Glidepath

by Andrew Watts

  Charles hoped so. While drone flight was becoming more and more prevalent in military and commercial use, it had yet to be approved by any major global aviation agency. If things went well today, that could all change.

  He entered the mission control room. The Fend 100 mission control team had twenty workers, all sitting at neatly spaced-out computer monitors. Forty-foot ceilings. Giant screens at the front of the room showed the aircraft’s location and status. The floor was a glossy stone.

  Even within the glass walls, Charles could hear the crowd noise outside. Some were posing for pictures. Many wore press or other VIP badges around their necks. The aviation media had been plastering this story on the front pages of their websites and magazines for the past few years. This was their first real taste of the Fend 100 aircraft.

  “How’s it coming, Bradley?”

  Bradley Karpinsky said, “She’s taxiing for takeoff now, sir. Just another minute or so.”

  Claps and cheers outside as the Fend 100 taxied by.

  Wilkes walked through the door and gestured for Charles to follow him. Wilkes said, “Can you join us outside for a moment?” Flynn stood next to him, dread in his eyes.

  “Takeoff is in two minutes. Can’t this wait?”

  “Afraid not. Flynn just got a message from the FBI—a man claiming to be Max Fend contacted the Jacksonville field office. They weren’t sure if it was a hoax or not. They said the guy wants us to halt the flight. He said not to let the Fend 100 take off.”

  Charles looked incredulous. “What? Why? And why wouldn’t Max contact me or you?”

  Wilkes shook his head. “I don’t know, Charles. But the FBI said that Max was on his way here now. If the timing is right, he should be in the parking lot any minute. We’re going to check.”

  “Should we still have them take off?”

  The two government men looked at each other.

  Flynn lowered his voice so that only the two others would hear him. “We have Maria on board. We have a backup plan—nothing that we have seen suggests that Morozov will be successful in hacking into the network, let alone getting past Maria’s new security measures.”

  Wilkes said, “I would hate to ruin all of our plans unless we know for sure that this is Max.”

  Charles nodded. “I’ll come out with you.” He looked back at his chief engineer. “No need to wait for me, Bradley. Stick to the schedule.” They walked outside.

  As the three of them walked down the concrete stairs and into the parking lot, the quiet morning air filled with the loud noise of a commercial jetliner throttling up its engines. The men looked through the chain-link fence and witnessed the Fend 100 starting down the runway.

  Charles looked at his watch. “Seven a.m. Right on time.”

  The giant white aircraft pitched up and began climbing, its landing gear folding up into its belly. The airliner became a slow-moving silhouette against sunlit clouds. As it rose over the Jacksonville skyline, the jet noise gave way to a honking horn.

  All three men turned around to see a taxi racing towards them and skidding to a halt.

  Max sprang out of the door, panicked. He and the woman with him looked like hell – clothes damp and sandy.

  “It took off? Shit. Come on, we need to get to the control room and contact the pilots. You have to recall them.”

  “Don’t be absurd. Why?” Charles asked.

  “Hold on now, Max,” Wilkes said.

  Max pointed up at the departing aircraft. “Listen to me. Morozov isn’t planning to steal the Fend 100 technology.”

  “What are you talking about? What is he trying to do, then?”

  The group stared at Max as he spoke.

  “Morozov is going to crash it.”

  A drink cart made its way down the aisle of the Fend 100. The passengers were a mix of company employees being rewarded for their hard work, aviation enthusiasts who had won contests to go on the first flight, and members of the media.

  In seat B13, Betsy Sivers ordered a mimosa and looked out in awe at the beach below. She had worked for Fend Aerospace for almost thirty years. She’d started off in manufacturing at the original plant in Texas, then made her way to Florida when they’d expanded in the early 2000s. This flight was a great reward for her hard work.

  Rick Powell sat in G23. He wrote for Plane and Pilot magazine and was eagerly typing up everything he experienced so that he could publish it on his blog when they landed. His wife and twelve-year-old son had made the trip up from Daytona and were waiting back at the airport. He couldn’t wait to tell his son about the ride.

