John Nance - Lockout

“Tell me, Dana.”

“Someone could be using our machine and our equipment as a shield for what they’re really up to. You… do know former Prime Minister Moishe Lavi is aboard, right?”

“ What? No!”“

Dana Baumgartner filled in the details, and Paul Wriggle felt his head swimming.

“Oh, my dear God! No wonder the Company and the Situation Room is involved!”

“Does that… have a particular meaning to you, Paul? That Lavi is aboard?”

“At the very least it means the diplomatic explosiveness of this is far beyond anything I imagined. Good lord! Okay, Dana, I’d better ring off for the moment.”

“I’ll call the minute we get anything new.”

“Yes. Please.”

He punched the disconnect and sighed, hesitating in deep thought for what seemed like a very long time, before making the decision and pulling out a folded note from his shirt pocket. Don was right, he thought. Further hesitation was unsupportable. He carefully punched in the telephone number on the note and triggered the call, wondering how in hell he was going to verbally navigate the razor edge he would need to walk. He glanced at his watch, calculating the time zone change to Chicago, and almost missed the answering voice on the other end.

“Hello?”

“General Rick Hastings, please,” he said.

“This is Rick Hastings. Who is this?”

“Paul Wriggle, Rick. One of your classmates from undergraduate pilot training.”

“Hey, Paul! Kinda late for a telephone reunion, don’t cha think? But it’s good to hear from you. What’s up? I assume you’re not calling to chat about the Cubbies?”

Paul chucked. “I would never chat about the… God, you never give up on the Cubs, do you?”

“Of course not! That’s what sets Cubs fans apart. Eternal mindless optimism. So what’s on your mind, Paul?”

“Short and sweet, okay?”

“Of course.”

“First, I’m still on active duty. I’m a two star now, heading a program I can’t discuss. I know we haven’t talked since you retired as a three star, and I apologize for never formally congratulating you on becoming CEO of Pangia. But that’s the subject: Pangia. You have an airplane in trouble, I may have the solution, but flag rank officer to flag rank officer, I need your immediate assistance and an almost complete absence of questions about how I know what I know.”

Paul could hear Hastings changing hands and almost dropping the receiver.

“Holy moly, Paul! That’s quite a preamble.”

“I know it.”

“Well, I clearly have the fiduciary loyalty to this company to consider now.”

“We’re flag rank, Rick. That never changes. Remember the prime directive about joining the star club? Although I shouldn’t have to mention it.”

“No, you shouldn’t, Paul. A bit rude, I’d say, but I’ll hear you out.”

“Can I get some assurance?”

“Assurance? I’ll do the right thing for our service, and our country, Paul. You don’t have to ask for that.”

“Very well.”

“What is it, man?”

“Do you have any communication with your flight crew?”

“No. We did, sporadically, via a handheld satellite phone, but we think they ran out of battery. We know they’ll call back if they can.”

“So there’s no current means to relay something to them? Not even ACARS?”

“Not that I know of. Why?”

“I’ve got a code sequence, Rick. If we can get one of the pilots to punch it into what would probably appear to be a dead flight management computer, they’ll probably get back complete control.”

There was a chilling silence on the other end.

“Paul, are you telling me our service is screwing around with that airplane?”

“No! Absolutely not!” Paul Wriggle said, suppressing the small, burning kernel of doubt in his gut that he had a bead on everything that was happening. “What’s happened is a complete electronic accident.”

“You know something about this substituted airplane, don’t you? I just found out a half hour ago.”

“The aircraft swap was a total accident, Rick. Yes, that’s my bird, and she has some special equipment I can’t admit exists.”

“Well, buddy, the whole fucking world is liable to hear about it now!”

“Maybe, maybe not. But I think I have the code that, if punched in, returns the damned thing to normal. If we can get it to the pilots without broadcasting a hint of an explanation…”

“Jesus, I don’t believe I’m hearing this! You know how many passengers are aboard that flight?”

“Yes, and one in particular, whose presence makes getting this solved supercritical. No questions, Rick. We can sort it out later. Can you get to the pilots?”

Another long silence and a deep sigh as Paul noticed the Washington Monument passing off to the left.

“I’ll throw that question back to our operations center. As far as I know, we’ve lost all satellite contact, ACARS telemetry, and sat phone, as I told you. I don’t know what else we can do? But what’s the bloody number?”

It was Paul Wriggle’s turn to sigh. The cell phone was in the open, a non-secure channel, but it was too late to kvetch about that now. They could always change the code in future versions.

“You use the MDCU, the Multifunction Display Control Unit keypad. Select 1 Right, and twelve boxes will open. Type into scratch pad the twelve-digit number sequence I’m going to give you, then line select 1 Right, putting the numbers into boxes. Then select 1 Right again to activate. He read the twelve-digit sequence and forced a read back, stopping himself from mentioning the fact that they’d been blasting the code all over the planet with no response.

“This will do it? Just this?”

“Yes. But, Rick, a very large warning. It has to be entered with absolute precision. After three wrong entries, it permanently locks out the computers.”

“Okay. I’m on it. You realize the questions are going to come like a fire hose, and I can’t stop all of them?”

“Yes. Please do your best. I’ll call back in a little while. I promise you a full explanation. Just… no time now.”

He punched off the phone, aware that the destination was just ahead, and he fumbled around in his back pocket for the appropriate ID, preoccupied with the question of whether he had just committed a federal felony.

Situation Room, The White House (10:20 p.m. EST / 0320 Zulu)

The significance of the terse little conference in the corridor was not lost on the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Major General Richard Penick knew CIA Director James Bergen and his deputy, Walter Randolph, only too well, and trusted neither. Sharing a routine Senate grilling with Bergen every now and then as marginally-trusted intelligence community leaders was part of the job. But the multiyear ferocity of the food fight over which agency should control the nation’s human spies, cryptically referred to as HUMINT, was making blood enemies out of formerly respectful rivals, until it had become almost an intelligence civil war.

It was especially interesting, Penick thought, that Walter Randolph and James Bergen were so engrossed in their private little exchanges, they hadn’t even noticed him brushing past with a small wave.

General Penick moved into the Situation Room and nodded to the civilian aide who’d accompanied him, primarily to watch for incoming messages, but there was no question that she was also there for appearances: The director of DIA, and a three star general at that, should never be seen without at least one aide. If that wasn’t written as a rule someplace, Penick thought, it damn well should be.