Final Vector by Allan Leverone Page B

where they went to work and did their thing.
    Another day at the office, so to speak.
    Nick trudged through the dimly lit room, approaching the Boston Area slowly and with some trepidation. Air traffic controllers tended to be strong-willed, decisive people, with take-charge personalities and irreverent senses of humor, given to regarding virtually any situation as fodder for a joke. Nick supposed it was a natural coping mechanism in a job where you held more lives in your hands every single day than a brain surgeon did in his entire career.
    Today, though, Nick wondered how he would be received.
    Losing a spouse, especially at such a young age, was no joking matter, and he felt on edge, nervous, and reluctant to face his coworkers. It was almost as if he thought people would view him with suspicion, like he had done something wrong, which, of course, he hadn't. His wife had been killed, for crying out loud, murdered; it wasn't like he had something to be ashamed of.
    He needn't have worried. No sooner did the controllers spot him in the gloom of the low TRACON lighting than a shout went up from John Donaldson working the Bedford Sector. "Futz, welcome back, my man. We've missed you! It's been boring as hell around here--there's nobody as much fun to heckle as you while they're running their airplanes together on Final Vector!"
    Nick grinned in spite of himself. The nickname Futz had been bestowed on him by someone--he couldn't even remember who--
    when he had first arrived at the facility as a wet-behind-the-ears trainee years ago. It was short for Fucking Nuts, which had been his style when working Final Vector. He would aim everybody at the same point in space, then at the last minute begin to sort them all out. As an operating technique, it was not the sort of thing you would ever train someone to do, but from his earliest days as a controller Nick had possessed an uncanny ability to visualize the sequence of arrivals developing well before anyone else could, so what appeared random and accidental to the uninitiated was in reality a well-choreographed aerial ballet.
    "Hey, John, thanks a lot. I'd like to say it's good to see you too, but I still find your hideousness repulsive, even in the dark."
    "Jeez, now you're starting to sound like my wife," Donaldson shot back. "Of course, she would say, ' especially in the dark,' if you get my meaning."
    By now, everyone along the line of scopes had turned their attention away from their sectors long enough to add their own welcome back message to John's.
    Even Larry Fitzgerald, working the intense Final Vector position, took a second to shout, "Hey, Futz, enough with the hearts and flowers. Make yourself useful for a change, and come gimme a break," before turning back to his scope and leaning so close to it his nose practically scraped the screen.
    Final Vector was generally considered be the busiest and most pressure-filled position because the goal was to get the airplanes as close together as legally possible and keep them that way, all the way to touchdown on the landing runway. Often that meant taking a steady stream of arrivals from four or more different directions and running them almost directly at each other--a task requiring intense concentration and nerves of steel and one not to be undertaken by the faint of heart.
    The supervisor, Dean Winters, leaned his head around the opening to the Inner Ring and said, "Okay, everybody, the comedy act's over; let's keep it down, shall we?"
    As the controllers working operational positions once again began transmitting to the airplanes inside their sectors, Dean beckoned Nick into the Inner Ring and to his desk. When he had moved inside, Dean told him, "Take a seat. We need to talk."
    Nick rolled a chair over to the supe's desk and sat down. He had expected to be grilled by someone in management upon his return and had figured it wouldn't take long. He didn't blame them--his wife had just died, and the FAA would want to make