  In seat F57, Bobby Turell thanked the flight attendant for his apple juice and smiled to himself. He had turned thirty-two last week. He was one of the ten contest winners. A self-proclaimed aviation nut, Bobby had been to every SUN ‘n FUN air show since he was a boy. Getting to ride in the first passenger flight of the Fend 100 was the thrill of a lifetime for him. Right up there with riding in a Ford Tri-motor at Oshkosh. He couldn’t wait to tell his girlfriend about it. In a moment of pure euphoria, he decided right then and there that it was time to go ring shopping. Life couldn’t get any better than this.

  As the aircraft banked right to head south over the Florida shoreline, beams of electromagnetic energy began to illuminate the Fend 100’s data link antenna. The energy beams originated from a large yacht just south of St. Augustine and rapidly intensified in magnitude.

  The Fend 100 was being hijacked.

  21

  While the group marched into the Fend 100 headquarters building, Max did his best to fill them in on what he knew. Renee followed him in, listening.

  “Come on,” Charles said. “I’ve had them set up a special office space for you. You’ll be able to monitor the flight from there.”

  “We need to recall the flight, Dad. Now.”

  Charles said, “We can talk inside.”

  They walked through the revolving doors and past a throng of reporters who were setting up for their morning interviews. The group watched as Max and his father led the others into an office right next to the Fend 100 control room.

  One of the reporters said, “Is that…?”

  “No, he’s taller,” another one said.

  A few flashes erupted as cameramen snapped pictures.

  Once in the office space, they closed the door. Flynn said, “Okay, spill it, Max. What’s going on?”

  “Morozov tried to have me killed last night. We barely escaped. You were right, Caleb. Charlotte Capri was working for him. By the time we escaped, it was almost dawn—it took us longer to get a phone and a vehicle. We kept trying to call, but the Fend Aerospace phone network and my father’s phone weren’t connecting. Neither were the local police. We finally tried the FBI.”

  “Could be Morozov’s hackers trying to prevent you from reaching us.”

  “Well, it appears to have worked. Can we recall the Fend 100?”

  Max was scanning the room, looking to see who was in there.

  Wilkes said, “We have fail-safes in place. You know what we need here, Max. I need the Russians to make their move so that we have verifiable electronic data. Leverage to use against Morozov.”

  “That was back when the risk was a simple cyberattack—stealing a few terabytes of data from my father’s company. Now we’re talking about people’s lives, Caleb.”

  Agent Flynn grimaced. “Dammit. We shouldn’t have let them take off. I agree with Max.”

  Charles said, “So do I. I’m going to see what I can do.” Charles marched back into the Fend 100 control room.

  Max looked at Flynn. “Are you armed?”

  “Of course.”

  Max looked through the window of the office and into the adjacent Fend 100 mission control room. “If Morozov was going to kill me last night, that means that he didn’t need me to upload any software. But he’s still planning to hijack the Fend 100. I think you were right about him having someone on the inside.”

  Each of their heads turned to look thr
ough the window. They scanned the faces in the Fend 100 control room. The engineers and project team working diligently as the Fend 100 had its big show. Now that Max was silent, they could hear the project engineers and radio controllers speaking to the aircraft through the overhead speakers.

  “Fend 100, Control, we have good uplink and downlink. What’s your status?”

  “Control, Fend 100, everything looks good here. We’re along for the ride.”

  The group could hear the voice of the pilot and the project engineer, Bradley Karpinsky, on the overhead speaker system.

  The pilot said, “Cecil Control, Fend 100, things are looking good. We’re in fully automated mode and everything is proceeding normally.”

  “Fend 100, Cecil Control, roger. Nice job, boys. We’ll see you in a few.”

  “I am going to head next door for a moment,” Special Agent Flynn said. Wilkes followed him.

