John Nance - Lockout

“I think,” Dan began, “…that if I were back there as a passenger, I’d rather know the entire unvarnished truth. They will undoubtedly find out later.”

“Yeah, got it,” was the reply. Another deep sigh and Jerry punched the button again.

“Okay folks, let me describe to you precisely what we’re dealing with up here. It’s our policy not to dance around or obscure anything. In a nutshell, our autoflight system will not disconnect, and we have not yet been able to find a way to regain manual control. Further, the airplane reversed course on its own while falsely displaying normal indications that we were westbound and over the Atlantic headed for New York. Normally we would just pull circuit breakers and disconnect the system, but it is resisting our efforts to do so. Now, machines and computers are not sentient, so there is a simple explanation for this, and we will find it. But that’s the reason we need to establish an alternate way of speaking with folks on the ground, so we can solve this problem more quickly. Both of us up here promise to keep you fully informed at all times.”

Dan was nodding as Jerry punched off the PA. “Well, done, Jerry. Tough job well done.”

A genuine flash of appreciation crossed the captain’s face like the momentary flare of a candle on a dark night, and at the same moment the cockpit door burst open. Captain Bill Breem, his face almost purple with apparent anger, stood in the doorway, his voice loud enough to be heard in first class.

“WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON UP HERE?”

Jerry half turned in his seat and smiled as disingenuously as possible.

“And a good evening to you, too, Bill!”

First class cabin, Pangia 10 (2255 Zulu)

The passenger call light had brought Carol routinely to the side of a fashionably unshaven male in his forties who looked up and motioned her closer.

“Ma’am, could I talk to you, perhaps in the galley?”

“You have a cell phone or radio, sir?”

“Well… yes, but it doesn’t work. I…”

“Right now I need to deal with an airplane full of call lights,” she said, strain showing clearly on her face.

“Yes, but… I need to… to report something the pilots may need to know.”

“Report what?”

He glanced at the seat row ahead, noting the teenage boy who had partially closed the lid of his laptop, but the glow of an aircraft instrument panel could still be seen on the screen.

“Ah… in private, when you can… please,” his cultured British accent easy on her ears.

She nodded, not unkindly. “Follow me, please.”

The man scrambled out of the aisle seat, unnoticed by the woman in the adjacent window seat still too absorbed in her book to notice, and followed Carol forward to the galley where she had him step inside the curtains.

“Okay, tell me.”

“The pilot said he’s having trouble with the autoflight system. I… believe I may possess a clue as to why.”

“Go ahead.”

“I believe the young chap sitting ahead of me in 3B is fooling around with the controls of this airplane.”

“Excuse me? How?”

“He’s a computer hacker, and he’s trying to impress the girl next to him. He’s been manipulating programs for the past hour. I know computers. He’s up to no good.”

The look on Carol’s face told it all: She didn’t believe a word of it. Worse, she didn’t think it possible.

“I’ll tell the captain, sir. Please go back to your seat now, and thank you.”

“You’re quite welcome, but you do understand I’m dead serious?”

“I understand.” He felt her hand on his arm, propelling him gently but with unmistakable firmness back into the aisle and to his seat.

But she didn’t go straight to the cockpit, he noticed. Instead, she went aft and returned with a bag of collected cell phones first, disappearing then into the cockpit. Surely now she would inform the captain, he thought.

He studied the scene one row ahead, the shoulder-length blonde mane of the girl in 3A falling to the left of her seat against the window, sound asleep, the kid leering at her now without subterfuge, his eyes all over her as she slept. He sat with his partially closed laptop showing that same cockpit view. Whatever he’d prepared on that screen to impress her, he obviously wasn’t going to change anything until she awoke.

CIA, Langley, Virginia (6:00 p.m. EST / 2300 Zulu)

CIA Deputy Director Walter Randolph surveyed the packed conference room and said a simple “good evening” as he sat at the head of the table. Thirteen earnest faces now turned to him, their papers, tablet computers, and note pads at the ready.

“Very well, folks. As my able assistant Mr. Duke has, I’m sure, briefed you, we have a winged problem that may just be boomeranging back to Tel Aviv. At least we hope whoever is controlling Pangia Flight 10 intends it to go no further than Tel Aviv. We know Mr. Lavi is aboard with his handler, and in the case of Miss Ashira, the word “handler” is a bit of a double entendre. I do not know where our uniformed DIA rivals at the Pentagon may be on this. Further, at the director’s insistence, I am to meet him at the White House Situation Room in thirty minutes. So, speak to me, starting with the flight dynamics.”

Randolph planted his elbows on the polished table and supported his aging face, letting his eyes bracket whoever was speaking. Full attention mode, he called it, but in fact he was listening on a secondary level as well for something that didn’t quite mesh, some fact that seemed incongruous. Sometimes fifteen minutes later a tiny snag would surface from his subconscious gray matter, and often, too often, it was a missing piece of the puzzle.

The facts came hot and heavy: The aircraft was on the same heading as if it were bore sighted on Tel Aviv; the French fighter pilots were reporting Pangia pilot attempts to communicate visually but no luck with handwritten signs in the windows; Pangia World Airways was clueless about a potential cause and they suspected a hijack; and the Airbus was streaking toward an already upset Switzerland whose leaders perceived there might be a military issue with this rogue flight, of which they, being a neutral nation, would want no part.

Walter raised a hand to stop the briefing suddenly. “Whoa. Several statements back… Charmaine, was it you reporting on the passengers and cargo?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you said in addition to the normal baggage there was what? Cargo?”

She nodded. “One cargo storage igloo. We don’t have the manifest.”

“Can’t we get it? After all, we’re the CIA.”

“We’re working on it, sir.”

“Good. Random bags are one thing, but a cargo container containing unknown cargo and coming out of Israel with Moishe Lavi on board has me a bit more than concerned. Do we suspect something explosive?”

Several heads were shaking no. “No, sir. At least given the neutron backscatter equipment always used at Ben Gurion, nothing nuclear.”

“But we all understand, do we not…” Randolph continued, visually polling the faces around the table, “…that if the Iranians get interested, they won’t buy that assurance for a moment? And, we have no assurance that a Lavi sympathizer isn’t running the neutron backscatter detector array at Ben Gurion.”

The sound of the conference room door opening a bit too aggressively caused everyone to look toward the intruder. A woman Walter Randolph didn’t recognize but sporting the requisite CIA badge moved immediately in his direction, her face a mask of seriousness as she handed him a folded note written on the stationery of the director. Walter studied the note and nodded at her. “In five minutes,” he said quietly, pocketing the note as he forced his protesting body to its feet.