Flight 12 to Rome: A Nick Bracco Novella

by Gary Ponzo

  “Hey, Walt.”

  “Sam, I need all the data you have on the missing flight.”

  “Of course. I’ll send the files over to you right now.”

  “And Sam, we’re going to take over the investigation.”

  Sam forcefully pressed his pencil down on his desk, the middle of it bending near the point of break. “I don’t understand. This is my expertise, Walt. This is why this division exists, for days like today.”

  “That is true.”

  “So why take it away from me? You think I’m not capable handling this?”

  Walt’s voice seemed to soften. “Not at all, Sam. You’re the best aviation expert we have and nothing is going to sway my opinion on this.”

  “So?”

  “So . . . Nick Bracco is on that flight.”

  Sam dropped the pencil and watched it roll off his desk. “Oh no.”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “So it’s definitely an act of terrorism?”

  “It would seem logical.”

  “But Walt, I could still be an asset.”

  “No doubt, but I can’t have the FAA working with two divisions of the Bureau. I’ll handle the flow of information and send it your way once we’ve filtered through it. Make sense?”

  Sam wanted to say, “No, it doesn’t make sense. When it comes to aviation, I’m the expert.” But instead, he said, “Sure, but don’t you want an aviator involved in the process? I could be over there in thirty minutes and work with—”

  “No,” Walt’s voice rising now. “You stay in your office with your support staff and work out the scenarios for us as we send them your way. Are you going to be okay with this?”

  Walt Jackson had seniority and the terrorism division had jurisdiction in virtually every case. But Walt had the decency to ask Sam if he was okay with it, allowing Sam to be part of the plan and not an obstacle.

  “Sure,” Sam said, his right hand sitting uselessly on the desk. “I’ll support you however I can.”

  “I appreciate it,” Walt said. Then there was a period of silence where Sam wasn’t sure if Walt had hung up already. After twenty seconds, Sam said, “Walt?”

  “Listen,” Walt said thoughtfully. “If anything happens, I don’t want your head on the plate. I’ll take the hit.”

  Another solid point. When he relinquished the responsibility to Walt, he also gave up the ability to be a scapegoat. Sam couldn’t tell if Walt was being genuine, or using this as a tool to speed up the transition.

  “Of course,” Sam said. “I understand.”

  “Besides,” Walt said with a low tenor to his voice, almost cracking. “I’m the one who has to call Julie if Nick doesn’t make it.”

  Sam lowered his head, almost ashamed of his politicking. This was more personal to Walt than professional.

  “Of course,” Sam said, fully on board now. “I’m here whenever you need me.”

  Whether Walt didn’t have the voice to finish or he just needed to move on, the phone disconnected. Sam sat there staring at the lone button on his phone, still blinking.

  He pressed the button and said, “Kurtze?”

  “I’m here, sir.”

  “Go ahead and keep cooperating with the FAA. They’ll know what they need from you.”

  “So you don’t want—”

  “No, this has been reassigned.”

  “What does that mean exactly?”

  “It means we have a real issue on our hands and the specialists have taken over.”

  Kurtze hung up with a questioning sign off, but Sam finally understood what Walt Jackson had offered him. And as he looked out his window into the darkness, there was the slightest bit of relief on his mind.

  Chapter 9

  “It’s not so much fun when you don’t have those gadgets with you, huh, Agent Bracco?” Bennett said from his front-row seat.

  Nick was up against the cockpit door, leaning on it like his presence alone might cause it to open. He squinted at Bennett. “Exactly what gadgets are you talking about?”

  “I read lots of magazines,” Bennett said. “You and your partner Matt McColm have used a variety of devices to get out of sticky situations. But you don’t have your partner or the gadgets with you this time. Quite a disadvantage.”

  “When I come visit you in prison, you’re going to have to show me which articles you’re reading, because I can promise you, they’re full of hyperbole.”

  “Sure,” Bennett said in a mocking voice. “Except we’re less than ten minutes from touchdown and you haven’t improved your situation one little bit.”

