Lockout Read online

  “I’ve got the Quick Reference Handbook,” Dan announced. “Lemme get into it.”

  “I think we’ve lost all the generators, Dan.”

  “Yeah, but … where’s the battery and the RAT, the ram air turbine? It should have dropped into the airstream by now and provided emergency power.”

  “Okay, run the checklist.”

  “Which one?”

  “Loss of all electrics.”

  “I don’t think we have one like that … let me look … jeez!”

  “Wait … Dan, I can see light under the cockpit door.”

  “Sorry?”

  “I just looked back … the cabin’s still lit up.”

  “Okay, then it’s not the generators.”

  “This damn plane can’t lose all the displays,” Jerry said, “It’s supposed to be impossible! We’ve got zero instruments except for the standby attitude.”

  “Okay, here’s the loss of electrics checklist in the QRH.” Dan began reading the items, holding the small flashlight in his teeth, searching the overhead panel for a reset button as Jerry found his flashlight and frantically tried to make sense of what was happening.

  And just as suddenly, everything came back on line, all the computer screens snapping back to their previous illumination levels and the cockpit lights back on.

  “Thank God, Dan! What did you do?”

  “Again, nothing!” Dan mumbled, the small penlight still in his mouth.

  “Well, you must have done something. Check the heading!”

  “Steady on course, two seven zero degrees. Speed’s the same.”

  Jerry could see Dan shaking his head as he stared alternately at the ceiling panel and back to the QRH. He pulled the penlight out of his mouth and turned to the captain. “I’m telling you, Jerry, I didn’t do a bloody thing! I was still searching for something TO do!”

  “Then, what the hell happened?”

  “I guess it cured itself, but we’d better start troubleshooting. Something knocked everything off line. It could happen again.”

  Jerry had leaned forward, his eyes racing around the flight display.

  “We’re still on course, on altitude … on airspeed. Everything. I don’t think it even knocked off the autoflight system.”

  “Autothrottles still good?” Dan asked, verifying the indications were still correct.

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve never seen anything like that. Have you?” Dan asked.

  “No.”

  “Did I miss anything in training?”

  “No … I mean, individual screen failures, but they’re all independent.”

  Both men sat stock still as if any movement might once again plunge the cockpit into darkness, both of them studying the panels and trying out various theories, the silence building before Jerry spoke again.

  “There are no error messages on the ECAM, Dan. You notice that?”

  “Yes.”

  He punched at the center display. “Nothing. We didn’t imagine it, right?”

  “No, it was real. We were dark for maybe a minute. It felt like a freaking eternity!”

  “Jesus! I’m wide awake now.”

  “Me, too. Should we, maybe, advise maintenance?”

  “Yeah,” Jerry responded. “You want to type in the story?”

  “Yes. Got it.” Dan began punching in an abbreviated narrative of what had just happened to transmit to Pangia’s command center in Chicago.

  “As soon as you’re done with that, Dan, ask Shanwick for higher. I’m tired of this cirrus,” Jerry said.

  “Will do.”

  Dan typed in both messages and triggered the send function as Jerry scanned every panel for a clue to what had happened. The captain could see the copilot leaning forward again, scrutinizing something on the screen controlling the radio systems and the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System, known as ACARS.

  “What?” Jerry asked.

  “It’s not going through,” Dan replied. “I’ve got no indication of a transmission.”

  “Maybe it’s just not reporting properly. You think?”

  “I don’t know what to think, Jerry. Hold on, let me try getting Shanwick with a CPDLC message,” he said, referring to the Controller-Pilot Data Link Communication system. His fingers moved over the appropriate virtual buttons on the computer screen to send a message directly by satellite to Shanwick, then tried the HF channel, but the call went unanswered, as did the next attempt to reach the company over the satellite phone.

  Jerry watched him work with increasing concern as the copilot went through the entire array of available communication devices controlled through the touch screens, until Dan looked up and met his gaze.

  “Nothing, Jerry. We’ve got nothing!”

