"Left to two-three-zero. You're welcome."
"Global 317, how are you doing, sir?"
"We're struggling, but I think we'll be able to make it."
"Okay, Global 317, contact Boston Tower now on frequency 123.7. Good luck to you."
"Tower on twenty-three-seven. Thanks a lot for the help."
Behind him, Earl said, "Nice job, Nick."
Nick returned his attention to the mess he had yet to sort out--the nearly one dozen airplanes whose sequences had been disrupted by the sudden emergency and who were now nowhere near where they should be in Nick's airspace. There was a lot of catching up to do.
Nick took a deep breath and started barking out commands as the control tower supervisor called on a landline to tell Earl that Global 317 had landed safely and the aircraft was being evacuated on a taxiway.
The traffic kept coming. The controllers kept talking. The Thursday night shift continued.
Lisa Jensen blinked rapidly, attempting without any measurable level of success to maintain her concentration as she navigated the rain-slicked highway. Alone and overtired, she had already tried every trick she could think of for remaining alert while traveling late at night, including cranking her music up to earsplitting deci-bel levels and rolling her side window down. She knew she was fading fast, though.
Rain slanted at a forty-five degree angle out of the coal black sky, pelting the area as it had been doing virtually nonstop since Lisa had left D.C. The headlights of the passing traffic cast the landscape surrounding Interstate 95 in a shimmering, almost surreal muted glow. Hours ago, she had reached the conclusion that the sensible decision would have been to stay the night in the city and drive back to New Hampshire tomorrow morning after the storm passed through the area. But her time with Nick was already limited enough, and Lisa couldn't stand the thought of spending even one more night away from her husband.
Hell
, she thought,
we
don't see enough of each other as it is
.
Lisa gazed longingly at the Styrofoam cup of coffee perched in the cup holder directly in front of the gearshift in her Toyota, taunting her with its emptiness, and blinked again hard, feeling her scratchy and bloodshot eyes begin to water. She forced herself to start singing along with the song on the radio.
A fully loaded eighteen-wheel automobile carrier passed her in the left lane, moving much too fast for the conditions, rocking her little car on its springs and spraying a solid sheet of water onto the windshield in its wake. The Toyota's overmatched wipers worked at clearing it all away, the rapid
whup-whup-whup
of the wiper blades doing their best to lull Lisa back into the state of intense drowsiness she was trying so hard to avoid.
Lisa's wandering attention snapped immediately into focus as her car plunged into a long, deep, and nearly invisible pool of black water stretching across the breakdown lane and into the highway's right travel lane. Instantly the vehicle began to hydroplane. She wrenched the wheel to the left as the Toyota slewed out of control toward the guardrail, water splashing in massive fountainlike arcs outward from both sides of the vehicle.
Lisa knew enough not to hit the brakes, although the temptation to stomp on them was almost overwhelming. Instead, she concentrated on steering out of the slide, holding her breath as the guardrail crept closer and closer, allowing the car's momentum to slow on its own. In seconds that felt like hours, she had the Toyota under control and gradually began to increase her speed once again, checking her mirrors and then angling left out of the breakdown lane.
Chuckling nervously and breathing hard, her throat suddenly as dry and scratchy as her eyes, Lisa muttered, "Well, at least now I'll be wide awake for a while. Nothing like the occasional near-death experience to snap things back into focus!"
She was no longer drowsy but still longed to be home with Nick, couldn't wait to be in his arms. A civilian auditor at the Pentagon, Lisa spent every Monday through Thursday in Washington away from her husband, who was forced to stay alone at the couple's Merrimack, New Hampshire, house. Nick was an air traffic controller at one of the busiest airports in the country and was thus obviously unable to relocate to a city nearly five hundred miles away.
