Lockout

by John J. Nance

  “I will.”

  “And … what you called the nuclear option? Cutting the power?” Carol asked, her voice steady but her features decidedly pasty.

  “Yes. If Dan can find it, cutting the main electrical power lead to that damned box.”

  Dan and Frank Erlichman quickly descended back into the electronics bay to start pulling as many relay cubes as possible in the hope of finding the one that would restore directional control without turning them upside down. Dan had lost count of the number of times he and Erlichman had descended the small ladder from the cockpit. But once again they were standing in front of the offending cabinet, its mere presence mocking them, the remaining minutes to Tel Aviv ticking by with increasing urgency. Carol was once again scrunched in behind the captain’s seat, kneeling so that she could stick her head down through the hatch to relay any messages to Jerry, who had been out of the captain’s seat no more than twice the entire duration of the cascading emergency.

  Jerry looked over at the teenager he’d all but attacked so many hours ago, wanting to say something supportive. But after unsuccessfully punching numbers into the MDCU at random and taking a quick bathroom break, the kid was back nose-down in the MDCU operator’s manual and nodding every few seconds as if the arcane language actually made sense.

  “What do you think, Josh?” Jerry asked, unable to restrain himself.

  Josh Begich looked up and smiled tentatively. “Sir, I think … I think the unit is actually working and only the screen has been turned off. I was working out how to program a different destination.”

  “Really? Have you tried yet?”

  “No … where would you like it to take us?”

  “New York!” Jerry said, realizing the futility of it with depleted fuel reserves. “Okay, then maybe Tel Aviv. Where we originated.”

  Tom Wilson was still positioned behind the copilot’s seat, and he leaned in a bit. “Jerry, aren’t we already headed there?”

  “True. Okay, program in the coordinates for Cairo, just to see if it will change course.”

  Josh carefully entered the digits and pressed the execute button.

  “Nothing,” Jerry pronounced, watching the heading, his voice calm and matter-of-fact, where hours before he would have thrown something out of sheer frustration. Maybe it was weariness, Jerry thought. Maybe his more laid-back demeanor was a dangerous measure of resignation, a realization that he couldn’t necessarily control everything. Whatever it was, in some ways he seemed like a stranger to himself, someone he was watching from a distance, and even amidst the angst and the fright, that fascinated him.

  “Jerry,” Carol’s voice reached him from directly behind. “They’re pulling the first breaker now.”

  “Thanks. Josh, keep experimenting. Just, as I said before, write down everything you punch in before you hit execute.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The startling sound of an air traffic controller giving an inflight instruction to an EgyptAir flight momentarily confused Jerry before he recalled that the main VHF radio had been activated an hour ago, but with no transmit function. Almost absently, he pushed the transmit button on the sidestick controller.

  “And Cairo Control, Pangia 10 with you, I just wish you could hear what the hell I’m saying up here, because it would sure be nice to be able to speak to the rest of the known universe, or at least someone in it!”

  Jerry relieved pressure on the button, listening absently to what seemed a response.

  “Pangia 10! Cairo Control! We do hear you, sir. How are you reading this transmitter?”

  Jerry looked down at the VHF control head on the center console, wondering why Dan was taking the time to tap in from below to tease him with a bad accent. Recognition slowly dawned that it wasn’t Dan’s voice at all.

  From Bill Breem’s vantage point, Jerry seemed to rise a couple of inches in his command chair, as if re-inflating, glancing around quickly to assure himself no one else was holding a microphone.

  “Holy …” He grabbed for the sidestick.

  “What was that, Jerry?” Breem asked, but Jerry was already mashing the transmit button.

  “Cairo, Pangia 10! If that’s really you, we have you loud and clear on 122.7.”

  He turned as far to the right as he could. “Carol! Tell Dan we have two-way VHF restored! And tell him to keep on pulling things!”

  “Loud and clear also, Pangia 10,” the Cairo controller was saying. “We are aware of your emergency. How can we assist, sir?”

