Lockout Page 12

  At the forward end, he could see a cascade of cables entering the cabinet, but without pulling up the floor panels it was unclear where they were coming from. The sheer size of the cable harness, however, looked formidable—as if every circuit in the airplane was routed through the big box.

  Gotta get inside this thing! No warnings, no labels, no nothing. This makes no sense! You don’t put a major component in an airplane and weld the whole thing shut. There’s got to be a hatch on here somewhere.

  He moved carefully towards the aft end of the cabinet, examining every square inch he could reach by running his fingers along the smooth, unpainted metallic surface.

  Okay, logically, if there are no openable panels, then the entire side has to come off or swing open.

  He ran his fingers over the top of the right side from aft to forward, realizing at last that there was a ridge where the sheet metal was bent from the vertical to horizontal, overlapping the edge by perhaps two inches, the overlap unseen on the top. He examined the entire front-to-back breadth of the seam, feeling for a latch or screws or some sort of fastener.

  On the third pass, he found what felt like a round depression, just the size for an index finger to push in on some type of button.

  The space between the top of the cabinet and the roof of the electronics bay was only two inches, not enough to see over, but he could feel the button give a little when he pushed it, and spreading his legs to get a steady stance while holding the edge of the metal rack to his right, Dan shoved his index finger down with as much force as he dared.

  He felt the lock begin to move as an earsplitting “CRACK” coursed through him. Just as quickly, the memory of the noise faded as he sank to the floor of the electronic bay.

  How much time had passed he couldn’t tell, but regaining consciousness felt like swimming up from the bottom of a giant bowl of soup. It wasn’t immediately clear to Dan whether he was coming in or out of a dream, anesthesia, or a nightmare. He opened his eyes to a sideways, floor level view of a strange compartment that ever so slowly began to look familiar again. He lay there afraid to move for a moment, wondering if he still had arms and legs and whether they would respond if he tried to move.

  There was sound all around him now, and he recognized it as a slipstream, which would mean he was in flight somewhere. He struggled to put the pieces of the puzzle together, and the thunderclap realization of where he was and what had happened caused him to sit bolt upright, ignoring the dizzying pain in his head.

  There was a burning sensation on his right index finger, and something wet, warm, and sticky was on the back of his head and when he probed it, his hand came back covered in blood. The steel-faced cabinet was still in front of him, looking all the more impregnable and intimidating. Obviously it was booby-trapped, and he’d walked right into it.

  There was a voice in the distance … a female voice, Dan judged … and he knew he should look to the right and see if there was a woman attached to it. Or maybe he was still dreaming. It would be so much better to just close his eyes and rest a few minutes.

  Or a few hours.

  But the voice was insistent, irritatingly calling his name, and he struggled to look to the right, spotting a disembodied Carol, only her head visible as she stuck it below floor level looking for him.

  He tried to reply, but his voice sounded too weak for even him to hear.

  “DAN! WHAT HAPPENED? DAN, ARE YOU OKAY?”

  Carol pulled her head up and out of sight, but it was replaced instantly by the rest of her descending the ladder and coming to him, some sort of towel in her hand.

  “Good Lord, what happened?” she asked, as Dan struggled to answer that question himself. There had been a button and he had punched the button, and … and …

  “That … thing … shocked me.”

  “Shocked you?”

  He started to nod, but she was holding the cloth to the back of his head.

  “Ow!”

  “You’re hurt! Stay still!”

  “Voltage … I think it’s got a protection … ah … circuit … shock thing …” Dan could hear his voice trail off as if it belonged to someone else, but slowly his conscious thoughts were coalescing. He had been electrically zapped by something when he tried to open the cabinet. That meant that whoever had put it here did not want it opened, at least not in flight. He could feel his heart racing and wondered in passing if it could have killed him.

  “That cabinet … holds the key,” Dan said, but she didn’t hear.

