BOOK EXCERPT

FINAL VECTOR
by Allan Leverone

CHAPTER 24

The garage was cool and quiet in the middle of the night, which was exactly the way Tony liked it. He had been out of the Middle East so long now that he wasn’t sure whether he would be able to withstand the relentless baking heat when he was finally able to return. He was anxious to find out, though, and thrilled to know that day was rapidly approaching, after many long years of waiting and doubting he would ever go home again.

Tony had been living legally in the United States for nearly a full decade. In the beginning it had been difficult. At times during the first long, lonely years, he questioned the judgment of those who had given him this assignment, even though he had been well trained and thoroughly prepared for his insertion into the U.S. as the leader of a Jihadist sleeper cell.

For that initial period, Tony did nothing but live quietly in the community, scrupulously learning the customs, working hard to obey all the laws of his adopted country, and avoiding any activity that might suggest he was anything other than a hardworking immigrant, anxious to make a new life for himself in this alleged land of opportunity. He reported to his superiors via secure satellite phone once a month, but otherwise, to anyone paying attention, Tony
Andretti could have been the poster boy for the American dream, post-9/11 melting pot edition.

He worked long hours at his job, provided by an anonymous patron sympathetic to his organization overseas and its revolutionary cause. Driving a delivery truck for a uniform services company gave Tony ample opportunity to insinuate himself into multiple different law enforcement and military agencies. After years of seeing the same quiet, respectful man come and go, serving them with all their uniform needs, many within these organizations came to view Tony as one of their own.

When Tony had established a standing in the community, he expanded his activities, using the Internet and the connections he had painstakingly developed in his job to identify and begin recruiting potential additions to his team. He also began stockpiling the impressive array of weapons and gear that was now practically overflowing the garage in which he now sat. He accomplished all this while never knowing precisely what his assignment would be or even when it would come.

Before Tony had arrived in America, he wondered whether his hatred for all things Western would begin to diminish as he fell into a routine and made a life for himself. After all, he would be forced to do the acting job of a lifetime: to convince everyone around him that he was not disgusted by the very sight of them. Perhaps at some point he would lose his edge and feel some empathy for these people and their twisted and heretical culture.

It never happened. In fact, the opposite was true. The longer Tony lived away from his true home, the more he missed it and the more he despised these strange people for their silly religions and their materialistic lifestyles and especially for the sexually suggestive way they permitted their whorish women to dress while advancing the ridiculous notion that women were the equals of men.

Several years into his mission, Tony received more specific direction regarding his eventual assignment, and he was able to finalize the recruitment of the men who now made up his team. He enticed them with promises of wealth and power in another country upon completion of one simple task first.

Now, sitting alone in the cool semidarkness of his D.C. base of operations, hours after he had sent his men home, Tony waited patiently for the sat phone to make the connection. When it had been estab¬lished and his contact had been called to the phone, Tony wasted no time on small talk or pleasantries. Those things were pointless. “We’re ready,” he announced amiably into the handset.

“You have succeeded in acquiring everything you will need?”

“Yes.”

“Good. You already know the president’s itinerary. All that remains is for us to discuss your team’s extraction once the mission is complete. There is an abandoned grass landing strip in northern Massachusetts roughly halfway between the two locations where you and your men will be operating. I sent you the GPS coordinates of this airfield last week. I assume you have familiarized yourself with it?”

“Of course.”

“Good. That is where we will have a small aircraft waiting to transport you and your team to a freighter which will depart out of Newport News, Virginia, immediately upon completion of your assignment to bring you home at last. Assuming you suffer no casualties, you will need a plane big enough for the pilot plus a five-man team; is that correct?”

“No.”

“Excuse me?”

“No, that is not correct.”

“You mean to tell me I have been misinformed as to the size of your team?”

Tony chuckled. “No, I mean to tell you that you have been misinformed as to the likelihood of the potential casualties that will be sustained by my team.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning there will be some. Four, to be precise.”

There was a pause. Then the man thousands of miles away on the other end of the satellite connection chuckled, too. His voice took on a hard edge. “Am I correct in assuming you will not be one of them?”

“I certainly hope so.”

“So, you . . .”

“That’s right. If all my men survive this mission, I will ensure none of them survive this mission.”

Tony’s contact paused again. The seconds ticked away in silence. Finally he asked the question Tony had been expecting. “Why? These men are going to help us achieve our greatest triumph, greater even than the success of September 11, 2001.”

“True,” Tony conceded. “But the answer is quite simple. For all their technical proficiency, these men are still nothing more than filthy infidels. They know nothing of our culture and religion, care nothing of them, either. They are greedy, unclean pigs, and I will not be responsible for infecting the sacred land of my country with the likes of them. They will help us accomplish our goal, and then they will be executed. A two-seater plane will be sufficient for the flight to Virginia.”

