States armed forces in various conflicts around the globe, starting with the Falkland Islands over a quarter-century ago.

Normally the missiles were fired by two-man teams, but it was possible for one person to operate the shoulder-fired weapons. They required a minimal amount of training, and modern versions of the Stinger were extremely accurate, combining visual acquisition of the target by the shooter with a heat-seeking component that allowed the missile to track its target even if the aircraft took evasive maneuvers.

Stingers could be used to shoot down targets at altitudes as high as ten thousand feet, but Nick guessed that the man wanted Fitz to get Air Force One to a thousand feet to provide the best possible odds of taking it down. Undoubtedly Air Force One was equipped with the most sophisticated countermeasures available against just such a weapon, but every aircraft, no matter how technologically advanced, eventually reached an altitude on final approach where it was extremely vulnerable.

At one thousand feet, the president’s plane would be “low and slow,” with flaps extended, traveling at the relatively slow speed of around one hundred thirty miles per hour. At that altitude and speed, Nick knew it would be virtually impossible for the flight crew to take any meaningful evasive action, even if they knew what was coming.

There was no way to avoid it. The president was going to die.

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

Jackie sat in the guard shack on the edge of the BCT grounds, leaning back in the chair that hadn’t been splattered with the blood of the dead guard. His feet were propped on the console holding all of the CCTV monitors, and he was bored out of his mind. He had been dozing and was good and pissed off that he had been handed the most uninteresting assignment of all, especially after doing the dangerous and dirty work with the two guards.