  Nick handed his pistol to Kyle Church and said, “Get Weston up here.”

  Kyle gave him a peculiar look, then took the gun and went toward the main cabin.

  Nick grabbed a fire extinguisher from the wall, slammed it against the cockpit door and screamed, “Open this damn door!”

  Nothing. The plane seemed to dip in the sky, and Nick’s legs were giving out with each yard the plane dropped. He was sleep deprived, frustrated, and losing hope. Finally he resigned himself to a last resort. He went over to Jess, who was writing frantically in her notebook without ever looking up. As he approached, he heard a shriek from the main cabin. Then he could feel the plane bounce from a sudden thump of the floor. When he finally found the source of the commotion, it made his stomach drop down to his knees.

  Moving up the aisle was Kyle Church followed by one of the goons who had Kirk Weston in a stranglehold. The air marshal’s right arm was completely bent behind his back, being pulled up by the terrorist. On his face was pain and irritation.

  Behind them was Cory waving Nick’s gun like a prize he’d won at the county fair.

  “Aw, Kyle,” Nick said. “Don’t tell me.”

  “Sorry, Nick,” Kyle said pointing the pistol out in front of him. “They offered to give me the name of who murdered Kristin, plus a lot of money.” He shrugged, as if he had no other choice but to defect.

  For the first time since he’d boarded the plane, Nick actually believed it just might be over. He shook his head. “Kyle,” he murmured, “so all that stuff about Clayton was bullshit?”

  Kyle grinned at his storytelling ability.

  Bennett now stood up and squeezed the creases of his slacks as if that were his biggest annoyance of the flight. “Sit down,” he ordered Nick.

  Nick returned to his seat where Bennett just vacated. He looked over at Jess across the aisle, scribbling away. “I hope you’re enjoying this,” he said.

  Jess looked up at him. “What? I’m doing my job.”

  Nick tried to control his breathing, but as the plane drifted lower and lower, so did his hopes of surviving. His mind raced with ideas, but he needed to save the people on board. Nervous smiles were replaced by sobs and passengers wiping their eyes.

  Nick wanted to tell Jess something, but Kyle stood guard over him while Bennett paced in front of first class, looking around at the collection of terrorists he’d assembled. They’d resumed their search for the elusive device, but it was becoming uncertain whether it would be found.

  Bennett crossed his arms with a disgusted expression and said to Nick, “You do understand I’m doing this for the world?”

  Nick’s stomach churned with anxiety. “Are you trying to justify your actions?”

  Bennett strolled back and forth with the straight-backed posture of a professor. “Not at all. I just want you to appreciate my motives.” This time he looked over at Jess who was absorbing his propaganda like a prized student.

  Nick was ready to strike, not caring of the consequences. Cory cocked his head almost daring Nick to move.

  The sun was beginning to brighten the windows and Nick was able to see the Atlantic. They were very low now.

  The doors to the landing gear opened as they screeched their approach to the uncharted island. Bennett sensed the urgency of his plight and grabbed the PA microphone.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said in a professional tone, “so far we
have not found the device we so dearly need to protect our families back home. In an effort to expedite the process, I will begin to have one passenger killed every sixty seconds until the person with the device comes forward.”

  Now the entire plane was filled with shouts as parents huddled their children and husbands grabbed their loved one’s hands.

  “We shall start with you,” Bennett said, pointing to the pilot who’d assisted Nick earlier.

  The pilot instinctively leaned back, as if he could delay his death by an extra millisecond. His face tightened with terror as Cory approached with his gun outstretched.

  “Now,” Bennett said into the PA system, “I will count to three and if the person with the device doesn’t come forward, I will have to kill this fine gentleman. His death will be on your conscience.”

  A crescendo of screams and crying filled the aircraft.

  “One,” Bennett said, “two . . .”

  Cory had a mischievous smile as he held out the gun, ready to fire.

  “Stop!” Nick shouted. “I know where the device is.”

