Lockout

by John J. Nance

  “I’m sorry. I thought the autothrottles were engaged. As I say, I made a huge, honking mistake.”

  “Yeah … and about that …” Jerry Tollefson had swiveled partially around in the captain’s seat, glaring at his right-seater with blood in his eye, daring the underling to talk back again as he played the challenged alpha wolf. “Whoever taught you to just sit there and watch the airspeed deteriorate without touching the throttles? What kind of moron doesn’t teach watching the throttle movement or listening to the engines?”

  “You wouldn’t believe what I was and what I wasn’t taught, Jerry,” Dan said, as quietly as possible. “You asked me after you’d saved us where the hell I learned to fly, but I never had a chance to answer you.”

  “You made the same ridiculous mistake as those systems operators at Asiana made in 2013 in San Francisco! Maintaining one’s airspeed is the prime directive.”

  “Which I was never taught.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Where did you learn to fly, Jerry?”

  “The United States Navy,” Jerry snapped. “So where were you trained?”

  “I learned in one of the toughest flight training environments you can imagine,” Dan said, earning a contemptuous sideways glance from the captain.

  “Oh, really?”

  “Yeah … it might as well have been a correspondence course! It was a civilian ab initio program provided by a little airline in New England desperate for pilots … an airline that didn’t care if I had never even flown in a small plane and didn’t think it was important. The same kind of deficient ab initio course the big airlines are now trying to use. This little carrier was looking for trained monkeys to fill the legal square and didn’t even realize it themselves.”

  Jerry Tollefson had leaned forward to jab at the buttons of what in a Boeing would be a flight management computer, but he stopped suddenly and straightened up in his seat, fixing Dan with a questioning gaze. “What do you mean? You telling me you didn’t even have your private pilot’s license when you got your first airline job? That kind of ‘ab initio?’”

  “Private ticket? Hell, Jerry, they hired me out of my office in Seattle. I’d never even flown a small plane. I was disillusioned about my Internet business and from having too much success too fast, and I’d always, always wanted to fly. So I decided to sell my company and go the route of any other average individual without much money. I thought that was the honorable thing to do, something that would be respected as paying my dues, you know? I had no idea how contemptuous people would be about that decision.”

  “What do you mean, contemptuous?”

  Dan shook his head, smiling ruefully, trying hard not to say something even more sarcastic.

  “It was a huge relief to sell my company and stop spending every day worrying when the whole thing might collapse. I watched my father and my family lose everything to a recession and never recover. I was very lucky to make enough and get out in time.”

  “When I flew with you,” Jerry said, “… everyone was talking about our billionaire boy pilot. We figured you were slumming with the working stiffs.”

  “I hated that. I still hate that impression! I’d had 2,000 hours of flying airborne computers by the time I applied here, and as I said, I had no idea I was deficient. I was trained to fly primarily by autopilot and dial in altitudes and headings and airspeeds and told to keep my hands off the controls if the autoflight system could do it better. Precisely the same malady that caused the Asiana crash in San Francisco in 2013.”

  “A systems operator.”

  “Yes. Exactly. I was trained to be a dumb systems operator, not a pilot. When I hit the line, I had less than 300 hours. It was before the FAA changed the rule to require 1,500.”

  “Less than 300?”

  If I’d had any idea how little I knew about stick and rudder flying, I could have bought 400 or 500 hours of quality flight instruction. But what I didn’t get a chance to practice were those basic skills. I had no idea that was a deficit.”

  “And then we hire you,” Tollefson said flatly.

  “Yeah. Sorry about that!”

  “What’d you do, pull strings?”

  Dan shook his head with a rueful laugh. “Jesus, you, too? I guess everyone thinks that. No, I didn’t pull strings. Wish I had. Someone might have told me to back off. Instead, after driving regional jets around for almost two years and seldom ever touching the yoke, I dropped an application in the box at the very moment you guys were desperate for new first officers, and after a whirlwind ground school and a few sessions in the simulator, you got the lucky number. I mean, Pangia World Airways knew my limited aeronautical background a heck of a lot better than I did.”

