The controller initiating the handoff would instruct the pilot to contact the receiving controller on his or her specific radio frequency. When the pilot checked in on that frequency, the controller would issue specific instructions to ensure the separation and sequencing necessary for that airplane to depart, land, or transit the airspace.
Taking a handoff. Simple.
But not for Larry, not today. Operations Manager Don Trent, First-Line Supervisor Dean Winters, and at least one representative of the FBI or the U.S. Secret Service were supposed to have arrived in the facility by now to oversee things. None of them had shown up, which could mean only one thing--they had been stopped by the other terrorist, the one who had duct taped Ron to his chair and then left the room. It was inconceivable to think it could be a coincidence; they had all run into traffic or overslept, not with Air Force One flying into Boston. Screwing up in that way was a career ender in the FAA and undoubtedly even more so in the FBI or Secret Service.
Larry wondered if any of them were still alive or if they had simply been murdered and disposed of, and his hand began shaking even more. He could feel the irresistible force and sheer brutal power of the gun pressed against his neck just under his ear. The terrorist stood behind him now and seemed nearly as tense as Larry, although Larry didn't see how that could possibly be the case.
He heard the man whip a cell phone out of a pocket and punch a key. Moments later he said, "It's time . . . Yes. Ten minutes."
It would take approximately ten minutes for Air Force One to reach the point in Boston's airspace where the terrorist with the gun was insisting Larry vector it. The president of the United States had roughly ten minutes to live.
Larry rolled his cursor out to the target representing the president's airplane. Normally the data tag corresponding to an airplane read something like ABC123, which represented aviation short-hand for ABC Airlines flight 123. Air Force One was represented in air traffic control facilities everywhere simply as AF1.
The cursor reached the target, still flashing patiently as the data block moved steadily toward Boston's airspace, and Larry stabbed at the button that would alert the Boston Center controller that Boston Approach Control was accepting the handoff on Air Force One. He missed the button entirely. He tried again and managed to strike the button, but this time the cursor wasn't placed directly over the target, so nothing happened.
"Damn it," Larry muttered softly.
The man rapped the gun against the side of his head.
Bright colored lights exploded in Larry's head. It felt as though he had been clubbed with a baseball bat.
"Do it," the man commanded, his voice a harsh rasp.
"I'm trying," Larry answered desperately, wondering what it would feel like when the bullet crashed into his skull and began making scrambled eggs out of his brain. Sweat flowed freely down his face, and he vaguely registered the sound of heavy, ragged breathing, realizing dully that it was his own. He thought of his wife and two children and wondered if he would ever see them again, if they could ever forgive him for contributing to the assassination of President Cartwright.
One more attempt at taking the handoff. This time the cursor reached its intended destination and the flashing stopped.
Air Force One entered Boston Approach Control's airspace.
The floor rushed up to greet Kristin, and she could feel blood dribbling out a ragged hole in her new dark blue pants, which had set her back nearly a hundred bucks.
Now these pants are ruined,
she thought crazily for a second, before a rolling wave of intense pain overwhelmed her, blotting out everything else, beginning at her right knee and radiating outward.
Kristin was childless, but she had it on very good authority that the worst pain a human being would ever endure was that of childbirth. If that was really the case and bearing children was even worse than this, then she was definitely out.
When the terrorist demanded she call her team at Logan and tell them everything was okay here, she had known immediately that refusing to do so would earn her some sort of negative reinforcement--you didn't have to be an FBI agent to figure that one out--but this was much more than she ever expected.
She gasped and sucked in a breath through clenched teeth, trying to maintain consciousness in the face of her body's rebellion against the sudden trauma inflicted upon it. She looked up from the floor and saw a man looming above her. It was the man who had shot her, and he was telling her something she could not make out in a voice that seemed unnaturally reedy.
She shook her head and blinked to clear her fuzzy vision and tried to focus on what the man was saying, but it was so difficult.
She couldn't get past the unbelievable fiery agony burning through her leg.
Call. He was saying something about a telephone call. He wanted her to make the call to her superiors.
The man fished her cell phone out of the holster on her hip and placed it on the floor in front of her. Behind it, in front of the absurdly large plate-glass windows of the conference room, a thin grey cord ran out the back of a telephone's base like a rat's tail and snaked its way along the floor, disappearing behind a table.
From this angle, Kristin could see dust bunnies and a sprinkling of crumbs that had gathered on the carpet under the table; it was clear the janitorial service contracted to clean the BCT had not been doing a thorough job.
Kristin reached out to pick up her cell. It seemed as though her hand stretched out for ten or twelve feet before it reached the phone, like she was looking at it through the wrong end of a tele-scope. She was surprised to see how much her hand was shaking. It occurred to her that she was going into shock, and she wondered in a detached way if she was dying.
"Call your supervisor," the man told her again. It sounded like he was talking underwater.
The man kneeled down and placed his gun at her temple. He leaned close to her ear. "I'm going to scatter your few simple brains all over this beautiful conference room if you don't make the call right now."
Kristin believed him. She punched the speed dial with her trembling hands.
On the first ring a voice said, "Watkins."
"This is Cunningham," she said in a voice that sounded like someone else's. Someone she didn't know. Someone who was dying.
"Hey, how's life up in the wilds of New Hamster?"
"Great," she said, concentrating on remaining conscious and keeping her voice steady. She felt increasingly woozy and thought she might throw up at any moment. The pain was immense.
"Are you okay?"
"Just . . . just not feeling very well," she mumbled, feeling sick and scared and ashamed of herself. She knew she should be trying to pass a message to Lieutenant Watkins, but she could barely think at all.
"Everything's all right up there?"
"Yeah, sure. Everything's fine."
"Okay, thanks for checking in. We'll give you a call as soon as the president's motorcade is moving into the city. Talk to you soon."
