Lockout

by John J. Nance

  “We think,” James Bergen began, “… that Israel may need some steady words of caution and calm from you, Mr. President, if the scenario doesn’t change.”

  “How would it change?”

  “The crew may regain control. It appears they have partially done so with the speed and at one point they did a complete circle.”

  “But they’re still headed for Tehran.”

  “No sir. Tel Aviv. But there are two basic scenarios, both with a bad flight plan. One, Lavi isn’t in control, this is an accident somehow, but when the airplane arrives over Tel Aviv, instead of disconnecting, it will mindlessly turn to go back to its point of origin before Tel Aviv, which was Hong Kong, which means straight over Iran and just south of Tehran. Second, this is a Lavi operation, in which case, the aircraft will also inevitably turn and head for Tehran.”

  “There’s not a lot of airspace between Tel Aviv and Tehran that a 500-mile-per-hour jet can’t cover rapidly,” the president mused. “About 600 miles, I figure. How long before they’re over Israel?”

  “One hour, sir.”

  “And we still can’t talk to them?”

  “No.”

  The president was nodding. “I know Moishe reasonably well. He’s a egomaniacal bastard, but it would be consistent with his personality, whether he’s dying or committing suicide, to do it with a full professorial explanation. If that’s what’s really happening, I promise you he’s got a satellite phone ready to connect when he’s ready to speak. I’ll be back down in forty-five minutes, or sooner if you need me. James? You and General Penick here pull out all the stops to find out what that phone number is and be ready to connect me to him if it’s humanly possible to do so. And … keep me posted on your missing man, General. That’s worrisome.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The group got to their feet as the president left, and General Penick leaned close to his civilian aide’s ear as he leaned down to pick up his briefcase.

  “You were talking to our operations team a minute ago?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Get them back on the line and tell them to lock down this city until they find that goddamned agent, Bronson.”

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Aboard Pangia 10 (0320 Zulu)

  “Nothing new happening up here!” Carol yelled, and Dan nodded as he sat on the floor of the electronics bay, glancing at the passenger who had been invaluable in helping solve an impossible riddle.

  Frank nodded, too, his smile quite thin, the tension starkly transmitted by the tightness of his facial muscles. Small talk was difficult in the constrained space with the noise levels of cooling fans and slipstream, and Dan averted his gaze back to the strange cabinet, determined to give it a few more minutes before deciding precisely where they were in the process. The satcom antenna leads were dangling loose where he’d left them nearly a half hour before. No further orders could be received from anywhere as long as those two halves were disconnected, if there had indeed been any external control to begin with.

  But that same nagging feeling that he hadn’t thought this through enough was rising again, the same feeling he had when playing chess and a gleeful move to place his opponent in check was about to turn out to be premature—the opponent poised to take advantage of the one move he’d failed to consider.

  Why am I assuming there is a person on the other side of this nightmare? Dan thought, wondering if the personification of a nemesis wasn’t obscuring some larger truth. Why would anyone or any entity do this to us?

  Carol’s head had disappeared from the hatch, and Dan found it suddenly unsettling to not see her there. He had all but ignored the beauty of her auburn hair cascading down through the hatch, so great was his forced discipline to concentrate on the nightmare at hand. Nothing wrong with concentrating! We’re in trouble. No time for thinking sex-related thoughts, although she was a very attractive woman. But here he was facing an uncertain future, his mind suddenly grasping for relief—something good to think about—and Carol’s femininity triggered a moment of regret that he’d paid far too little attention to his love life in the past few years.

  My alleged love life, he thought, triggering a random pain that echoed back to his teens and threatened to open doors of longing he’d long since tried to nail shut. He forcibly switched off those thoughts and turned his mind back to the life-threatening dilemma at hand.

  There’s always a reason for anything that takes time and money, and whoever built this thing obviously has a huge investment in it working. But to do what? Kill us?

  Dan looked at the cabinet again. Obviously designed to switch off the cockpit and hand the control to … someone? What if, he mused, it was a two-stage deal? First, remove control from the cockpit, then stage two, switch the active control to someone on the ground through satellite interface? What if only stage one had occurred, and that had been an accident?

  And what if someone below was trying to “fix” that mistake right now and reverse stage one?

  The two disconnected ends of the satellite communications antenna were suddenly mocking him, and Dan called Frank out of his brief reverie as he pointed to them.

  “Follow my logic. We disconnected and nothing has changed for a half hour. That proves we weren’t under active control, so it should be okay to reconnect, especially if someone below accidentally triggered this thing and might try to use a satcom signal to reverse their mistake.”

  “So … reconnect?” Frank asked.

  “Yes. Why not?”

  “How much time do we have?”

  “Before what?”

  “Before running out of gas.”

  “Maybe two hours. Maybe a bit more.”

  “Then we should do it quickly,” Frank said.

  “Agreed,” Dan replied, adjusted the gloves, and grabbed the two ends, screwing them back into uniformity.

  When the job was complete, Dan sat back, aware Frank was looking at him.

  “What?”

