Lockout

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

Situation Room, The White House (10:20 p.m. EST / 0320 Zulu)

The significance of the terse little conference in the corridor was not lost on the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Major General Richard Penick knew CIA Director James Bergen and his deputy, Walter Randolph, only too well, and trusted neither. Sharing a routine Senate grilling with Bergen every now and then as marginally-trusted intelligence community leaders was part of the job. But the multiyear ferocity of the food fight over which agency should control the nation’s human spies, cryptically referred to as HUMINT, was making blood enemies out of formerly respectful rivals, until it had become almost an intelligence civil war.

It was especially interesting, Penick thought, that Walter Randolph and James Bergen were so engrossed in their private little exchanges, they hadn’t even noticed him brushing past with a small wave.

General Penick moved into the Situation Room and nodded to the civilian aide who’d accompanied him, primarily to watch for incoming messages, but there was no question that she was also there for appearances: The director of DIA, and a three star general at that, should never be seen without at least one aide. If that wasn’t written as a rule someplace, Penick thought, it damn well should be.

The woman shook her head ever so slightly to indicate there was nothing new to report, and that irritated him all the more. To have a major potential intelligence challenge with Israel and Iran occur simultaneously with one of his agents appearing to go silent was upsetting. Whatever was happening, it also involved the NSA, and it was a sure bet his CIA counterparts knew something and were waiting with barely concealed glee to blindside him.

Penick took his seat, trying hard to maintain a smile but hating this aspect of the job. In the military, blindsiding a major general was a career-ending move. In the civilian intelligence community, it was known as sport.

The president had become fond of walking briskly ahead of his aides, advisors, and body man and breezing into meetings with little or no warning, which he did now, loosening the bow tie on his tux as he rounded the corner. There had been too many occupants of the Oval Office, Walter thought to himself, who had no military experience and had been too tentative and wildly out of step with reality, but the current chief executive was not one of them, and it was deeply comforting to know the man understood the parameters—and the limits—of both military force and intelligence.

“Okay, folks. What’s the status of the Pangia flight?”

One of the national security advisor’s deputies ran through the basics: Aircraft still not under crew control but a strange 360-degree turn, as well as a significant slowing.

“Okay. James? Walter? What about Moishe Lavi? Is he just along for the ride? Or is this something more nefarious?”

Walter Randolph wanted badly to get to his feet and command the room, but it would be seen as inappropriate and an upstaging of the president, so he remained in place and substituted a few silent moments of referring to his papers before looking up and locking eyes with POTUS, then beginning to speak.

“First, a few new discoveries. The Airbus A330 that’s causing the problems does not belong to Pangia.” Walter quickly outlined the switched aircraft and the airline’s utter shock at the news, the missing, bogus employee in Mojave, and the allegation that former Prime Minister Lavi may be dying of pancreatic cancer. “Mr. President, with all this, we increasingly suspect the possibility of a covert op being run on behalf of, or even directly by, Mr. Lavi, and one originating at least in part within our borders.”

“Good lord! How probable is that?”

“Well, sir, the facts are lining up a bit, and the motive is very clear, if Lavi is involved. First, the missing Mojave employee. We believe he is actually a well-known ex-pat operative who at one time or another has worked for a half dozen agencies, including the CIA. His real name is William Piper. His aliases are too many to mention, which is something for a man in his late forties. He looks like a GQ model, and we figure he has a very good plastic surgeon somewhere keeping him young. We think we’ve picked up his tracks in Tulsa where the airplane was prepared for commercial service the following week, and we also have reason to suspect he has a confederate, some sort of mole, in Pangia Airways. The owner of this mysterious, identical airplane that was pawned off on Pangia as theirs… an airplane which has to have been fitted clandestinely with some sort of electronics a regular Airbus would never have… is a secretive company in Colorado Springs, which is obviously a front for someone—and not CIA, I hasten to assure you. This outfit bought the subject A330 new off the line in Toulouse and had it sitting in storage long enough to modify it for precisely this mission.”

“A front organization in the Springs?” the President asked, looking startled.

