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She sat bolt
upright in a strange bed, feeling stiff and sore, and then the memories came
rushing back: Major Mitchell shooting his fellow B-52 crewmembers, Tracie
returning fire and putting Mitchell down, the desperate attempt by a dying
Major Stan Wilczynski to land the big jet in Bangor, Maine, the subsequent
plane crash, and her rescue by air traffic controller Shane Rowley, who brought
her to his apartment and cleaned and bandaged her injured leg.

Then she had
fallen asleep in his bed. She started to panic again as she looked for the
letter she had to deliver to President Reagan from Mikhail Gorbachev. She
snatched up her pillow, and there it was where she’d stuffed it, crumpled and
sweat-stained, flecks of blood splattered across it.

She grabbed it with
a sigh of relief and then looked around, wondering about the time. A digital
clock-radio on a dresser on the far side of the room said eight twenty. Tracie
tried to remember the last time she had slept this late and couldn’t.
Stretching, she eased off the side of the bed and gingerly placed a little
weight on her injured leg. Her thigh throbbed but the pain was bearable. She
leaned more firmly and finally took a couple of shuffling steps toward the
bedroom door.

Painful but not
overwhelmingly so.

She poked her head
into the short hallway and looked around, seeing no one. She smelled fresh
coffee and her stomach rumbled. Shane must be in the kitchen. She decided to
take advantage of the opportunity for a shower and slipped into the bathroom.
Splotches of dried blood covered her arms and she could feel more blood flaking
off her face. Her hair was matted and stringy. She felt as though she had
crawled through a mud puddle the size of a football field.

She closed the
bathroom door, put the letter on top of the toilet tank, and undressed, casting
a critical eye at the makeshift patch job Shane Rowley had done on her leg last
night, pleased to see only a slight discoloration of the Ace bandage at the
site of the injury. There was no oozing or seeping of blood.

She knew she
should remove the bandage and clean the wound again, but didn’t want to take
the time now. She’d do it later.

Tracie eased into
the shower, holding her injured leg awkwardly out of the tub in an effort to
keep the bandage dry. It was uncomfortable standing like that, hard to keep her
balance, but she turned the hot water up as high as she could stand, then
showered quickly. She washed her hair with some shampoo she found in a hanging
shower caddy and then got out, dripping water all over Shane’s floor while she
searched for a towel.

She found a stack
of clean bath towels in a cabinet under the sink, dried off, and wrapped one
around her body, now clean and pink from the hot shower. She wasn’t looking
forward to getting back into her filthy clothes, but didn’t have much
choice—her travel bag had been lost in the crash. She decided to delay the
inevitable, instead picking the precious envelope up off the toilet tank,
opening the bathroom door and limping down the hallway in search of the coffee.

 And, she had to
admit, Shane Rowley.

The kitchen was
empty. So was the living room. A couple of blankets had been thrown carelessly
to one side of the couch and a pillow lay on the far end. It was obvious Rowley
had slept here, but Tracie’s assumption that her rescuer was anywhere in the
apartment had been off the mark. She turned and wandered into the kitchen,
finding a pile of neatly folded clothing on the counter. A handwritten note had
been placed atop the clothes.

Tracie furrowed
her brow and unfolded the note.
Good morning, Tracie,
it read.
I hope
you’re feeling a little better. Sorry I’m not here, but I got called in to
work. I have to talk to the NTSB investigators about the crash. They’re going
to want to talk to you, too, but you looked so exhausted last night that I
didn’t have the heart to wake you up before I left. The bureaucrats can wait.

The coffee is
fresh, and the water is hot if you’d like to shower. I made the assumption
you’ll want clean clothes, so I dug out some of the stuff my ex-wife left
behind in her rush to escape her boring husband and the backwoods of Bangor,
Maine. You’re probably not exactly the same size, but I’m guessing it will fit
okay. I have a feeling you could wear just about anything and look stunning.

Make yourself
at home, and if you’re so inclined, I would love to help you figure out your
next move when I get back. If you decide to hit the road before I return, good
luck to you, and thanks for my most interesting Saturday night ever.