7
At the close of administrative hours at the Pentagon every Thursday, Lisa's standard routine was to eat dinner in a small cafe just a few blocks from the mammoth office building and wait for the Beltway area traffic congestion to ease. Then she would hit the road in her trusty Toyota, which was only three years old but had already racked up well over 150,000 miles. She would work her way up Interstate 95 to New England, then zigzag various interstate highways to Route 3 into New Hampshire, eventually reunit-ing with the other half of her tiny family. Lisa worked ten-hour days Monday through Thursday in order to have a couple of full days every weekend with Nick.
It certainly wasn't the perfect arrangement. Lisa knew that making a marriage work was enough of a strain for a husband and wife who were together every day, but the challenges faced by a couple forced to spend nearly three quarters of their lives apart sometimes seemed nearly insurmountable.
The Jensens had been enduring exactly that situation, though, for most of their married life, and their plan was to continue in a similar fashion for several more years. By then they estimated they would have enough money set aside so Lisa could quit her job and stay at home to raise a family full-time. That was the theory, anyway. At moments like this, Lisa wondered about the wisdom of The Plan, but the prospect of that happy family, complete with two or three children running around their home, was the carrot dangling on the end of the stick that kept her going even when things were at their most difficult.
As she drove, Lisa's mind wandered inexorably back to the mess she had gotten mixed up in at work, to the intrigue that seemed to reverberate within the dozens of miles of passageways running through the Pentagon. She wished she could discuss it with Nick. She hated deceiving him, but she knew in her heart it was best to keep him in the dark, even though he was a valuable sounding board and never failed to give her good advice when she asked for it--and sometimes even when she didn't.
She wondered what a relationship expert would say about the fact that she was now hiding things from her husband, the person with whom she was supposed to have a closer relationship than anyone else in the world. After all, everyone knew honesty was the foundation of a good marriage. Lisa chewed on her lower lip, a habit she had developed as a youngster when confronted with stress. Hiding things from Nick. She detested the idea and considered what it said about her.
Ensuring Nick's safety was paramount, though, and the situation Lisa found herself involved in recently was much more serious than she had ever expected or imagined possible, even when you considered the enormity of some of the secrets held inside the walls of the massive five-sided building in which she worked.
It was real and it was big and it was trouble, and as hard as it was for her to believe, there seemed to be the very real possibility of people getting hurt or even killed because of her discovery. Hell, killing was the whole
point
of it, and she was determined not to do or say anything that might put Nick's life at risk. Lisa pursed her lips and shook her head firmly as she drove, trying to bury the nugget of guilt eating away at her insides.
Lisa had been dealing with the situation on her own for the last two weeks, quietly digging and searching for evidence of an extremely serious--perhaps even treasonous--criminal conspiracy.
When she had first contacted Nelson Michaels, one of the men she suspected of heavy involvement in the activity, she had expected a logical explanation, something she had overlooked. What she had gotten instead was a stammering, defensive denial that had immediately raised all sorts of red flags in her mind.
She had decided she would confront Mr. Michaels in his office first thing Monday morning, laying out the evidence she had gathered and giving him one opportunity in person to offer a logical explanation for it all, as unlikely as that seemed. If none was forthcoming, then her next move would be to consult with her boss. She would dump everything in his lap and leave it up to him to figure out how to pursue the investigation. The implications of her discovery were far above her pay grade, and the allegations were so explosive that they could ruin Nelson's life. She knew she would never be able to look herself in the mirror every day if she allowed a man's career to be destroyed without first giving him the chance to prove her wrong.
But there was plenty of evidence. Some of it was tucked securely in the hard drive of her laptop, the one she was careful to keep in her possession at all times--every second--when she was at work. The rest of the materials were stowed safely in the back of the walk-in closet of their home in Merrimack. Lisa had stacked it all behind a pile of sweaters and parkas. Attempting to safeguard the material in her office at the Pentagon would be foolhardy, even if it were kept under lock and key, and the same thing went for trying to hide it in the studio apartment she rented outside D.C.
There simply wasn't any place to conceal the papers in the three tiny rooms.
