Lockout

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

Aboard Pangia 10 (0410 Zulu)

“They said we’d get an escort, and there they are,” Jerry announced as two Israeli F-15 fighters pulled into wingtip formation, their markings barely visible from the reflection of the lights in the A330’s passenger windows.

“Can we talk to them?” Tom Wilson asked.

“I don’t know. If they have only UHF, we can’t.”

But a male voice cut through the question on the discreet frequency they had set up with Cairo Control.

“Pangia 10, how do you hear?”

“Pangia 10 here. Are you our escort?”

“Affirmative, Pangia. One of us on each wing. And we are relaying a UHF signal that you may not hear in your cockpit.”

“Excuse me… we don’t have UHF.”

“Pangia, we were told to broadcast this just in case. Stand by.”

Jerry glanced at the opposite window, seeing only the reflection of a flashing red position light somewhere in the darkness. A full minute dragged by.

“Pangia 10, would you please check to see if you’ve regained control?”

“I don’t know what you’ve been told, sir, but we didn’t hear anything you broadcasted. But… let me try.”

Jerry grasped the sidestick controller and tried to punch off the autoflight system once again, keeping a shadow of hope alive that maybe magic had been wrought somehow.

But there was no response, and he reported it to the fighter escort.

“Are you guys armed?” Jerry asked.

“We are always in alert status, sir,” the pilot replied, the elliptical response telling enough.

First Class Cabin, Pangia 10

“There’s my lovely keeper,” Moishe Lavi smiled as Ashira slid into the seat beside him. “What, may I ask, is on your mind?”

“You.”

“Really?” he asked, looking pleased.

“I think there’s something you’re not telling me because you wrongly think I’d object.”

Moishe adopted the slightly amused look he was fond of throwing at her when she approached a serious subject. It wasn’t as if he were discounting her, but at heart he was the superior, and one in his position did not adopt a serious expression of interest in a subordinate’s concerns until she’d earned it.

“And what am I to think you would object to?”

It was her turn to smile and sidestep the question. “I’ve long been prepared to give my life to Israel, and I will willingly follow you into whatever lies ahead.”

Moishe was looking at her now with great care, searching her deep brown eyes and for once thinking substantially beyond the sexual.

“Ashira, my love, do you truly think this… this electronic hijacking is my doing? Is that what you’re indicating?”

“Isn’t it?” she asked. “If it is, it’s a stroke of genius, and I’m sure there are others involved to make sure the first strike is the result. You were right all along, of course.”

He started to protest, then thought better of it and merely smiled. “You would follow me into death, then, to eliminate the threat?”

“Of course. I suppose that means we haven’t much time, but I wanted to tell you.”

“And you would be disappointed if I told you that I have had nothing to do with the problems on this airliner tonight?”

“I understand that you need to say that. I suppose I just wanted to see it in your eyes. I knew you wouldn’t let us down, even after losing office.”

He took a deep breath and prepared to say more, but the PA system clicked on:

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is Captain Tollefson again. We have restored radio contact with the ground and have a great number of people and agencies trying to help us restore control of the airplane, and we have made some progress. But as we approached Tel Aviv, some of you may have noted that we picked up a protective escort of Israeli fighters off each wing. We are in contact with them. We are not out of tricks, so to speak, but the reality is that we just passed over the airport we left so many hours ago, Ben Gurion International in Tel Aviv, and whatever electronic bandit has locked us up did not release the controls but turned us apparently back in the direction of the last major port-of-call for this flight, which was Hong Kong. Of course we do not have sufficient fuel to reach anywhere close to Hong Kong, so we have to resolve this within the hour. And one of our greatest concerns is that in approximately one hour we will have overflown Jordan and Iraq and will be approaching the Iranian border with no permission to cross. I will communicate with you when there are any changes.”

Ashira was nodding and smiling lightly. She patted Moishe Lavi’s hand and started to get up before adding as an afterthought:

“Oh, may I borrow your laptop for a few minutes? I want to compose my thoughts, and I’m out of battery.”

“Of course,” he replied, handing over the machine. “Just close my word program. I’ve already saved my things.”

“Thank you. As we approach the end of this, I want to hold your hand.”

“You shall,” he said, the seriousness of his tone flipping the last tumbler into place in Ashira’s mind.

She rose to her feet, a bit unsteadily, moving to a window seat on the opposite side, and opened the laptop, pretending to type while keeping a close eye on Lavi. But as she probed deeper into the computer and its programs, the effort became more frantic and equally unproductive. There was nothing overt, and whatever he had been writing was well protected with a password she couldn’t seem to break. Even the keylogging program she had clandestinely installed months ago was reporting nothing, which meant his countermeasures to thwart exactly what she’d been trying to do were very effective.

Finally sitting back and pretending to wipe a tear from her eye, she faced the fact that she had nothing left to try. He had defeated her. No evidence, no programs that could be even remotely connected with seizing control of an airliner, and not even assurance that Moishe Lavi was the party responsible for their plight—although she was certain that was the case.

As she prepared to turn the machine off, a tiny icon she didn’t recognize appeared in the lower margin of the screen, and she double-clicked on it, triggering a routine official screen with the Israeli flag. What was clicking away in the left corner, however, caught her eye. Two digital clock readouts, one counting up, the other down, the digits changing every second.

She peered closely at the elapsed time, 06:08:23, and calculated backwards to the start of the flight, some eleven hours in the past. Where would they have been six hours ago at around 500 miles per hour?

The calculations in her head were simple, and she ran them twice more to be sure. Somewhere off the coast of Ireland, most likely, and somewhere around the time the aircraft had turned around without the pilots’ knowledge.

Still, that could be coincidental.

The second digits were counting down, reading 00:53:49, and she felt a deep chill rising up her spine with the realization that it must be the time to crossing the Iranian border with Iraq. They had fifty-three minutes, and the only reason for the two clocks she could imagine was Moishe Lavi keeping track of what he’d started.

It was true, she concluded. Somehow a cabal of his followers had cocked and loaded the gun, and he’d pulled the trigger!

She loosed a final try, a series of known passwords trying to pry open the door to whatever this electronic vault was, knowing just as surely as she had to try, he would have made certain it couldn’t be undone.

In her entire life—even as a baby in Russia before her parents immigrated to Israel—Ashira had a reputation for being incredibly tenacious. She never quit.

But perhaps for the first time in her adult life, she felt herself involuntarily relax in the face of certainty: There was nothing else she could do now. Life was to be measured in minutes, and the choices were no longer hers.