  Renee sat at one of the computer terminals in their office, looking at all of the displayed information. “What are we looking at?”

  “So this map here shows the aircraft track, altitude, airspeed, and heading,” Max said.

  Renee said, “Where are they now?”

  “East of Cape Canaveral. Headed South.”

  “So nothing unusual yet?”

  Max shook his head. “Not yet. Perhaps Maria’s security fix is working.”

  Max could see his father standing over the shoulder of Bradley Karpinsky, a grave expression on both of their faces.

  Karpinsky’s voice came on the radio again. “Fend 100, Cecil Control, there has been a change of plans. We’re being asked to cut the flight short due to unforeseen circumstances here on the ground.”

  “Say again, Control?”

  “We’re bringing you back, Fend 100. Sending the aircraft new directions now.”

  Max could see the engineers in the other room becoming agitated, pointing at their own displays and yelling back to Karpinsky.

  Renee said, “What’s wrong?”

  The overhead speaker relayed Karpinsky’s voice. “Fend 100, Control, I just input a return to base command, but I’m not showing the aircraft turning.”

  “Affirm, we’re seeing the same thing here, Control.”

  “Fend 100, Control, I now show you in a descent of one thousand feet per minute,” they heard over the overhead speaker. “Please verify. The flight profile has you maintaining altitude at twenty thousand feet for the next fifteen minutes.”

  “Roger, Control, we see that. We’re in fully automated mode. Not sure why it’s descending on us. We’re troubleshooting now.”

  Max could see his father speaking to Wilkes and Flynn. They all looked worried. “I think it’s happening.”

  Renee typed at her desktop computer. “I’m going to see if I can get us some more information.”

  “Fend 100, we now have you descending at a rate of two thousand feet per minute. Airspeed still three hundred and eighty knots indicated.”

  “Control, Fend 100, roger. Troubleshooting.”

  “Fend 100, please have Miss Blount get on the radios.”

  “Control, Fend 100, say again?”

  “Control, Fend 100, no joy on troubleshooting. Sorry, folks, but we’re going to conduct a manual override.”

  A few tense moments went by before they heard from the pilots.

  “Cecil Control, Fend 100, we seem to have a problem.” The pilot’s voice sounded agitated.

  Karpinsky said, “Go ahead, Fend 100.”

  “Control…the manual override doesn’t appear to be working. The electronic flight controls aren’t responding the way they should. They…they aren’t responding at all. We can’t stop the descent.”

  “Fend 100, Cecil Control, did you try the backup?”

  “Control, Fend 100, that’s affirm.”

  “Did you try pulling the circuit breaker?”

  “Control, Fend 100, we’ve tried everything and are retrying all the steps again. So far we’ve tried the primary system override, the backup override, and pulling both circuit breakers. We’re ready to pull all the AC power in the cockpit and try a full restart.”

  Max looked at the airplane’s statistical readouts. They had just passed below ten thousand feet. The hair on the back of his neck stood up. The altitude kept ticking down.

  Renee said, “Where are they now?”

  “They’re still headed south. Heading towards the Bahamas.”

  Flynn and Wilkes came in. “Have you guys tried to reach Maria on your radio? They aren’t putting her on our radio.”

  “I’ll try,” Max said.

  They had set up a special communications section on the aircraft for Maria to talk on.

  “Maria, this is Max, come in.”

  “This is the Fend 100 flight engineer, who’s this?”

  Max spoke into the microphone. “This is Fend Control—we have a separate comms channel set up. Please put Miss Blount on immediately.”

  “Fend 100, Control, we are initiating the override procedures now. You should be able to take control of the aircraft now.”

  Max could see flashing green text on the bottom of the aircraft statistics screen. Remote Aircraft Control Datalink connecting.

  “Control, Fend 100, what’s the status? We need you to take control now. Our troubleshooting is nonresponsive.”

  Karpinsky said, “Roger, Fend 100. Stand by.”