  “Did they also know you were uber rich?”

  “I wasn’t uber rich, not that it has any bearing on the situation. I’m not uber rich. But I had no intention of telling them or anyone else I was well off. It was simply immaterial.”

  “So what was your net worth? Bill Gates country?”

  “Hell no. I had a paltry sum compared to what I could have received if I’d kept the company several more years and taken it public before selling.”

  Dan Horneman met Jerry Tollefson’s gaze for a few seconds, knowing what the response was going to be if he spoke in dollars. It was impossible for anyone with an average professional income to bridge the philosophical gap that separated their respective bank accounts. It was far more than numbers, it was a gulf measured in unfathomable terms of struggle and misunderstanding, and ultimately, it was always a case of ‘You have what I don’t, and I resent it!’”

  “How paltry?” Jerry prompted. “Speak to me in numbers.”

  “About $500 million.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  First class cabin, Pangia 10 (2000 Zulu)

  Josh Begich was impressed with his own stealth. The smoking hot babe seated next to him in Seat 3A still wasn’t aware he’d been indulging in a delicious, clandestine view of her substantial cleavage.

  Thank God for peripheral vision! he thought.

  Josh riffled another series of keystrokes across the keyboard of his laptop computer to keep her attention diverted, smiling to himself when a map expanded impressively to fill the seventeen-inch screen and then zoomed in on what appeared to be a phosphorescent aircraft against a black void, presumably as seen from space.

  “Is that us?” the girl asked, her eyes riveted on the image as wisps of clouds appeared to pass the depiction. She shifted in her first class seat and leaned in further toward him for a better view—his better view. Exactly what he’d planned.

  “Yes, that’s us,” he answered. “It’s the infrared picture I’m pulling off one of our US spy satellites. I hacked into their datastream months ago and … as long as I don’t stay connected too long … they never know why their camera suddenly shifts to something else.”

  “That … is … amazing,” she said, a giveaway tone of delectable awe in her voice. “I mean, it’s night, and we’re still visible!”

  “Yep. That’s what you can do if you know these machines … and you have a Wi-Fi connection by satellite.” Josh glanced at the “satellite” image running in the three-minute loop he’d constructed. It was streaming from nothing more distant than his own hard drive, and in about thirty seconds it would start again with a slight jump, perhaps giving away his deception. But the girl was apparently buying it.

  What is she, fifteen like me, or sixteen? But technologically dumb as a stump.

  Josh pointed to the screen again. “This jet we’re on is full of computers. The whole world is now, and I can break into just about any of them.”

  She sat back, the slight look of awe changing to a look of skepticism. “Really?”

  “Yeah. Really!” Josh replied, feeling suddenly challenged.

  “So, launch a missile from North Dakota for me,” she said. “You owe me for five minutes of eye-fucking my boobs!”

  “Eye what?”

  “It’s okay. I�
�m cool with it. Now, make good on your boasts. Show me something other than a pre-cooked loop.”

  “Pre-cooked …”

  “You’re busted, dude. I saw it repeat.”

  “You know computers?”

  She smiled a disturbing message of hidden sophistication and nodded, her eyes melting his as she sat enjoying his squirming response.

  “You might say that.”

  “How?”

  “Hey, you’re the stud trying to wow the dumb blonde in the next seat, it’s my turn to be mysterious. So throw down, boy. Show me something real.”

  Nonchalance was his thing—Joe Cool on ice—and he tried to regain that air of bravado as he shrugged his insubstantial shoulders and worked on looking slightly bored.

  “Okay. I’ve got some pretty good moves.”

  “Sweet. Show me.”

  “It’ll take a few minutes to break into the processor I’m gonna commandeer.”

