Final Vector (25 page)

The terrorist forced the gun up under Larry's ear and said softly, "You
will
take that airplane to Runway 33 Left. Say whatever you must to convince him to accept it, but that
is
where that airplane is going to go." Although spoken quietly, the words were filled with an implied menace that Larry did not miss. He supposed that was the point.

"Air Force One, sorry about that, but Runway 4 Right will be closing momentarily and will not be available for at least an hour. We had an aircraft incident, and there is debris on 4 Right that needs to be removed. The winds are light enough where the decision was made by the tower supervisor to go with Runway 33

Left. The ATIS will be updated shortly to reflect the change. Sorry to spring it on you like that, but we didn't get any advance notice, either."

Larry was taking a calculated risk. If the crew of Air Force One were to call down to Massport--the Massachusetts Port Authority, the agency responsible for the operation of Logan Airport--they would discover in short order that there was no closure planned for Runway 4 Right and there had been no aircraft incident.

If that happened, Larry had no idea what he would do. He was banking on the fact that the winds were relatively light and that 33

Left was a longer runway than 4 Right anyway, so it wouldn't be a big deal to them. He also hoped that since they were on a tight schedule, they wouldn't want to waste time arguing about a landing runway when it didn't really matter.

Seconds ticked by. The AF1 target moved closer to the middle of the scope, where the depiction of Logan Airport was scribed on the digital map. The terrorist and Larry waited in silence for the response.

"Okay, then, 33 Left will be fine. We'll fly a zero-six-zero heading. Did you give us lower?"

"Not yet," Larry replied, "but now you can descend and maintain three thousand." He wondered if his shaking voice was as noticeable to the pilot as it was to him; he guessed not, since the man didn't seem to recognize anything was wrong.

The Boeing 747 turning and starting its descent toward Boston was actually one of two identical customized airplanes that were traditionally considered by the public to be Air Force One, although in reality that designator was used to refer to any airplane occupied by the president of the United States if that plane was under the command of the U.S. Air Force. Normally the plane was one of two customized Boeing 747s. Sometimes the president was ferried on a Marine helicopter if, for example, using an airplane would be inconvenient or unwieldy. In that case, the helicopter would be known as Marine One as long as the president was aboard.

The terrorist spoke softly, almost casually. "I thought I made myself clear when I told you that I wanted you to get the president's plane as low as possible. I know you can do better than three thousand feet."

Larry closed his eyes and nodded, hoping he wouldn't accidentally jar the man's finger on the trigger and blow his own head off. "I understand, but if I issue a descent clearance to an altitude of, say, fifteen hundred feet when they are still that far away from the airport, the crew will get suspicious. It's not something they would be expecting to hear. I'm assuming you don't want them to be suspicious, right?"

The answer seemed to satisfy the man, although Larry knew he could have issued the descent clearance. He just didn't know where the terrorists were planning to strike, so his goal was to keep Air Force One at a reasonable altitude for as long as possible. He couldn't imagine what difference it would make, but he needed to feel like he was doing something to try to delay the inevitable.

He wondered about Nick. Had he been captured or killed, or was there any chance at all that he had escaped and was even now on his way back to the BCT with help? Larry didn't know how many terrorists were involved in this plot; he knew there were at least two, because he had seen them. Maybe there were many more. If that were the case, the odds of Nick even being alive, much less rushing back with the cavalry to save the day, were pretty much nonexistent. If he
had
lived, though, and he
was
bringing help, he damned well better hurry up about it, because the clock was winding down.

Just cling to that hope
, he told himself. Nick was bringing the state police, the Merrimack police, the FBI, the Secret Service, the Department of Homeland Security, and the freaking CIA and the NSA. The U.S. Marines and a few Navy SEALs would be okay, too.

That thought gave him a moment's hope, but then he refo-cused on the digitized target representing Air Force One, now less than twenty miles from the airport and approaching three thousand feet in altitude. Soon the pilot would expect a turn onto the final approach course, and the zealot standing right behind his chair holding a gun to his head would be expecting him to issue a further descent clearance to the airplane.