Tony broke the connection and placed the bulky satellite phone inside the bottom drawer of his desk, locking it securely. He lit a cigarette and took a long drag, exhaling slowly, watching as the smoke drifted away on the invisible currents of air circulating through the drafty garage.

CHAPTER 25

Special Agent Kristin Cunningham reviewed all the material removed from Nick Jensen’s home for about the thousandth time in the last several days. To Kristin and Frank, it had been instantly clear that the information Jensen notified the Merrimack Police about could mean only one thing: some nameless and faceless group had planned to hijack Raytheon-made Stinger shoulder-fired missiles somewhere between the company’s home base in Tucson and the ultimate destination of the weapons, in this case Fort Bliss.

Their assumption had been right on target too, although Kristin felt no satisfaction being right. Last week, on the very same evening that Kristin and Frank sat in Nick Jensen’s living room discussing the strange collection of information his dead wife had hidden inside their closet, that nameless and faceless terrorist group had indeed hijacked an Army transport truck, murdering the two soldiers assigned to the delivery and dumping their bodies by the side of the road in the desert.

There were no witnesses, at least none who had survived, and by now the missiles could be anywhere in the country—or possibly even overseas—under the control of a terrorist organization that had already murdered four people.

Over the last several days, Kristin had been in almost constant contact with officials from the Department of Homeland Security. Their working theory was that the stolen Stinger missiles were hidden somewhere inside the boundaries of the United States and had been hijacked with a specific domestic target in mind. The murder of Michaels was executed cleanly and professionally, but no serious effort had been made to mask the killing. To Homeland Security, this indicated the group in possession of the Stingers was planning on using them soon.

The theft had triggered red flags throughout both the law enforcement and intelligence communities, because the stolen missiles were almost completely intact. In most cases, Stingers were delivered in several separate pieces to guard against an occurrence like the one that had just taken place. In this case, however, time-sensitive critical software modifications had been made, necessitating the shipment of missiles that were virtually complete. The only thing missing was the guidance system, which, if added, would give whoever possessed the shoulder-fired Stingers the ability to wreak untold havoc and kill potentially many thousands of people in a disaster that could rival the September 11, 2001, attacks.

The likelihood that the group which had stolen the weapons was actually in possession of the software needed to accurately control them was slim, but still, law enforcement agencies at all levels around the country had been put on the highest alert status. This would remain the case until the missiles had been safely recovered.

Kristin felt a surge of annoyance that Nick Jensen had waited a couple of days after discovering the notes and other materials before alerting the authorities. Had he done so even one day sooner, DHS and the FBI could have set up a sting operation, driving a decoy truck along the mapped-out route that night with nothing inside it but a few empty crates. They could have taken down the terrorist organization that had purchased the information, and today there would be one less group of murderous fanatics out there bent on the destruction of the United States or some other Western country.

Of course, Kristin couldn’t really blame Nick. The poor guy had just lost his wife in a terrible accident and didn’t have any idea what he had stumbled upon when he found it hidden in the back of a closet. Plenty of people would never even have bothered to contact anyone. They would have tossed the binder in the trash and gone on with their lives, never giving it a second thought.

It was hard to blame Nick’s wife, either. Lisa was employed as a civilian auditor at the Pentagon, whose investigations were mostly limited to staffers stealing pens and surfing inappropriate Web sites at work. She had clearly known she was dealing with something big, but she had been too hesitant in informing her supervisors. Hell, maybe she had been concerned that a supervisor was involved and hadn’t known who she could trust with the discovery. Ultimately, Lisa had been involved in something much bigger than she was prepared to handle, and it had cost her her life.

Kristin found her mind wandering back to her meeting a few nights ago with Nick, and she was embarrassed to admit that she felt a tug of attraction. The man had just lost his wife, for God’s sake. Still, she couldn’t help how she felt, and even though his face had been drawn from sorrow and lack of sleep, there was something about him that she found alluring. He wasn’t football-star handsome, had probably never dated the prom queen in high school, but still, he seemed honest, with an easy smile and natural charm . . .

Jesus, she thought, what’s wrong with me? There’s a group of homicidal maniacs running around with a stolen truckload of lethal weapons, and I’m daydreaming like some love-struck junior high girl about a guy whose wife is barely in the ground.

She shook her head, disgusted with herself, and got back to work.

CHAPTER 26

An eight-foot-high chain-link fence encircled the outer perimeter of the large plot of land housing the Boston Consolidated TRACON. The upper eighteen inches of fencing consisted of four strands of tightly wound barbed wire jutted outward at a forty-five-degree angle. The fence was set back from the ugly mustard-colored brick building a minimum of fifty feet in all directions.

Ornamental trees, mostly small and insignificant looking against the backdrop of the big building, dotted the landscaped property, but most of the area had been left open, presumably for security purposes. Anyone somehow managing to scale the fence without being incapacitated by the barbed wire strands—in addition to leaking copious amounts of blood—would be forced to cross a wide expanse of well-lit open ground before getting any¬where near the BCT building itself.

