John Nance - Lockout

“So we’re at flight level three-eight-zero, and so is this display. Our instruments show a heading of two-four zero, and so does the panel on this screen. You’re reading our panel, aren’t you?”

“Captain, he was just trying to fool me…” the girl said again. “He was… just being a dork.”

“I heard you!” Jerry snapped at her, his eyes boring into Josh’s. “What am I looking at on this screen?”

“I… it’s a mockup… it’s a cockpit like yours, sir, but… but I’m not connected to anything. I just had it running the heading and everything… where I thought we were.”

“And if I turn this computer off and rip the battery out?”

“Nothing will happen to the plane! Honest! I was just… just…”

“Our cockpit is offline! Is that a coincidence, too?”

“I heard your announcement, sir, but it isn’t me.”

Jerry grabbed the laptop and handed it to Carol. “Take it to Dan. See what he thinks.” He turned back to Begich, pressing a finger to his chest. “If I find out you’re lying, kid…”

“I’m not! I’m not lying… I wouldn’t… really! I swear!”

Jerry swiveled around, reading the distress in his lead flight attendant’s eyes. He followed her gaze to the three male passengers who’d been standing at the ready. All three were watching him now with deep alarm, saying nothing, as if unsure whether it was safe to even sit down with a madman captain screaming and threatening kids. He shook his head and waved them off. “Sorry to alarm you guys. We thought…”

One of the men was approaching. Short, rotund, and balding, he nevertheless had an air of authority about him and Jerry shook his head at first when the man’s voice reached him, low and accented.

“Captain, may I speak with you in the galley there.”

It was, Jerry realized, more of an order than a request, and for some reason the embarrassment of attacking a snot-nosed teenager cancelled his desire to pull rank and duck back in the cockpit. Instead, he followed the man in, finding a perfunctory outstretched hand, which he took reluctantly.

“I am Moishe Lavi,” he began, watching for a reaction that didn’t come. “I know a few things about command and leadership, Captain, and I know we’ve got a very big problem, but may I make a humble suggestion?”

“What, that I cool it? Yeah, you can, because I know you’re right, Mr.… Lavi was it?”

“Yes.”

“I apologize.”

“Tell me what you think is happening to this plane, Captain?”

Just for a second Jerry thought he saw a means of polite escape, but pilot platitudes such as “We’re working on the problem” or “We have it under control” sounded one light year beyond ridiculous, and so he remained where he stood, knowing somewhere in the back of his mind that somewhere he’d heard the name “Lavi,” and not being able to make the connection was bothering him, too.

“Actually, sir, I don’t have any good ideas to explain what’s happening to us. Neither the copilot nor I have ever even heard of anything like this before. I… we just left Israel, as you know, and I have to wonder if some enemy of Israel did this… but, I don’t even know how to define “this.”

“An enemy of Israel?” Lavi looked off balance for the briefest of moments. “You mean the Iranians? Why would you suspect them?”

“I don’t, at least not an active suspicion, and not just Iran. I mean, we have no explanation for what’s happening, so I suppose that’s a place to start.”

“I see. And you can’t regain control?”

What? Jerry thought. Am I not speaking clearly? He stifled the urge to make a sarcastic comment, still suspicious that he should know this guy.

“No,” Jerry answered, restraining himself carefully and describing the untouchable video game the cockpit had become.

“And if nothing changes, what are we to do then, Captain?”

That’s the question I don’t want to hear, Jerry thought to himself. What if! What if we can’t solve it before we run out of fuel? What if even then, even when all the electrics are offline, we can’t even dead stick it to an engine-out landing?

Moishe Lavi saw the expression on Jerry Tollefson’s face even before Jerry realized it himself.

“Excuse me, please, Mr. Lavi,” Jerry said, trying to mask the sudden tension in his voice. “Please go back to your seat. I have to go back up front.”

Jerry turned without a word and propelled himself into the cockpit, pulling the door partially closed behind him. Bill Breem had surfaced from the electronics bay and was perched on the jumpseat and Jerry registered the fact that Dan had the kid’s computer on his lap, an amused expression on his face.

“What, Dan?”

Dan shook his head. “Carol told me what went on. This is just a clever recording. I changed a bunch of parameters and nothing changed up here.”

The sigh from the captain’s mouth as he slid back into the command chair was almost heartrending, Dan thought.

“I thought…”

“I know. Unfortunately, it’s not that easy.”

“One other idea, Dan.”

“Go ahead.”

“If the engines stopped, and the RAT wasn’t deployed, and the battery was disconnected, there’s no way whatever or whoever is holding us hostage could not let go, right?”

There was desperation in Jerry’s voice, but what was pulling at Dan was completely frivolous—the fact that the last line of defense for electrical and hydraulic failure had a derisive acronym: RAT, the Ram Air Turbine.

“Dan?”

“Jerry, the only way that would happen, if nothing else we try works, is when we run out of fuel and the engines stop. Even then, a total disconnect would only occur if we slow down so far the engines can’t provide windmilling voltage. Then, provided we could keep the RAT from popping out and giving us electricity, which, by the way, we can’t, because it’s automatic, and provided I could find and disconnect the only battery bank downstairs, then the remaining problem is, we’d have no basic flight controls and we’d be descending, with all instruments blank, unable to influence anything. I don’t really think that’s a good solution.”

“I wholeheartedly agree, that’s not a solution,” Breem added, his voice no longer carrying a sarcastic tone.

“I’m not an idiot,” Jerry said. “I know that. But in that moment of complete disconnect, we could then deploy the RAT, power up the controls, and maybe get her back.”

“For how long?” Dan asked. “To glide down somewhere? We’d be out of gas, and we can’t artificially turn off the fuel since nothing up here works.”

“We haven’t tried to use the engine cutoffs.”

“Jerry, I don’t think we want to just try that. You want to gamble, knowing that if it works and the engines stop, we still can’t get them back and fly the airplane manually…” he let the thought trail off into the oblivion it deserved.

“What else have we got?” Jerry asked.

“Methodical analysis. We’re off the emergency checklists on this. Yes, we have no formal guidance, but this stuff isn’t metaphysics. Therefore, we have a lot of deduction and methodical analysis to go through, step by step. Let me get back downstairs and see what I can find… if anything. Captain Breem, did you have any insights down there?”

Bill Breem shook his head and looking a bit pale. A bit different when you’re facing the monster yourself, isn’t it, Captain Bligh, Dan thought, making sure those thoughts weren’t being transmitted in his expression.

“I’ve only been in that compartment a few times, gents,” Breem said. “But you’re right; I’ve never seen a cabinet like that or even heard of it.”