Lisa didn't like the idea of storing potentially dangerous material in their home, but she reasoned that it would be there for only a few more days. Besides, what was the likelihood that anyone searching for the evidence would even know that she had a husband and a home in New Hampshire, anyway?
By now Lisa had nearly completed the long drive home. It was almost three o'clock in the morning, and she had been so wrapped up in her work problem that the miles had flown by. She knew Nick would be waiting up for her, a cup of steaming tea in one hand and some sexy lingerie he had picked out for her in the other.
"To get to know each other again," he would say with a mischie-vous smile, in what had become a part of their weekly routine they both looked forward to.
Lisa smiled at the picture in her head and accelerated through the traffic light at the end of the long, winding off-ramp leading from the highway to the surface streets of Merrimack. It continued pouring; to Lisa's amazement the rain had gotten heavier over the course of the last eight hours as the storm moved up the East Coast and gained in intensity. She stopped at the red light, even though it was ludicrous to think that any other cars would be out at this late hour, especially in a storm of such intensity.
She pulled through the intersection when the traffic light flashed green, planning to turn left toward her home. As she did, her side window was filled with the bright white headlights of a semi hauling beer from the Budweiser brewery that was one of the town's biggest employers. The massive, fully-loaded truck had run the red light, its driver obviously thinking what Lisa had been thinking just seconds before--that no one would be out in Merrimack this late.
Lisa watched, transfixed, as the oncoming truck rocketed out of control, its own momentum and the water-covered pavement combining to thwart the efforts of the driver to stop. Somewhere far away she could hear the grinding and screeching of diesel brakes.
She hesitated, then jammed the accelerator to the floor, praying that she could shoot across the street in front of the semi; it was her only option. For a second, it appeared that it might even work.
Maybe on a dry road it would have.
But her tires spun, and the drive wheels stuttered for purchase on the slippery road. Lisa watched through the side window in utter helpless horror as the massive truck smashed her Toyota broadside.
The occupant of the nondescript blue sedan that had been tailing Lisa Jensen's car since leaving Washington--known in the United States as Tony Andretti, although that was not his real name--
watched in amazement as the eighteen-wheeler lost traction on the wet road, sliding out of control and running over the Toyota, the mass of the huge vehicle virtually enveloping the much smaller car. Tony could not believe his good fortune. This unexpected but welcome development would make his job even simpler than it already was.
The force of the violent impact drove the young woman's car--impossibly tiny and splattered all over the grille of the truck like a fly--across the road, straight through the deserted oncoming traffic lane, and directly into a massive ancient maple tree.
Fire erupted from somewhere underneath the car, which was instantly mangled beyond recognition and buried under several tons of beer-laden tractor-trailer. Moments later the truck's driver, apparently injured but only superficially so, tumbled out of the cab to the ground and limped to the front of the vehicle, obviously hoping to be able to pull the other driver out of the wreckage. Tony sat in the blue sedan and watched closely through narrowed eyes as the man skidded to a halt next to the tree and shook his head.
For all intents and purposes, the car had vanished, compacted to a fraction of its original size.
Tony eased his vehicle behind the beer truck and flicked on his emergency blinkers. It would be the worst sort of cosmic irony to have his car rear-ended by some damned fool motorist driving along in the middle of the night not paying attention to what he was doing.
He then put on a light jacket and stepped into the heavy rain.
The deluge instantly plastered his clothing to his skin, but he didn't care. He walked alongside the jackknifed trailer portion of the vehicle toward the cab in time to see the weeping driver of the beer truck flop down on his hands and knees on the pavement and crawl under his rig. The man still hadn't noticed him.
Tony sighed deeply and squatted as well, peering under the frame of the truck. Thick black smoke poured out of and around the engine compartment of the eighteen-wheeler, issuing from where he assumed the car must now be, as flames licked their way around the fenders on both sides of the cab. He could see the beer truck's driver, outlined by the rapidly expanding fire against the twisted metal barely recognizable as a car. "Are you okay? Hello?