  Bennett held up his hand to temporarily delay the execution.

  “Let’s have it, Agent Bracco,” Bennett said. “Right now or you’ll be next.”

  “It’s not in the cabin,” Nick told the CEO. “It’s in the cockpit.”

  Bennett gave Nick a dubious glare. “That’s a very clever way of getting us to open the door, but it won’t work.” He nodded at Cory to continue his death sentence.

  “No,” Nick said, reaching both of his arms into the air in a defenseless position. “I have the manifest which gives all the medical data for everyone on board. The copilot has a bad case of allergies which requires him to carry an inhaler with him. You were right . . . it is on board. It’s just inside there.” Nick pointed a finger at the cockpit door.

  The concept rang a bell with Bennett and he gestured Cory to lower his weapon. The guy looked like he was told to drop his ice cream cone. The plane sank lower into the Atlantic without any appearance of land surfacing around them. Some of the passengers gasped as the flight appeared on the verge of landing in the ocean.

  Bennett braced himself against the wall behind him with a menacing expression. He zoned in on Nick as if he could determine Nick’s motivations with the mere power of his stare.

  Nick tried to offer Bennett a way out without casualties. Now it was a matter of saving lives. Possibly even his own.

  “You said there would be no one injured if you found the device,” Nick reminded him.

  Bennett braced himself for the landing but said nothing.

  The passengers along the window seats squealed in horror as they descended above the choppy waters without a sign of land before them.

  “I’ll call your bluff,” Bennett finally muttered. “But if you’re wrong, the executions will begin with you.”

  Nick glanced over at Jess, who for the first time seemed to realize her story might never reach an audience above the ocean floor. Her face was pale and her expression bleak.

  At that moment the back wheels finally touched down and everyone lurched forward as the plane hit the tarmac. There was a slender strip of land on both sides of the plane before the ocean spread out to the horizon. An occasional tree interrupted the ocean view, but it almost felt as if they were landing on an aircraft carrier.

  The plane was stopping quicker than a normal landing, consistent with a short runway. So far everything Bennett said seemed true. They were on a tiny piece of land in the middle of nowhere.

  When the plane finally stopped, Bennett stood tall and pulled his cuffs down from beneath his suit jacket. He glared at Nick while one of his minions twisted the door latch and opened the door.

  Immediately a ladder clicked against the side of the plane and Bennett gave a signal to someone outside. Nick couldn’t see the entourage from his seat, but he was betting they were armed and ready for action. Five million dollars would do that to a person.

  The plane remained idling and there was no indication the cockpit door would be opening. There were audible sobs coming from the rear of the plane. Nick’s pulse throbbed in his temple as he waited for the next move.

  Bennett motioned for his team to bring the injured terrorist to the front and the guy hobbled on one leg while using the headrests as crutches. When he reached the ladder, Bennett personally helped the guy lumber down the top of the steps. He turned to see Jess back to scribbling notes and gave a satisfied smile, as if his effort would be documented for the world to see.

  Bennett motioned Lisa to the front and she strutted down the aisle with a purpose. He nodded to the cockpit door and Lisa tapped a sequence of taps onto the door. Then she pressed a series of numbers into the keypad. A moment later, the door opened, and finally Nick could see Paul Greko. He was a fit-looking gentleman with graying sideburns and bushy eyebrows. He looked like an airline pilot.

  As Greko exited with his carry bag, Lisa slid past him into the cockpit. Bennett gestured for him to step onto the ladder, then stopped him.

  “Can I see what’s in the bag?”

  Greko didn’t hesitate. He handed Bennett the black bag and waited while the CEO rummaged through his personal items. After a minute, Bennett seemed satisfied and pointed for him to continue. Greko allowed himself a guilt peek at his two pilot colleagues, who simply stared at him with disdain.

  Bennett stuck his head into the cockpit and Nick’s longshot gamble was about to expose itself. He was completely unsure of his theory and just hoped that Bennett’s intel was solid.