Jesus Christ, Nick, hurry up. Please
.

Nick moved quickly to close the distance between himself and the man pressing the gun to Larry's head. The terrorist appeared completely engrossed in what was happening on the radar scope. Nick was surprised to discover he made it nearly the entire fifteen feet without tripping over a chair or scuffing his feet on the floor or alerting the man to his impending attack. He was going to make it!

As he rushed forward, Nick saw Air Force One on the radar scope turning northwest, dangerously close to Logan. He feared he had cut it too close and that the worst-case scenario would be played out. He could see it all clearly in his head. He would disarm the terrorist, taking him down and thinking he had saved the day, and then the huge Boeing 747 jumbo jet would be blown out of the sky anyway. One moment the target would be there on the radar scope, and the next it would simply have disappeared.

Who knew where the coconspirators with the missiles were actually located? They had to be fairly close to the airport, but that was exactly the problem--Air Force One was even now fairly close to the airport.

Nick reached a point roughly three feet behind Fitz and the terrorist, the two of them clumped together watching the scope like it held the secret to life. Nick supposed that at the moment it did. He raised the heavy nail gun to his shoulder, holding it exactly like he had seen hundreds of movie and television heroes hold their guns: with both hands, aiming it under his right eye with his left eye squeezed shut.

As he did, a fleeting shadow of his movement reflected off a shaft of light from one of the low-wattage bulbs mounted high in the Ops Room ceiling. It was nothing, really--a flicker, a flash, a split-second change from dim to dimmer across the side of the terrorist's face.

Nick fired, but as he did, the terrorist dropped to the floor and rolled in an evasive maneuver more complex than Nick would have ever dreamed possible. The man had sensed his presence and reacted like a gazelle.

Vaguely aware of a humph noise coming from the man as he hit the thinly carpeted floor and jarred the air out of his lungs, Nick heard the heavy tenpenny nail strike the screen of the radar scope located to the right of Larry. He knew then he had missed the terrorist. The scope imploded with a loud pop, and instantly the acrid metallic smell of frying electronic circuitry filled the air.

Everything was going to shit, and even worse, it was happening way too fast. Desperately trying to readjust his aim and fire another nail at the terrorist, Nick could see plainly that he was going to be too late. He felt like he was trying to maneuver under water while the other man was moving with the grace and speed of an elite athlete. Before Nick could squeeze off another shot, the man rolled over, sprang up into a shooter's crouch, and aimed his weapon at Nick. The gun was big and black and terrifying.

Nick heard a scream, and he realized it was coming from him.

He barely registered Fitz diving out of the way and hitting the floor to his left as he reflexively aimed the nail gun at the terrorist's head. Nick pulled the trigger, panic coursing through his body as he waited to die.

The terrorist's bullet slammed into Nick's shoulder and spun him to the floor, and as he fell, he heard another scream, a high-pitched one that he was almost certain was not coming from him.

Was it Fitz? Had Fitz been hit, too? Was it possible that the terrorist had shot both of them with one bullet, or had Nick been so freaked out he had missed the sound of the man pulling the trigger on his weapon more than once?

Nick had failed. He waited for the end, for the man to put him away with a second bullet, this time between the eyes. One second passed. Another. Nothing happened. Nick realized he had squeezed his eyes tightly shut in anticipation of the kill shot that had never come.

He opened his eyes and saw the terrorist stretched out on the floor six feet away, unmoving. The man was lying flat on his back with a thick nail protruding from the middle of his forehead like the top half of an exclamation point. An inch and a half of the nail was visible under his shock of unruly black hair; the remainder was buried in his skull. A trickle of blood moved sluggishly across the unmoving man's forehead. It was a tiny jet-black slash in the dim light.