  “That was precisely my question, Captain. What do we do now?” Frank asked.

  “We start experimenting again and yanking relays, as fast as we can.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Silver Springs, Maryland (9:25 p.m. EST / 0325 Zulu)

  “So where do we run to, Mr. Bond?” Jenny asked, only slightly amused with her reference.

  Will Bronson had been all but hunched over the steering wheel, guiding them into the night traffic southbound toward the heart of DC and obviously deep in thought. He looked over now almost in lack of recognition, a smile returning uneasily to his face as his eyes focused on her.

  “Sorry. I was concentrating on where to go.”

  “Any Starbucks will do,” Jenny said, not in jest.

  “Too public, and a public server will be child’s play to trace.”

  “Who cares, Will. We’re running out of time. If I had a portable hot spot … wait, I do!”

  “Jenny, we’re being watched!”

  “Okay, and I’m willing to trade my damned job for a planeload of passengers. Aren’t you?”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “What is the point, Will? I think I have the code figured out, but we need to be broadcasting it everywhere. I have only one transponder I know that might be usable. Who else can we turn to?” Jenny fumbled in her purse, pulled out her smartphone, and worked the screen to trigger its internal hotspot.

  He was shaking his head and breathing a bit too hard, and Jenny heard the indecision in his voice.

  “I think I know where to go for a secure channel, but … you’re right about the lack of time.”

  “Then hush up for a moment and let me work this,” she replied, head down, making a tiny mental note that “hush up” might be too Southern a way to shush a spy. Then again, he was acting less and less like a serenely confident operative.

  She pulled her laptop out of its case and fired it up, connecting to the cell phone’s Wi-Fi channel, then retracing her previous steps to the entry portal of
the satellite array she had previously tried. She entered the appropriate string of keystrokes and tried to suppress the urge to scream “Dammit!” when the entry denial included confirmation that her previous attempt had never made it through their firewalls.

  “This isn’t working, Will,” she said in disgust, tucking back an errant cascade of hair behind her ear.

  “Okay, then we’ll have to find that secure entry point.”

  “No. No, you don’t understand,” she said, turning to him. “I only had one satellite channel, and it won’t let me in. We don’t just need a place to get into the Internet, we need a transponder or about a dozen of them. I think I’d better call Seth at home, and in the clear.”

  “No!”

  “Why not? No way he’s the bad guy. I know you can’t guarantee that, but I can.”

  “You can’t call him in the clear, Jenny. And I promise you he doesn’t have the horsepower to intervene and find a transponder for us.”

  “Yeah? Well, Sherlock, find me someone who does, or I see no choice but to try.”

  “I’m working on it,” he replied, negotiating Dupont Circle and steering them down Massachusetts Avenue.

  Quietly, she opened a direct to text program and typed the most innocuous message she could think of.

  “Seth, I’m with Will and have unlock solution for P10, but one hour left and can’t broadcast. Need advice! Jen”

  Jenny hit the send button and simultaneously collapsed the program just as an oath reached her from the driver’s seat.

  “Oh, crap!”

  “What?”

  Will Bronson was staring intently into the rearview mirror.

  “We’ve got a tail.”

  “What? Really?” Jenny whirled around in the seat, her eyes jumping through a series of headlights behind them, none of them close enough to finger as a tail.

  “I don’t see who you’re talking about.”

  “He’s back there. Came around the circle trying to stay aloof. Obviously a solo, not a team, which is good.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m rather well trained in this, and high performance driving response,” he shot back, eyes darting between the crowded street ahead and the rearview mirror before screeching into a sudden left turn across traffic and darting into a side street, almost losing control in the process and barely missing a parked SUV.

  “JESUS, Will!”

  “Sorry.”

  “What are you afraid of, anyway? That they’ll shoot us?”

  “We need a portal and a transponder, and being in any sort of custody won’t achieve that in time,” he replied.

  “Custody? What the hell do you mean custody?” she said, hanging onto the handgrip above the passenger window as he accelerated through the back streets.

  “Not now. Gotta concentrate.”

  Once more she turned to search behind them, seeing nothing that would qualify as a chase car, yet Will was throwing them through desperate maneuvers. Slowly, a rising tide of doubt began to trickle into the corners of her mind, where uncertainty had already created a void. The sudden departure from the safe house, no overheard voices on his phone calls, now a phantom chasing them, and a potentially precious cargo she couldn’t deliver.

  There was a tiny vibration in her hand and she looked down at her phone’s screen to see an answer from Seth:

  Company says Will is rogue and dangerous. Get away now, call me ASAP! Use any excuse.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Situation Room, The White House (10:28 p.m. EST / 0328 Zulu)

  “Sir, Piper may be in DC right now.”

  Walter Randolph switched the handset to his other ear and let Jason Duke’s words coalesce.

  “Talk to me, Jason.”

  “We know DIA is searching for their man who was at NSA this morning, the one we’ve wondered about. You said DIA briefed the president someone had gone rogue, and we think it’s the same guy, named Will Bronson. We don’t have much on him. If he’s an operative, he’s a new one or we haven’t been watching appropriately.”

