Deadly Dozen: 12 Mysteries/Thrillers

by Diane Capri

  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. Blood flowed freely and heavily from the wound, already forming a near-perfect circle around his head as it pooled on the carpet.

  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 fourteen 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 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 to the man’s neck where the carotid artery was located 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.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  It all went down so fast that it was nearly over before Larry even realized what was happening. 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 survival instinct 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 workplace.

  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.

  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 lay 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.

  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 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. The pain undoubtedly was, too.

  “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 cavalry—start with the FBI and Secret Service. Don’t forget to notify 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 left and right, then disappeared into the hallway.

  CHAPTER SIXTY

&n
bsp; 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 sent scouting parties of small dots blooming across 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-arriving employees.

  The thought crossed her mind that perhaps these men were not concerned about arriving 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.

  She eased her head back and was amazed to catch sight of her 9mm Glock. Was this really possible? Or was it some bizarre, 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 not regain consciousness. Maybe they even thought she was dead; Kristin had no idea how much attention they had paid to her after she collapsed.

  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. If he did, he would surely kill her this time. The terrorists 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 conference table 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 weakness, 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. She bit her lip in hopes of preventing herself from crying out when the inevitable wave of pain struck, clamping down with such force 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 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 confirmed for Kristin that she had just broken her nose. She let out an involuntary gasp that was choked off as her consciousness slipped away.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

  Nick wrapped his sweaty hand around the grip of the semiautomatic pistol he had taken off the dead terrorist. The weapon felt bulky and heavy, 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 adrenaline and sheer terror, 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 to the ground level foyer, he wondered how badly he had been injured. He wasn’t sure he really wanted to know.

  The initial gush of blood had slowed to a thick but constant dribble. 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.

  From his vantage point, he could see most of the glass-fronted conference room on the first floor known as the fishbowl. The room was located diagonally across the wide foyer from the staircase, and the gigan
tic windows that made it such a convenient spot 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 their mission had been accomplished.

  There was no way of knowing whether these two men were the only terrorists still inside the BCT. Nick fervently hoped there were no others, because the thought of another gunman 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 amongst 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 attempting 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 radar room had been—and have any chance of taking them down.