  “Can you patch us into a discreet frequency and set up a telephone relay to our company?”

  “Standby, 10, I believe we can arrange that.” The channel remained silent for a few seconds before the controller confirmed it, and Jerry passed the main number for the Operations Control Center in Chicago.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  Aboard Pangia 10 (0355 Zulu)

  “Pangia 10, your company is calling, and we have them connected,” Cairo Control relayed. “Please go ahead.”

  “Chicago, Flight 10.”

  “Captain Tollefson, is that you?”

  “Yes. Who is this?”

  “Rick Hastings, your CEO. Captain, please listen closely. There is one thing I need you to do with great care and precision.”

  “Yes sir. What would that be?”

  “It’s a series of numbers I need you to enter into your MDCU.”

  “We’ve already discovered that even though the screen is blank, it can accept some inputs. We’re just not sure which ones.”

  “I may have an answer to that, Captain. I’ll read the procedure I want you to follow and the numbers, and then I need a precise readback.”

  “Go ahead.”

  Hastings read the steps and the code and listened as Jerry read it back without error.

  “Okay, good. While I have you, please punch that in and execute, and tell me the results.”

  “Mr. Hastings, I suppose now is not the moment to ask you what the hell is going on and why do I have this … this … code?”

  “You would be correct, Captain. It is neither the time nor the forum. Just do it, please.”

  “Standby,” was the response, followed a minute later by the report Hastings had dreaded. “We put that in precisely as instructed, sir, and virtually nothing has changed.”

  “You’ve tried your controls?”

  “Yes, sir. Nothing. We’re working like hell to disconnect whatever idiot thing that is in the electronics bay that has taken over, and, as you can tell, we got the radio back and the throttles, but nothing else.”

  “Input that again.”

  More seconds of line noise and vocal silence before Jerry Tollefson returned to the line, his voice terse.

  “We put it in three more times, sir, and nothing is different.”

  “Three more? I only instructed one more.”

  “No, sir, you said to input it again. Well, we tried three times and to no avail. May I ask where this number sequence came from?”

  “No, but I can tell you your airline has had nothing to do with this whole affair. We’re working as hard as we can to help you.”

  “Well, Mr. Hastings … I’m sorry, I forgot … General Hastings … we’re begging for anything substantive you can do. Maybe that was the wrong number sequence?”

  Unseen, half a world away in a Chicago command center, Rick Hastings sighed, remembering Paul Wriggle’s warning that the third bad attempt would permanently lock out an MDCU no one knew was active to begin with.

  “Captain, I don’t know that we’ve got anything else at the moment. I’ll get back to you the moment we do.”

  “Not much time left, sir,” Jerry added.

  “I know it.”

  And just as quickly, the connection was broken.

  The White House

  On the president’s direct order, General Paul Wriggle had remained in the Oval Office, distant from any possibility of the team in the Situation Room wondering about his presence, and his purpose. Co
ntemplating what had become an expanding disaster on many fronts, Wriggle found himself alone when his cell phone rang with Dana Baumgartner on the other end.

  “We’ve found Gail Hunt, General. Tell me how much detail you want, but she skidded off the highway to Estes five days ago and has been trapped in her car in a gully since then. One of our guys started searching for her and found the skid marks, and … she’s been airlifted to Denver, alive but unconscious.”

  “Good Lord! Thank God she’s alive. What’s the prognosis?”

  “Good, we think.”

  “Don’t hurt her, Dana, but push as much as you can to get that code, if she can recall it. We’re down to no time left.”

  “She’s unconscious, General.”

  “Do what you can.”

  He punched the phone off only to have it ring again, this time with Rick Hastings on the other end.

  “Paul, read me that disconnect code and the entry sequence again.” Clearly it was not a request, and there was no point in asking.

  “Standby … I have it here,” Wriggle said, opening his notebook and relaying it once more.”

