Lockout

by John J. Nance

  “A bit excessive, don’t you think? Any direct bead on us?”

  “Negative. Not so far.”

  Wriggle sighed, rubbing his forehead.

  “I’m on the ground in the Beltway now. Where is our jet? I figured an hour and a half out of Tel Aviv.”

  “We concur, but it’s slowed down.”

  “What? What do mean, ‘slowed down’?”

  “By over sixty knots, and before you ask, that’s not explainable by winds at that altitude.”

  “Do you think the crew has retaken control?”

  “Their heading is still the same, but the speed could indicate something. We’re just not sure what. If they change course, however, depending on where they head, it could mean we’re dealing with something entirely different.”

  “Tell me, Dana.”

  “Someone could be using our machine and our equipment as a shield for what they’re really up to. You … do know former Prime Minister Moishe Lavi is aboard, right?”

  “What? No!”“

  Dana Baumgartner filled in the details, and Paul Wriggle felt his head swimming.

  “Oh, my dear God! No wonder the Company and the Situation Room is involved!”

  “Does that … have a particular meaning to you, Paul? That Lavi is aboard?”

  “At the very least it means the diplomatic explosiveness of this is far beyond anything I imagined. Good lord! Okay, Dana, I’d better ring off for the moment.”

  “I’ll call the minute we get anything new.”

  “Yes. Please.”

  He punched the disconnect and sighed, hesitating in deep thought for what seemed like a very long time, before making the decision and pulling out a folded note from his shirt pocket. Don was right, he thought. Further hesitation was unsupportable. He carefully punched in the telephone number on the note and triggered the call, wondering how in hell he was going to verbally navigate the razor edge he would need to walk. He glanced at his watch, calculating the time zone change to Chicago, and almost missed the answering voice on the other end.

  “Hello?”

  “General Rick Hastings, please,” he said.

  “This is Rick Hastings. Who is this?”

  “Paul Wriggle, Rick. One of your classmates from undergraduate pilot training.”

  “Hey, Paul! Kinda late for a telephone reunion, don’t cha think? But it’s good to hear from you. What’s up? I assume you’re not calling to chat about the Cubbies?”

  Paul chucked. “I would never chat about the … God, you never give up on the Cubs, do you?”

  “Of course not! That’s what sets Cubs fans apart. Eternal mindless optimism. So what’s on your mind, Paul?”

  “Short and sweet, okay?”

  “Of course.”

  “First, I’m still on active duty. I’m a two star now, heading a program I can’t discuss. I know we haven’t talked since you retired as a three star, and I apologize for never formally congratulating you on becoming CEO of Pangia. But that’s the subject: Pangia. You have an airplane in trouble, I may have the solution, but flag rank officer to flag rank officer, I need your immediate assistance and an almost complete absence of questions about how I know what I know.”

  Paul could hear Hastings changing hands and almost dropping the receiver.

  “Holy moly, Paul! That’s quite a preamble.”

  “I know it.”

  “Well, I clearly have the fiduciary loyalty to this company to consider now.”

  “We’re flag rank, Rick. That never changes. Remember the prime directive about joining the star club? Although I shouldn’t have to mention it.”

  “No, you shouldn’t, Paul. A bit rude, I’d say, but I’ll hear you out.”

  “Can I get some assurance?”

  “Assurance? I’ll do the right thing for our service, and our country, Paul. You don’t have to ask for that.”

  “Very well.”

  “What is it, man?”

  “Do you have any communication with your flight crew?”

  “No. We did, sporadically, via a handheld satellite phone, but we think they ran out of battery. We know they’ll call back if they can.”

  “So there’s no current means to relay something to them? Not even ACARS?”

  “Not that I know of. Why?”

  “I’ve got a code sequence, Rick. If we can get one of the pilots to punch it into what would probably appear to be a dead flight management computer, they’ll probably get back complete control.”

  There was a chilling silence on the other end.

  “Paul, are you telling me our service is screwing around with that airplane?”

  “No! Absolutely not!” Paul Wriggle said, suppressing the small, burning kernel of doubt in his gut that he had a bead on everything that was happening. “What’s happened is a complete electronic accident.”

  “You know something about this substituted airplane, don’t you? I just found out a half hour ago.”

  “The aircraft swap was a total accident, Rick. Yes, that’s my bird, and she has some special equipment I can’t admit exists.”

  “Well, buddy, the whole fucking world is liable to hear about it now!”

  “Maybe, maybe not. But I think I have the code that, if punched in, returns the damned thing to normal. If we can get it to the pilots without broadcasting a hint of an explanation …”

  “Jesus, I don’t believe I’m hearing this! You know how many passengers are aboard that flight?”

  “Yes, and one in particular, whose presence makes getting this solved supercritical. No questions, Rick. We can sort it out later. Can you get to the pilots?”

  Another long silence and a deep sigh as Paul noticed the Washington Monument passing off to the left.

  “I’ll throw that question back to our operations center. As far as I know, we’ve lost all satellite contact, ACARS telemetry, and sat phone, as I told you. I don’t know what else we can do? But what’s the bloody number?”