  “Can you walk, Dan? I need to get you upstairs to attend to this cut.”

  “I’ve … I’ve gotta get into that thing.”

  “Not until I get this bleeding stopped.”

  With Carol guiding him, he reached the ladder and propelled himself up to the cockpit with her behind, aware that Jerry was watching him emerge with an incredulous expression.

  The process of bandaging the gash on the back of his head took several minutes while Dan explained what he could remember to Jerry, who was looking quite feral.

  “You say it’s booby-trapped?” Jerry asked.

  “Yeah. In a phrase. I wasn’t expecting that.”

  “Can we … can we maybe use gloves and get past it?”

  “Dunno. Could be it has other security safeguards as well, but that’s got to be the key. There are huge wire bundles running into it from the front side under the floor. I’ve never seen anything like that in an A330, although … to tell you the truth … I’ve only been down in two other hellholes. But those two had nothing like that, just an open bay of electronic racks where that thing is situated.”

  “I’ve never been down there at all,” Jerry said.

  “Any luck getting through on any of those other phones?” Dan asked.

  “No. They’re still trying.”

  “I was hoping to find a way to restore the radios, but it’s hopeless to trace wires. Millions of them. Wait, Jerry … did anything change up here when that thing zapped me?”

  The captain shook his head no.

  “I was hoping it had. That might mean it’s just a short. But … I think this thing intends to defend itself. God knows how many volts of electricity it hit me with, but I don’t think its intent was to kill.”

  Jerry’s eyebrows were up as high as they could go, the alarm in his voice visceral.

  “What are you talking about, Dan?” Bill Breem interjected. “You make the damned thing sound sentient.”

  “It may be. God, that stunned me! But it’s the key. You don’t build a defense system for routine electronics on a plane. Has to be something someone doesn’t want us screwing with, and since we’re not in control, the box that IS in control doesn’t want us taking over. So, that fits.”

  “What fits?” Jerry asked. “I’m not following you.”

  “I’m not either,” Bill Breem added, a genuinely engaged look on his face.

  Dan took a deep breath as Carol nodded her okay to turn forward in the copilot’s seat. “I mean, we’ve been relieved of control thanks to something electronic, and it’s more than likely that whatever that is, is in that cabinet, and the cabinet is protecting itself because it doesn’t want us taking control back.”

  “Who is ‘IT’?” Jerry asked. “I mean, I know you’re referring to the cabinet, but who’s controlling the cabinet?”

  “Ah … yeah. That’s the friggin’ question, right?” Dan said. “If we knew that, we might know how to fight it off.”

  Jerry cursed and turned left toward the side stick controller, grabbing it and mashing the priority button before deflecting the stick full to the left.

  Nothing happened, and he flopped the stick back and forth violently as if trying to break it away from its base.

  “Goddamnit!”

  “I know. Nothing,” Dan said.

  “Who the hell would install such a thing in a commercial jet? Has Pangia gone mad?”

  “Why would you think our airline would have …” Bill Breem began, letting h
is voice trail off as the ridiculousness of the question hit him. It was here, therefore someone in their airline had to know, and had to have decided not to tell the pilots.

  “Okay, guys,” Jerry continued. “If that thing IS in control, we’ve got to defeat it. Can we cut the cables?”

  Dan was shaking his head vigorously. “No. Too risky. But … what the hell is it? Is it some sort of surrogate control center? Is it supposed to protect us and instead it’s gone nuts?”

  “I don’t have a clue, but I want it gone.”

  “Yeah, Jerry … me, too, but if we go cutting cables to something we don’t understand that seems to be in control and defending itself, we could crash. If we cut the wrong cable, remove that thing’s ability to fly and don’t restore ours, we’re done.”

  “We’ve got to do something!” Breem said.

  “So what do you think we should do?” Jerry asked through gritted teeth, looking squarely at Dan but expecting Breem to respond as well.

