Deadly Dozen: 12 Mysteries/Thrillers (278 page)

“I can understand that,” Dean replied, nodding, “but are you sure you’re ready to come back to all this? After all, you took only a week off; that’s not very much time to grieve.”

“Oh, I’m sure. I need this. I need to start working airplanes again, if for no other reason than it will help take my mind off what happened. If I were to wait until I was done grieving, you’d probably never see me again, because I don’t think I’ll ever
be
done.”

“I don’t know …”

“Listen, sitting around my empty house with the ghost of my wife, waiting for her to come walking through the front door when it’s never going to happen, is not doing me any good. Accomplishing something positive and contributing even a little bit to the operation of this facility will go a long way toward helping me get back on my feet, believe me.”

Dean searched his eyes for a moment and then sighed. “I understand. If you want to ease back into it and work a slow position every now and then, just let me know. But I think I would look at things just the way you do if anything were to happen to Cheryl. Anyway, welcome back.”

“Thanks a lot. I appreciate it, probably more than you know. Is there anything else, or can I get to work?”

“Actually,” Dean said, “there is one more thing. You’re scheduled to work the midnight shift this Saturday night with Fitzgerald. I need to go over a couple of things with you before then.”

“What things?”

“President Cartwright is flying into Logan early Sunday morning.”

“Okay, well, you said I have the mid shift on Saturday night. Shouldn’t you be having this conversation with the Sunday day shift guys?”

“No, by early Sunday morning, I mean like 5:00 a.m. when you and Larry are still going to be the only Boston controllers here.”

Nick shrugged. “That’s fine; I’ve worked Air Force One before plenty of times. So has Larry. It won’t be a problem.”

“I know that. But someone in charge has to plug in and monitor the controller whenever he’s working the president’s plane.”

“That’s not a problem, either. Who’s been designated as CIC on that shift?” Controller in Charge was the designation given to the air traffic controller assigned the responsibility of running the watch when a supervisor wasn’t available, and supervisors were never assigned midnight shifts at the BCT.

“You’re CIC Saturday night on the mid.”

“Well, then, I’ll plug in behind Larry when he’s working the president’s plane. End of problem.”

“I know you could do it, but Don Trent wants to be here just in case. He wants me here, too.”

“Just in case? Just in case what?”

Dean sighed again. “I don’t know. But Don is the operations manager, and if he says we need to be here, then we need to be here.”

“So let me get this straight. Larry and I are good enough to handle the airplanes that don’t matter—you know, the ones with several hundred
regular
people on board—but when it comes to the president of the United States, we need the assistance of two guys who haven’t done the job in twenty years?”

Dean’s face tightened in annoyance. “It’s not like that. I know you and Larry would be fine here by yourselves and so does Don. But he wants us to be here, so we’re going to be here, whether you like it or not. Work your midnight shift as normal, but be ready for Don and me to walk in a little before five.”

“Fine. Whatever. That it?”

“That’s it.”

“Then what do you want me to do now?”

“Go get Fitz out of Final Vector. He’s backing up the whole East Coast.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

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.

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 established 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 TWENTY-SIX

Special Agent Kristin Cunningham reviewed all the material the FBI had 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 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.

The killers had then driven twenty miles to an RV sales center on the outskirts of Tucson, where they exchanged vehicles, abandoned the Army truck, and disappeared into the night, but not before killing one more person, a Tucson police officer who stumbled onto the exchange during a routine patrol.

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, if you included Nelson W. Michaels, the midlevel Pentagon staffer who sold the information to the group. Michaels had originally been presumed killed in an auto accident while driving home from work on the same day he had made the trade, but it was later determined that he had been murdered in his car following the wreck. It was the second time someone connected to the case had been killed in this manner.

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 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.