Turbulence

by Nance, John J. ;

  Aw, what the hell, he thought as he dropped his jacket back on the back of his chair and reached over to trigger the incoming text. There was always the possibility that such a message contained the elusive elixir that gave real newsmen their greatest highs: the wholly unexpected, late-breaking story no one else yet knew about. The chance of being first on the electronic rooftops with such revelatory information was as powerful a magnet as the promise of a jackpot to a gambler, or the hope of sex to the dating male of the species.

  The message, he saw, was from an e-mail address he vaguely recognized. He toggled up his database program and ran a quick search, finding a seldom-used contact at Meridian Airlines in Denver as the explanation. He made note of the name and returned to the message.

  “We’ve got a strange emergency in progress over Africa,” the man had written, filling in the details of Meridian Flight Six and its odd emergency landing and the message from the flight deck, which had been sent verbatim.

  Robert sat back and reread the words again. A 747 hijacked by its own passengers? Is that what the captain’s saying? He tried to imagine three or four hundred passengers in revolt.

  There was a note from the sender at the end warning that disclosure of his name to Meridian would get him fired.

  Then why screw your own employer? Robert thought to himself, but the man had already anticipated the question.

  If this company were the Meridian Airlines we all used to respect, I’d never leak this to you. But today I wouldn’t be at all surprised at a passenger riot. We still treat our passengers so badly, I’m surprised it doesn’t occur every day. And then we lie, lie, and lie some more. I’m sick to death of it. We took the public’s money back there after WTC to keep us afloat and then we proceeded to keep screwing the public. I’m trusting you, Robert, not to reveal me as the source, and whatever you do, for God’s sake don’t call me here. I’m sending this on my Palm Pilot PDA.

  Robert got to his feet and paced slowly around his desk, trying to figure out whom to call first, if not the sender. Surely Meridian Airlines would instantly deny everything, though he would have to talk to them, too.

  Come on, man, think! Who in D.C. would be privy to such information. Okay, CIA, maybe FBI, maybe not … the Pentagon … NRO …”

  An old memory flashed into his head. The writer had used the term ACARS to describe the cockpit machine supposedly used by the captain of Meridian Six to send his plea for help. ACARS signals traveled by satellite, and he’d toured one of the main facilities of the organization that provided airlines with that service.

  Robert returned to his desk and keyed in the appropriate company name, his excitement already building. With any luck, he could get the corroboration he needed and put the story out on the wires in twenty minutes or so.

  Suddenly, all thoughts of dinner evaporated.

  NRO HEADQUARTERS,

  CHANTILLY, VIRGINIA

  5:28 P.M. EDT

  Colonel David Byrd had left the secure monitoring chamber as much to think as use the rest room. There was a break room around the corner and he drifted in, relieved it was empty. He fed a dollar to a Coke machine and sat down for a second, lost in thought, trying to pinpoint what was eating at him about the conclusions being sanctified down the hall.

  You’re not a spook, and you’re not an analyst, he kept telling himself. Don’t get in the way of this.

  But relief wouldn’t come.

  David popped the can open and sipped at the soft drink as he drummed his fingers on the table and went over the pieces. Angry passengers hijacking the airplane, yet wanting to go to its original destination. The message was full of contradictions even before considering the bigger picture of hostages on the ground and the sudden course reversal to the north. Did “angry passengers” mean air rage? And was the captain talking about some, or all? More important, how could foreign terrorists construct phraseology like that?

  I’m forgetting, David reminded himself, that we’ve got pictures of two seriously injured pilots on that runway.

  He thought about his first impression when he’d walked in and been briefed on what they knew so far. He’d fully expected John Blaylock to be more skeptical, yet John was essentially convinced beyond a doubt, and he, the rookie, was the one feeling strangely uncertain.

  That’s why I stayed out of intelligence! David thought with a chuckle. Too many shades of gray. Certainty was more satisfying, like a switch that could be either on or off.

  John Blaylock’s voice boomed into his consciousness from behind, causing him to look around suddenly.

  “So this has something to do with the Coca-Cola Corporation?”

  “What?”

  John pulled out an adjacent chair and spun it around, sitting down backward and resting on the back as he pointed to the soft drink. “You were contemplating that Coke can as if it held the secret of life.”

  David laughed. “Coke thinks it does. Pepsi disagrees.”

  “Something’s really bugging you about all this, Colonel Byrd. I can tell. So what is it?”

  “I don’t know.” David sighed. “That’s the problem. There’s an incredible drama going on half a world away and we don’t have any idea what it really is. Are there people on that plane or not? I’ve been sitting here running it back and forth and I can’t find any logical holes in your conclusions, John, but something’s really nagging at me.”

  “When that happens to me, I go for the basics one by one. We’ve made a lot of assumptions today. So, go back and see if you can find a flaw in any of the big ones.”

  David chuckled. “You mean, like, are we sure he landed at Katsina, or was that a cardboard cutout?”

  “It’s a start.”

  “Anything new, John?”