  “Fend 100, Control, I show you passing through four thousand feet.”

  Then the radio call came that made everyone turn white.

  “Mayday, mayday, mayday, this is Fend 100, forty miles northeast of Bimini Island. Flight controls nonresponsive, in an uncommanded descent…we will be ditching in the water.”

  In the chamber where the press and aviation enthusiasts were watching, some people started to yell in worry. Max could hear the commotion from their office room.

  Max said in a firm voice, “Fend 100, please place Maria Blount on right now. She will be able to override the remote control.”

  “Control, 100, say again?”

  “Fend 100, Control, get Maria on the horn. She should be able to help.”

  “Control, Fend 100, Maria is with you on the ground.”

  The people in the office shook their heads, annoyed at the confusion of the moment.

  Max was almost yelling now. “Negative, Fend 100. Maria Blount is on board with you. Go tell someone to find her and get her on the radio—now!”

  “Control, Fend 100.” Another pilot speaking, now. “I’m positive she is not on this flight. She told us that there was a change of plans this morning. She was there for preflight, but not for takeoff. She said she would be with you.”

  Renee said, “They just went below one thousand feet of altitude.” People were screaming outside the room now. Some were family members of the passengers on board.

  They have someone on the inside.

  Max closed his eyes.

  “It’s Maria. Maria Blount is Morozov’s person on the inside.”

  The altitude now read zero.

  The door to the mission control room was being held open by one of the FBI agents. Max could hear his father telling Karpinsky to contact the Coast Guard and start a search and rescue. Outside the room, people were sobbing.

  Maria typed on her computer inside Morozov’s yacht. The vessel was sailing fifteen miles off the coast of St. Augustine.

  “Sync complete. We now have control.” She spoke to Morozov, who was piped in through the speakerphone in the center of the room. Morozov had left the Ritz-Carlton at Amelia Island and gone to their safe house. It would be too risky to bring him back to the yacht. The yacht had served two purposes: to gain initial control over the Fend 100, and to divert any American response.

  Morozov sounded in good spirits on the speakerphone. “Excellent work, Maria. Are the men ready?”

  The ex-Spetsnaz man standing next to her nodded. “Yes, Mr. Morozov. As soon as you give us the signal, we’ll move.”

  �
��Maria, you know what to do at this point. I have received the transponder code that we will need. I am sending that to you now.”

  Maria turned to a dark-haired young man who sat in front of a computer terminal to her left—a very talented hacker, with a very capable mind. Chechen by birth, he worked for one of Morozov’s companies—Maljab Tactical. He served as a consultant for many of the extreme militias in the Middle East. Until recently, much of the work he did was in Syria, helping the Islamic State to maintain a solid social networking presence without getting caught by the NSA or other Western cyber agents.

  Maria said, “You get it?”

  “Yes,” the Chechen responded.

  “We have what we need, Mr. Morozov.”

  “Good. Send out our headline news updates. And get moving.”

  “We will. Goodbye.”

  Maria ended the call and turned to the Chechen. “Send it.”

  The boy made several keystrokes in rapid succession and then hit the return key.

  “It is done.”

  “Ms. Blount.” It was one of the security men.

  “Yes?”

  “The helicopter is ready, ma’am.”

  “Good. Let’s be quick.”

  Maria and the Chechen entered the cabin of the helicopter, which was spinning on the small flight deck of the yacht. As soon as they were on board, it took off and headed north along the coast, remaining far enough out to sea that it wouldn’t be visible from the shore.

  The men and women at the Fend headquarters stood in shocked silence. Some of the engineers were crying. Some were still trying to do their jobs.

  The reporters outside the mission control room all wanted to get Charles Fend in front of a microphone.

  Max cursed himself for not thinking that Maria could be a part of it. Maria had only been with the company for a few years, but she was one of Charles’s most trusted employees. And she had been one of the first to report the cyber intrusion to the authorities. Why would she do that?