John Nance - Lockout

Walter Randolph sighed internally. The next two days would be exhausting as they tried to build a defense for every conclusion, every action, and every opinion the CIA had rendered, and DIA would be doing the same. The worst part, he thought, was that neither agency yet knew precisely what the hell had just happened, or why.

Or, for that matter, how .

He pulled out his pen and made a quick note regarding the mysterious William Piper. The company’s conclusion in the heat of the battle had been that Piper was, in fact, the missing employee at Mojave who dispatched the wrong jet and the former Mossad agent was even supposed to be in Washington masquerading as a DIA operative. The president had been insistent on getting to the bottom of that. But then, on return to the Situation Room, the president had surprisingly appeared to lose interest.

Why? Walter wrote, underlining the word four times.

Baghdad International Airport

Ashira Dyan needed no briefing about the dangers to an Israeli agent who found herself suddenly in Iraq, even in post-Saddam Iraq. Being alive and on the ground was a positive thing, but the ground they were on was anything but good for an Israeli. That was especially true when you were in the company of the one Israeli official the Muslim world hated above all others.

As soon as Ashira’s feet had hit the ground, she was struggling with her satellite phone for a connection to Tel Aviv and some sort of plan. Casually blending in with the passengers to wait for alternate transportation would be unthinkable, and perhaps lethal, on a host of levels.

Moishe Lavi was equally aware of the dangers, but the urgency of the call he was struggling to connect took precedence even over the sudden sweating and pain in his left arm, both of which had come out of nowhere after he slid down the exit chute.

A male voice, heavy with sleep, answered from somewhere in London, but the fact that he had picked up at all triggered a quiet flood of relief in Moishe.

“I’m alive, it turns out,” Moishe said in Hebrew.

“So I hear. There is no war, you know.”

“You mean, tonight?”

“Of course, tonight. Your letter… you said…”

“I know what I said. It was all for nothing. Please destroy it. Forget it. Please.”

There was a tired sigh on the other end, and he understood completely. What might have been one of the major scoops of the decade had just evaporated in the journalist’s hands. But Moishe knew he would keep his word.

“Very well,” the man replied. “It would not make a lot of sense now anyway, would it?”

“Next time I’m in London, we’ll get together, okay?”

“Certainly. Until next time, shalom. And, by the way, old chap?”

“Yes?”

“I am truly glad you’re still among us.”

“Thank you.”

Moishe punched off the phone, angry at the rising pain and the shortness of breath he was experiencing and concerned that Ashira would notice. He stood for a moment, forcing the pain to subside and composing himself, then motioned her over to him as his mind raced through the tasks he would now have to accomplish.

“First, we have to evaporate from here. You know this, yes?”

“Of course,” Ashira replied. “I am working on it.”

“Very well.”

“Are you all right?” she asked, studying his face in the subdued lights of the airport.

“Certainly. Just a bit fatigued.”

“You look very pale, and you’re perspiring. Let me find a place for you to sit…”

“No!” He had his hand out, palm up, fending her off. “Do nothing to attract attention to me, or you, for that matter. I will be fine.”

The White House

The air force chief of staff had been asked to walk with the president back toward the Oval, but the chief executive stopped short of the door and turned.

“General, I don’t care what you have to send in to do it, but get Lavi and his entourage out of there immediately.”

“Yes, sir. We’ve got the transports en route…”

“No, I mean sooner. Do we have a diplomatic mission in Baghdad with an aircraft? One of our 89th Squadron birds? A charter? A business jet? Anything?”

“I… don’t know, sir, but we’ll get on it immediately.”

“Coordinate with Tel Aviv, but get them out of there. The Iraqis must not know Lavi is there until he’s long gone, if then.”

Kathy Swanson, the press secretary, was waiting with the chief of staff as the president swept back into the Oval and leaned wearily against his desk.

“Where are we with the media?” he asked her. “How much do they know?”

“They know that Pangia 10 was hijacked… that’s the word they’re using… by its own electronics, but so far no one is openly speculating about sabotage or external control. They know the aircraft did a U-turn over the Atlantic and headed back to Tel Aviv and then turned toward Iraq and Iran. They know the aircraft has made an emergency landing in Baghdad, and that it was out of fuel. They do not know, as yet, about the explosion on the right engine or the Iranian attack.”

“And they know that Lavi was aboard, right?”

“To my utter shock, not yet!”

“Really? Are any of them hinting at an Israeli-Iranian faceoff?”

“Reuters threw that into the air four hours ago, but no one else saluted it. ABC has been asking the question, but refrained from open speculation.”

“And the thundering herd here?”

“Our White House press corps know something big is afoot beyond a distressed airliner, but what I’m hearing from them is just their own speculation about what happens if an American flight originating in Israel ends up at an airport in Iran with Jewish passengers aboard.”

The president’s phone rang, and he scooped it up, spoke a few words, and replaced the receiver, turning back to the group.

“Seems the Israelis have already launched a business jet to Baghdad to get Lavi and his lady out of there, and he’s supposed to be on the ramp in twenty minutes.”

He looked back at the press secretary, who was holding up a cautionary finger.

“Go ahead, Kathy.”

“It’s going to accelerate, sir. The aggressive speculation we’ve had so far will flow into any available pathway for an explanation. Most of it at the moment revolves around what might go wrong with flight computers and complex avionics on highly automated Airbus airplanes, and we can expect the usual round of broadcast analysts chewing over the subject on the morning shows. From there, they will eventually realize this can’t be explained by a malfunctioning autopilot.”

The president nodded. “But Lavi’s name might not surface?”

“No way to tell.”

“Kathy, keep me informed regardless of the hour if speculation on the why and how begins to turn toward anything domestic, including us.”

He could see her seize on the word “us,” the look in her eyes betraying the realization that there was something important she did not know, and in the interest of plausible deniability as press secretary, she needed to keep it that way.

He waited until she had gone and the door had closed behind her before turning to his chief of staff.

“Walk with me. We’ve got two whistle-blowing government employees sitting with Paul Wriggle in the Cabinet Room and I’m going to have to risk filling them in on what this whole project was really about.”

“You may have to fill in more than them, sir. This could come unraveled.”

“I know it. It’s all or nothing. But if we do start down the mea culpa slide, we tell it all.”

Baghdad International Airport (8:40 a.m. local / 0640 Zulu)