Nelson Demille: The Lion's Game

Sam Walters punched a few buttons, then spoke into his headset microphone on the intercom channel. "Sector Nineteen, this is Twenty-three. That NO-RAD, TC One-Seven-Five, is coming your way, and you'll get the handoff from me in about four minutes. I just wanted to give you a heads-up on this in case you need to do some adjusting."

Walters listened to the reply on his headset, then said, "Yeah… the guy's a real screwup. Everyone up and down the Atlantic Coast has been calling him for over two hours on VHP, HF, and for all I know, CB and smoke signals." Walters chuckled and added, "When this flight is over, this guy's going to be doing so much writing, he'll think he's Shakespeare. Right. Talk to you later." He turned his head and made eye contact with Esching. "Okay?"

"Yeah… tell you what… call everyone down the line and tell them that the first sector that makes contact will inform the captain that when he lands, he's to call me on the telephone at the Center. I want to talk to this clown myself so I can tell him how much aggro he's caused along the coast."

" Canada, too."

"Right." Esching listened to Walters pass on the message to the next controllers who would be getting jurisdiction of Trans-Continental Flight 175.

A few other controllers and journeymen on break had wandered over to the Section 23 console. Walters knew that everyone wanted to see why Supervisor Bob Esching was so far from his desk and out on the floor. Esching was-in the unkind words of his subordinates-standing dangerously close to an actual work situation.

Sam Walters didn't like all these people around him, but if Esching didn't shoo them off, he couldn't say anything. And he didn't think Esching was going to tell everyone to clear out. The Trans-Continental No-Radio situation was now the focus event in the control center, and this mini-drama was, after all, good training for these young controllers who had pulled Saturday duty.

No one said much, but Walters sensed a mixture of curiosity, puzzlement, and maybe a bit of anxiety.

Walters got on the radio and tried again. "Trans-Continental Flight One-Seven-Five, this is New York Center. Do you read me?"

No reply.

Walters broadcast again.

No reply.

The room was silent except for the hum of electronics. No one standing around had any comment. It was unwise to say anything in these kinds of situations that could come back to haunt you.

Finally, one of the controllers said to Esching, "Paper this guy big-time on this one, boss. I got off to a late coffee break because of him."

A few controllers laughed, but the laughter died away quickly.

Esching cleared his throat and said, "Okay, everybody go find something useful to do. Scram."

The controllers all wandered off, leaving Walters and Esching alone. Esching said softly, "I don't like this."

"Me neither."

Esching grabbed a rolling chair and wheeled it beside Walters. Esching studied the big screen and focused on the problem aircraft. The identity tag on the screen showed that it was a Boeing 747, and it was the new 700 Series aircraft, the largest and most modern of Boeing's 747s. The aircraft was continuing precisely along its flight plan, routing toward JFK International Airport. Esching said, "How the hell could all the radios be non-functioning?"

Sam Walters considered for a minute, then replied, "They can't be, so-I think it has to be either that the volume control is down, the frequency selectors are broken, or the antennas have fallen off."

"Yeah?"

'Yeah…"

"But… if it was the volume control or the frequency selectors, the crew would have realized that a long time ago."

Walters nodded and replied, "Yeah… so, maybe it's total antenna failure… or, you know, this is a new model so maybe there's some kind of electronic bug in this thing and it caused total radio failure. Possible."

Esching nodded, "Possible." But not probable. Flight 175 had been totally without voice contact since leaving the Oceanic Tracks and reaching North America. The Abnormal Procedures Handbook addressed this remote possibility, but he recalled that the handbook wasn't very clear about what to do. Basically, there was nothing that could be done.

Walters said, "If his radios are okay, then when he has to start down, he'll realize he's on the wrong frequency or that his volume control is down."

"Right. Hey… do you think they're all asleep?"

Walters hesitated, then replied, "Well… it happens, but, you know, a flight attendant would have come into the cockpit by now."

"Yeah. This is too long for a NO-RAD, isn't it?"

"It's getting to be a little long… but like I said, when he has to start down… you know, even if he had total radio failure, he could use the data link to type a message to his company operations, and they'd have called us by now."

Esching had thought about that and replied, "That's why I'm starting to think it's antenna failure, like you said." He thought a moment and asked Walters, "How many antennas does this plane have?"

"I'm not sure. Lots."

"Could they all fail?"

"Maybe."

Esching considered, then said, "Okay, say he's aware of a total radio failure… he could actually use one of the air-to-land phones in the dome cabin and call someone who would have called us by now. I mean, it's been done in the past-you could use an airphone."

Walters nodded.

Both men watched the white radar blip with its white alpha-numeric identification tag trailing beneath it as the blip continued to crawl slowly from right to left.

Finally, Bob Esching said what he didn't want to say. "It could be a hijacking."

Sam Walters didn't reply.

"Sam?"

"Well… look, the airliner is following the flight plan, the course and altitude are right, and they're still using the transponder code for the transatlantic crossing. If they were being hijacked, he's supposed to send a hijacking transponder code to tip us off."

"Yeah…" Esching realized that this situation didn't fit any of the profiles for a hijacking. All they had was an eerie silence from an aircraft that otherwise behaved normally. Yet, it was possible that a sophisticated hijacker would know about the transponder code and tell the pilots not to touch the transponder selector.

Esching knew he was the man on the spot. He cursed himself for volunteering for this Saturday shift. His wife was in Florida visiting her parents, his kids were in college, and he'd thought that going to work would be better than sitting around the house alone. Wrong. He needed a hobby.

Walters said, "What else can we do?"

"You just keep doing what you're doing. I'm going to call the Kennedy Tower supervisor, then I'll call the Trans-Continental Operations Center."

"Good idea."

Esching stood and said, for the record, "Sam, I don't believe we have a serious problem here, but we would be lax if we didn't make some notifications."

"Right," Walters replied as he mentally translated Esching's words to, We don't want to sound inexperienced, panicky, or too incompetent to handle the situation, but we do want to cover our asses.

Esching said, "Go ahead and call Sector Nineteen for the handoff."

"Right."

"And call me if anything changes."

"Will do."

Esching turned and walked toward his glassed-in cubicle at the rear of the big room.

He sat at his desk and let a few minutes pass, hoping that Sam Walters would call him to announce they'd established contact. He thought about the problem, then thought about what he was going to say to the Kennedy Tower supervisor. His call to Kennedy, he decided, would be strictly FYI, with no hint of annoyance or concern, no opinions, no speculation-nothing but the facts. His call to Trans-Continental Operations, he knew, had to be just the right balance of annoyance and concern.