Closed-circuit cameras were mounted on all exterior corners of the building, providing three hundred sixty degrees of CCTV surveillance around the BCT, as well as in dozens of locations throughout the interior. The cameras were monitored twenty-four hours a day by armed security personnel quartered inside a brick guard shack, complete with bulletproof glass, located at the only entrance to the facility. A reinforced steel gate could be trundled across the entryway at the touch of a button, repelling access by any vehicle smaller than a tank.

Outside the fence, though, was a different story entirely. The land immediately behind the property was heavily populated with fir trees. They were big and ancient and provided excellent cover for anyone interested in observing the facility while keeping his presence a secret.

Sitting quietly in this thickly forested area were Tony, Brian, and Jackie. It was Sunday, just shy of 3:00 a.m., and United States President Robert Cartwright was scheduled to fly into Logan Airport on Air Force One in approximately two hours. Tony’s goal was to ensure that it was the last time the president ever flew anywhere, except straight to hell where he belonged.

Clouds gathered overhead, thickening rapidly, effectively obscuring the quarter-full moon. Ambient light would not be a problem. The weather forecasters were calling for ceilings to continue to lower and eventually for a light but steady rain to begin falling across the region. If the conditions deteriorated too quickly, it would spell problems for Dimitrios and Joe-Bob, who were hunkered down in a remote location outside Logan Airport with the stolen Stingers, but Tony wasn’t worried. He had studied several different forecasts, and it was unanimous that the worst of the conditions around Logan would not occur until much later in the day—long after their mission had been accomplished.

All his men needed in order to fire upon Air Force One as it hung in the sky over the airport—exposed like a fish in a barrel, just waiting to be blown to bits—were cloud bases of as low as a few hundred feet. Assuming the current forecast was accurate, in a few hours the president would be killed in a fiery plane crash. Once the job was complete, the clouds could extend all the way down to the ground; it wouldn’t matter to Tony in the least.

The faint sound of rubber-soled shoes scuffling on pavement floated through the still air. Tony glanced at his watch. Three o’clock. Right on time. He and his men had staked out the BCT for several days now, and each morning at exactly three, one of the two security guards on duty clomped by on the paved walking path encircling the facility just inside the perimeter of the security fence.

Protocol, not to mention common sense, should have dictated that the guards vary the timing of the nightly sweeps, but it had become quite clear to Tony that security at this facility—located far off the beaten path—was inexcusably lax; the guards had not varied their routine the slightest bit from one evening to the next.

A damp breeze rustled the massive evergreens all around them, and the group held their positions, standing perfectly still in the shadows as the patrolling security guard materialized out of the darkness. He yawned and appeared to be practically sleepwalking as he strolled along the path, paying little attention to his surroundings and moving with the gait of someone who couldn’t wait to get back to his favorite chair and take a load off.

Jackie lay prone on the cold carpet of moss and reddish brown fallen pine needles and watched the man pass. He was stationed just far enough into the pitch-black area behind the trees that he remained invisible to the security guard as he made his rounds. He sighted down the barrel of a TCI M89SR sniper rifle, patiently tracking his prey. The compact semiautomatic weapon, originally manufactured for the Israeli Defense Forces and now in common use by the special forces units of numerous countries, was fitted with a sound suppressor and rested comfortably in a portable bipod, barrel angled upward. Jackie followed the ambling gait of the unwitting guard, making minute adjustments, keeping the man’s body centered in the crosshairs.

Minutes earlier, Jackie had taken out the lone security camera monitoring the grounds behind the BCT building. The camera, mounted high on the back wall of the building, had been programmed for constant motion, continually scanning for anything out of the ordinary. Now, however, this area remained free of electronic surveillance, the camera currently resting in a thousand useless pieces scattered across the rear parking lot.

The possibility that the guard manning the security station might be alarmed by the lack of video surveillance in this area didn’t concern Tony. There were so many cameras on this federal government property that it was unlikely the guard would even notice the blank screen for some time, and that was assuming he was even paying close attention to all the monitors in the guard shack rather than sleeping—an unlikely scenario given the late hour and general security laxness Tony had observed.

The patrolling guard wandered sleepily in front of Tony and his unmoving men, three pairs of eyes quietly marking his progress. When he reached a point almost directly in front of them, passing less than forty feet away on the other side of the chain-link fence, Jackie squeezed the trigger of the M89, and a soft phht sound was accompanied a second later by the sight of the guard tumbling to the ground. He executed a slow, almost balletic, pirouette before dropping gracefully to the pavement. He kicked his legs once and lay still.

On the other side of the fence, no one moved for nearly a full minute. When Jackie was finally satisfied the man was either dead or at the very least completely incapacitated, he took his finger off the trigger and began dismantling his equipment and repacking it into his bag.

Brian approached the fence carrying a small but powerful set of bolt cutters. He was covered by Tony, but the team anticipated no interruption from the other guard, who was undoubtedly still huddled in the security building and out of sight around a corner, completely unaware of what had befallen his partner. The two men never patrolled together.