  “You tried VHF?”

  “Yes, 123.5. No one’s answering, and there have to be aircraft all around us.”

  “Okay, there’s got to be a way to reset these radios.”

  “There is a procedure to reset the satellite phone, but it stands to reason, Jerry. Whatever blacked us out up here probably tripped a whole bunch of breakers in the E and E compartment.”

  Jerry handed over the checklist. “You know how to go down there?”

  “I’ve only been in the compartment once, but … yeah, I know how.”

  “We’re supposed to get company approval first.”

  “Okay, so once we reset the radios, I’ll ask them for the okay,” Dan chuckled.

  “Good plan.”

  Dan was lifting himself out of the seat but Jerry reached out to stop him. “How much time before we hit the coast, Dan?”

  “Three hours, twenty minutes to Newfoundland,” Dan replied. “And we’ve got five hours to JFK with six hours thirty minutes fuel remaining.”

  “Okay.”

  “At least the computers are with us again. I just don’t understand what the hell happened back there.”

  “Tell me about it,” the captain replied, his eyes on some distant point beyond the nose. “This is a frickin’ electric jet. I don’t know how it’s even possible!”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Shanwick Air Traffic Control Facility, Shannon, Ireland (9:15 p.m. local / 2115 Zulu)

  “Pangia One Zero, Shannon on HF. Are you experiencing any difficulty, sir?”

  Arthur O’ Brien had triggered the selective call code for the flight he’d been watching on their new extended radar, speaking on high frequency radio. There was no guarantee the crew of Pangia 10 would hear him, but they hadn’t responded to his satellite computer message and this was getting serious.

  Arthur leaned in slightly as he studied the computer-generated displays of the air traffic under his control, most of them entering, leaving, or navigating the Nat Tracks–the North Atlantic Track System. He was dead tired, but his focus had snapped to the glowing symbol representing a Pangia Airways jumbo jet after it had made a completely unexpected U-turn at 38,000 feet.

  He could feel his fatigue evaporating.

  “Pangia One Zero, how do you hear Shannon Centre?” he repeated, his finger moving imperceptibly against the transmit switch.

  Even in the subdued atmosphere of the radar room, the uptick in his voice had caught the attention of his shift supervisor, and Sean Smythe was beside him, glancing with rising concern at O’Brien’s display. The Tel Aviv-to-New York flight was boring eastbound, the huge Airbus A330 now challenging a sky full of westbound jetliners approaching their North Atlantic Track System entry points, including two 747s closing on their position at the same altitude.

  “Bloody hell!” O’Brien muttered, his voice low and steady, his mind on full alert.

  “He’s not talking to me, and he hasn’t responded to the CPDLC message, and I only caught this when he crawled back on to my scope.” O’Brien said to Smythe without looking up. He mashed the transmit button again, hard enough this time to feel his finger protest. “Pangia One Zero, Shannon, how do you hear us? We see you’ve made an unauthorized course
reversal.”

  O’Brien finally glanced up at his chief, and Smythe read the grave expression on the controller’s face. He had worked with Arthur O’Brien for a decade and had never seen him rattled, and while this was no exception, the rising tide of tension was washing over him as well.

  “Better clear the way,” Smythe said, voicing O’Brien’s thoughts.

  “Got it,” Arthur answered, his finger already triggering the transmitter as his mind shifted to the high-speed task of keeping a sky full of jetliners from colliding with the rogue Airbus. All of those westbound flights were closing in on their entry points to the North Atlantic Track System, after which they would be out of direct radio contact, passing position reports primarily through satellite-based computer messages. But for now he had to rearrange those jets approaching the coast, and it would all be done with numbers: compass headings, fired by voice into the headsets of a dozen airline pilots, shattering what had been a quiet, routine passage over western Ireland.

  Turning a British Air 747 to a heading that wouldn’t conflict with the Pangia Airbus was his first urgent task. Using the traditional radio call sign of all British Air flights the order rolled easily off his tongue.