  Cory stood by the open doorway with his gun dangling in his hand and a serene look on his face. Nick would have to challenge him soon. To his left, Nick could see Kirk Weston in a window seat with a gash across his forehead. When Nick made eye contact with him, the air marshal seemed ready to make a suicidal plunge. Go out fighting.

  After a few minutes, Bennett emerged from the cockpit wearing a giant grin across his face and holding up an inhaler for everyone to see.

  “You are a very clever man, Agent Bracco.”

  Nick let out a breath. There was the slightest drip of hope running through his veins, but he knew that could evaporate with a simple nod from Bennett.

  Chapter 10

  From his office window in Washington, DC, the administrator of the FAA, Henry Schaffer, could see the National Mall and the Smithsonian, but all he wanted to see right now was a Flight 12 sighting. He was on his third cup of coffee and it wasn’t even six o’clock.

  Sitting across his desk were a handful of his closest advisors, all staring at their tablets trying to communicate with varying control centers around the globe, attempting to locate the missing 767.

  “We’re up to a five-hundred-mile circumference,” Deputy Administrator Lance Hawkins said. “Every hour that passes, that circumference increases by four hundred miles.”

  “Keep that perimeter tight,” Schaffer said. “Anything outside five hundred miles and it turns into something completely different.”

  “Hank, if we keep the search field too narrow, we might lose valuable—”

  “Too bad,” Schaffer said, rising to his feet and circling around to the front of his desk. “We already have the USS Kidd and three naval carriers heading that direction. If we have them searching the entire Atlantic, we’ll never find them.”

  On the eighty-four-inch monitor at the back of his office, an animated version of that night’s scheduled flight plans over the Atlantic lit up the screen. Including Flight 12.

  “Shanwick is reporting headwind of over fifty miles per hour,” Hawkins said. “Otherwise, no other weather in the area.”

  Schaffer pointed to another staff member. “You spoke with Rolls Royce?”

  “Yes, they said it was impossible. Less than one-tenth of one percent.”

  Schaffer’s greatest talent was his ability to delegate. He acquired his job almost exclusively on that basis alone. Previous regimes would have to run everything through the administrator, but n
ot Schaffer. He encouraged free thinking.

  “Hank,” Hawkins said. “Rescue flights are just arriving on the scene. They have nothing to report.”

  “Remind me,” Schaffer said, “how long between waypoint check-ins?”

  “Reykjavik lost him at 2:34,” Oscar Chang said. “There was a fifty-minute lag between check-in and zero contact. That’s our target range. If it’s mechanical, we’ll be over the site all day long.”

  Schaffer walked over to his window where the sun was just beginning to brighten the streets below him. Business people were starting their day without ever understanding the responsibility he felt trying to keep them safe while they moved from one city to the next at thirty thousand feet.

  “We’ll find them, Hank,” Chang said. “It’s only a matter of time.”

  “Sir,” Anne Johnson said, glued to her tablet, “secondary radar system show Flight 12 on its flight plan sixty minutes out of JFK.”

  Schaffer shook his head. “That’s not helpful. Their HF signal came an hour after that.”

  “Yes, but were they on their track when the pilot sent the signal?”

  “Sir,” Chang said, “I just received confirmation that the transponder has been shut off.”

  That brought a silence to the room.

  “Do we know if it was turned off deliberately?”

  Of course that was the question everyone was trying to determine. Was it a premeditated act of a rogue pilot? Or was the transponder destroyed in some catastrophic event?

  “No sir.”

  Schaffer leaned back against the front of his desk and clenched the oak structure with both hands as if it were trying to fly away. “No request for flight change,” Schaffer ruminated out loud. “No response to air traffic control in Reykjavik. No transponder.”

  Just then Schaffer’s cell phone vibrated in his pocket. When he saw the incoming number, he immediately pushed the “on” button. “What do you have for me, Walt?”

  “We have satellite images just coming in right now,” Walt Jackson said. “So far we don’t see any anomalies.”