Final Vector (26 page)

Larry only then remembered Air Force One and rushed to his handset, frantically calling off the approach of the Boeing 747

and telling the flight crew to climb and turn as rapidly as possible.

The next few minutes were a blur as he called Boston Center and handed the president's airplane off to them. He didn't realize he was shouting into the landline until he terminated the call. The poor controller at Boston Center probably thought he was dealing with a raving lunatic. At that point, maybe he was.

Air Force One and President Cartwright would be returning to Andrews Air Force Base. There would be no ceremony in Boston today. The crew had filed no flight plan to return to Andrews, but that was Boston Center's problem. They could clear Air Force One to its destination and give the flight whatever route they chose; at least the pilot would be alive to fly it.

After that, working almost in a daze, Larry called the controllers inside Logan Tower and told them that Boston TRACON was not accepting any traffic; they were closed and out of business until someone much higher up in the FAA food chain than he could decide how to proceed from here. One thing Larry knew for sure was that he was in no condition to separate airplanes. Neither was Ron or Nick, who was bleeding heavily from the shoulder where he had been shot.

Larry looked at Nick, who was grimly shoving the terrorist's pistol into the waistband of his jeans, and suddenly remembered that this man lying on the floor had not been working alone; this nightmare wasn't over yet.

"This guy's dead," Nick muttered hollowly.

Larry didn't answer because there was nothing to say.

Nick fished a small handgun out of an ankle holster just above the terrorist's combat boot and handed it to Larry. "If any more of these fuckers come waltzing through the door, send them straight to hell. Don't forget to take off the safety."

Larry couldn't believe this was Nick, the man he had known and worked with for so long. He seemed more like Rambo. Only skinnier and a lot paler.

"You've been shot," Larry said, shoving the gun into his waistband like Nick had done. It was a stupid thing to say. Undoubtedly Nick knew he had been shot; the leaking blood was a dead giveaway.

"I'm fine," he replied, shaking his head slowly, although he was clearly not fine. "I'm going to see if I can find the other guys and maybe take them by surprise. You cut Ron free and call the cops--

start with the FBI and Secret Service. Don't forget to call facility management when you can. I've got a real bad feeling about Don Trent and Dean Winters."

Larry nodded. Even now, the speed with which everything had happened was hard to conceive of. "Good luck."

Nick gave him a quick, distracted smile and dragged himself to the front entrance of the Ops Room, dripping blood onto the floor behind him. He opened the door, glancing to his left and right, then disappeared into the hallway.

The first thing Kristin became aware of as she willed herself slowly back from the murky depths of unconsciousness was the pain. It started out as a vague throbbing, a notion of extreme discomfort that her body recognized was a problem before her conscious mind did. She struggled like a drowning person to break through the surface and regain consciousness, and as soon as she did, the full agony of her shattered right knee struck her with the force of a speeding freight train.

She gasped as the nerves in and around her knee screamed at her. It felt like someone was holding an exposed live wire against her leg, the electric current pulsing and blasting. Or perhaps like someone was firing bullet after bullet into the knee, mercilessly holding down the trigger of a lethal weapon with a limitless supply of ammunition.

A wave of nausea rolled over Kristin, and she swallowed hard, holding her breath, knowing that if she threw up, the retching action would jar her leg and the pain would escalate exponentially.

She couldn't imagine how it could get any worse but didn't want to find out. Misshapen black clouds roiled at the edges of her vision as her brain threatened to shut down again. Kristin longed for the relief that passing out would bring but feared that she would never reawaken if she gave in this time.

Struggling to focus as the black clouds dotted her line of sight, Kristin concentrated on the tiny flecks of gold scattered throughout the wine-colored carpet. They were easy to see from her vantage point, lying on the floor of the BCT conference room in exactly the same spot where she had been shot.

Grudgingly--and probably temporarily--the black clouds receded, and her vision improved to where Kristin felt she could move her head and look around without sending herself right back into unconsciousness.

She turned her head gingerly, wondering if that motion, seemingly unrelated in any way to her knee, would cause the pain level to shoot up again. It didn't. She looked around the room and spotted a man in combat boots pacing from the west door to the east door and back again.

The other guy was seated at the head of the conference table.

What he was doing, Kristin could not tell. This terrorist seemed much less sure of himself than the man who had shot her. He might simply be awaiting instructions, since he didn't strike her as the type who would take a lot of initiative. She found it odd that neither of them had gone back outside to the security building at the front gate to deal with any early employees.

The thought crossed her mind that perhaps these men were not concerned about early employees because they expected to finish whatever they were planning and be long gone before any of them began arriving. That meant they would be exiting the building soon but undoubtedly not before slaughtering anyone still alive.

It didn't seem likely they would want to leave any witnesses. She shuddered, and a bright flash of pain seared up and down her leg.

Kristin tried to force her brain to work, but her thoughts were muddled and slow. It was a Sunday morning, so no administrative or support personnel would be working today, but still, a full complement of controllers and technicians would arrive soon to start their eight-hour tours of duty. Dozens of people could potentially lose their lives if these gun-wielding terrorists were still in the building when they got here. On the other hand, if the terrorists had departed by then, it would mean the president was dead, not to mention Kristin herself. She had to figure out a way to stop these people.

Her service weapon had been taken away, and she had no doubt that the man who shot her in the knee had checked her over for other weapons. Undoubtedly the backup revolver she always carried strapped to her ankle was long gone. Even if it wasn't, how did she expect to access it? Pulling the gun out of its holster would require sitting up and bending her knee slightly, something she knew she could not accomplish without forcing a new wave of fire through the ruined limb. She was certain that just the attempt would send her crashing back into unconsciousness, maybe for good this time.