When Brian reached the fence, he began snipping the tempered steel with the powerful jaws of the bolt cutter, steadily moving from the ground up in more or less a straight line, until he had created a jagged opening in the fence roughly six feet high and three feet wide that the group could squeeze through. For sixty seconds, the only sound was a muffled ting-ting-ting as he worked his way through the reinforced steel. The sound of the links snapping was surprisingly clear, enough so that Tony wondered whether it would carry through the heavy, moist air all the way to the guard shack. He then decided it didn’t really matter.

Even assuming the lone remaining guard was awake and heard the noise, it seemed unlikely it would penetrate his consciousness, and if it did, he would try to figure out what the hell it was. By the time he decided to get off his ass and investigate, the sound would have long since stopped, and he would likely just shrug and forget about it. It was clear to Tony that these rent-a-cops didn’t exactly represent the top of the law enforcement food chain.

When Brian finished creating an opening in the security fence big enough for the team to squeeze through, he pulled the chain links apart, and Jackie slipped through and entered the property. The fence creaked quietly and then fell silent as Brian maintained a steady tension on the links.

Jackie approached the fallen security guard cautiously, his Glock 9mm semiautomatic pistol with sound suppressor trained on the unmoving man the entire way. He reached the guard in a few steps and knelt down beside him, running his fingers lightly along the side of the man’s neck, feeling for a pulse. He shook his head in disbelief, then placed the gun at the guard’s temple, turned his body, and squeezed off a single shot. He felt for a pulse again.

Satisfied that the man was dead, Jackie jammed the gun into the waistband of his jeans and grabbed the prostrate guard’s ankles, dragging him back through the fence and into the relative darkness and safety of the thick stand of trees just outside the BCT property line. Brian eased the makeshift gate closed behind him and then retreated into the trees, too.

Shivering from the cool and damp air, Jackie began to undress.
-----------------
CHAPTER 27

Jim Shay was bone tired. Working two jobs—one of which required him to be alert between 12:00 and 8:00 a.m. while the rest of the world slumbered snugly in their beds—was a major pain in the ass. But with five kids and a wife who spent money like they had a printing press in their basement, he had no choice but to do what he was doing. “Keep on keepin’ on,” as the song lyrics went.

On the bright side, this BCT security gig was a piece of cake once you got past the terrible hours. He worked days as a Merrimack town cop, slept in the afternoon and early evening, then put on his generic security guard’s uniform and drove to this out-of-the-way government facility to work the graveyard shift five nights a week. As the sun peeked over the evergreen trees in the morning, he would leave the BCT and drive straight to the Merrimack Police Department to begin the whole exhausting cycle all over again.

It was a tiring life, boring too, but the way Jim saw it, he had no real reason to bitch. The United States government paid damned good money to maintain a minimum staffing level of two armed guards at the BCT 24/7, and Jim was thankful he had been selected to fill one of the slots when the air traffic control facility opened seven years ago. In this economy, when a lot of people were scrambling to keep one job, Jim wasn’t going to complain about having two.

He leaned back in his rolling office chair and yawned. As tempting as it was to close his eyes and take a quick power nap, Jim was too conscientious to ever sleep on duty. It wouldn’t be right. More to the point, if he got caught, he would definitely get fired, and what would he do then? Lucy was sure as hell not going to stop spending money, and there was no way he’d ever find another second job that paid the kind of scratch this one did.

At least he had someone to talk to; that little bonus helped pass the time. In keeping with the FAA’s policy, there were always at least two people manning the guard shack at all times, even in the middle of the night. And although his night shift partner, Morris Stapleton, wasn’t going to make anyone forget Albert Einstein and didn’t exactly set the world on fire with his initiative, he had a pretty good sense of humor and loved to talk sports, so for the most part, the nights went by as quickly as Jim had any right to expect.

Thinking of Morris made Jim wonder what was taking him so long to return from his perimeter patrol. There were only three duties mandated by the government on the overnight shift: maintain a constant presence in the guard shack, screening traffic at the front gate at all times; scan the bank of monitors showing the real-time video feed from the dozens of CCTV security cameras inside and outside the BCT building; and patrol the perimeter of the property and the inside of the BCT building several times a night.

In other words, do a little bit of law enforcement.

Over the course of their partnership, Jim and Morris had worked out an agreement whereby they would trade off perimeter patrol duties on alternating nights. Walking perimeter patrol was by far the most distasteful of the job’s few requirements, since it involved exercise often conducted in weather conditions that were less than desirable.

Tonight was Morris’s turn to Walk the Line, as they called it, and he was pretty fortunate; the conditions weren’t too bad. It was cool, and it was going to rain later. But for now the air was still, and although the atmosphere was saturated with moisture, the rain had thus far held off.

