John Nance - Lockout

Jerry looked over at the teenager he’d all but attacked so many hours ago, wanting to say something supportive. But after unsuccessfully punching numbers into the MDCU at random and taking a quick bathroom break, the kid was back nose-down in the MDCU operator’s manual and nodding every few seconds as if the arcane language actually made sense.

“What do you think, Josh?” Jerry asked, unable to restrain himself.

Josh Begich looked up and smiled tentatively. “Sir, I think… I think the unit is actually working and only the screen has been turned off. I was working out how to program a different destination.”

“Really? Have you tried yet?”

“No… where would you like it to take us?”

“New York!” Jerry said, realizing the futility of it with depleted fuel reserves. “Okay, then maybe Tel Aviv. Where we originated.”

Tom Wilson was still positioned behind the copilot’s seat, and he leaned in a bit. “Jerry, aren’t we already headed there?”

“True. Okay, program in the coordinates for Cairo, just to see if it will change course.”

Josh carefully entered the digits and pressed the execute button.

“Nothing,” Jerry pronounced, watching the heading, his voice calm and matter-of-fact, where hours before he would have thrown something out of sheer frustration. Maybe it was weariness, Jerry thought. Maybe his more laid-back demeanor was a dangerous measure of resignation, a realization that he couldn’t necessarily control everything. Whatever it was, in some ways he seemed like a stranger to himself, someone he was watching from a distance, and even amidst the angst and the fright, that fascinated him.

“Jerry,” Carol’s voice reached him from directly behind. “They’re pulling the first breaker now.”

“Thanks. Josh, keep experimenting. Just, as I said before, write down everything you punch in before you hit execute.”

“Yes, sir.”

The startling sound of an air traffic controller giving an inflight instruction to an EgyptAir flight momentarily confused Jerry before he recalled that the main VHF radio had been activated an hour ago, but with no transmit function. Almost absently, he pushed the transmit button on the sidestick controller.

“And Cairo Control, Pangia 10 with you, I just wish you could hear what the hell I’m saying up here, because it would sure be nice to be able to speak to the rest of the known universe, or at least someone in it!”

Jerry relieved pressure on the button, listening absently to what seemed a response.

“Pangia 10! Cairo Control! We do hear you, sir. How are you reading this transmitter?”

Jerry looked down at the VHF control head on the center console, wondering why Dan was taking the time to tap in from below to tease him with a bad accent. Recognition slowly dawned that it wasn’t Dan’s voice at all.

From Bill Breem’s vantage point, Jerry seemed to rise a couple of inches in his command chair, as if re-inflating, glancing around quickly to assure himself no one else was holding a microphone.

“Holy…” He grabbed for the sidestick.

“What was that, Jerry?” Breem asked, but Jerry was already mashing the transmit button.

“Cairo, Pangia 10! If that’s really you, we have you loud and clear on 122.7.”

He turned as far to the right as he could. “Carol! Tell Dan we have two-way VHF restored! And tell him to keep on pulling things!”

“Loud and clear also, Pangia 10,” the Cairo controller was saying. “We are aware of your emergency. How can we assist, sir?”

“Can you patch us into a discreet frequency and set up a telephone relay to our company?”

“Standby, 10, I believe we can arrange that.” The channel remained silent for a few seconds before the controller confirmed it, and Jerry passed the main number for the Operations Control Center in Chicago.

Aboard Pangia 10 (0355 Zulu)

“Pangia 10, your company is calling, and we have them connected,” Cairo Control relayed. “Please go ahead.”

“Chicago, Flight 10.”

“Captain Tollefson, is that you?”

“Yes. Who is this?”

“Rick Hastings, your CEO. Captain, please listen closely. There is one thing I need you to do with great care and precision.”

“Yes sir. What would that be?”

“It’s a series of numbers I need you to enter into your MDCU.”

“We’ve already discovered that even though the screen is blank, it can accept some inputs. We’re just not sure which ones.”

“I may have an answer to that, Captain. I’ll read the procedure I want you to follow and the numbers, and then I need a precise readback.”

“Go ahead.”

Hastings read the steps and the code and listened as Jerry read it back without error.

“Okay, good. While I have you, please punch that in and execute, and tell me the results.”

“Mr. Hastings, I suppose now is not the moment to ask you what the hell is going on and why do I have this… this… code?”

“You would be correct, Captain. It is neither the time nor the forum. Just do it, please.”

“Standby,” was the response, followed a minute later by the report Hastings had dreaded. “We put that in precisely as instructed, sir, and virtually nothing has changed.”

“You’ve tried your controls?”

“Yes, sir. Nothing. We’re working like hell to disconnect whatever idiot thing that is in the electronics bay that has taken over, and, as you can tell, we got the radio back and the throttles, but nothing else.”

“Input that again.”

More seconds of line noise and vocal silence before Jerry Tollefson returned to the line, his voice terse.

“We put it in three more times, sir, and nothing is different.”

“ Three more? I only instructed one more.”

“No, sir, you said to input it again. Well, we tried three times and to no avail. May I ask where this number sequence came from?”

“No, but I can tell you your airline has had nothing to do with this whole affair. We’re working as hard as we can to help you.”

“Well, Mr. Hastings… I’m sorry, I forgot… General Hastings… we’re begging for anything substantive you can do. Maybe that was the wrong number sequence?”

Unseen, half a world away in a Chicago command center, Rick Hastings sighed, remembering Paul Wriggle’s warning that the third bad attempt would permanently lock out an MDCU no one knew was active to begin with.

“Captain, I don’t know that we’ve got anything else at the moment. I’ll get back to you the moment we do.”

“Not much time left, sir,” Jerry added.

“I know it.”

And just as quickly, the connection was broken.

The White House

On the president’s direct order, General Paul Wriggle had remained in the Oval Office, distant from any possibility of the team in the Situation Room wondering about his presence, and his purpose. Contemplating what had become an expanding disaster on many fronts, Wriggle found himself alone when his cell phone rang with Dana Baumgartner on the other end.

“We’ve found Gail Hunt, General. Tell me how much detail you want, but she skidded off the highway to Estes five days ago and has been trapped in her car in a gully since then. One of our guys started searching for her and found the skid marks, and… she’s been airlifted to Denver, alive but unconscious.”

“Good Lord! Thank God she’s alive. What’s the prognosis?”

“Good, we think.”

“Don’t hurt her, Dana, but push as much as you can to get that code, if she can recall it. We’re down to no time left.”

“She’s unconscious, General.”

“Do what you can.”