The power is coming off! he thought to himself, just as a voice yelled down from the flight deck, relaying Jerry’s words.
“PUT IT BACK! PUT IT BACK! THE ENGINES ARE COMING TO IDLE!”
“OKAY!” Dan yelled back over his shoulder as he prepared to re-mate the cut wires, positioning them so he could make firm contact and then twist them back together. He could feel the big aircraft continuing to slow. He was too far ahead of the wing mounted engines to actually hear them, but the decreasing sound of the slipstream told the tale. The thought crossed his mind with lightning speed that if the engines didn’t rebound when he touched the wires, they were truly at the end of the line, and the thought made him almost desperate to touch the wires together again, just as something else was warning him to wait.
What the hell am I missing? Dan thought. The pressure to act was accelerating to unfathomable levels as he forced his mind to divulge whatever it was thinking in the periphery of the subconscious.
Oh, jeez! Yes!
Dan turned to yell at the face he saw watching him from the hatch.
“PUSH THE THROTTLES UP! SEE IF THEY RESPOND!”
“What?”
“TELL THE CAPTAIN TO PUSH THE THROTTLES UP!”
Carol nodded and disappeared, and the seconds slowed down to an agonizing pace as time dilated and Dan lost track of reality. The two ends of the wire were still in his respective hands, and the big jet was getting progressively slower. Without more power they would slow and stall, and unless the autoflight system was truly engaged, they would fall out of the sky.
Dan tried to force himself to touch the wires and finish it, but another part of his brain was screaming to wait a few extra moments in case deliverance was at hand. When a surge of thrust reached his consciousness, Dan was unsure whether he was imagining it or feeling it.
Carol’s voice from above broke the suspense:
“IT WORKS! HE SAYS IT WORKS! WE HAVE MANUAL THROTTLES!”
Dan looked at Frank, realizing neither of them had been breathing. He gasped for breath then and smiled at the shaken passenger.
“Thank God!”
“Indeed.”
“Let’s get these wires taped and very far apart.”
“I can do that for you!” Frank said, a very large grin on his face. The jet was reaccelerating, the slipstream sounds rising back to where they’d been.
“I’m going up for a minute. Standby to reconnect those wires if something goes wrong.”
Dan all but levitated out of the hatch to find an ebullient captain fine-tuning throttles he could actually control.
“Jesus Christ, Dan! Well done! God, I’m not going to buy you a beer when we get on the ground, I’m buying you a friggin’ brewery!”
“Full manual control of the engines?”
“Yes! Goddamit, yes! And I can hear air traffic control on the radio. Bosnia, I think. One-twenty-one-five,” he said, citing the emergency frequency. “I can’t talk to them, but I can hear the buggers. I don’t know how fast we’re going, but I’m gonna slow us down a bit by feel to conserve fuel while you work the rest of your magic!”
“We’re just starting the process, Jerry.”
“I know, but hell, you can try to kill me in Anchorage anytime, Bro!”
Dan smiled, a cascade of emotions coursing through his head, all of which he forcibly suppressed.
“You have no side stick control, though?”
“No. And all the displays are fiction. But I’m pretty sure I can feel this baby well enough to slow her down without stalling.”
“Pretty sure?”
“All I’ve got. But we can control something for the first time in hours! How’d you do it?”
“The truth?”
“Yes. Of course.”
“I guessed, Jerry.”
“Okay.”
“And the next guess might not be as lucky.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Silver Springs, Maryland (8:45 p.m. EST / 0145 Zulu)
Jenny Reynolds sighed. Her laptop was fighting back, and she was getting seriously pissed.
She sat back for a second, rubbing her eyes before casting them around the surprisingly spacious apartment. She’d only imagined what a clandestine “safe house” would be like, but never had she actually been in one.
Jenny glanced at her watch, reading nearly 9:00 p.m. The Pangia flight would be over Tel Aviv in less than two hours now, and Will had apparently pried enough information out of his unsuspecting confederates at the Pentagon to confirm that nothing aboard had changed: The pilots were still unable to control the jet, and the rising level of alarm from Washington to Tehran was becoming deeply worrisome. Worse, Will had had the temerity to lay the singular hope of deliverance on her shoulders.
“I’m just guessing, Will. Let’s get real here. Even if I can figure out how to reverse whatever that original order was, that might not be enough to solve it. They could be taking telemetry orders from some live control room now and impervious to anything I send. Besides, this server is blocking me at every turn, and even if I write the right code, I don’t know how the hell we’re going to get it broadcast on the right channels in time.”
“Just do your best.”
“I am, but at precisely what point are we going to let someone else but us know what we suspect?”
“One more hour. Nothing bad’s going to happen to them for another hour. After that, it could be very bad.”
She’d stood then, moving to him as he stood by the door and taking him by the arm, locking eyes.
“I need a commitment, Will! Got it? If I can’t make it work by one more hour from now, we need to call a rainmaker. So who would that be?”
His eyes broke the lock and looked away, toward the window, then toward the door.