As Jim considered whether he should go look for Morris— maybe the fat slob had suffered a heart attack and was even now lying facedown and motionless behind the building—he noticed the vague shape of his partner coming into focus in the dim, hazy glow of the sodium vapor arc lights spaced at regular intervals around the property. Morris was still far off across the open empty expanse of field bordering the access road, ambling along like he always did. Jim often wondered if Morris even knew how to run. If he did, Jim had never seen any evidence of it.

Jim turned his attention toward a large imitation maple console that ran alongside the front interior wall of the guard shack. The console contained a series of small closed-circuit television monitors, each one countersunk into the surface so that only its viewing screen protruded. The guards had had a few close calls with spilling coffee onto the damned things, but so far, thank God, none of the accidents had fried any of the monitors.

He wondered how much money would be withheld from his paycheck to replace a monitor if he destroyed one and shuddered. They were just basic black-and-white CCTV monitors, five inches tall by seven inches wide, but with the United States government doing the purchasing, undoubtedly the sky was the limit on the price of the goddamned things. Each one probably priced out at upward of a thousand bucks or something.

He glanced at the three rows of monitors, looking away and then doing a double take. Something was wrong with camera 17, the one mounted on a swivel high on the southeast corner of the BCT building. It provided the only video coverage of the grounds directly behind that portion of the building, and the camera had just shit the bed, or else the monitor itself was on the fritz. All that was being displayed was interference, like the snow you used to get on the broadcast TV channels—in the Dark Ages before cable—in the middle of the night when the station was off the air.

Jim tried to remember whether that particular monitor had been working the last time he checked and was pretty sure it had been; he would have noticed if the screen had been grey and fuzzy like it was now. It wasn’t all that unusual for the cameras to suffer glitches, though. He would have to ask Morris if he had noticed anything unusual in that area when he made it back to the shack. He had passed by there just a couple of minutes ago. Where was he? Christ, that guy was slow.

Finally the man’s bulk filled the open doorway. Jim registered him entering in his peripheral vision but continued watching camera 17’s monitor as if he could somehow will the piece of crap to begin operating normally again. It would certainly make life easier if he could.

“Check out this piece of shit,” Jim said, glancing up at the man and immediately freezing in place, his blood running cold. He had no fucking idea who was standing inside the guard shack’s bulletproof door dressed in Morris’s ill-fitting uniform, but it certainly wasn’t Morris. This guy was shorter than Morris, squat and powerfully built, with curly jet-black hair sticking out of his blue ball cap at odd angles, making it look as though he had a bunch of antennae coming out of his head. Kind of like Uncle Martin on My Favorite Martian, the old TV comedy he had loved when he was a kid.

But there was nothing funny about the gun the guy was pointing at Jim’s chest. He held the weapon securely in a two-handed shooter’s grip like he knew exactly what he was doing, and he appeared completely at ease. “Check out what piece of shit, my friend?” he said pleasantly in a high-pitched nasally voice tinged with traces of a New York accent.

“Who the fuck are you?”

“I would think you might try to take a more civil tone, considering I have absolute control over whether you live or die in the next few seconds.”

Jim tried to get his breathing under control as he considered his options. There weren’t many. He could try to draw his weapon on the man, but it was holstered at his hip, held in place by a thick leather strap. He would have to unsnap the strap, lift the gun, and shoot in one smooth motion before the guy squeezed the trigger on his own weapon, which he now recognized as a Glock very similar to his own. Odds of success: pretty fucking slim.

Other options? He couldn’t think of any, except maybe to keep the guy talking. Slow things down a little. Maybe he would have the opportunity to get a jump on this character if he could draw things out and establish some control over the situation. Easier said than done, though, especially since this guy looked like a pro.

“Yeah, you’re right. Sorry about that, dude. Let me try a different question: Where’s my partner?”

“Partner? What partner? You had a partner?” The guy had a wiseass smirk on his face, and Jim realized he was playing with him. He also realized the guy said “had a partner,” not “have a partner.” He didn’t like the choice of wording and didn’t think it was accidental.

He pushed on. Keep the guy talking. Wait for an opportunity. What choice did he have? “Yeah, my partner, the man whose uniform you’re now wearing. I gotta tell ya—he fills it out a lot better than you do.”

“Not anymore he don’t.” The man’s dark eyes had gone cold, and they glittered dangerously. He held the gun perfectly centered on Jim’s chest. His hands looked relaxed and steady. This guy knew what he was doing. “He won’t be filling any uniforms out anymore, good or bad.”

Jim’s heart sank. Unless the guy was playing with him again, and that certainly appeared unlikely, he was making it clear that Morris was dead. Matters suddenly became much more dire, if that was possible. Question: What could be worse than a man pointing a loaded gun at you from no more than seven feet away? Answer: A man who had just killed another human being in cold blood pointing a gun at you from no more than seven feet away.