  “Go for it, Rambo. We’ve got hours,” she replied with a smile. “But I’ll warn you … I don’t impress easy.”

  “What did you say your name was?” he blurted, well aware she hadn’t offered it and angry with himself for yet another display of awkwardness in the presence of a pretty girl.

  “Sara,” she replied, eyes meeting his again for a moment before he looked away in clandestine embarrassment and prepared to do battle with a vulnerable server unseen in the distance, a knight errant out to win the damsel.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  NSA, Ft. Meade, Maryland (3:15 p.m. EST / 2015 Zulu)

  “Seth! It’s not a primary signal; it’s an echo!”

  Jenny had noted the unusual fact that Seth’s office door was closed at the same moment she thrust it open. It was immediately obvious that she’d interrupted a closed meeting.

  Seth Zieglar’s back had been to the door, but he turned now, motioning to an unfamiliar man standing near Seth’s desk.

  “And right on cue comes Ms. Reynolds, the analyst I was describing to you. Jenny, meet Will Bronson of Defense Intelligence.”

  “DIA?” she asked, off balance.

  “Yes,” Bronson said, coming forward to shake her hand. “We’re equally curious about this SIGINT … signals intelligence … you’ve found.”

  “I know what SIGINT is,” she said a bit too defensively.

  “Jenny has a tendency to enter like Seinfeld’s Kramer, Will, but other than that, she’s really quite competent,” Seth winked at her in a way she detested.

  “I’m sorry to burst in,” she managed. “I was just, well, excited.”

  “Sit!” Seth commanded, pulling up a third office chair for her. “Everyone, sit.”

  Will Bronson waited for her to settle into a chair before doing the same. “So this is not primary flash traffic you found?” he asked.

  She shook her head, watching Seth out of the corner of her eye. Bronson was easy on the eyes. Heavy dark hair, clean shaven, almost squarish face, and clearly mid-thirties in an impeccable dark blue business suit and what she judged to be a Jerry Garcia tie. She could date a guy like this, she thought—provided one ever asked her out. He had a genuine smile, too, but any Defense Intelligence operative so well turned out was too smooth to be overtly trusted, and she made a mental note to think before blurting.

  “I thought it was coming up from somewhere west of the Irish coast, now I think I’m merely reading echoes of a downlinked satellite transmission. It’s still piggybacking on a legitimate signal, and whoever’s sending it is trying to hide it. But it may well be hemispheric in scope, or wider.”

  “Then you’re looking for it in other areas of the globe I take it?” Bronson asked.

  “Yes. It could be coming down from satellites all over the place, or just a couple. I’m not sure yet.”

  “Show me everything you’ve got, if you will.”

  Seth was nodding approval, and after all, she had called in DIA on Seth’s order. But as she began laying out the various papers and waveform tracings, she couldn’t shake the feeling that his question was more “tell me what you’ve discovered that you shouldn’t know” than an innocent search for new information.

  After a fifteen-minute briefing, she couldn’t help herself.

  “So, is this us? Did I catch something we’re doing … something I should totally forget? Do you have some little flashy thing that erases our short-term memories?”

  Bronson chuckled as he glanced at Seth Zieglar, then returned a disturbingly intense gaze toward her. “I’m wearing a blue suit, Jenny … not black. And in a word, ‘no.’ We at DIA are equally puzzled and concerned. It’s not coming from our side, and I agree, it’s a programming order of some sort. That’s why I’d like to work with you, and my team at Boling Air Force Base to coordinate with us, depending on my interpretation. You okay with a team effort?”

  “Sure.”

  “Good. Because there are things going on out there … things that are classified with no need for you to know … that demand we quickly solve mysteries like this. Immediately if not sooner.”

  She was watching his eyes intently, but his gaze was steady, open.

  Smooth operator, she thought. Probably has a girl in every port … or office. Jenny pulled herself back to the moment and cleared her throat. “Wow. So this could be a threat?”