  Dan could feel the cobwebs dropping away at last. The burning sensation in his finger and mild headache were trivialities he could ignore.

  “Okay, it’s a straightforward problem in essence. It’s electrical. Find me some thick gloves, insulate my shoes, put on the thickest coat I can find, and I’ll go get that goddamn cabinet open. That’s step one.”

  “And step two?”

  The single laugh that escaped unbidden turned into a guttural giggle, as Dan shook his head. “Jerry, even if I wrote thriller fiction for a living, I wouldn’t have a clue where this story goes next!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Aboard Gulfstream N266SD (2350 Zulu)

  General Paul Wriggle looked out at the lights of Telluride, Colorado, passing below and to the right of their Gulfstream. He’d been there many times and loved the place, even with its rarified altitude. He wished he could just spend his time flying airplanes and looking at incredible sights like this, the sodium vapor lights reflecting off the ski slopes, as night skiing progressed in the crystal clear air. Not that he didn’t appreciate the professional opportunities for accomplishing things and meeting the challenges that his rank and assignment provided. He enjoyed being a general officer, even more so than he’d imagined he would when he was a lowly second lieutenant just entering undergraduate pilot training out in Enid, Oklahoma. But flying was such a joy, especially when he could park the plane at destination after a completed mission, like an actor leaving a bravura stage performance that never needed a follow-up meeting.

  Not quite as good as sex, he thought to himself with an involuntary smile, but maybe the next best thing!

  He considered throwing off the seatbelts and going back to the cabin to check on Sharon’s progress, then thought better of it. They would be ready to start descending into the Springs in about twenty minutes, and he’d already had the pre-arrival bladder break.

  He was lucky to have Major Wallace on his team, he thought. An absolute Radar O’Reilly when it came to anticipating what was needed, and incredibly adept at finding logistics solutions for almost any challenge. She could accomplish more in twenty minutes than most staff members could in a day.

  He changed his mind again and decided a pre-descent leg stretch was a good idea after all.

  “Don? You’ve got the con. I’m going back for about ten minutes.”

  “May I point out, sir, that ‘you’ve got the con’ is navy-speak, not air force?”

  “You may,” he smiled.

  Sharon Wallace was hunched over the satellite phone when Wriggle walked into the cabin, and she looked up briefly with a “please wait” gesture. He settled into the swivel chair next to her as she finished the conversation and turned to him immediately.

  “Sir, we have a problem. A bunch of them. I was just coming to tell you.”

  He sat forward, on alert. “What’s the matter, Sharon?”

  “First, the FBO I called in to fuel our aircraft in Tulsa called to reconfirm which airplane we were talking about. I repeated our tail number and serial number and the spot. He rang off, then called back ten minutes later to say the airplane isn’t there, despite what the other guy told me.”

  “Isn’t there? Did he check all the …”

  “Yes, sir. All the white tail A330s. And he checked their hangars. He said the aircraft on spot eighteen is definitely not our Three-Three-Zero-Romeo-Mike. The serial number is three numbers off from ours. He got out and checked the identity plates in the nose wheel well, to the extent that Pangia’s ramp patrol got suspicious and chased him off. Obviously the first guy I engaged was sloppy as hell.”

  “Shit! Where the hell is our ship?”

  “I’m afraid I already know, General.”

  “Well, tell me, Sharon!”

  “The call I was on when you came back was the FAA command post in the DC area. I had a bad feeling. I hate to tell you, sir, but the registration number of Pangia’s hijacked A330 is 330RM. In other words, ours.”

  As a matter of style, Paul Wriggle had never appreciated the use of dramatic pauses, but he couldn’t help himself. He sat staring at Sharon for several very long seconds as he tried to process what she’d just said.

  “You’ve got to be kidding!”

  “I wish I were. No wonder they couldn’t find her in Tulsa. Pangia wasted no time putting her on the line.”

  “As a white tail?”

  “Must be, sir. No way could they have painted her in a week.”