“No!” she snapped. “Stop that! Look at me, dammit!”
Will Bronson turned his gaze back to her, looking startled. “Okay, okay. Calm down.”
“Do you even have a plan?”
“Sort of.”
“Sort of? What do you … what do you mean sort of, for Chrissake?”
“Look, Jen, I’m not sure who we’re battling here.”
She cocked her head slightly as if seeing him for the first time. “Really?”
She sat studying him, realizing he was perspiring ever so slightly and looking far more uncertain that she’d recognized before.
“You know what I think?” she asked suddenly. “I think there’s a deeper subtext here, dude. I think what you’re trying hard not to say is that you’re not sure whether you’re protecting your bosses at the Pentagon and trying to undo what they’ve done in time, or whether we’re fighting some renegade group in the government, or maybe even some crazy individual? Am I right?”
He tried to pull away from her, but she tightened her grip. His voice was rising, betraying angry frustration.
“Okay, I don’t know. That’s the point. That’s why I came to find you tonight because I am worried who’s behind this and if it is our side and we’re messing with that flight for some legitimate reason, and I go and breach security to tell the world …”
“Goodbye career,” she finished the sentence for him.
“Yeah, and maybe worse. You, too.”
“All right, now I need YOU to focus. You just used the phrase ‘for some legitimate reason.’ Is there any legitimate, reasonable, conceivable justification for putting those people in peril, if this is something our side did?”
Will looked down in thought for a small eternity before sighing and nodding, then changing the gesture to an emphatic head shake. “No.”
“Then I need that commitment. One hour more. If I can’t be sure we’ve freed them … and it’s only a bizarre Hail Mary pass we’re talking about … if I’m not sure, who you gonna call?”
He turned toward her slightly, fully engaging, which was a good sign, she figured.
“Jenny, there is no one I can be sure of in a situation like this. No one. Not even my tea
m, who are hunkered down waiting for me to tell them something good. Do you understand what I’m saying to you? In the entirety of the government of the United States of America, since the enabling signal came from our own National Security Agency, I can think of no one completely safe who could take action in time. Hell, it may already be too late to take any action in time, but you’ve got to try.”
She leaped to her feet again. “Oh, really? Tell me again why I’ve got to solve this? My government seems to have gone crazy and is trying to kill a planeload of people and maybe start a nuclear confrontation and I’m responsible how?
“Sit, please,” he commanded suddenly, the earlier composure returning if not the air of confidence. Something hard in his voice led her to choke off an objection and comply.
Will Bronson picked up another lightweight chair and plopped it down in front of her backwards. He sat on it, leaning his chin on the back, staring at her.
“What?”
No response, and she was getting steamed.
“WHAT, damn you?”
“You really want me to tell you why … how you’re responsible?”
“Is there an echo in here? Yes! That’s what I asked.”
“You wrote the code.”
She stared at him in disbelieving silence.
“I … what?”
“I wasn’t going to tell you, but you wrote the code they used to start this mess.”
“Like hell I did! I’ve been trying to decipher … what are you saying?
“The registration of codes I told you about? I wasn’t lying when I told you I was denied access to who registered it. But there is a track to whoever created a unique code or variant. Do you recognize the digital signature Three-Three-Six-Nine-Alpha?”
Jenny looked at him speechless for a few seconds, her mind running back to previous assignments over the years, some of which had required a personal code, which in her case had always been 3369A.
“That’s … my digital signature, but I swear to you I’ve never seen that transmitted code before. And I wouldn’t have anything to do with …”
“You signed it.”
“No, someone used my coded signature! I’ve spent the whole day trying to figure out the logic in that codec. If I’d written it …” She stopped, her face suddenly looking pasty.
“What?”
“Oh crap!”
“What Jenny?”
“I didn’t think about …”
“Please, tell me.”
Her hand was in front of her mouth, her eyes drifting away for a few seconds before she looked back at him.
“Jesus God, Will! That’s the key! Someone scrambled a very old code of mine, and I’ve been irritated all day because it had some familiar overtones but I couldn’t tell why. I didn’t write this version, but they used one of my encoding sequences and then scrambled the hell out of it.” She turned a shade whiter as she met Will’s gaze, understanding.
“This means NSA is involved!”
“Maybe. Could be. Highly possible,”
“But if I know the core philosophy of the code, maybe I CAN decipher it!”
She started to turn back to the computer and stopped herself, a dark cloud crossing her face as the final tumblers fell into place. She hadn’t been just the helpful girl from NSA. She had been the target all along.
“I see now. NSA. You thought I was the bad guy, didn’t you?” she said softly, watching him as he stood and put the chair aside.
“Jen …”
“No, level with me. This whole thing was because of my digital signature and the signal coming from NSA, right? So what were you going to do to me if I didn’t produce the code? Seduce me? Torture me? Kill me?”
“What?”
“This is one of your safe houses and I’m sure you could kill someone in here quite handily and some … some team would come flying in to dispose of the body and the evidence.”
“Jenny, calm down. That’s not what I or the DIA do. That’s Hollywood.”
