Blackout

CHAPTER 16

In the rear of the coach cabin, Britta Franz leaned against the back of an unoccupied seat and looked at the gaping, jagged hole in the floor. The struggle to enlarge it had taken more effort than she’d expected, even with Dallas and Robert MacCabe taking turns with the crash ax.

She could see Dallas’s head moving among the bags below, using a flashlight to search for the one that held the handheld global positioning satellite unit. The PA announcement that they were going to cut through the floor had galvanized almost everyone aboard to wide-eyed silence while they hacked through the metal. As soon as the hole was large enough to climb through, Robert had gone back to the cockpit.

Britta glanced around the coach cabin, taking inventory of her passengers. Nine people had been moved forward to other seats to clear the aisle, most of them from the tour group, and at least a dozen were still standing at a respectful distance under the watchful eye of their tour director, Julia Mason.

Britta smiled encouragingly at Julia.

“You okay?” Julia asked in return.

Britta nodded. “Just tired,” she fibbed, trying to keep the gnawing fear she was feeling from showing up on her face. This has to be a nightmare. I’ll wake up any time now! she told herself, well aware it was real.

She thought of the passengers in first class, and the trade delegation. She’d paid little attention to them since the crisis began, but Claire, who was working the lower first-class cabin, had reported that everyone was calm. A third of the passengers in coach were Asian, men and women from Hong Kong and mainland China as well as other Asian nations. Most had remained in their seats with expressions ranging from neutral to barely masked panic, almost all of them searching Britta’s eyes for some new glimmer of hope every time she came down the aisle. The professional responsibility for maintaining a believable smile had never seemed so onerous.

The sound of bags crashing to the floor in the baggage bin below snapped Britta’s attention back to the baggage search.

“Dallas? You okay down there?” Britta called.

The answer came back with a disgusted tone. “Everything’s fine, Britta. Once I shovel two thousand pounds of suitcases off my feet, adjust my attitude, and get past the next twenty years of trying to forget this night, I’ll be just fine.”

“Okay.”

Dallas’s head popped up through the hole, carefully clear of the jagged edges. “It was light brown, right, Britta?” Dallas asked.

“That’s right.”

“And the name was Walters?”

“Yes,” she said, brightening. “Did you find it?”

Dallas shook her head. “No. But I think I know where to look now.”

Once again she disappeared, and the sound of serious bag-throwing could be heard all the way to the main deck.

In the cockpit, Dan Wade held the controls while young Steve Delaney took his turn using the bathroom. Robert MacCabe kept up a constant description of what the instruments were showing.

“You know, this is working pretty well,” Dan said, as fourteen-year-old Steve came back in the cockpit. “I’m able to visualize the attitude indicator as you describe it, and fly what I visualize.”

“Seems very steady to me,” Robert said.

“Not enough to land with, of course.”

“You certain?” Robert asked.

Dan turned slightly toward the left seat. “You ready to take over, Steve?”

Steve Delaney nodded before remembering that Dan couldn’t see the gesture. “Yeah, I’m ready.”

“You’ve got it,” Dan told him. “Keep steering a heading of two-two-zero degrees on the lower instrument there.”

“Okay.”

Dan sighed and turned partially toward Robert. “I figure we’ll cross the Vietnamese coast in twenty minutes, and daylight should overtake us in about an hour-thirty. Whatever we decide, we better have it figured out and rehearsed by then.”

He heard Robert MacCabe get to his feet. “If you two are okay, I’m going to go back for a moment.” Robert left the cockpit door ajar and moved back into the cabin with no particular goal in mind other than to escape the tension for a few minutes.

Susan Tash reached out and caught his sleeve as he passed. “What’s going on up there?” she asked. Dr. Graham Tash was looking up expectantly as well, and Robert knelt down to talk to them both.

“Dan’s holding out remarkably well, and the boy, Steve, is doing an outstanding job of flying, but…”

“Do we have a way to land?” Susan asked point-blank.

Robert sighed and smiled fleetingly. “I guess there’s always a way, but it looks to me like young Steven is going to have to actually fly the plane down while Dan talks him through it. In any event, we’re going to have to wait until daylight to find a long enough runway.”

Susan pursed her lips and glanced at her husband’s grim expression before looking back at Robert. “They think they can do it?” she asked.

The veteran reporter searched her eyes, thinking how beautiful she was, before diverting his gaze to her husband and nodding. “I think they do. I think we all do.”

“One hell of a story, eh?” Graham asked.

“Look, I’d…”

Graham raised his hand. “I don’t mean you’re up there for crass purposes, I just mean that if we get through this, it’ll be a rare event to have a professional wordsmith who can appropriately describe it.”

Robert thought for a second and smiled at the doctor, nodding slowly. “That’s gracious of you, Doctor. I actually hadn’t thought of it that way, but you’re right. Gives me an even better incentive.”