If this crazy bastard really had murdered Morris, then clearly he had nothing to lose. He was already facing a lethal injection and would have zero reason to allow Jim to live and every reason in the world not to. Jim knew he should be shaking, should be shitting his pants actually, but he felt a strange sort of Zen calm envelop him. He had been in bad situations before, serving two tours with the Marine Corps in the Middle East, where there was virtually no respect for human life among many of the people; they just didn’t place the same value on it that Westerners did.

He had survived confrontations with men who were twice as savage and cunning as this young man, and Jim was sure if he kept his wits about him that he could survive this, too. He just had to figure out how.

“So Morris is out of the picture. That’s too bad, man, but we can still resolve things without anyone else dying. Especially me. That sound reasonable to you? What’s your name?”

The guy coughed out a harsh laugh like the question was the funniest thing he had heard all night. His dead shark eyes narrowed. He probably knew exactly what Jim was trying to do. “Okay, I’ll play along, seeing how we’re becoming so close and all. My name’s Jackie. Jackie Corrigan. It make you feel better knowing my name?”

“Not really, Jackie. Since we’re being honest with each other, I have to tell you it makes me feel damned uncomfortable. It makes me feel like you’ve already decided what you’re going to do with me, and I’m afraid it’s something that I’m not going to like very much.”

A genuine smile flitted across the man’s face and disappeared. “I like you. You’ve got balls. In a different life we could have been friends. It’s too bad I’ve got to do this. No hard feelings, okay?”

In that instant Jim knew what was coming and tried to fling himself backward. The guard shack was small and packed with equipment, and there was virtually no place to take cover, but Jim was literally a sitting duck in that chair, propped up right in front of the killer with the Glock. He pushed off with his feet and launched himself up and over the back of the chair just as the first shot came. The pistol roared, and fire spit out of the muzzle. Jim screamed, and against all odds he almost missed that first shot.

Almost but not quite. The bullet caught Jim in the right wrist, and blood splattered all over the far wall. For a split second Jim wondered whether they would take the cost of repainting the building’s interior out of his pay, and then the man fired again. This time his aim was true, as Jim had run out of room. The bullet struck him in the center of the chest, opening up a ragged gaping hole and causing a gushing wave of blood to soak his uniform shirt.

Jim found himself crumpled on his back on the console, his uninjured left hand resting just inches from the telephone. He reached for it instinctively, but before he could punch a single button, a third bullet pierced his neck, and the curtain came down on his world as rapidly and as completely as the end of a Broadway show, except there would be no applause. His last aching thought was of Lucy, and then the world went black.

CHAPTER 28

A rickety old Dodge Dakota pickup prowled slowly along Shoreline Drive in Hull, Massachusetts. The road was mostly deserted at this hour. Abruptly Dimitrios extinguished his headlights and turned sharply left, causing a dozing Joe-Bob to rap his head against the passenger side window. He glared in Dimitrios’s direction as the truck left the road and struck out across the roughly three-quarters of a mile of empty marshland filling the space between the edge of the Atlantic Ocean and this portion of Shoreline Drive.

Dimitrios shifted the Dakota into four-wheel drive to navigate the loose, spongy terrain. Mud and water sprayed in all directions, caking the outside of the truck in a matter of seconds. It was slow going, moving relentlessly toward the Atlantic. The truck jounced and slid, its tires sinking into the soft ground before the force of the drivetrain pulled them back out again.

After ten minutes of muscling the pickup across the empty marshland, Dimitrios splashed to a stop roughly fifty feet from the water. He shut down the truck, and silence rushed in to fill the void left by the absence of the struggling engine’s whine. Low waves lapped at the rocky shoreline.

The marshy area currently serving as a staging point for the Dodge was a small spit of land known as the Hull Peninsula, one of the main battlefronts in the long-running war between local community activists concerned about airport noise and aviation officials anxious to provide air service to the region. The peninsula sat just three miles across the water from the approach end of Logan’s Runway 33 Left, which meant aircraft landing on that runway would pass almost directly overhead, just a few hundred feet above the ground.

At the moment, different runways were being utilized for Logan Airport’s arrivals and departures, so all was calm in the airspace above the truck. From inside the cab, Dimitrios and Joe- Bob could see the seemingly never-ending stream of lights from the airplanes landing and departing Logan. It looked like a line of bees arriving on one side of a hive, with another line of bees taking off from the other side. The airplane noise from this distance was nothing more than a nearly continuous low rumble.

Tony’s plan called for Dimitrios and Joe-Bob to get in position nice and early. He hadn’t wanted them to run into any unexpected difficulties and then not have enough time to set up. There would be only one chance to get this right.

Dimitrios and Joe-Bob had encountered no difficulties, so they were now hunkered down in position a couple of hours early and could relax for a while. They would begin setting up the equipment in the bed of the retrofitted truck in half an hour. That would give them roughly ninety minutes to prepare before Air Force One came floating out of the sky with its big fat belly hanging in the air above them, exposed and vulnerable and waiting to be blown to a million scorched pieces along with everyone inside.