"Yes, soon," Kristin repeated hollowly, her leg feeling like it was being blasted by a blowtorch.
"Take care of yourself; you don't sound too good," Watkins told her.
For some reason she found that very funny. "I will," she said with a high-pitched laugh that sounded just short of hysterical, even to her.
The connection broke, and the terrorist removed the gun from her head as he rose. "See? That wasn't so hard, was it?"
The room was spinning now, twisting around and around like the antigravity wheel she used to love to ride every fall when the county fair passed through her tiny town. Kristin guessed she had spent easily a couple hundred dollars on that ride when she was a teenager. Who knew you could get the same effect without spending any money at all?
Of course, there was the small matter of being shot, of having a chunk of lead traveling at near supersonic speed blast your knee apart. But what the hell? There's no such thing as a free ride in this world, as her old man liked to say.
She tried to focus on the man with the gun, but he was spinning just like the room, and now Kristin knew she was going to be sick. He was saying something else that she could not make out.
He was so damned far away.
He must have gotten tired of trying to make her understand because he prodded her right leg with the toe of his combat boot.
Instantly the world exploded in an atomic blast of pain, and then everything went black.
Nick stood just inside the door on the west side of the TRACON
Ops Room, holding his weapon in both hands and watching, sick with fear, as the terrorist held a pistol steadfastly against the side of Larry's head.
It had been a stroke of good fortune--probably his first since this whole nightmare began unfolding--finding the fully charged, battery-operated nail gun lying in the first-floor construction site.
The thing was filled with heavy-gauge nails, maybe tenpenny?
Nick had seen a video once of the injuries a roofer had suffered when he fell off a house and reflexively squeezed the trigger of his nail gun on the way down to the ground, firing three nails into his skull. The damage had been extensive, with X-rays depict-ing the spikes protruding well into the man's brain after punching holes right through the thick protective plate of the skull. Nick was hopeful that if he could fire even one shot into the guy's head, the man would be incapacitated and maybe even killed; he certainly would be unable to hold his gun on Fitz as he was crashing to the floor with a thick nail stabbing into his brain.
Larry was seated in his controller chair, facing his scope. The terrorist stood behind him, facing the scope as well. They had their backs turned toward Nick, and he could see the flashing data tag displayed on Larry's scope that must surely represent Air Force One. Nick was too far away to read the information contained in the tag, but judging from the intensity with which the terrorist was watching the radar display, he knew there was no other possibility.
Far off on the other side of the big room, Ron sat duct taped to his chair. His eyes were closed, and Nick hoped he was simply dozing. There was no obvious sign of a gunshot wound or any other kind of wound for that matter, nothing resembling the damage that had been done to Harry, but Nick knew these men were cold-blooded fanatics and would not be above killing another defense-less man.
He noticed Larry struggling to accept the automated handoff on Air Force One. Larry's hands were shaking so badly he could barely control the slewball. Nick felt sorry for him and for the fact that he had a loaded weapon aimed at him. Then he looked down at his own hands and realized they were shaking just as badly as Fitz's, maybe worse.
Nick tried to calm himself. The next couple of minutes were critical, literally life-and-death. He would get one chance to take the terrorist by surprise, and he knew he had to make the most of it if he wanted to put the man down. Desperately he tried to control his fear and focus on the task in front of him. What would be the best approach to take--speed or stealth?
The edge of the console currently providing cover for Nick was only about fifteen feet from where the terrorist stood. He could step clear of the console in three long strides. The obvious problem, though, was that if he made even the slightest noise during that time--a scrape of his shoe on the carpet, a rustle of clothing, anything--there would be more than ample time for the man to fire his gun into Fitz's head and blow his brains all over the TRACON.
On the other hand, if he moved slowly and deliberately, Nick was reasonably sure he could quiet his approach enough so that the man would not hear him coming until it was too late for him to react. But what if he was wrong? What if he couldn't sneak up on the man? What if the terrorist saw a shadow or turned at the wrong time or just
felt
Nick's presence? What then? This scenario would doubtless end the same way, with Fitz's dying body slumping out of his chair onto the floor.
He thought about Lisa and wondered whether she had been aware of what was happening to her as she was being murdered.
Did she have any idea why she had been targeted? Was she aware that the man who ended her life was taking it from her just because she had been unlucky enough to stumble across the wrong information in the course of trying to do her job?
Nick pictured his wife, with her warm brown eyes, her angelic smile, and her determination to always do the right thing, and he felt a surge of calm confidence. He could do this. With a little luck and a little determination of his own, this could all be over in just a few minutes.
"Boston Approach, Air Force One is with you, leveling at one-one thousand, with ATIS Charlie."
Larry keyed up his mike, unsure how in the hell he was going to keep President Cartwright out of harm's way and also continue breathing for more than the next couple of minutes. The barrel of the terrorist's gun pressed relentlessly into his neck just below his ear. "Air Force One, this is Boston Approach. Fly heading zero-six-zero. That's your vector for the ILS Runway 33 Left approach.
Boston altimeter two-niner-niner-seven."
There was a short delay while the flight crew forty-five miles south of Boston, flying over Providence, Rhode Island, at eleven thousand feet, digested the information they had been given. Then the call came back. "Uh, Approach, on the ATIS broadcast the tower is advertising Runway 4 Right as the active. Did we miss something?"
Larry had known the pilot would question the assignment of a landing runway that was not being broadcast as the active runway on the ATIS. It was a basic tenet of aviation everywhere that airplanes perform their best when they are landing and departing on the runway that is most closely aligned with the wind direction, and on the latest weather sequence, it was showing out of the northeast, zero-three-zero at eight knots. The flight crew of Air Force One wanted and expected to land on Runway 4 Right.