Free Fall

Thirty-Five

Manhattan, New York

Kate worked at her desk, mining the article for useable information.

It was a report in the Chicago Tribune on a speech President Bush had given to air industry workers at O’Hare International Airport a few weeks after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.

The president’s remarks had focused on strengthening air safety and security. Kate went to the link for the White House archives and printed off the full speech. In it, the president had promised action on a number of fronts.

Kate underlined one key section.

“We will look at all kinds of technologies to make sure that our airlines are safe,” the president had said, “including technology to enable controllers to take over distressed aircraft and land it by remote control.”

Remote control? What happened to this technology? Was it ever used? Kate chided herself for not finding this piece of information earlier and using it in her reports on EastCloud and Shikra.

It was there all this time and I missed it.

Chuck Laneer was not at his desk when she placed her printouts of her research on his chair. “I think we could have a story here,” she wrote in the yellow note she stuck to the package.

Thirty minutes later, Chuck called her.

“This will work,” he said. “And I have an idea on what we can do.”

He called Kate into his office, along with Hugh Davidson from the business section. Hugh reported on computer technology and was known as Newslead’s Emperor Nerd. He was partial to bow ties and pastel shirts.

Chuck had Tim Yardley with Newslead’s Washington bureau and Noah Heatley with the London bureau on the line. He turned on his speaker.

“You’ve all had a chance to look at the older clips. We’re going to build a story on this. Kate will lead. Hugh and Tim and Noah, I want you to feed whatever you can find on the subject to Kate.”

“Excuse me, but this issue’s been around,” Hugh said. “What exactly is new here? What’s the context?”

“We’ll build our story in relation to the questions surrounding Shikra’s crash in London and the near disaster with EastCloud at LaGuardia,” Chuck said. “Whatever happened to this remote-control technology the president promised? Does it exist? Could it have helped, or could it have somehow been in play and abused by some criminal group? We’ll come at the story fresh.”

“Why didn’t we do this earlier?” Noah asked from London. “Why didn’t we, or anyone else for that matter, pick up on this? I mean, there have been long-standing arguments in the aviation industry about the possibility of cyber hijacking, and conspiracy theories, all of these things.”

Chuck hesitated, glanced at Kate, thought for a moment.

“Besides,” Noah continued, “everyone here thinks Shikra was caused by a double engine failure due to an electrical malfunction arising from poor maintenance. Why is there such a desperate push for this odd angle? Is it because of the Zarathustra message Newslead received?”

“What Zarathustra message?” Hugh asked.

“All right, some background,” Chuck said. “This is confidential, but I’m not surprised that some of you know this. Newslead’s aware of two threats, emails, by someone claiming responsibility for Shikra and EastCloud. The one Kate received after the EastCloud story broke was from someone identifying themselves as Zarathustra. They claimed responsibility and wanted us to do a story crediting them or they’d cause harm to another aircraft.”

No one spoke as Chuck provided more context on the Zarathustra and Kuwait emails. When he’d finished, silence followed.

“If you were already aware, fine,” Chuck said. “If you weren’t, my apologies. We had to keep this tight. So consider yourself informed. None of this has been reported because the emails are unsubstantiated and we don’t want to create alarm in the commercial airline industry. We’ve alerted the FBI, which is assessing them.”

Chuck paused, inviting any comments, before he continued.

“There’s a strategic reason I want to proceed this way with this story.”

“Are you going to share that with us?” Hugh asked.

“Later. For now, we’ll take this one step at a time and we will make no mention of the emails unless we have confirmation of their credibility. Any questions?”

None were voiced.

“All right, let’s get busy.”

Kate drafted a list of sources and experts she intended to go to for the story. She reached out to Nick Varner at the FBI for any updates. There were none. She called the NTSB, the FAA, EastCloud, Richlon-Titan, Shikra and Talal Nasser, her source with Kuwait’s Aviation Safety Department. Kate also called Erich, asking if he had any updates. He said he was working on it.

Soon, copy came in from London and Washington.

Noah Heatley’s team filed chilling commentary from cyber experts from around the world claiming they could-in theory-hijack a jetliner remotely. Industry officials refuted those claims.

Yardley in Washington confirmed that Congress had approved five hundred million dollars for the fiscal year 2002 to go to the Transportation Department, to allow the air industry to fortify cockpit doors, ensure continuous operation of aircraft transponders in an emergency, and to provide “other innovative technologies to enhance aircraft security,” which many industry insiders interpreted as remote-control technology.

Working with Hugh, Kate interviewed leading aviation experts. She hit pay dirt when she reached Fred Winston, who headed an airline industry consulting firm in Los Angeles.

“That technology the president discussed evolved into the Continuous Autopilot System,” Winston told her. “It works like this-should the crew feel the plane is under threat of being hijacked physically, they throw a switch, allowing remote control of the plane by the ground, traffic control, which can remotely employ other auto features to land the plane safely. That system cannot be interrupted by anyone or anything in the cockpit or on the ground.”

“So what happened to the technology?” Kate asked.

“Several major airlines hold patents on variations of it,” Winston said. “But it was never applied, installed, or used in the commercial air industry.”

“Why not?”

“Safety issues,” Winston said. “Chief among them is the fear that somehow someone could hack the system-override and take control of a jetliner.”

“Could that happen?”

“I know a lot of experts might disagree, but I wouldn’t rule out the possibility,” Winston said. “In fact, there were rumors that the military, which can control aircraft remotely, had also developed a top secret remote auto-control system for landing distressed commercial jets, but that it somehow got leaked, or was stolen, creating fears it had fallen into the wrong hands and would be used to crash airliners.”

“What?”

“That’s the rumor, and many credible experts place it in the realm of conspiracy theories, so I don’t know how you would confirm that.”

Taking careful notes, Kate talked with Winston for several more minutes before thanking him and ending the call.

Pen clamped in her teeth, she began typing up the significant points of her interviews. As she weaved in the copy coming to her from Hugh, Washington and London, her heart raced.

This is shaping up to be a hell of a story.