“Oh really? The DIA doesn’t do covert ops? You’re known for covert ops!”
“That’s not me.”
“How were you planning to make me talk, huh?” Her eyes were narrowing as she warmed to her anger. Here she’d thought he respected her and enjoyed working with her and—
“JENNY!”
“What?”
“What would you have thought in my shoes?”
“I …”
“We have a major emergency and little time. Thank God we were wrong about you. I get it. Now let’s work like hell, okay?”
She looked at him carefully, the steam dissipating, and nodded.
“Okay.”
“We’re essentially alone on this. Just like I said.”
“Okay.”
“And, I would never kill you or torture you!”
“You left one out,” she said, turning back to the laptop.
“Did I?” he said, feigning ignorance.
“Get me coffee, Will Bronson. You can seduce me later.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
The White House (8:50 p.m. EST / 0150 Zulu)
CIA Deputy Director Walter Randolph had made the round-trip from the White House to Langley and back reluctantly, but meeting with his team was vital and there was simply no way of assuring an unmonitored electronic conversation in or around the Situation Room. He looked up from his briefing papers now as his driver was waived through the West Wing gate, spotting the director of Central Intelligence who was waiting. James Bergen climbed into the rear seat as Walter leaned forward to engage the driver.
“Ralph? Just drive around for about fifteen minutes, okay? Then back here.”
The guards waved the car back through the gates as Bergen sighed and rubbed his eyes. “I hate days like this and just hanging around waiting for POTUS.”
“I know. Feels a bit subservient.”
“We serve at the pleasure of the president, Walter, my boy. At least I do. Okay, what have we got?”
“A growing international confrontation that could either dissipate like the morning fog or end up in a nuclear exchange. How’s that for extremes?”
“Details, Walt.”
“We have confirmation now that Tehran is fully aware of Moishe Lavi’s presence on the Pangia flight, because they have formally notified all adjacent air traffic authorities that any flight with Lavi aboard is prohibited from entry into Iranian airspace. They’ve assembled what passes for their air force general staff, and they’ve even sent a direct nastygram to Pangia headquarters to make sure Pangia knows their jet with Lavi aboard will be, as they put it, ‘refused admission to Iranian airspace,’ meaning they reserve the right to shoot them down.”
“Okay. We expected all that. What else?”
“Well, we’ve also discovered an interesting little tidbit that is probably quite seismic: The Airbus that Pangia is flying doesn’t belong to them, and the airline apparently didn’t know it.”
“Excuse me?”
Randolph explained Pangia’s shock at being informed they were flying the wrong Airbus A330 and how they had pulled it out of the desert and hurried it into service.
“The storage company in Mojave, California, made the mistake, Jim. We sent two of our people up there in the past hour. The employee responsible for sending the wrong airplane to the airline is a Carl Kanowsky, and Mr. Kanowsky has suddenly disappeared, and it turns out the name is probably an alias. Our team suspects that all the information the man gave the employer to get hired about six months ago when those white tails arrived will turn out to be false. And, the jet Pangia Airways thought they were flying, the one which should still be there in Mojave?”
“Yes?”
“It’s gone, and the owner of the storage company is feigning surprise.”
“What are we thinking, Walt?”
“First, we’re thinking that delivering the wrong aircraft to Pangia Airways was not an accident, and that the substitute aircraft that was sent to Pangia’s fac
ility in Tulsa had been purposefully prepared specifically for this flight with something electronic installed that would seize control of the airplane when triggered. This may well be a carefully laid plan.”
“Laid by whom?”
Walter Randolph laughed and cocked his head. “Well, Jim, who’s aboard?”
“Really? You think the old bastard engineered this?”
“He’s dying, Jim. Sorry … that sounds like a line from Star Trek, but, seriously, you remember our little inside bombshell that Lavi’s hiding the fact that he’s been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer?”
“I’ve never bought that, Walt. I think it’s a planted feint. We know he’s had heart trouble, but cancer?”
“The cancer stuff may be false. But remember we got that word one month before he pulled his wildly unexpected goal line stand in the Knesset, which, if he isn’t dying, makes little sense. Lavi has always known how to live to fight another day. That throw down was a complete reversal of character,”
“Walt, he acts as hale and hearty as he was at age twenty. Certainly his bedroom athletics haven’t diminished.”
“True, but let’s just suppose for the sake of argument that he is dying. Look at the motivation. If you were the great Moishe Lavi, how would you like to go out? As a footnote in history, the failed leader who never removed the Iranian threat you had likened to Hitler, or as the self-appointed deliverer of your people?”
“The Messiah complex.”
“Yes.”
The CIA director sat for a few seconds in thought. “I’ll admit it’s not impossible. But what would he have gained by planting the cancer story?”
“A cover for uncharacteristic behavior,” Walter Randolph continued, “… which could also mean a cover for the solution he’d devised against the mullahs.”
“Shaky, Walt.”
“But possible.”
“So, who would have engineered this global effort for him, whether he’s dying or just intent on suicide?”
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