She eased her head back and was amazed to catch sight of her 9mm Glock. Was this really possible? Or was it some weird, pain-induced hallucination? Kristin closed her eyes and forced herself to get past the searing pain in her leg and concentrate on the task at hand. When she reopened her eyes, the gun was still there, not six feet away, tossed carelessly into the corner of the room by the door.

Clearly the men holding her had assumed she would either not regain consciousness or would be immobilized by the damage to her knee. She thought there was a good chance they were right--

the prospect of moving seemed like a pipe dream.

Something else was clear, too: the men weren't watching her very carefully now.

It was time for a little experiment. Gritting her teeth, Kristin planted her elbows into the plush carpet with as much force as she could muster given her awkward position on the floor. She was terrified that the man on the other side of the room would see her and open fire again, this time killing her on the spot. They didn't need her any longer; there was nothing to stop him from doing exactly that. The fact that she was obscured from his vision by the long maple conference table stretching almost the entire length of the room did little to quell her rising hysteria.

Still, she knew that giving up and lying on the floor like a victim--something she refused to be--would only serve to get her, and probably many other people, killed. Because of her, the president was already dead or would be soon; she could not bear the thought of dying without at least trying to take one of these bastards with her. She had to do something.

The thick carpet fibers provided at least a measure of traction under her elbows, but Kristin was unsure whether it would be enough to allow her to drag her body along the floor. There was only one way to find out. Kristin bit her lip in hopes of preventing herself from crying out when the inevitable wave of pain struck, biting down so hard she drew blood.

She dragged her body forward a couple of inches, and the invisible man firing the flamethrower at her leg ratcheted up the weapon until the blast furnace agony constituted her entire existence. The black clouds loitering at the edge of her vision blossomed like out-of-control thunderheads, growing with a speed and intensity she could scarcely comprehend.

She felt the acidic burn of the coffee she had drank earlier this morning as it rushed up her throat, and she puked all over the carpet. Her head smashed down on the floor, and a bright new blossom of pain radiated from her nose. She let out an involuntary gasp that was choked off as her consciousness slipped away.

Nick wrapped his sweaty hand around the grip of the semiautomatic pistol he had taken off the dead terrorist lying on the floor of the Ops Room. The weapon felt bulkier and heavier than he would have expected, frighteningly lethal. It seemed as though he could feel the gun's deadly power radiating from it like a physical presence. It was a power he did not want and a presence he feared.

His shoulder throbbed and burned from the gunshot wound.

At the time, he had barely registered the impact of the bullet; his entire focus had been on swinging that heavy nail gun around and getting off another desperate shot before being taken down for good by the terrorist.

He had been aware, of course, that he was shot--how do you miss something like that?--but between the adrenaline and the sheer terror that propelled him forward and kept him going, Nick had been temporarily able to compartmentalize his body's response to the physical trauma.

Now, however, as he crouched at the top of the wide staircase leading from the second floor down to the large foyer on the ground level, he wondered how badly he had been injured. He wasn't sure he really wanted to know.

The blood that initially gushed out of him and soaked his shirt had slowed to a thick but constant dribble now. That was the good news. The bad news was that it was next to impossible for Nick to raise his left hand above his waist, and he was feeling weak and faint. He knew he was slipping into shock and hoped he would be able to find the strength necessary to see this nightmare through, however it was to end.

Nick could see most of the interior of the glass-fronted conference room on the first floor known as the Fishbowl. The room was diagonally across the wide foyer from the staircase, and the gigantic windows that made it such a convenient vantage point for the terrorists to monitor the front entrance made it just as easy for Nick to monitor them.

Inside the Fishbowl, two men dressed in camouflage fatigues and combat boots restlessly cooled their heels. No sooner did one check his watch than the other would mimic him exactly. It was clear they knew Air Force One should be getting blown out of the sky anytime now and were apparently awaiting notification from the dead guy in the TRACON that the mission was accomplished.

There was no way of knowing whether these two men were the only terrorists still inside the BCT. He fervently hoped there were no others, because the thought of another terrorist coming up behind him and shooting him in the back of the head was horrifying.

Something else inside the Fishbowl grabbed his attention.

Across the room from the two anxious terrorists, a young woman lay motionless on the floor. Nick could not be certain from this angle, but he thought she looked an awful lot like the FBI agent who had come to his house last week to discuss the binder of information he had found hidden in Lisa's things in their closet. Special Agent Kristin Cunningham.

He wondered if she was dead. As he watched, though, the downed agent appeared to move her arms, just a little and for only a second. It looked as though she was trying to drag herself forward. She tried to lift her head; then it slammed down to the carpeting, and she was still.

Add that scary sight to the list of reasons why I've got to do something--and fast,
Nick thought. He may have just watched that young FBI agent die. But even if she was still alive, it was clear she wouldn't be for very much longer.

The problem was he couldn't imagine how he was going to go up against two terrorists--neither of whom was as distracted as the guy in the Operations Room had been--and have any chance of getting the better of them.

On the bright side, he finally had a real weapon to rely on as opposed to a rechargeable pneumatic power tool, but the other side of that particular coin was that he had never fired a handgun in his life and had no clue whether he could actually hit anything with it.

Didn't matter. By now Larry would certainly have notified the authorities. Undoubtedly the cavalry would be arriving en masse in just a few minutes, which normally would be a good thing.

But Nick had no doubt that every exit had been disabled by the terrorists, meaning that the only way into the building was via the front door--the entrance that the two heavily armed terrorists currently had covered from their spot in the Fishbowl. A protracted standoff would be inevitable after the first responders got cut down in a hail of bullets at the front entrance.