  “It didn’t work, Paul! My crew punched it in precisely as stated, and it didn’t work.”

  “Oh, shit,” was the only phrase that seemed to fit.

  “Oh, shit, indeed! Now what do we do? You seem to know what the hell is going on. My guys punched it in four times, so if it was the wrong code, by your statement, we’re locked out now and screwed.”

  “It was the only code we had. My people were pretty sure …”

  “Pretty sure? Jesus Christ, man, why didn’t you tell me it was uncertain?”

  “I didn’t know it was! The woman who wrote the code was missing. She’s just been found in a car wreck near Estes Park, Colorado, barely alive after five days in a gully, and we can’t question her yet.”

  “You want to start telling me what is going on, Paul? Or should I ask the president, if he’s still with you? We have less than an hour and a half of fuel on that bird and something your ass is involved with is about to kill everyone aboard.”

  “Rick, I can’t give you answers to that basic question yet. Not on an open line, at least. If this is your direct line, I’ll call you back as quickly as I can, if there’s anything more we can pass to your crew. I can tell you this … we have Israeli fighters heading to intercept them, and one of them is prepared to relay the unlock code on a channel they can’t lock out.”

  “But if it’s the wrong damned code, Paul …”

  “I know, I know. One of my guys is at the bedside with our lady in Denver. They’re trying to get her conscious long enough … I really can’t tell you the rest of it.”

  “We’ve got a fuse burning down toward an explosive, Paul.”

  “I know it. Believe me, I know it. I’m standing in the freaking Oval Office! Back as quick as I’ve got something to pass.”

  Paul Wriggle punched off the cell phone and sat in horrified thought for a few seconds, hoping Dana Baumgartner called again quickly. Finding Gail Hunt hovering near death in her wrecked car had answered one riddle and left others, chief among them how to deactivate a unit they never activated to begin with, and if the codes they had found in her safe were wrong, could she recall the real one? The chances of a Moishe Lavi-led conspiracy was less than one notch below certain in his mind now, but thank God Gail hadn’t been the cause of it.

  Impatience won out, and he triggered the speed dial number for Colonel Baumgartner, not even bothering with hellos.

  “Any news, Dana?”

  “Coming around. She’ll make it. Hypothermia and dehydration, but the main injuries are just fractures.”

  “No way to question her, I suppose?”

  “Steve Reagan’s there at bedside now. He’s the one who found her, and he’s going to try.”

  “The unlock code didn’t work, Dana,” Paul, said, filling in the details.

  “Oh, lord,”

  “That means the broadcast unlock code is probably crap as well.”

  “Agreed.”

  “We have just over an hour I’m told until flameout. Even at the risk of Gail’s life, adrenalize her or do something to get the information. He filled in Dana on the newly launched mission to relay the unlock code through an Israeli fighter’s UHF radio. “We were going to use the same code, but now that’s apparently futile.”

  “Could the crew have gotten it wrong?”

  “Highly unlikely. It was apparently passed with great care on a clear channel with confirmed readbacks. If we can’t get the right code, we’re done … and they’re done. And, there’s always the chance the thing has been monkeyed with and not even Gail has the right numbers.”

  “Got it.”

  “Hurry! Please.”

  “Paul, shouldn’t we get our engineers together and see if they know how to physically pull the plug?”

  The words felt like a ballpeen hammer to the head. “Oh, Jesus! I should have seen that! It was right in front of us, and I’ve been hung up on the damned codes.”

  “We designed it to be tamper-proof, and the cabinet is booby-trapped, but …”

  “Anything is worth trying. How long will it take?”

  “I have to roust them out of their homes.”

  “Go! I’m standing by.”

  Paul Wriggle punched off his cell phone and looked up, embarrassed that the president had been standing there and he was singularly unaware of it.

  “What do you have, Paul?”

  “Nothing good. We got through to the crew with the code, and the code’s incorrect. The Israelis are preparing to intercept, also with the wrong numbers, but we did find our lady who wrote the code. She’s been in a bad accident and may not be able to talk to our guys, but we’re trying.”