  “And the damn flight is hijacked?”

  “It gets worse, General. I picked up a late news dispatch about the Pangia flight before those calls came in. It’s not a hijack. The flight crew is reporting that something has electronically locked out all the controls on the aircraft, and the crew can’t fly it, descend, change course, or anything.”

  Wriggle snapped forward in his chair, eyes wide.

  “Oh, my God!”

  “No one knows why, sir. Or at least, they don’t why … or so the news media are saying.”

  “Jesus Christ, Sharon!” General Wriggle managed, his eyes flaring wide.

  “Those were the words,” she added. “The pilots can’t disconnect the autoflight system. And it’s our airplane.’”

  “How the hell could this happen?” the general managed, his eyes casting around the carpet as if searching for an answer or reprieve that just had to be rolling around the floor.

  “Our guys are an hour behind us in the other A330 headed for Tulsa,” Sharon continued, “and undoubtedly, every level of our government will be involved shortly.”

  Wriggle was waving her to be quiet as he stood and started pacing.

  “And we’re constrained by law and regulation from saying too much to anyone,” the general added, half under his breath.

  “Sir, should we stop our team from landing Pangia’s airplane in Tulsa for now?”

  Wriggle was breathing hard and struggling to stay composed. He looked up at her as if only half understanding. “What?”

  “Our guys hauling Pangia’s A330 behind us, sir. We told them to proceed to Tulsa.”

  “Ah … no. Have Don get hold of them. Have them land in the Springs and just wait for instructions.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Quick. Go ask Don to confirm whether we have enough fuel to make Washington, DC. I think we do, but …”

  “Will do,” she said. Sharon disappeared forward into the cockpit returning less than a minute later.

  “Don says it would be tight but we can make it. Two hours and twenty minutes from now. We have a kick-ass tail wind.”

  “Where is that Pangia flight? How much fuel and time do they have left?”

  “I … have no idea, sir. We can probably calculate it. They were a Tel Aviv to New York flight with normal reserves, if we knew the departure time …”

  “No. There’s no time. We’ll land at the Springs and work this from our secure lines.”

  She started to turn for the cockpit again, but he stopped her.

  “Wait �
�� Sharon, do we still have classified capability on this satellite phone?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Okay, tell Don to head direct to Andrews. I’ll work on things from here. I need our staff assembled at the Springs and waiting for instructions.”

  “What are we going to do, sir?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. I really don’t know! I’m thinking. We had no contingency plans for anything like this. That airplane was never supposed to be out of our control, dammit! And nothing like this is even supposed to be possible.”

  Silence filled the space between them for a very uncomfortable few seconds before Sharon Wallace filled it.

  “We have to help them, sir,” she said.

  The general’s eyes locked on to hers with a pleading look she knew he could never articulate.

  “Sharon, goddammit, don’t you think I know that?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  NSA, Ft. Meade, Maryland (7:10 p.m. EST / 0010 Zulu)

  “Jenny? What happened? Where’d he go?” Seth Zeiglar was leaning in the door of the small conference room, which now held nothing but her.

  She looked up from what was apparently deep thought and shook her head as she shrugged her shoulders.

  “Frankly, I’m not sure. Ten minutes ago we were fixing to go back over everything we knew … or thought we knew … about the signals, and Will Bronson gets a text, immediately makes some lame excuse, and he’s on his feet thanking me for nothing and then evaporating.”

  Seth came in, closed the door behind him, and sat down, looking concerned. “So, what did you find together?”

  Jenny sighed and tossed the papers she’d been holding on the table. “We validated my theory that the signal sequence is an echo that has been apparently piggybacking on several dozen communication satellites around the globe. That, in itself, is a pretty good trick, requiring some very creative programming, and I told him that, in my opinion, this isn’t something you can set up in a matter of days. Chances are, the transponders involved have been quietly prepped for many months … maybe years.”