  It was Paul Wriggle’s turn to sigh. The cell phone was in the open, a non-secure channel, but it was too late to kvetch about that now. They could always change the code in future versions.

  “You use the MDCU, the Multifunction Display Control Unit keypad. Select 1 Right, and twelve boxes will open. Type into scratch pad the twelve-digit number sequence I’m going to give you, then line select 1 Right, putting the numbers into boxes. Then select 1 Right again to activate. He read the twelve-digit sequence and forced a read back, stopping himself from mentioning the fact that they’d been blasting the code all over the planet with no response.

  “This will do it? Just this?”

  “Yes. But, Rick, a very large warning. It has to be entered with absolute precision. After three wrong entries, it permanently locks out the computers.”

  “Okay. I’m on it. You realize the questions are going to come like a fire hose, and I can’t stop all of them?”

  “Yes. Please do your best. I’ll call back in a little while. I promise you a full explanation. Just … no time now.”

  He punched off the phone, aware that the destination was just ahead, and he fumbled around in his back pocket for the appropriate ID, preoccupied with the question of whether he had just committed a federal felony.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Situation Room, The White House (10:20 p.m. EST / 0320 Zulu)

  The significance of the terse little conference in the corridor was not lost on the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Major General Richard Penick knew CIA Director James Bergen and his deputy, Walter Randolph, only too well, and trusted neither. Sharing a routine Senate grilling with Bergen every now and then as marginally-trusted intelligence community leaders was part of the job. But the multiyear ferocity of the food fight over which agency should control the nation’s human spies, cryptically referred to as HUMINT, was making blood enemies out of formerly respectful rivals, until it had become almost an intelligence civil war.

  It was especially interesting, Penick tho
ught, that Walter Randolph and James Bergen were so engrossed in their private little exchanges, they hadn’t even noticed him brushing past with a small wave.

  General Penick moved into the Situation Room and nodded to the civilian aide who’d accompanied him, primarily to watch for incoming messages, but there was no question that she was also there for appearances: The director of DIA, and a three star general at that, should never be seen without at least one aide. If that wasn’t written as a rule someplace, Penick thought, it damn well should be.

  The woman shook her head ever so slightly to indicate there was nothing new to report, and that irritated him all the more. To have a major potential intelligence challenge with Israel and Iran occur simultaneously with one of his agents appearing to go silent was upsetting. Whatever was happening, it also involved the NSA, and it was a sure bet his CIA counterparts knew something and were waiting with barely concealed glee to blindside him.

  Penick took his seat, trying hard to maintain a smile but hating this aspect of the job. In the military, blindsiding a major general was a career-ending move. In the civilian intelligence community, it was known as sport.

  The president had become fond of walking briskly ahead of his aides, advisors, and body man and breezing into meetings with little or no warning, which he did now, loosening the bow tie on his tux as he rounded the corner. There had been too many occupants of the Oval Office, Walter thought to himself, who had no military experience and had been too tentative and wildly out of step with reality, but the current chief executive was not one of them, and it was deeply comforting to know the man understood the parameters—and the limits—of both military force and intelligence.

  “Okay, folks. What’s the status of the Pangia flight?”

  One of the national security advisor’s deputies ran through the basics: Aircraft still not under crew control but a strange 360-degree turn, as well as a significant slowing.

  “Okay. James? Walter? What about Moishe Lavi? Is he just along for the ride? Or is this something more nefarious?”

  Walter Randolph wanted badly to get to his feet and command the room, but it would be seen as inappropriate and an upstaging of the president, so he remained in place and substituted a few silent moments of referring to his papers before looking up and locking eyes with POTUS, then beginning to speak.

  “First, a few new discoveries. The Airbus A330 that’s causing the problems does not belong to Pangia.” Walter quickly outlined the switched aircraft and the airline’s utter shock at the news, the missing, bogus employee in Mojave, and the allegation that former Prime Minister Lavi may be dying of pancreatic cancer. “Mr. President, with all this, we increasingly suspect the possibility of a covert op being run on behalf of, or even directly by, Mr. Lavi, and one originating at least in part within our borders.”

  “Good lord! How probable is that?”

  “Well, sir, the facts are lining up a bit, and the motive is very clear, if Lavi is involved. First, the missing Mojave employee. We believe he is actually a well-known ex-pat operative who at one time or another has worked for a half dozen agencies, including the CIA. His real name is William Piper. His aliases are too many to mention, which is something for a man in his late forties. He looks like a GQ model, and we figure he has a very good plastic surgeon somewhere keeping him young. We think we’ve picked up his tracks in Tulsa where the airplane was prepared for commercial service the following week, and we also have reason to suspect he has a confederate, some sort of mole, in Pangia Airways. The owner of this mysterious, identical airplane that was pawned off on Pangia as theirs … an airplane which has to have been fitted clandestinely with some sort of electronics a regular Airbus would never have … is a secretive company in Colorado Springs, which is obviously a front for someone—and not CIA, I hasten to assure you. This outfit bought the subject A330 new off the line in Toulouse and had it sitting in storage long enough to modify it for precisely this mission.”

  “A front organization in the Springs?” the President asked, looking startled.