                                                                                                       
Shane

Tracie finished
reading, then rummaged around in the cupboard above the counter until she found
a mug and poured herself a cup of coffee. She stood at the counter sipping it
as she read the note a second time.
I have a feeling you could wear just
about anything and look stunning.

She found herself
smiling as she thought about the handsome young air traffic controller, and then
shook her head at her foolishness. Something explosive was contained in the
envelope she held in her hand, something someone was willing to go to great
lengths to destroy.

She sat down at
Shane Rowley’s tiny kitchen table, thinking about secret communications and
international diplomacy and who might have the desire—and more importantly, the
ability
—to commit murder in the interest of squelching a communique that
only a handful of people in the world even knew existed. There seemed to be
only one possibility, and if she was right, that possibility was terrifying.

Tracie knew she
needed to contact her handler, and she needed to do it before speaking to
anyone at the NTSB, or even anyone from the Air Force. A U.S. military officer
had brought down that jet last night and had murdered two fellow officers in
cold blood, and the only entity Tracie could think of that possessed the reach
to accomplish that—and the desire to do so—was the KGB.

She limped back
into the living room and flipped on Shane’s television. A local news reporter
was doing a live broadcast from Bangor International Airport on last night’s
B-52 crash, and in the lower right corner of the screen was a picture of Shane.
“Our source tells us this man, Shane Rowley, an air traffic controller living
here in Bangor, was on his way to work at the time of the crash and was able to
rescue the as-yet unidentified woman. Her condition and whereabouts, as well as
the whereabouts of Rowley, are at this time unknown, but our source tells us
Mr. Rowley is scheduled to meet with NTSB investigators as well as
representatives of the Air Force at nine a.m. at the control tower building here
at BIA to assist in the investigation. More on this story as it develops. Jane
Finneran, WBGR News 9.”

Tracie stared, her
heart sinking. Shane had called a supervisor last night to explain why he
wasn’t at work, and that person, or someone close to that person, must have
leaked details to the press.

This was bad. She
looked from the television to the letter still clutched in her hand. Whether it
was the KGB or some other entity determined to prevent the communique from
reaching President Reagan, they would have no reason to stop until they
accomplished their goal, not after committing multiple murders and destroying
an airplane worth tens of millions of dollars.

A chill ran down
her spine. She glanced at a wall clock hanging over the TV. 8:50 a.m. She hurried
to the pile of clothing in the kitchen, dropped her towel onto the floor, and
strapped her backup weapon—now the only gun she had left, her main weapon had
been lost in the B-52 crash—to her ankle in its holster. Then she stepped into
the underwear, jeans and sweater as quickly as she could manage. The clothes
were a little loose but would have to do for now.

She took another
look at the clock in the living room. Its hands seemed to be moving at double
speed. There was a lot to do. She only hoped she wasn’t too late.

24

May 31, 1987

8:50 a.m.

Bangor, Maine

Shane drove along the access road
leading to the air traffic control facility at Bangor International Airport, a
bumpy mess consisting of crumbling chunks of decades-old pavement that had at
one time made up the runways and taxiways of the old Dow Air Force base. The
field had originally been a small civil airport, but had seen three runways
hastily constructed at the onset of World War Two, and then a massive
11,400-foot runway built during the darkest days of the Cold War. Dow had been
used as a Strategic Air Command Base for two decades, launching B-52s and other
military aircraft until its decommissioning in 1968.

After it was taken
over as a civilian airfield and renamed Bangor International, almost all of the
runways and taxiways had been closed, deemed too expensive to maintain. The one
remaining runway was long enough to accept any aircraft in the world, civilian
or military, including the space shuttle.

Many of those
closed runways and taxiways were turned into access roads, resulting in some of
the widest, if bumpiest, motorways a Maine driver would ever utilize. It was on
one of these long-ago taxiways Shane was now bouncing along in his Volkswagen.
The control tower loomed in the distance, ancient and drafty, sticking into the
air like a giant’s middle finger. Next to the control tower was a base
building, as old as the tower, which housed the TRACON—the terminal radar
approach control facility—in addition to offices and conference rooms.

