Rick Mofina - Free Fall

I can’t let it end here. I’ve got to see Hooper.

Cole licked his lips and fumbled for the ID badge he’d used when he’d worked on NTSB investigations long ago. He eyed the security officers while keeping his head down. His line moved steadily.

Remain calm and act natural. Calm and natural .

“Next,” said the young female security guard, Atley, according to her nameplate.

“Robert Cole to see Jake Hooper with NTSB Major Investigations.” Cole placed his ID on the desk.

Atley looked at it carefully, deepening his fear.

“It’s urgent,” Cole added. “I’m party to an investigation.”

Atley looked at Cole, typed on her keyboard then reached for her phone.

Cole glanced at other security officers, momentarily eyeing their holstered guns. Then he looked back at Atley, not liking the way she was tapping his card on her desk while on the phone.

It telegraphed a problem.

Cole saw that one of the other security guards was taking a longer look at him. Cole looked away for several seconds, but when he looked back the guard was still looking at him-directly at him.

A collision course! Dear God, they did it. They’ve breached the system .

Jake Hooper rushed from the emergency meeting to his desk, stunned by the horror playing out over the sky, refusing to believe Robert Cole would engineer such devastation.

How can we stop it?

The nation’s best experts with the NTSB, the FAA, the military, the airlines, the planes’ makers, were all frantically searching for solutions that would release the cyber stranglehold that had locked the jets on a death course.

Nothing was working.

Jet fighters were getting into position to take whatever action the White House advised.

Impact was less than forty minutes away.

More than eleven hundred people would die.

The FBI was on-site in Colorado, minutes from moving in on Seth Hagen and Cole’s daughter.

Is there time to stop what’s been orchestrated?

Hooper racked his brain for a solution. It was futile. Whatever he’d thought of had already been conveyed to the crews by the Air Route Traffic Control Centers, and nothing was working.

Hooper glanced at the time: thirty-eight minutes to impact. His line rang and he seized it.

“Hooper.”

“Security, sir. I’ve got Robert Cole at the desk for you.”

“Who?”

“Robert Cole. He says it’s urgent.”

Hooper’s pulse rocketed.

“Don’t let him leave! I’ll be right down! Hold him there!”

“Sir,” Atley said to Cole upon hanging up, “your card’s expired.”

“Expired?”

“Yes, would you-”

“Let me take a look.” The guard who’d been staring at Cole held out his hand for Cole’s ID. He studied it, then the pages posted near the computer. His sharp blue eyes flicked to Cole, then to the pages, then to Cole.

Both men knew.

Cole’s stomach clenched and he took a step back from the desk.

The guard very subtly shifted his weight while unsnapping the button strap of his holster.

“Sir, get down on the floor, on your stomach,” the older guard said.

Cole didn’t move.

In one smooth motion the guard drew his gun from his holster and leveled it at Cole’s head.

“Get on the floor now!”

A woman screamed. People nearby backed away as Cole dropped to his knees, raising his open hands.

“Please, I have to see Jake Hooper! It’s a matter of life and death.”

“Atley, move your ass! Cuff him!” the older guard said.

“You don’t understand,” Cole said.

Atley rose from her seat and moved behind Cole, pushing his stomach flat on the floor, and handcuffed his wrists behind his back. The older guard replaced his gun in his holster and spoke quickly into the shoulder microphone of his radio. Then he helped heft Cole to his feet and moved him around the security desk toward a small office, just as Hooper emerged.

“Jake!” Cole called to him. “Jake, it’s my daughter and her boyfriend! They found a point of vulnerability! I can fix it!”

“Shut up!” the older guard said as his radio crackled a response.

“Hold on!” Hooper said. “I need to talk to this man!”

“No,” the guard said. “He’s wanted by the FBI. We’ve just alerted them.”

“Where’re you taking him?”

The guard nodded to the small office.

“Jake, please, let me help! I can fix it!”

More security people arrived, along with Reed Devlin.

“Reed,” Hooper said, “Robert says he has the solution!”

Devlin’s face tensed as he assessed the scene.

“This man’s wanted by the FBI,” the security supervisor said, “and we’re holding him here. They’re on their way.”

“Reed,” Hooper said. “Cole can help us and we’re losing time!”

“Listen to me,” Devlin told the guards. “We’ve got a crisis happening now and we need this man’s expertise immediately. Please hold him in our operations room so we can talk to him. Keep him in custody and watch over him. The NTSB will assume responsibility but we must do it now!”

As the security supervisor shook his head Devlin stepped closer to him, enabling the security man to read the fear in Devlin’s eyes.

“We have a thousand lives at stake! Do you want to be the guy history remembers as the one who stood in the way of saving them?” Devlin said.

The security supervisor’s face whitened.

“We’re in this together,” Devlin said. “Let’s do this now!”

The supervisor turned to the guards and nodded.

“Let’s go. Take him up to the sixth.”

Grand Junction, Colorado

“It’s not working.”

Beads of sweat grew on Lloyd Quinn’s brow as he looked at Shawn Krenski, who was shaking his head.

Thirty-five minutes ago, they’d learned that their plane, Trans Peak Airlines Flight 2230 from LA to New York, was locked on a collision course with Seattle-bound NorthSun Airlines Flight 118. The time of impact was in thirty-one minutes.

Both crews had now been alerted and advised not to tell passengers of the situation so as not to risk chaos on the flight. Since the alert, Quinn and Krenski had made countless attempts to regain control of their aircraft.

“Anything happening with the autopilot?” Joe Brazak, the top engineer for the 880, said from Trans Peak’s headquarters in Seattle.

“Nothing.”

“Let’s try that override again.”

“Roger.” Quinn nodded to Krenski, who issued a sequence of commands but to no avail.

“Nothing,” Quinn reported, just as his headset beeped with a transmission from the ATCC.

“TP Twenty-two Thirty, Denver Center. No change to your course.”

“Twenty-two Thirty. Roger, Center. We’re working on it with engineering.”

Quinn’s headset beeped again.

“Try it again but with the reset,” Marty Chan, the systems chief, suggested from Seattle.

Krenski wiped his sweating fingers on his shirt as he tried the reset without success.

“Okay,” Brazak said, “try to reduce speed again.”

“We tried again. Nothing.”

“Try adjusting altitude.”

Quinn made yet another effort, which failed, leaving him to curse under his breath and face the fact that they were trapped. Every command was shut out. He had no control of his aircraft as it cut across the sky thirty-six thousand feet above Grand Junction, Colorado.

They were moving at more than five hundred miles an hour, locked into a course that would end in a midair collision with a Seattle-bound flight in about thirty minutes.

Quinn looked to the corner of the console, where he’d placed a small photo of Maria, his wife, and Sophie and Ella, their two daughters. It was in keeping with a promise he’d made to himself long ago. If ever he faced something impossible on the job, their faces were the last thing he wanted to see.