Across the water, the bees continued to swarm, one long line of airplanes arriving, their yellow landing lights seemingly suspended in the air in complete defiance of the laws of gravity, and another line departing. The throaty roar of the departing engines floated across the water, shattering the stillness every couple of minutes like clockwork. Dimitrios and Joe-Bob smoked cigarettes and watched the aerial ballet in silence.

CHAPTER 29

Nick glanced at the big clock hanging on the wall over one of the two small entryway doors flanking the east end of the TRACON Operations Room. Hanging amidst all the high-tech electronic gadgetry stuffed inside this room, the clock seemed almost anachronistic—a Flintstones clock in a Star Wars world. It was big and round, with clunky black hands fitted over an off-white face, an exact match to the clocks that used to hang in the classrooms of the Sydney Street Elementary School Nick had attended. He had always thought that a fancy digital display would have been much more appropriate to the setting.

It was 3:15 a.m. Airborne traffic in and out of Logan had slowed to a trickle, and that would remain the case until flights began gearing up for the new day, normally around 5:15 to 5:30. Today would not be a normal day, of course, with the anticipated arrival of President Cartwright at about 5:00. The ops manager and the day shift supervisor would be stumbling in all bleary-eyed before then to stand around and look important, and the Secret Service or FBI would also be represented.

Sitting alone at the Initial Departure scope, where the Boston Area’s sectors were typically combined for the midnight shift, was Larry Fitzgerald. He looked like a lost little kid, manning one scope while surrounded by all the others dutifully displaying their boundary maps and traffic, but with no controller sitting in front of any of them. There was no need for more than one sector to be open in either the Boston or the Manchester Area on the overnight shift, considering the lack of traffic.

Nick stood up from the supervisor’s console, where he had been reading a book and trying, mostly unsuccessfully, to stay awake. He strolled over to Fitz’s scope and saw one arrival in the entire Boston Area airspace, a Global Airlines flight that had been delayed departing Tampa, thanks to a series of thunderstorms pummeling the west coast of Florida.

“Fitzy, I’m going to grab a bite to eat; then I’ll give you a break. Does that work for you?”

“That works for me, boss. I’m pretty sure I can handle this solitary airplane all by myself.”

Nick laughed. “Don’t kid yourself. You could have twenty airplanes, and I’d still be taking a break, pal.”

“Hah! Who needs you, anyway? Go ahead and take your break. I’ll face the onslaught alone.”

“I’ll be back in like twenty minutes. Do me a favor and try not to kill anybody in the meantime.”

This was how it went between Fitz and Futz, two veteran controllers who had been hooking airplanes in the Boston Area for years. They were forever denigrating each other’s abilities, but both men knew that when push came to shove and the traffic was heavy and things were going to hell in the TRACON, they could trust each other implicitly. The bonds of shared experience were strong among air traffic controllers, and until you proved yourself time and time again under the intense pressure of busy traffic and poor weather conditions, you could look cool and sound sharp on the frequency and you would still garner little or no respect from your peers.

Nick and Larry had been there. Each man knew he could count on the other when it mattered.
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CHAPTER 30

The bodies of the two dead security guards lay side by side on the cold ground, tossed next to each other like trash piled on a curb awaiting collection. Jackie had thrown the second guard’s bleeding body over his shoulder and carried him to the security fence the team had breached just a few minutes before, where the rest of the small team huddled, waiting impatiently.

“Took ya long enough,” Brian groused, stamping his feet to keep warm and lighting a cigarette. Tony had expressly forbidden smoking while both guards remained in play. Now, however, with the small security force eliminated, there was no reason not to light up. No residences or businesses populated the area immediately surrounding the BCT, meaning there would be no one to see the flare of a lighter or match. Even if a patrolling Merrimack town cop should happen to cruise past the property on the access road, he would see nothing, as the team had retreated into the relative safety of the thick stand of trees on the east side of the property.

Jackie glared at Brian, a look of scorn plainly evident on his face, even half-hidden in the shadows as it was. “Oh, really? I didn’t ice this guy fast enough for you? Well, maybe next time you can do all the heavy lifting, and I’ll hide back here in the friggin’ forest and sit around complaining. How’s that sound to you, pretty boy?”

“Shut your mouths and focus, both of you,” Tony cut in. “We’ve got work to do, remember? Or would you rather just stand around arguing like spoiled children the rest of the night?”

The two men stared at each other for a moment. Finally they knelt next to Tony, who was busy rifling through the pockets of the guards. The most valuable item in each guard’s possession was not his weapon or his radio or his money or any of his personal effects; it was the picture ID hanging on a lanyard around his neck.

Every BCT employee possessed a similar identification card, and embedded in each was a chip limiting BCT access to those portions of the property the employee had reason to use based on his or her job description. Electronic locks adorned the entrance to every sensitive area, but not every ID would provide access to every area of the building. As security personnel charged with protecting both the interior and the exterior of the property, however, the chips embedded inside the guards’ identification cards opened all locks and permitted access to every area within the BCT, and thus were keenly valuable to the terrorists.

