The Lion's Game by Nelson DeMille Read Free Book Online

afternoon sun behind him. He looked at his watch and saw it was almost 4:00 P.M. He would have been out of here in a few minutes, but that was not to be.
    He was supposed to be home for dinner with his wife at seven, with another couple. He felt fairly confident that he could make it, or at least be no more than fashionably late. Even later would be okay when he arrived armed with a good story about what had delayed him. People thought he had a glamorous job, and he played it up when he’d had a few cocktails.
    He made a mental note to call home after the Trans-Continental landed. Then he’d have to speak to the aircraft’s captain on the phone, then write a preliminary report of the incident. Assuming this was nothing more than a communications failure, he should be on the road by six, with two hours of overtime pay.
Right
.
    He replayed the conversation with Esching in his mind. He wished he had a way to access the tape that recorded his every word, but the FAA wasn’t stupid enough to allow that.
    Again, he thought about Esching’s phone call—not the words, but the tone. Esching was clearly concerned and he couldn’t hide it. Yet, a two-hour NO-RAD was not inherently dangerous, just unusual. Stavros speculated for a moment that Trans-Continental Flight 175 could have experienced a fire on board. That was more than enough reason to change the alert from a standard 3-2 status to a 3-3. A 3-4 was an imminent or actual crash, and that was an easy call. This unknown situation was a tough call.
    And, of course, there was the remote chance that a hijacking was in progress. But Esching had said that there was no hijacking transponder code being sent.
    Stavros played with his two options—3-2 or 3-3? A 3-3 would definitely call for more creative writing in his report if it turned out to be nothing. He decided to leave it a 3-2 and headed toward the coffee bar.
    “Chief.”
    Stavros looked over at one of his tower controllers, Roberto Hernandez. “What?”
    Hernandez put down his headset and said to his boss, “Chief, I just got a call from the radar controller about a Trans-Continental NO-RAD.”
    Stavros put down his coffee. “And?”
    “Well, the NO-RAD began his descent earlier than he was supposed to, and he nearly ran into a US Airways flight bound for Philly.”
    “Jeez ...” Stavros’ eyes went to the window again. He couldn’t understand how the Trans-Continental pilot could have missed seeing another aircraft on a bright, cloudless day. If nothing else, the collision-warning equipment would have sounded even before visual contact was made. This was the first indication that something could be really wrong.
What the hell is going on here?
    Hernandez looked at his radar screen and said, “I’ve got him, Chief.”
    Stavros made his way to Hernandez’s console. He stared at the radar blip. The problem aircraft was tracking unmistakably down the instrument-landing course for one of Kennedy’s northeast runways.
    Stavros remembered the days when being inside an airport Control Tower meant you’d usually be looking out the window; now, the Control Tower people mostly looked at the same electronic displays that the air traffic controllers saw in the dark radar room below them. But at least up here they had the option of glancing outside if they wanted to.
    Stavros took Hernandez’s high-powered binoculars and moved to the south-facing plate glass window. There were four stand-up communications consoles mounted ninety degrees apart in front of the wraparound glass so that tower personnel could have multiple communications available while standing and visually seeing what was happening on the runways, taxiways, gates, and flight approaches. This was not usually necessary, but Stavros felt a need to be at the helm, so to speak, when the airliner came into view. He called out to Hernandez, “Speed?”
    “Two hundred knots,” Hernandez answered. “Descending through fifty-eight hundred