  “How do Bronson and Piper match up, Jason?”

  “There’s an NSA woman … a Jenny Reynolds … involved somehow, an analyst, purely a desk type. She and Bronson are together. Apparently Bronson was working with her earlier at NSA headquarters.”

  “Okay.”

  “But we think the real Bronson never made it to NSA. God knows where he is, but we think this Jenny Reynolds woman is with William Piper and has no idea who he is. “

  “Why?”

  “Sorry?”

  “Why would Piper be spending time with her? Are they lovers?”

  “Could be, I suppose, although our source is her boss and he doesn’t think she’d ever met Bronson or Piper before. But here’s the thing. If this is Piper, and he is behind whatever satellite transmission triggered an internal hijack of that aircraft, and if he’s working for Lavi, the last thing he wants is someone figuring out how to send a countermanding code and turn it off. We’re trying to find Bronson, looking in his apartment, car, et cetera. Highly likely we’ll find a professionally disposed of body. Meanwhile DIA is going nuts and whipping everyone into a find-Bronson frenzy. We’re afraid they’ll shoot him if they find him.”

  “Purposefully?”

  “No, sir. Overreaction. Even the police are involved now.”

  “And you think the Reynolds woman knows that code?”

  “We think she has the ability to figure it out. He’s probably protecting his interests. She has no idea what he does to people who are no longer of use to him.”

  “I’ve seen the file. But what if she’s his confederate? What if she’s the means of sending the triggering message that started all this?”

  “Her boss doesn’t think that’s possible.”

  “Right … like every serial killer. The neighbors swear he was a great guy.”

  “In any event, we need to find them fast, before DIA kills them both and we lose any answers.”

  “Any track on where they are?”

  “Yes and no. In DC at some apartment earlier tonight, but they left that location. DIA and we are bumping into each other trying to pick up the trail.”

  “Jason, what are the chances the woman really does have the key? The unlock code, so to speak.”

  “Her boss says she’s the best, and if anyone can figure it out, she can.”

  Walter rubbed his eyes as his deputy waited for the inevitable thought process to end with an order or observation.

  “Okay, you’ve been in the thick of the chase for hours. Pull back and grab some perspective. We have a phantom operative who planted himself for, what, six months in Mojave just to dispatch the wrong aircraft? And now we think he’s down to the wire trying to prevent the undoing of his dastardly deeds, right?”

  “Essentially.”

  “Jason, could Piper have done this all alone?”

  “Sir, what I can’t grasp is what was engineered into that airliner that he could activate that would lock out the pilots. I don’t know airplanes, but that seems impossible.”

  “Let’s say he could, technically. For the sake of argument. Could he have pulled all this off solo?”

  “Maybe. Probably. Piper is clearly one of the best. He’s almost a legend, and we never expected to see him back stateside. We’re thinking that with six months of uninterrupted access to the airplane his employer thought was sealed and mothballed, he could have actually installed something very complex. He’s an electrical engineering graduate, you know, with a lot of practical experience.”

  “I missed that. From Cal Tech, too, correct?”

  “Yes. And we also know he’s a Lavi loyalist, because it was Moishe Lavi, while he was running Mossad a few years back, who set Piper up in luxury with all the females he wanted after he did God knows what for them. No, he’s a loyalist, and if this was planned as Lavi’s last play, you can bet Piper’s a part of it. But we’ll have to find bodies to make this scenario real. Where’s th
e real Bronson? Where’s the real Mojave employee?”

  “Where will Miss Reynolds end up? And maybe more.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Call me the moment you’ve got a bead on him, and we’ll share with DIA.”

  “Sir, we figure those pilots are just a hair more than an hour away from Tel Aviv. Just so you know.”

  “Understood.”

  The Oval Office

  Flanked and trailed by the same advisors and Secret Service agents, the president negotiated the relatively short distance back to the ground floor without discussion, waiving off his secretary and the waiting chief of staff as he pushed through the door into the most famous office on the planet, closing it carefully behind him as he looked at the lone visitor and shook his head ruefully.

  “Jesus Christ, Paul! So it was you.”

  “Mr. President, I’m afraid so.”

  “When I heard the pilots couldn’t control the aircraft, I thought of you, but when I heard Colorado Springs was the aircraft’s home, the coincidence was too much. But then again, one of my most trusted generals would never let anything like this occur. Right?”

  “I’m very sorry, Mr. President.”

  The president crossed to the desk and consulted a folder before looking up again.

  “What the hell happened, Paul? You wouldn’t believe the briefing I received downstairs a little while ago.”

  “I probably would, sir.”

  The president motioned him to the couch as he sat heavily into an adjacent captain’s chair.

  “Give me the basics.”

  Paul Wriggle quickly summarized the series of disastrous discoveries starting with the Airbus A330 ending up as a commercial flight, the efforts to broadcast a disconnect signal, the complete mystery of how the cockpit lockout happened, and his call to Rick Hastings.