  “They’re incorporated as Air Lease Solutions, but we can’t find any evidence of a single lease they’ve done as yet, and they only own one other airplane, a Boeing 737, also new. Of course there hasn’t been enough time to track down any of their principals, but we’re working on it as fast as possible. Considering the fact that Piper once also worked for Mossad some fifteen years ago, and the fact that he was last supposed to be retired from being a spook and living in Haifa with his Israeli girlfriend, this fits most of the fingerprint requirements for a carefully planned operation: They acquire and extensively modify the electronics on the aircraft and wait for the right moment to substitute it for one of Pangia’s identical airplanes, knowing that the A330 would most likely end up on the long distance, round-the-world run … especially if a confederate was doing the ship routing in Chicago. Once the aircraft is on the way, Mr. Lavi buys a ticket … which he did, in fact, buy at the last minute … and once they’re airborne, either take control of the aircraft through an installed package of electronics triggered by an external, probably satellite-fed signal, or internally. It’s not impossible that Mr. Lavi himself is controlling the aircraft from his first class seat. Maybe with a special laptop the aircraft is programmed to obey. Mix in an unknown number of sympathizers and coconspirators in the IDF and the Israeli Air Force ready to overstate the case and push everyone into hair-trigger tension, make sure Iran is informed very early in the process of who’s aboard and what might be happening, perhaps call in a sleeper agent in Tehran to whip up paranoid hysteria at a critical moment among the top military leaders, and you have the makings of a manufactured disaster.”

  The president’s hand was out in a stop gesture. “Whoa! All this just to provoke a response from Tehran? The mullahs could just order the plane shot down!”

  “Very true, and if Flight 10 gets close to the border, Iran will undoubtedly launch their fighters to do exactly that, and it’s likely they will be flying toward an airliner escorted by Israeli fighters with hair-trigger rules of engagement. Also, as we all know, there are factions in Tehran who were so outraged by Lavi’s quest for a first strike, they want the same thing launched by their side and, of course, we must never forget that power in Tehran rests in the hands of people openly dedicated to wiping Israel off the map and evaporating all the inhabitants. Any way you cut it, you have at the very least a potentially escalating confrontation. This jet is a spark flying toward a pool of gasoline.”

  “But we don’t know if Lavi is a passenger or a progenitor?”

  “Yes sir. And, we don’t know what aces Lavi may have hidden up his operational sleeve, if this is all his doing.”

  “What is Israel saying?”

  “Precisely what you would expect, Mr. President. They are on alert; their command and control apparatus is on line in The Hole in Tel Aviv. We also know that the new prime minister was there a few hours ago and is fully engaged with the civilian decision-makers who would have to be in agreement for any nuclear usage, and even though we are not supposed to know this about our allies’ preparedness, they have pilots waiting now in their cockpits, with the fighters fully armed. We assume the missile crews are on hair-trigger alert as well.”

  “I see,” the president said, leaning on both arms, his hands planted on the table. “Anything else? Not that that’s not enough.”

  “Yes, sir.” Walter glanced at the DIA chief with a carefully forced, neutral expression. “There is one thing we haven’t had an opportunity to share with General Penick, since we picked it up just before you got here, but we have grave concerns that part of this clandestine operation, whoever is running it, may have involved our own NSA in some way, and we think DIA may have had someone looking into this already.”

  James Bergen watched a homicidal look flicker across General Penick’s face before the DIA chief caught himself and nodded evenly.

  “Yes, sir, we had one of our men deployed to NSA this morning because we d
etected some strange satellite signals and wondered if they were military and we wanted their assistance.”

  “So, what did he find?”

  “We … don’t know yet, sir, because it appears he’s … suddenly dropped off the radar. We don’t know if he’s refusing to come in, or why he’s gone silent, or who he was talking to at NSA, if he even got there.”

  “You’ve misplaced one of your agents?”

  “Misplaced is a bit harsh, Mr. President. We’re quite concerned about him.”

  One of the presidential aides quietly appeared at the president’s side and at his nod spoke a few words in his ear too low to be heard.

  The president nodded in response and returned his gaze first to General Penick, and then to James Bergen. “James, what do you suspect? Forget this parochial shit and spit it out.”

  “Very well. First, since we know the aircraft was operating normally until halfway into its flight and then suddenly turned around without the pilots’ knowledge, and in addition the aircraft or something in the aircraft’s systems locked the crew out of being able to control their plane, the highest likelihood is that the triggering event was a radioed order of some sort, which could have been transmitted via satellite, a ground station, or even from the cabin of the aircraft. So, if there was such a signal, since DIA was already looking into strange signals found by someone at NSA, then my immediate concern would be knowing precisely what NSA discovered, and, quite frankly, getting assurance that NSA hadn’t somehow been involved directly or otherwise in transmitting anything. I have to add that this was news to us that DIA and NSA were looking into strange signals.”

  “My God, you’re suspecting a covert operation involving the NSA supporting Moishe Lavi?” the president fell silent, looking, Walter thought, suddenly a bit chalky. Just as quickly he recovered and stood up. “So what are your recommendations, gentlemen?”