Nick leapt to his feet, barely noticing his own warm, sticky blood oozing down his chest and soaking his shirt. He trained the nail gun on the terrorist and approached slowly, and when he was close enough, he kicked the man's pistol out of reach. It was surprisingly heavy, and it skittered and bounced across the floor, eventually coming to rest against the back of the supervisor's console in the Inner Ring. The man still hadn't moved.

Somewhere in the recesses of his consciousness, Nick heard Larry keying his microphone. "Air Force One, climb
immediately
and maintain one-four thousand! I say again, max climb to four-teen thousand feet; do it now! Turn right
immediately
to a heading of one-three-zero degrees! An
immediate
right turn! Again, do it right now!"

Still focusing on the prone, unmoving body of the terrorist, Nick knelt and placed one shaking hand on the man's neck, feeling for a pulse. He was irrationally afraid that the man would do what villains in horror movies always did--grab his hand and begin fighting again. Even though he knew it only happened in Hollywood, he couldn't shake the feeling that the man's eyes would spring open and he would close one viselike hand around Nick's wrist and then somehow rise like a zombie, or maybe like Glenn Close splashing out of the bathtub at the end of
Fatal Attraction
, and come after him again.

Nothing happened. Nick pressed two trembling fingers into the man's neck where the carotid artery was and where there should have been the steady throb of a pulse. He was both relieved and sickened to discover there was none. Nick Jensen, who had not so much as been involved in a fistfight in twenty-five years, had just killed a man.

In the background, Nick could hear the pilot of Air Force One shouting, "What the hell is going on down there?"

But Nick knew the pilot would be comply with the urgent instructions he had been given. He was angry but alive. They had done it. They had saved the president.

It all happened so fast that it was nearly over before Larry even realized what was going on. The radar scope to his right imploded, its surface disappearing in an impressive shower of glass into the machine's circuitry followed immediately by a sizzling noise as the components were zapped and destroyed, and his instinct for survival kicked in.

He half felt, half saw a blur on his right and registered it as the terrorist diving to the floor to escape the bullets being fired by whoever had come to save them. Or maybe he had been hit by one of them; he couldn't say for sure. All Larry was certain of was that he had to get out of the line of fire--
now!

He pivoted left and dived onto the carpeting like an Olympic swimmer hitting the pool. His left arm struck the floor and scraped across it as his body followed, skidding along the carpet and instantly raising an ugly red rash from his wrist to his shoulder. His head smashed into the floor, and for a second, he had the absurd vision of tweeting birds circling his head like they always did in cartoons when the characters fell off a cliff, got run over by a truck, or were held hostage by crazy, fanatical terrorists fighting a gun battle in the middle of someone's supposedly secure work-place.

Then his head cleared, and he struggled up onto his hands and knees, prepared to take cover behind the cops or FBI agents or SWAT teams that had come to rescue them. He looked up and froze, his jaw nearly hitting the floor again, so unbelievable was the sight that greeted him. It was Nick, good old Futz, and he was taking on this terrorist, this professional killer with what looked like a nail gun.

As Larry watched, openmouthed, seeing everything in what seemed like the super slo-mo that the networks sometimes featured during football games, the terrorist tumbled onto his back and flipped right over his shoulder, landing on his hands and knees. It looked like something you might see in the circus. The man got up into a shooter's crouch with a speed and dexterity that Larry found almost impossible to believe, bringing his pistol to shoulder height and opening fire.

Nick went down in a heap, spinning almost one full revolution from the force of the bullet that struck him somewhere in his upper body. A gush of blood blossomed, soaking through Nick's shirt almost instantaneously.

Horrified, Larry watched as Nick fell to the floor, and then he turned his head to see who the terrorist was going to finish off first.

What he saw he almost could not believe. The terrorist was on his back on the floor, a shiny silver nail protruding from his forehead.

Somehow Nick had managed to fire a nail--a fucking nail!--

dead center into the man's head as he had been preparing to kill them both. The man remained unmoving as Nick leapt off the floor, walked over to him, and kicked his gun away.