  “It could. And as a bit of a backdoor measure of the seriousness, if you have anywhere you were planning to go or do this afternoon or evening, I’d like you to cancel.”

  “And what if I have an important date?” she asked, smiling.

  “Break it. You’re dating me tonight, so to speak.”

  She felt a little ripple of surprise flitter up her spine before he continued with a broad smile. “Me and three others back at my office.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Cockpit, Pangia 10 (2110 Zulu)

  The tension in the cockpit was thick enough to slice. Not that the past four hours had been anything but correct and collegial, but Captain Jerry Tollefson had no doubt that Dan Horneman was eager to continue arguing about the Anchorage incident, the arrogance of the Arctic Eagles, and how discriminated against he felt for being shamelessly rich.

  Screw him! Jerry thought. He could have just apologized and left it at that, but no, he had to attack me for letting him be a lousy pilot! Bullshit!

  But there didn’t seem to be any point to reigniting the argument. Horneman, he had concluded, was a weak pilot slumming in a world that neither needed nor wanted misfits. And somehow, he was trying to evade the reality that a competent, properly trained pilot simply doesn’t have the luxury of making fundamental mistakes.

  Rehabilitating a pilot’s reputation once he’s shown himself to be dangerously slow at the controls is impossible, Jerry thought. The rumor mill, after all, communicated weakness faster than light. He resented Horneman’s use of the phrase “right stuff” and mud-slinging North Star’s Anchorage-based pilots. Horneman didn’t have it, and he never would.

  He’s right about one thing, Jerry thought. None of us can be comfortable flying with a man who already has the money and success we all want. If you’re insanely rich, why do this? Why play airline pilot? It was hard to even imagine what it would be like to have $500 million or what would he do with it if he had such wealth?

  Jerry brought his eyes back to the windscreen where a streaming cocktail of darkness and high-altitude cirrus clouds made the view indistinguishable from that of a simulator. There were stars somewhat visible overhead through the clouds, but he did little more than glance at them. Astronomy had never interested him, although a spectacularly starry night was always exhilarating.

  They were entering a patch of turbulence, just light chop at first, but for some reason the slight bouncing was promising to get worse. He glanced down at the glowing computer screens that formed the front panels of the Airbus, checking the radar, which showed nothing of significance as the turbulence increased slightly to just below the moderate level. Jerry caught himself wondering almost casually why,
at the exact same moment, the entire forward panel and all the cockpit lights went pitch black.

  “What the hell?”

  Dan Horneman’s voice echoed his own thoughts. Jerry sat back suddenly as if struck. The entire instrument panel, consisting of four cutting-edge sophisticated video screens and including the Electronic Centralized Aircraft Monitor, or ECAM, were blank. Normally they conveyed all the information pilots needed to fly.

  “What happened?’ Jerry asked. “What did you do, Dan?”

  “What did I do? Nothing! We’ve just lost all our displays … ECAM … everything!”

  The turbulence had grown to the level of “moderate,” and from habit, Jerry reached up and turned on the seat belt sign.

  “Where’s a flashlight?” Jerry asked, his voice betraying confusion.

  “Hold it … I have mine …” Dan said, pulling a small penlight from his shirt pocket and shining it around the forward panel.

  Is there a procedure for this? I can’t recall one? Dan thought. How the hell can we lose everything?

  “Let me … get the checklist …” Dan said, scrambling to play the small beam of light to the right in search of the Quick Reference Handbook.

  “I’ve got a big flashlight here somewhere in my bag …” Jerry said.

  “Was there anything on the radar?”

  “No! It was clear.”

  “Never thought we’d ever need a flashlight in a Scarebus!”

  “Dan, do we have a reset button for the generators?”

  “I’m … I’m pulling the checklist … hold it. I don’t think so … as such …”

  “What the hell is going on here? Are we turning?”

  “What?”

  “It felt like …” Jerry began, straining to look out and up. “I guess not. Engines are still running.”