John Nance - Lockout

To defuse it, all he had to do was order the missiles off the rails of the fighter trailing Pangia 10. If there was no inbound airliner with Moishe Lavi aboard, there was no reason for launching against Tel Aviv, and no reason for Israel to incinerate Iran.

Airborne, in trail of Pangia 10

The pilot flying Patyish 26 assigned to trail the Pangia Airbus with missiles ready to fire had maintained the radar lock for what seemed an eternity, waiting for an order one way or another. The massive internal battle between the obligation to follow orders and the nightmarish possibility of committing mass murder, even as an instrument of his government, tore at his soul. The thirty-four-year-old father of two was not entirely sure he could squeeze the trigger if given the command.

“Patyish 26, stand by for orders.”

“Roger,” was the correct reply, and all he could manage as he tensed for what was coming next. A cold chill had already enveloped him, and he could hear his heart pounding in his ears as he strained at the silence on the channel.

Pangia 10

“Tell Dan to get ready,” Jerry said.

“He says ‘on your command,’ Captain.”

Jerry glanced at the moving map display. Was there any point in waiting further? Mere minutes of fuel remained.

Jerry reached up and grabbed his sidestick controller perhaps for one last comforting moment of pretense that all was normal and this had been just a nightmare.

He deflected the stick to the right, reacting in absolute disbelief as the big aircraft rolled to the right, obeying his command as if nothing had ever been wrong.

What the hell?

Carol’s voice from just behind his seat partially filtered through his disbelief.

“Captain, Dan says to tell you there was a large noise down here and a lot of relays clicked. Are you ready for him to cut it?”

Jerry looked at the sidestick controller in his left hand as if it had materialized out of the either. For hours it had defied him, and now, suddenly, when it was probably far too late, it decides to work? What the hell?

Her words finally coalesced. Dan was ready to bring an axe down on the power cable below. He forced his body to swivel around as far as he could to make sure Carol heard him. “NO! Tell him do NOT cut it! Do NOT cut it! We have control again somehow! Tell Dan to get up here.”

Jerry could hear Carol getting up from the floor as Dan all but levitated through the hatch, barely believing Carol’s words.

“You have control Jerry?”

“Yes! Get back in the seat.”

“Jesus, yes!” Dan scrambled past Carol, patting her on the butt as he passed in some unconscious form of celebration as he all but leapt in the copilot’s seat.

“How’d you do it, Dan?”

“I didn’t! I have no idea why it let go!”

The Kirya, Tel Aviv, Israel

The generals, and especially the air force chief, were feeding in an almost three-dimensional picture of the aerial battle, and as expected, Iran was doing very poorly, even as the second wave of fighters closed in. That would hasten Tehran’s decision. If they couldn’t shoot the airliner down…

“How long a delay in seconds between a ballistic missile launch and when our board here would show it?” Gershorn asked no one in particular.

Two members of the general staff turned to answer. “No more than five seconds, sir. This is an amalgam of real-time satellite sensors and imagery.”

He nodded thanks, his mind racing. The order to intercept any launched missile in boost phase was already signed. The order to launch the nuclear preemptive strike would take a maximum of two minutes consultation.

“One more question,” Gershorn asked evenly, consciously hanging on to his emotions. “What are the expected civilian casualties if we go for preemption?”

The room quieted immediately, as if a judge had asked a defendant at the start of a trial which prison he’d prefer.

“Between… 7,000 and 20,000, sir, in primary and secondary casualties in the communities in which they’ve tried to hide the enrichment facilities.”

“And our fighter is in place for a shootdown?”

“Awaiting your order, sir.”

“How long would it take Tehran to understand the threat was gone?”

“They would see the target break up and disappear. But, they might not know who shot them.”

“In other words, they might still push the button based on the assumption that we were attacking?”

The generals in the room were all glancing at each other as if forming an unspoken collective resolve over what to say. The prime minister was clearly teetering on a razor edge. The wrong phrase, the wrong word, might push him in the wrong—or the right—direction.

The final tumbler suddenly dropped into place in Gershorn’s mind, unlocking his resolve.

And somehow, in Tehran, he knew his counterpart had also reached an equally historic decision.

Aboard Pangia 10 (0542 Zulu)

“I tried to tell the fighters, but they’re not responding,” Jerry said as Dan pulled on his headset and triggered the radio the Israeli had been using. “I’m starting a turn.”

“Patyish Lead, this is Pangia 10! We have regained control! Repeat, we have regained control and are reversing course back to Iraq.”

There was no response, yet another explosion in the distance off to the east announced the fact that the engagement wasn’t over.

“Where are we?” Dan asked.

“Just inside their airspace. Baghdad is right behind us. See if you can punch up the airport in case we need it.”

“Absolutely we’re going to…”

The rest of the answer was drowned out by a thunderous explosion on the right side of the Airbus and they could feel the big bird stagger and yaw to the right. Emergency warnings, beeps and horns and messages began flooding the ECAM computer screens.

“Jesus God!”

“What the hell was that ?” Jerry demanded.

“Something exploded!”

“No shit, Sherlock! But what?”

“I don’t know… maybe a missile. We’ve lost number two engine, I think.”

Dan jerked his head back forward, quickly scanning the cascading readouts on the screen. “Yes, number two engine is down!”

“We have a fire light?” Jerry asked.

“What? Y es , dammit!”

“Run the ECAM procedure.”

“Roger. Engine fire number two, I have the fire switch for number two, confirm?”

The procedure intimately familiar from training scenarios, Jerry reached his right hand up and touched the same fire switch Dan was pointing to.

“Roger, number two confirmed.”

“Pulling two, continuing checklist. Shutting off number two start switch.”

The sudden feeling of deceleration superimposed itself over all their other senses as Jerry looked with feral intensity toward his copilot.

“No, No, Dan! Number TWO! Not number ONE!”

“I pulled two!”

“We just lost number one! Confirm the fire switch is in and try a restart…”

“Jerry!”

“…we can get her back! Quickly!”

“JERRY!”

“What?”

Dan was pointing to the forward panel and the depiction of the fuel tanks.

“We’re out of gas, Jere!”

“What?”

“We’ve run out of fuel. I’ve got all the pumps on.”

Dan leaned left to get closer to the fuel readouts, confirming it. No useable fuel in number one main tank, and essentially none in number two.

“We’re zeroed, Jerry.”

“Oh, fuck! But what happened to two?”

“They shot us.”

“Who? Who is they? Who shot us?”

“Man, I don’t know, but it had to be the Iranians.”