  “Speedbird Two Three, turn immediately to vector heading three-zero-zero, acknowledge.”

  The obviously puzzled voice of a pilot with an exceptionally cultured accent replied from the British Air cockpit. “Vector heading three-zero-zero, Speedbird Two Three, Roger.”

  Very well … the Air France flight next, then Virgin Atlantic, then American.

  The British Air pilot interrupted before Arthur could trigger the next command.

  “Shannon, Speedbird Two Three. Have we lost our Nat Track clearance then?”

  “For the moment, yes, Speedbird. Remain this frequency and standby.” The pace of his words was accelerating, the same motormouth tendency he had always complained about in other controllers who tried to stuff too many words down the finite “tube” of a push-to-talk radio in any given period of time. But there was no time to hesitate. Three oncoming flights had to be turned away quickly and in the form of a messy starburst maneuver there would be no time to explain.

  “Air France Two Eighteen, Shannon. Turn right immediately, vector heading three-zero-five. Break, Virgin Four Four Six, immediate right turn, vector heading three-one-zero. Break, American Twelve, immediate right turn, vector heading three-two-zero.”

  A cascade of acknowledgments flowed through his headset from each flight, each voice registering tension as the collective group of airmen perceived the alarm and urgency in their controller’s inflections. O’Brien saw the respective blips beginning to change course just as the voice of the British Air pilot cut through his consciousness again with a chilling message.

  “Shannon, Speedbird Two Three. We’re responding to a resolution alert.”

  Dammit! Arthur thought to himself. The TCAS—the onboard traffic collision avoidance system—in the British Air 747 had electronically detected the oncoming Pangia Airbus A330 and was now commanding the pilots to make an emergency climb or descent to avoid a collision.

  But which was it? Up or down? The TCAS had essentially yanked control of the 747 out of his hands, and he was prohibited by regulations from trying to interfere.

  The image of a second rogue jumbo jet now climbing or diving through a traffic jam of airplanes stacked at 1,000-foot intervals above and below gripped him like a blast of arctic air. It was a game of instant contingency planning, with deadly stakes.

  Arthur forced a breath and waited for the next sweep of the radar to make its way through the computers and onto the datablock on his screen, each sweep a new brush stroke in an ever changing work of electronic art. The numbers changed suddenly, showing the British Air jumbo in an emergency climb.

  He could deal with that.

  Arthur snapped out two more commands, ordering heading changes for the eastbound jetliners whose altitude the British Air flight was about to invade as he struggled to climb above the oncoming Pangia A330. The routine radar “picture” had suddenly become a deadly video game of changing vectors, and he watched the British Air 747’s blip close on another 747 just above him as the second jet began to turn out of the way. British Air was leveling nearly 2,000 feet above his original altitude, safely clear. He knew they couldn’t collide with anyone now, but Arthur’s stomach had already condensed to the size of a pea watching the small computer-generated blocks of data representing each airborne aircraft merge together, then crawl apart intact with agonizing slowness.

  He looked at the Pangia datablock again, wondering what else was wrong. Something had snagged his attention, and all too slowly the recognition dawned: While British Air had responded to the resolution alert, Pangia had not. Why? The TCAS system in both airplanes were supposed to be communicating at light speed with each other, mutually agreeing that one flight would climb while the other would descend to avoid a potential collision. British Air had gone up. Pangia had remained at flight Level 380!

  O’Brien looked up and locked eyes briefly with Sean, an unspoken sentence wordlessly communicated in the fleeting glance: What the hell is Pangia doing?

  CHAPTER TEN

  Mojave Aircraft Storage, Mojave, California (2:45 p.m. PST / 2145 Zulu)

  The owner of Mojave Aircraft Storage slammed the receiver down as hard as he could manage, trying his best to fracture the rest of the ancient telephone desk set, speaking through gritted teeth in seething anger.