  “Yes. When I stepped out two or three minutes ago, our wayward 747 was precisely forty miles away from bulling their way into Libyan airspace, but suddenly they altered course twenty degrees to the left. Now they’re tracking a projected course that will bring them within two to three miles of the Libyan border in about fifteen minutes, and then they’ll have a second encounter with the border in forty-five minutes where it kind of juts out to the west into Algeria.”

  “How’s Qadhafi taking it?”

  “His boys are orbiting at the point of projected closest passage, and you can be sure they’re armed and eager. Will they come over the border into Algerian airspace and shoot the Boeing? Who knows? Who knows what crazy communications Tripoli has been listening to? We’ll see. Oh, by the way, the news services just broke the story of a 747 hijacked by its own passengers. CNN and everyone else will be launching camera planes within minutes. Someday they’ll have their own satellite surveillance network.”

  “I don’t doubt it.” David fell silent for a few seconds. “So what’s your opinion, John, about the course change?”

  “Convinces me more than ever there’s no commercial throttle jockey in that cockpit,” he said, getting up from the chair. “You coming back in? Might be fun to watch this all the way to conclusion.”

  “I wouldn’t miss it … but I need to find a phone.”

  John Blaylock nodded and fished in his pocket for a card. “George anticipated that. Says to tell you to use his office down the hall.” He slid the card across the table with the room number. “A really cute little brunette named Ginger will be sitting there emitting copious pheremones and playing the part of the dutiful but distractingly pretty secretary.”

  David smiled and shook his head. “You ever think of anything but women and sex, Colonel Blaylock?”

  “Hell no, Colonel Byrd! What else would I think about? Women and sex, preferably together, make the world go around. In fact, that’s the treasured objective of virtually everything else we do as males. Don’t kid yourself.”

  “Ginger, huh?”

  “She knows to expect you. Be gentle.”

  “Oh, cut it out, John.”

  “Not a chance. See you back inside.”

  He turned and disap
peared into the corridor as David took the card and got to his feet, chewing over the contradiction of the satellite shots of the hostages with the plaintive message from the flight deck of Meridian Six. To have angry passengers, you had to first have passengers. And they had to be angry about something. What was it that Senator Douglas had told him just that morning about the system falling apart?

  David was moving down the corridor looking for George Zoffel’s door when the memories finally merged and he came to a dead stop.

  Wait a minute! Senator Douglas had just flown to London on a Meridian flight, and it was a terrible experience. She said she was almost ready to attack the crew herself. What was that flight number?

  David quickened his step, propelled by a growing feeling of urgency. He seemed to be the only one harboring any doubts, but they needed to be resolved fast. Two aircraft carriers of warplanes were waiting to destroy the aircraft called Meridian Six.

  CNN HEADQUARTERS,

  ATLANTA, GEORGIA

  5:38 P.M. EDT

  The interval between the first appearance of the Associated Press wire report and the first break-in announcement of the story on CNN was six minutes. News that an American 747 had been hijacked by its own passengers was a major story, and within fifteen minutes the appropriate bureaus, stringers, and correspondent television news outlets in a dozen countries were struggling to respond to the uniquely American demand to accomplish the impossible sometime yesterday. As ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox News joined the fray, jets were being chartered, camera crews were being rousted out of bed, and diplomatic clearances for news crews were being negotiated on the assumption that whatever was going to happen to Meridian Flight Six wouldn’t happen until a live worldwide television audience was watching. Surely, the common wisdom among the various newsrooms held, this type of hijacking would require more than one night to resolve. Besides, the flight was returning to London, and London was an easy stage for live coverage. But it was equally apparent that the flight path from Nigeria to London would be close to Italy, Spain, France, Switzerland, Malta, and Belgium, and all possible landing sites had to be covered.

  The usual editorial debates were also in full swing about how much to report of what was allegedly known. Should they release the report that a copilot named Abbott—the only copilot aboard—had been badly injured and dumped somewhere in Africa? Had the man’s family been informed? And even if they didn’t use his name, wouldn’t the wife and kids and parents and whoever else cared about him recognize the flight number the moment they heard it?

  The London news bureaus in particular began ordering their people into action with the urgency of a fire department responding to a general alarm. Within an hour correspondents were manning phones and waking a wide variety of sleeping people, the so-called “usual suspects” when commercial aviation went sour. For Meridian Airlines, the list began with the home number of Meridian’s station manager for Heathrow, James Haverston, who reluctantly sat on the edge of his bed rubbing his eyes and dealing with a steady stream of incoming requests for information he didn’t have and interviews he had no authority to grant.

  “Go ahead and talk to them, James, but just stick to the basic facts,” the staff vice president for media relations told him when Haverston succeeded in calling headquarters for advice.

  “You realize Flight Six had quite a delay leaving Heathrow?”

  “Yes, but as I say, just give them the facts.”

  James replaced the receiver in disgust. Years of experience had taught him to distrust such glib and overly broad instructions. If he stuck to the facts and got Meridian in trouble with the media, the vice president’s report to upper management was a given: “I told him not to say that!” the man would complain, and James would end up sacked. Veteran managers for Meridian knew from bitter experience it was always better to develop a case of selective amnesia in such moments, though ducking the media was always counterproductive in the long run.

