John Nance - Lockout

I shouldn’t have teased Seth, she thought, recalling his attempted joke about Pearl Harbor. She knew that story very well, and how all the American intelligence agencies at the time had been withholding information and fighting each other so ridiculously that firmly predicting an impending attack on Hawaii had been all but impossible.

So, is this the DIA pushing us away? she wondered. Probably not.

But, there was something about Bronson’s hasty departure, and now his rather disingenuous wave-off, that raised a flag. A big one.

Jenny sipped her coffee and let her thoughts bounce around for a few seconds before realizing something about that hijack story on her screen was lobbying for her attention. She re-read the details, noting the time that the airliner had reversed course without clearance was around 2100 Greenwich Mean Time, or “Zulu” as it was now called.

A little more than three hours ago.

Jenny sat bolt upright in her chair. “Three hours…”

She leaned over suddenly, pulling the folder of papers they’d been working with all afternoon toward her, rifling through the notes to find a particular line.

The one, singular answering burst from something out there that had accepted their mystery signal had come at 2052 Zulu.

Now when, exactly, did that airliner’s turn begin? How do I find out? ”

She re-read the screen before recalling the existence of the FAA’s Air Traffic System Command post. A quick search through a very restricted database turned up the duty officer’s number and she punched it in before realizing that a call from the National Security Agency, even on the best of days, could rattle cages and raise shields. And there was never a question about being on an NSA line alone—she had a monitor out there in the form of an active human or a passive datastream.

Monitors be damned, she decided as the line was picked up.

“Vint Hill, duty officer.”

“Yes, hello. Jenny Reynolds here, at the Pentagon. A quick question, if I may.”

“Go ahead.”

“That Pangia flight we’re all watching, do you know precisely when it reversed course in Zulu time? I need to verify the start of the unauthorized turn.”

“May I ask why?”

“Yes, ma’am, you may ask… but I can’t tell you.”

She could tell the woman on the other end was weighing suspicion against the relatively innocuous nature of the request.

“All right. I think I understand that.”

“If it helps, I didn’t call on our secure lines because this isn’t a classified question. I’m going for speed.”

“Right. Hold on.” Jenny could hear papers being shuffled in the background before the answer came through. She issued a heartfelt thank you and hung up before any additional questions could be asked, comparing the two numbers and feeling a small shudder ripple up her back.

Jesus God! Two minutes apart! First the answering burst, then two minutes later the turn. How many ‘Holy Shits!’ are there in the word ‘coincidence’?

She sat back down, tracking the various components of the puzzle. A strange programming order repeats for at least half a day over clandestine satellite channels, apparently waiting for an answering burst. The United States Defense Intelligence Agency, with a straight face, tells her they know nothing about the transmissions or their purpose, and a team forms around the one NSA employee who discovered the mystery. Then, suddenly, there IS an answering burst, and the primary transmissions stop—and a civilian US flagged airliner, with passengers aboard, reverses course as if hijacked and heads back to the Middle East.

And the DIA team leaves as soon as they hear.

She could feel her face heating up in anger at being used and tossed aside by DIA’s Will Bronson, who undoubtedly had known all along whatever was happening was the military’s doing.

But, wait a minute, she cautioned herself, he came over BEFORE the aircraft reversed course. Bronson was already here when the answering burst came through. Why stage such a charade if they really did know what was happening, who was sending the transmissions, and what was going to happen? Jenny sat back and tried to unleash her subconscious to work on the problem.

That doesn’t make sense!

But her conscious mind couldn’t let it go.

No. There was no need for a charade. We called them. All he had to do was tell me to sit down and shut up, and I would have. He and his team were involved because there was something we stumbled on that they didn’t know about. But what?

Wait… how many people were on his team? I never spoke to anyone back at Boling. But he did. So, maybe at least one or two.

She pulled a legal pad over and started listing the items:

• They didn’t know who was sending the signal.

True. That’s why they needed my help in locating the source, which we never discovered.

• They weren’t sure what the programming signal was trying to accomplish.

Hmm. Maybe. They might have recognized it as a dangerous transmission doing exactly what I was afraid it was doing: programming some possibly airborne or orbiting machine.

Her logic was getting tangled, she realized. Beyond the high probability that Bronson and his team came over because there was something they did not know, it was too murky to be sure of anything.

But, as soon as they got word that…

She stopped herself again. The connection she was making between the errant airliner and Bronson’s text message was a leap. No, it was worse. It was her tendency to connect dots that didn’t yet exist. She hadn’t even read the text he’d received. Maybe it had nothing whatsoever to do with the airliner. Maybe it was a laundry list, or his mother asking him to bring a quart of milk to dinner.

But what if it did connect? The thought was rising like a silent tide. Maybe Will Bronson didn’t know what was going to happen, but obviously he and his people knew enough to get concerned when someone at NSA discovered a sky full of strange signals.

Dammit, none of it was anything but speculation! She desperately wanted hard conclusions.

Jenny let out a long sigh, unconsciously shaking her head as she reached for the water bottle always by her computer and took a long drink.

Okay. Strict logic, girl. No intrigue. No leaps. No return to my paranoiac youth. Point one: This can’t involve some sort of secret planned military test or exercise or Bronson would never have come over here to begin with, let alone involve his minions back at Boling. They would have already known what those signals were. Point two: If they suddenly connected the dots between the answering radio burst and the airliner hijacking, and that prompted his hasty evacuation, that doesn’t prove the DOD is involved. Maybe it just means that they needed to get back and handle the intelligence questions that will inevitably follow the offshore hijack of an American aircraft.

But there was a point three, and she couldn’t avoid thinking about it: What if whatever’s happening somehow involves some clandestine operation by our military that has to be hidden at all costs? The fact that we know about it means the operation is leaking, and may be spinning out of control.

Jenny sat in silence for a minute reviewing the chain of thoughts. She drummed her fingers on the edge of the mouse pad, then flicked her hair back and picked up a pencil to chew on the eraser—a comforting habit since grade school that her father had hated. It angered her that Will Bronson hadn’t called her personally, and she blushed slightly at the thought that her pique might be more primal than professional.