  “Okay, team. Guess what? They’ve already launched and are on the way here from Colorado with an ETA of fifteen minutes. I called them two hours ago, and they’re almost here … our clients with the missing airplane who are going to want some answers we don’t have, and I seriously doubt … THAT THEY’RE HAPPY!” The yelled words bounced off the walls of the line office, but this time the general manager was a bit beyond cringing, having already endured an hour of Ron Barrett’s fury and verbal abuse. After almost six hours of meticulously examining the identification plates of every Airbus A330 on the windswept desert airfield, the conclusion had been inescapable: They had, indeed, dispatched the wrong airplane a week before to Pangia World Airways, one of their best customers—an identical aircraft owned by a Colorado company no one knew anything about. The company had responded by launching their senior executives on a business jet, and Barrett was all but terrified at the upcoming confrontation.

  Mojave Aircraft’s attorney, Jaime Lopez, had dropped everything and raced in from nearby Lancaster to join Barrett in pacing holes in the floor, waiting for word that the missing A330 wasn’t missing after all.

  But it was.

  Barrett was snarling again at the three people in the office. “You idiots know that it’s probably the goddamned CIA we’re screwing with, right?”

  “We’re not sure they’re government, Ron,” Lopez replied, but Barrett whirled on him, his eyes tiny little pinpoints of red, his overgrown eyebrows flaring almost comically.

  “Who the hell else would have a $200 million airplane registered to an unknown company none of us can find anything about? Not even a secretary of state listing in Colorado. Strike you as strange?”

  Barrett continued pacing before speaking again, this time at a slightly lower volume. “Whoever they are, we’ve screwed it up and they’re almost here, and I’m going to have to call Pangia Airways now and tell them they’re using someone else’s airplane illegally.”

  “Not illegally, Ron,” Jaime Lopez reminded him. “They just … are going to need to return it … at our expense. We released it, true, but Pangia’s pilots flew it out, so it was more of a mutual mistake. Have we pulled a copy of whatever communiqué came from Pangia Airways asking us to deliver one of their airplanes?”

  The manager lifted a folder off the desk. “I checked the serial number of the jet we mistakenly sent away,” he began, “but we got an email ordering us to pull that very aircraft!”

  Ron Barrett was on his feet, moving to the desk to verify
the conclusion.

  “What?”

  “I think we’re in the clear!” the manager added.

  “Let me see that, please,” Lopez asked, moving in behind Ron Barrett, who was holding the single sheet of paper triumphantly.

  “The bastards created their own problem!” Ron Barrett was saying. “How are we to know that’s the wrong serial number?”

  Jaime Lopez closed the folder and placed it back on the desk. “We have a duty to double-check, Ron, and unfortunately, that emailed order did not come from the true owner of the jet. We are decidedly not off the hook.”

  “But Pangia misled us!”

  “Did anyone authenticate this message?” Lopez asked. “Did we independently call Pangia’s maintenance base and verify? Did anyone validate the email address on this order?”

  Silence met the question, and the lawyer shook his head. “Guys, the sender is, indeed, listed as Pangia World Airways and the email seems to be from them, but did any of you notice that the company name is misspelled?”

  “What?” Ron whirled and moved to the lawyer’s side to look at the paper.

  “After the ‘at’ symbol, it says ‘Pangiawordlair dot com.’ Why would a major airline be unaware that its email server’s name is misspelled? This isn’t just a repeated email address, this is the address from which the message was sent! And I just looked … each of the previous orders from Pangia comes from ‘Pangiaworldair dot com.’ In the message we received, there is one more addressee listed, ‘XL@pangiawordlair dot com.’ The ‘l’ and the ‘d’ have been juxtaposed.”

  “What are you saying?” Ron asked.

  “I’m saying,” Jaime Lopez said, metering his words, “… that on the face of it, it looks like we dutifully responded to a request that was specifically designed to look like a valid order to deliver to Pangia’s possession a $200 million aircraft that does not belong to Pangia. I’m saying that the email address of whoever sent the order may be bogus. And I’m saying that the fact that we received, and innocently acted on, that order does not change the reality that we handed over someone else’s property without their permission.”