Tony lifted an ID from around the neck of one of the dead guards and examined it. “Morris Stapleton,” he muttered, reading the identifying information. He smiled and hung it around his neck like an Olympic athlete displaying his gold medal. He then removed Jim Shay’s, lifting the dead man’s upper body off the ground to slide it off before dropping his head with a muffled thud. He handed the ID to Jackie, who placed it around his neck.

They performed the same ritual with both men’s two-way radios; Tony kept one and handed the other to Corrigan. The guards’ weapons they ignored. The men were already heavily armed and had no use for more firepower. What they had brought with them would be more than enough to force compliance from the overnight skeleton crew of three air traffic controllers and one electronics technician, now unprotected and alone in the building until later this morning.
Brian smoked his cigarette as he watched the two men. The air was heavy and damp, thick with the promise of approaching rain, which had thus far held off exactly as the weather forecasters had predicted. He burned it all the way down to the end, flicking the butt into the trees and holding his breath to keep in that last puff as long as possible.

“All right, let’s go,” Tony ordered.

Brian reluctantly blew out the smoke in a slow, steady breath. The three men lined up and slid through the opening Brian had cut in the security fence. They made no particular effort to hide either the dead bodies lying on the ground or the damage that had been done to the chain-link fence. No one would make the gruesome discovery until a full complement of guards, controllers, and technicians began arriving for the day shift a couple of hours from now. By then it wouldn’t matter.
CHAPTER 31

Dimitrios awoke with a start, confused. It took him a moment to get his bearings—he was slouched in the front seat of the Dodge Dakota parked in a marsh, a couple of miles across the water from the approach end of Runway 33 Left at Logan Airport. Dimitrios squinted at his watch. It was 3:30 a.m. He realized he had been dozing, snoring lightly, and he turned angrily to Joe-Bob. “Jesus, why didn’t you wake me up when I fell asleep?”

Joe-Bob shrugged. “Why should I? There was nothing to do for a while, anyway. It doesn’t really require two of us to watch the airplanes come and go.” He nodded toward the windshield, grimy with dried mud that had been kicked up when they drove through the marsh.
Dimitrios followed Joe-Bob’s gaze and saw that what had been a steady stream of arriving and departing airplanes was now pretty much petered out to nothing. The line of bees flying into and out of the hive had turned into an occasional lonely airplane descending the glide path to the airport or taking off and turning, climbing away toward some unknown destination.

“I suppose we should get to work,” Joe-Bob said languidly. It was clear he was tired and wished for nothing more than to sleep for a while, as Dimitrios had done.

Now, however, there was no time left for a nap. They needed to begin preparing for the critical task they would complete as the sky was brightening over the Atlantic. In roughly ninety short minutes, Dimitrios and Joe-Bob, along with the other three members of their little team thirty-five miles away in Merrimack, would change the course of history forever.

They opened the doors of the pickup and plopped down onto the wet ground, instantly sinking six inches into the muck. It was no wonder this area had never been developed. Between the standing water of the marshland and the bustling activity of Logan Airport just a couple of miles away, no one in their right mind would want to live here, even though the view of the sea was breathtaking and oceanfront land was a prime commodity.

The two men splashed slowly toward the tailgate in their waterproof boots. Joe-Bob stopped and cocked his head.

“What is it?” Dimitrios asked.

“You hear that?”

Dimitrios shook his head, and as he did, he began to hear a low buzzing, almost like the sound a mosquito would make as it navigated its way to your head to begin munching. It wasn’t a mosquito, though, and the two men stared at each other incredulously as it dawned on them both at the same time.

“Somebody’s driving out here,” Dimitrios said. He couldn’t believe his ears. Who the hell would come all the way to the northern tip of the Hull Peninsula in this swampy mess at 3:30 in the morning? His first thought was the police, but that was impossible. No one knew they were here; he was certain of that. If the authorities were aware of their presence, they would have been arrested and taken away hours ago when they first arrived.

The two men hurriedly retreated to the cab of the Dakota.

“Whoever is coming out here, we have to get rid of them,” Dimitrios whispered fiercely, as if concerned that the occupants of the four-wheel drive making its way slowly toward them with its lights off might be able to hear him.

They stared at the advancing truck as it materialized out of the darkness. The thing was close enough now that they could see it was a Jeep, at least ten years old, and it was filled with young men drinking and partying.

It occurred to Dimitrios that the Jeep’s occupants, who were clearly drunk and not paying much attention to their surroundings, might not even have noticed yet that they had company in the marsh. With a little luck, he and Joe-Bob could circle quietly behind them while they were busy carousing and eliminate them easily and quickly.

No sooner had that thought occurred to him than the Jeep slid to a stop in the mud and its headlights blazed on.

It was too late. They had been spotted.