About fifty yards
from the facility, a Bangor Police Department officer had angled his cruiser
across the pavement. The vehicle didn’t come close to blocking the wide access
road, but Shane decided the sight of the officer standing next to his cruiser,
hand resting lightly on the butt of his service weapon, made perfectly clear
anyone approaching had better stop.

Shane eased up next
to the cruiser. Mirrored sunglasses hid the cop’s eyes and his face was
impassive. He shook his head. “Sorry, pal, no access today.”

Shane held his
government ID up for the officer’s inspection. “I’m expected. My name is Shane
Rowley. I work here, and I’ve come to assist in the accident investigation.”

“Hold on,” the cop
said, and opened the cruiser’s door, picked up a clipboard from the front seat,
and glanced at it. After a moment he looked again at Shane’s ID, then nodded,
his face still a mask. “Go right on ahead, sir.”

Shane, curious,
asked, “Have you had a lot of people trying to get up here?”

A trace of a smile
flitted across the cop’s face. “Not since I turned away the first couple of
media vans. I’m sure they’re waiting until I get pulled out of here, then
they’ll be on you guys like flies on shit.”

Shane chuckled.
“Don’t be afraid to shoot ’em if you have to.”

As he was pulling
away, he heard the cop mutter, “I wish.”

***

The parking lot was almost full,
with a half-dozen or so cars Shane didn’t recognize taking up the few available
spaces. He found a spot close to the outer edge and parked, a light breeze
ruffling his hair as he crossed the lot to the base building’s front entrance.
He pulled open the heavy metal door and entered the building.

A long hallway bisected
the interior, with a row of doors running down each side. Immediately to the
right was a small kitchen area, equipped with an ancient oven, a slightly newer
microwave, a dual-tub sink, a coffeemaker, and a small round table nobody ever used.
Twenty feet beyond the kitchen on the right a doorway opened into the radar
control room, where on a typical workday a controller would spend half his
time, with the other half spent working upstairs in the control tower.

On the left side
of the hallway were a series of administrative offices: first came the
secretary’s, occupied during weekday business hours by a sweet, white-haired
lady named Mrs. Sanderson, who was maybe sixty years old and had worked at the
facility as long as anyone could remember. This being a Sunday morning, her
office was empty.

Beyond Mrs.
Sanderson’s office were aligned the rest of the staff offices, beginning with
that of the air traffic manager, Marty Hall. Hall’s name was just similar
enough to the host of the popular game show Let’s Make a Deal, Monty Hall, that
it was his fate to be forever known as Monty—at least when he wasn’t around.

Shane lifted the
carafe off the Mr. Coffee machine and sniffed warily. He could really use
another cup of coffee, but the stuff inside the facility’s pot was usually so
old it had the consistency and taste of used motor oil. Today was no exception,
and Shane grimaced and returned the carafe to the hot plate. He decided he wasn’t
that desperate for caffeine.

He left the
kitchen and wandered down the hallway, moving toward the sound of voices coming
from Marty Hall’s office. He stopped at the open doorway and glanced inside.
The facility manager was sitting behind his desk, and a half-dozen people Shane
did not recognize were seated in folding metal chairs arranged in a semicircle
around Hall’s desk. Everyone seemed to be talking at once, and for a moment no
one noticed Shane.

When it seemed
like this stalemate might go on forever, and mindful that this was his day off,
Shane cleared his throat. Finally Marty Hall noticed him and waved him in.
Everyone stopped talking and turned to stare at the new arrival. Hall said,
“Gentlemen, this is my controller, Shane Rowley, the man who witnessed the
crash while on his way to work last night.”

Shane nodded at
the group while Hall continued. “Shane, this is the NTSB Accident Investigation
team. They only just arrived about fifteen minutes ago. I’ll let each member of
the team introduce himself.”