“They’re incorporated as Air Lease Solutions, but we can’t find any evidence of a single lease they’ve done as yet, and they only own one other airplane, a Boeing 737, also new. Of course there hasn’t been enough time to track down any of their principals, but we’re working on it as fast as possible. Considering the fact that Piper once also worked for Mossad some fifteen years ago, and the fact that he was last supposed to be retired from being a spook and living in Haifa with his Israeli girlfriend, this fits most of the fingerprint requirements for a carefully planned operation: They acquire and extensively modify the electronics on the aircraft and wait for the right moment to substitute it for one of Pangia’s identical airplanes, knowing that the A330 would most likely end up on the long distance, round-the-world run… especially if a confederate was doing the ship routing in Chicago. Once the aircraft is on the way, Mr. Lavi buys a ticket… which he did, in fact, buy at the last minute… and once they’re airborne, either take control of the aircraft through an installed package of electronics triggered by an external, probably satellite-fed signal, or internally. It’s not impossible that Mr. Lavi himself is controlling the aircraft from his first class seat. Maybe with a special laptop the aircraft is programmed to obey. Mix in an unknown number of sympathizers and coconspirators in the IDF and the Israeli Air Force ready to overstate the case and push everyone into hair-trigger tension, make sure Iran is informed very early in the process of who’s aboard and what might be happening, perhaps call in a sleeper agent in Tehran to whip up paranoid hysteria at a critical moment among the top military leaders, and you have the makings of a manufactured disaster.”

The president’s hand was out in a stop gesture. “Whoa! All this just to provoke a response from Tehran? The mullahs could just order the plane shot down!”

“Very true, and if Flight 10 gets close to the border, Iran will undoubtedly launch their fighters to do exactly that, and it’s likely they will be flying toward an airliner escorted by Israeli fighters with hair-trigger rules of engagement. Also, as we all know, there are factions in Tehran who were so outraged by Lavi’s quest for a first strike, they want the same thing launched by their side and, of course, we must never forget that power in Tehran rests in the hands of people openly dedicated to wiping Israel off the map and evaporating all the inhabitants. Any way you cut it, you have at the very least a potentially escalating confrontation. This jet is a spark flying toward a pool of gasoline.”

“But we don’t know if Lavi is a passenger or a progenitor?”

“Yes sir. And, we don’t know what aces Lavi may have hidden up his operational sleeve, if this is all his doing.”

“What is Israel saying?”

“Precisely what you would expect, Mr. President. They are on alert; their command and control apparatus is on line in The Hole in Tel Aviv. We also know that the new prime minister was there a few hours ago and is fully engaged with the civilian decision-makers who would have to be in agreement for any nuclear usage, and even though we are not supposed to know this about our allies’ preparedness, they have pilots waiting now in their cockpits, with the fighters fully armed. We assume the missile crews are on hair-trigger alert as well.”

“I see,” the president said, leaning on both arms, his hands planted on the table. “Anything else? Not that that’s not enough.”

“Yes, sir.” Walter glanced at the DIA chief with a carefully forced, neutral expression. “There is one thing we haven’t had an opportunity to share with General Penick, since we picked it up just before you got here, but we have grave concerns that part of this clandestine operation, whoever is running it, may have involved our own NSA in some way, and we think DIA may have had someone looking into this already.”

James Bergen watched a homicidal look flicker across General Penick’s face before the DIA chief caught himself and nodded evenly.

“Yes, sir, we had one of our men deployed to NSA this morning because we detected some strange satellite signals and wondered if they were military and we wanted their assistance.”

“So, what did he find?”

“We… don’t know yet, sir, because it appears he’s… suddenly dropped off the radar. We don’t know if he’s refusing to come in, or why he’s gone silent, or who he was talking to at NSA, if he even got there.”

“You’ve misplaced one of your agents?”

“Misplaced is a bit harsh, Mr. President. We’re quite concerned about him.”

One of the presidential aides quietly appeared at the president’s side and at his nod spoke a few words in his ear too low to be heard.

The president nodded in response and returned his gaze first to General Penick, and then to James Bergen. “James, what do you suspect? Forget this parochial shit and spit it out.”

“Very well. First, since we know the aircraft was operating normally until halfway into its flight and then suddenly turned around without the pilots’ knowledge, and in addition the aircraft or something in the aircraft’s systems locked the crew out of being able to control their plane, the highest likelihood is that the triggering event was a radioed order of some sort, which could have been transmitted via satellite, a ground station, or even from the cabin of the aircraft. So, if there was such a signal, since DIA was already looking into strange signals found by someone at NSA, then my immediate concern would be knowing precisely what NSA discovered, and, quite frankly, getting assurance that NSA hadn’t somehow been involved directly or otherwise in transmitting anything. I have to add that this was news to us that DIA and NSA were looking into strange signals.”

“My God, you’re suspecting a covert operation involving the NSA supporting Moishe Lavi?” the president fell silent, looking, Walter thought, suddenly a bit chalky. Just as quickly he recovered and stood up. “So what are your recommendations, gentlemen?”

“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.”