  He padded to the kitchen and poured a hastily brewed cup of coffee, absently stirring in too much cream as he thought through what had happened and what he could say. The London delay had been due to an engine difficulty that cost them nearly three hours on the ground, but there had been no radioed indication from the flight crew of any difficulty with the passengers. After the flight left, it would have been up to Denver to answer any questions. He knew there would have been a threatened return to London, of course. The entire airline seemed to be chatting wildly on e-mail about that. And before leaving his office in the terminal, there had been word of the worrisome diversion into an African airport. But officially he could know nothing of that.

  The prospect of news cameras held little terror for him, having dealt with the aftermath of several accidents over the years. What was disturbing, he admitted to himself, was the singular memory of Janie Bretsen’s beautiful face evincing fatigue and disgust as she prepared to work yet another long leg to Cape Town. That and the fact that Judy Jackson was aboard, the same “lead flight attendant” now reported by the captain to be hiding in the cockpit of Flight Six.

  James sighed and checked his watch. He had thirty minutes before the camera crews would expect him to appear. He wondered if Janie was all right. She had always been a good leader, caring and friendly and at the same time tough and capable. But a passenger riot? Perhaps it was his old periodic longing for her that was contracting his stomach so. Or perhaps, he thought, the balloon had finally gone up, as his American friends would say. Perhaps Meridian’s arrogant attitudes had finally pushed a load of passengers too far.

  He felt a sick sensation rising in his gut, a dark and depressing premonition that this was not going to end well.

  The captain’s message included the name of a passenger, Logan, who had reportedly attacked the copilot. The name had triggered no recognition at first, but then, James remembered a note he’d left on a small pad on his desk.

  Please, let the name be different! James thought to himself.

  He finished his coffee and hurried to his car, wheeling onto the deserted nighttime streets and following the familiar route to Heathrow. The name was that of an angry man whose face still burned in his memory. It was all too easy to recall the source of the man’s anger, and the cold note on Meridian’s computer listing under that name had mentioned the death of his wife and unborn child. That was the passenger who had worried them at the gate, the worries prompting him to call for security.

  But James had decided to let him go aboard. His decision. His call.

  Had he been wrong?

  For the second time a small wave of nausea rolled through his mid-section.

  Could I be the cause of all this? he wondered. The thought deeply disturbed him. Had the copilot really been injured and left behind on a remote African airfield? James recalled the copilot’s face from the brief encounter at the gate. He’d been a friendly sort. Certainly nowhere near as dour as Captain Knight.

  James parked his car and hesitated before opening the door. What if the name on the notepad is Logan? What can I say to the press?

  But the answer was all too obvious. He could say nothing.

  CHAPTER FORTY ONE

  SITUATION ROOM,

  THE WHITE HOUSE,

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  6:10 P.M. EDT

  A live picture, appropriately scrambled, encrypted, transmitted over secure fiber-optic lines, then decrypted and reassembled on the liquid crystal display wall of the Situation Room, had been holding the attention of all present for the previous half hour. The White House Chief of Staff, Admiral Bill Sanderson, had tired of raising and lowering various telephone handsets and had opted for a lightweight headset instead, ignoring the prevailing snobbish attitude that only functionaries and secretaries wore such things, not senior leaders.

  “B.S.!” Sanderson had snapped when his communications director had made the point weeks earlier during another Sit Room—level crisis involving the ongoing war with the remaining terrorist cells in the Middle East.r />
  “Sir?” the Situation Room’s director said quiedy. “The President, line one.”

  Sanderson toggled the appropriate switch. “Go ahead, Mr. President.” He nodded while listening, his eyes locked on the infrared image of Meridian Six and the white images of four MiG-21s flying in a loose formation five miles to the east. “We know … or at least NSA assures us … that Tripoli was listening when the appropriate message went out. It was moderately clever, but so is Mu’ammar. In any event, his four horsemen are still flying formation and waiting. Nearest approach to the border is coming up in about two minutes, and with the course he’s flying, we estimate passage within two miles, but still physically clear of Libyan airspace. If they’re going to jump out of their border and shoot him down, this is their last chance to argue that Meridian had strayed over their border.”

  Admiral Sanderson eased his six-foot-two, rail-thin frame into a chair and nodded silently some more as the President spoke. “I’m watching the same shot right now. I’ll keep the line open.” He pressed a hold button and glanced around the room before hovering a finger over the live line to the fully staffed Pentagon war room. If the stolen 747 survived its close encounter with Libya, the Sixth Fleet would be on stage. Regrettable, he thought. Much better to let the Libyans destroy the plane and suffer a firestorm of condemnation than have the Navy do it.

  Sanderson glanced at a young Air Force major assigned to the Situation Room team and tried to recall when he’d held the Navy equivalent rank of Lieutenant Commander. It was confusing sometimes, he thought, when military matters arose, to be both a former Chief of Naval Operations and yet have to respond like a civilian as Chief of Staff at the White House.

  “Sir, they’re moving in,” the major said, pointing to the images.

  “How far from the border now?” Sanderson asked.

  “The MiGs are crossing into Algerian airspace now. The Meridian 747 is still six miles away, but in six miles he’ll be almost exactly two miles to the west of their border.”