  “An accident?”

  Paul filled in the details in brief.

  “Good God!” The president sat down on the couch opposite Paul Wriggle.

  “I spoke to the acting Israeli PM. He’s in a tough spot, Paul. He may have to order his fighters to shoot them down.”

  For a moment it didn’t register.

  “Shoot who down? The Iranians?”

  “No, Paul. Pangia 10. Our commercial jet with God knows how many people aboard.”

  “Why?”

  “It will be split-second decision-making, but if Flight 10 approaches the Iranian border, and if any of the Iranian missiles are erected on the launch pad, the only sure-fire way they’ll have to stop an action-reaction cascade that would end in an attempted nuclear exchange would be to remove the basic trigger—the intruding airplane. The Iranians might do that themselves instead of launching on Tel Aviv, but the Israelis are not about to take a chance.”

  “Lord!”

  “And the Iranians, according to what I just received from NSA, are fueling missiles as we speak. I just spoke with Moscow, but they won’t be able to stop a paranoid response. One more thing,” the president said. “If Lavi is behind this, he will have planned for damn near every contingency, including an attempted shootdown by his own forces, which is why he’d have confederates laced through the Israeli command structure to make sure it didn’t happen.”

  “You mean, the PM could give the order, but …”

  “Right. It wouldn’t be carried out, because Lavi needs that airplane in Iranian airspace to force the mullahs to launch, which will license Israel to wipe out their nuclear abilities and several cities.”

  “And … we’re powerless?”

  “No, not if we get the right code or pull the right plug or those pilots figure out something before crossing the line.”

  Paul looked at his watch. “Less than ninety minutes from the Iranian border, if I calculated it correctly.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  Washington, DC (Midnight EST / 0400 Zulu)

  The staccato bursts of red and blue strobe lights atop a police cruiser lit up the street behind them suddenly as Will barely recovered control from his latest tire-squealing turn,
the accelerator still to the floor.

  “Will, what the hell are you doing?”

  “We can’t stop.”

  “That’s a police cruiser!”

  “Maybe.”

  Only twice in her life had Jenny Reynolds felt the presence of a deep and sudden fear so overwhelming that it was all but paralytic, but that feeling returned now like a breaking wave as she replayed Seth’s emergency text in her mind. Will Bronson, or whoever the hell the man next to her really was, continued to jerk and weave through traffic like a madman, the squad car now solidly on their tail, siren blaring. Whether they were still being tailed in turn by whomever Bronson had been trying to shake was an unknown, but Bronson was flinging the SUV around like their lives depended on shaking the cop. Policemen, she knew, loved nothing better than an adrenaline-pumping chase, but such chases seldom ended well for the quarry.

  “Stop this car, Will,” she commanded, her voice low and terse.

  “No.”

  He’d seen her glance at something on her iPhone and was already suspicious. But there was no way to predict her suddenly pointing at something in the darkened residential street ahead as she screamed at ear-splitting volume: “STOP!”

  His foot jammed hard on the brakes, and the SUV went into a four-wheel skid, the police cruiser slamming on its brakes right behind and almost rear-ending them.

  “What? WHAT?” he demanded, eyes aflame and looking panicked. The doors of the police car had already been flung open, and two cops had emerged from each side clearing leather with their weapons.

  “I’m getting out!” she said, her hand on the door latch as he suddenly jammed the accelerator to the floor again, knocking her door closed before she could get a shoulder into it, the engine roaring, but not loudly enough to mask the sound of gunfire as the rear window of the SUV exploded in glass shards.

  The time it was taking for the two startled officers to turn and dive back into their car was all Will needed to dart off into a side street and begin another frantic slalom course, braking suddenly in an alley several wild turns and blocks away, peeling into a blessedly empty back driveway nestled between two high hedges before killing the lights and turning off the engine.