Rick Mofina - Free Fall

The NTSB and the FAA, as well as several aviation bodies around the world, had refuted the consultant’s claim, stating that it might work in theory on a flight simulator, but it was not possible to interfere with flight-certified hardware as he’d described. Initially Cole’s team had agreed, but while they’d been reviewing RT’s system, Cole had discovered something alarming.

Something that they’d missed.

There was a “back door” via a connection between the aircraft’s computing systems that was unsecured and could be exploited by a skilled hacker to gain access to critical flight systems. All that was needed to exploit the weakness was to establish a framework of malicious codes to override the plane’s security software.

Cole had alerted RT’s senior engineers to the flaw in the flight-management system, clearly indicating that it could be hacked. It’d meant that they would have to ground the fleet for a retrofit. He’d worked on a proposal to redesign and install a more secure system at an additional cost of nine million dollars per aircraft.

Executive members of the company had been stunned. They’d disagreed with Cole’s proposal. Under the direction of Hub Wolfeson, a powerful executive, and without Cole’s knowledge, the board had used RT’s European operations to launch a retest of the existing system. That review concluded the existing system was secure and that Cole’s theory was wrong. Cole had been angry, and after he’d managed to gain access to the European tests, he’d argued that the tests were inaccurate and therefore ineffective.

Again, he’d insisted the fleet be grounded and his proposal be implemented. Senior engineers and company board members, again led by Wolfeson, had been poised to review his request during the time Veyda had visited. Cole had been told that the board’s response would take days. He’d tried to put it aside, when suddenly he’d received a text saying that upon review, the board had agreed with the European results and had denied his latest proposal to ground and retrofit the fleet.

Cole had been responding to those texts at the time of the car crash.

In that moment, the life he’d known had come to an end.

He swallowed more whiskey. A lot more.

And now we have the EastCloud incident. The fools. I told them. I warned them. They think they’ve got a safe airplane .

Cole reread the news stories on the mystery surrounding the horror of EastCloud Flight 4990 and replayed the video of the terrified passengers over and over.

I know what happened and it’s going to happen again. I’ve got to do something. Washington. I know somebody in Washington. I know what happened to Forty-nine Ninety! It’s going to happen again, I tell you!

Cole reached for his phone but heard the sound of clinking glass as he fell to the floor, drunk, and passed out.

He lay unconscious in the darkness, still gripping his phone, while on his computer monitor horrified passengers screamed for their lives.

London, England

The sprawl of metropolitan London flowed under Shikra Airlines Flight 418 as it approached Heathrow.

The six-hour flight from Kuwait City had been a smooth one for Captain Fahad Al-Anjari, the crew, and for their two hundred passengers aboard the Starglide Blue Wing 250.

Al-Anjari was one of Shikra’s top pilots with some twenty-five years’ experience with the Kuwaiti airline. His seniority afforded him the Kuwait City-to-London route, considered one of the airline’s plum assignments. Al-Anjari had flown it nearly a hundred times and had always enjoyed it.

He loved flying the Starglide Blue Wing 250. It was a modern plane, equipped with easy-to-use computers, and had an admirable safety record. It responded well in all conditions, and always gave a smooth ride.

He loved the views over London, starting with the Thames. Each time he saw it, he thought of Joseph Conrad’s passage in Heart of Darkness about the river evoking a large snake twisting deep into the country.

Flight 418 continued its descent and was minutes from landing. It was vectored for a visual approach to Heathrow’s Runway 27L, the airport’s southern runway. The autopilot and autothrottle were engaged. As the jetliner passed over the rows of homes crammed together in Hounslow, a suburb bordering the airport, it was ninety seconds from touchdown.

Al-Anjari had extended the landing gear.

The jet had now descended to one thousand feet and was fully configured for the landing. When the plane reached eight hundred feet Al-Anjari took manual control of the aircraft, instructing Khalid Marafi, the copilot, to disconnect the autopilot at seven hundred feet.

Marafi disengaged the autopilot.

At fifty seconds from landing, Al-Anjari, now in control, commanded more thrust from both engines. Both engines initially responded, but seemed disturbingly reduced to a trickle of power.

“What the hell’s this?” Al-Anjari couldn’t believe it. “What’s going on?”

At thirty-five seconds from touchdown, Al-Anjari and Marafi scrambled to identify the cause for the loss of thrust.

“I don’t know what’s happening!” Marafi said. “Our speed is dropping fast! We’re not going to reach the runway!” He scanned the instruments for the problem. The fuel level was okay, the pumps were okay, no fire indicators, no malfunctions. “We’ve got a double engine failure! The engines have been switched off!”

“Switched off? How? We didn’t do that! Try restarting!”

They commanded a restart without response. Nothing worked.

Al-Anjari’s throat tightened as he scanned the rooftops of Hounslow and noticed a petrol station ahead.

Not here! Oh God, please, not here!

Now at twelve seconds before touchdown, a buzzer sounded and a robotic voice warned, “Air speed low! Air speed low!” Then the stick shaker activated and the control column physically vibrated, indicating that the aircraft was about to stall.

“We’re going to crash!” Marafi shouted.

Al-Anjari reached for the cabin PA system and announced to the passengers, “Brace! Brace! Brace for hard landing!” Then he radioed the tower. “Four one eight, Mayday! Mayday!”

At five seconds before impact, the jet just cleared the houses of Hounslow and the petrol station, coming so low to traffic on the A30 motorway that ran along the airport’s south side that vehicles swerved to avoid the airliner’s landing gear.

In the moment before impact, Al-Anjari pulled back on the control column and thought of his wife and children, flying kites and picnicking amid the southern dunes, praying he would see them again.

The jet came down in the grassy undershoot of the runway about two hundred and fifty yards inside the airfield perimeter fence. The right wingtip hit the ground first, followed by the right main landing gear. The wing disintegrated and the landing gear broke away as the plane skidded, then lifted and rolled, cartwheeling to an inverted position.

As it tumbled down the right side of the runway, the plane broke up. The rear tail section separated, taking several rows with it. While most passengers were belted in their seats, others spilled from the plane to the ground as it bounced along.

The main fuselage, the large center section, remained intact. As it slid and rolled, passengers were rocked loose in the cabin, some catapulted through it and out of the gaping hole left by the separated tail section. The metallic grind was deafening as passengers in the cabin were jerked and shaken like toys. The section seemed to slide forever before coming to a stop upside down.

People still belted were hanging in their seats. Blood dripped everywhere, and severed legs, arms and hands were scattered about the cabin. In some areas, the fuselage had been crushed, trapping people in coffins of compacted metal, their bleeding hands reaching out. The air filled with screaming, moaning and the overpowering smell of jet fuel.