Susan squeezed his hand as he stood up. “Thanks,” she said.

When Robert had gone, Graham stood and motioned Susan back toward the galley at the rear of the upper-deck cabin. The flight attendants were all downstairs, and Graham drew her in close against him and pulled the curtain closed, cupping the back of her head with his hand.

“Graham? Are you okay?”

“I don’t know, Suze.” He pulled back and looked her in the eye. “How are you holding out?”

“You tell me first. You look shell-shocked.”

He nodded. “I can’t recall ever being this scared, Honey. I’d… like to tell you I have faith it’s going to be all right.”

She started to giggle, leaving him slightly nonplussed.

“What are you laughing about?”

“Look at the situation. We’re in a giant airliner, without radios, being flown by a blind pilot and a fourteen-year-old boy!”

Graham cocked his head and smiled thinly. “Yeah, I guess…”

“This is beyond ridiculous!” She kept on giggling nervously.

“Are you missing the seriousness of this?” he asked.

She stopped immediately. “No. I’m aware of the seriousness. It’s just so ridiculous to think that there’s any way out of this!”

“What do you mean, Suze?”

“We’re screwed, Baby, that’s what I mean.”

“Wait… wait a minute! We’ve got a fighting chance. You heard what that fellow was saying.”

She cupped his face in her hands. “Baby, I’m not saying we shouldn’t try everything, and I’m not saying there isn’t a chance it’ll work out, but I think you and I better face the reality that we’re probably not going to live through this.”

He was silent for a few seconds as he studied her face, aware that tears were forming now at the corners of her blue eyes.

“Honey…”

“What we ought to do is go find that rest room and make love until we hit. If we’ve gotta go, that’s how I’d like it.”

It was Graham’s turn to laugh.

“What? Good idea?” she said.

“I was thinking a while ago that you’d suggest just that if you were convinced we were going to die.” He looked at her, watching the smile fade into a veil of tears. Susan pulled her husband to her and wrapped her arms tightly around his neck.

“Graham, I love you. Hold me for a few more moments. Don’t talk.”

In the aft area of the coach cabin, a sudden shriek of excitement wafted up from the jagged hole to the baggage bin. Britta jumped up to peer over the edge, and a bag came sailing up at her. She reached out by instinct and caught it.

Dallas’s face popped into view with a toothy, ear-to-ear grin. “That would be the very bag, Ms. Franz!”

“Wonderful!” Britta replied.

“Is Mr. Walters around to fish out his GPS, or do I go through his underwear?”

Britta showed the bag to a worried-looking man standing fifteen feet away.

“You found it!” he said as he came toward her. He took the bag, unzipped it, and pulled the GPS unit from its depths.

Britta pointed the way toward the front of the 747 and the stairway. “Let’s get moving. The captain…” She paused, feeling off balance, the image of the captain’s body curtained off in the small crew rest bed behind the cockpit filling her mind. A cold shudder ran down her back.

The GPS’s owner had noticed. “You okay?”

She nodded. “The pilot,” she corrected herself, “needs this immediately.”

He pulled the unit from its case, punched the On button, and watched the small liquid-crystal screen show a procession of images as it began its search for satellite signals.

Britta motioned him to follow as she led the way to the cockpit. “Dan, this is Britta. We found the GPS unit!”

The copilot swiveled around. “Wonderful! But I’ll need someone to help…”

“I’ve brought him,” Britta interjected. “Mr. Walters? This is Dan Wade, our acting captain.” She gently pushed Walters into the area just behind the central console, where he saw the copilot’s outstretched hand and shook it.

“You’ve heard… my PA announcements, Mr. Walters? You know what we’re facing?”

Walters was shocked at the effort it took for the copilot to talk. “Yes, and the name is John, please.”

“Okay, John. You’re not a pilot?”

“No, Sir. I have a sailboat. I bought this GPS for sailing.”

“You know I can’t see. The young man in the left seat here is Steve Delaney. Steve… has extensive flight simulator experience and is flying us right now. But we need to know… where we are and where we’re going. Can you help?”

“You bet, Captain Wade.”

“Just Dan, please. Is the antenna internal, or do you stick it on a window?”

“It has little suction cups. It goes in the window.”

“Use the side window by the jump seat behind me. The other windows have little heating wires embedded in the glass that block satellite signals.”

Dan could hear John Walters fumbling around in the jump seat Robert MacCabe had vacated. Finally he pushed the antenna onto the window’s surface.

“John, will the unit tell you when it’s tracking enough navigation satellites?”

“Yeah, it sure will. It beeps,” John Walters replied.

“Then can you… put in the… coordinates of the airport we want?”

“Sure. It’ll give us the speed, exact compass heading, miles to destination, and how many minutes.”

“Does it tell you the course to fly?”

“Yes. This one is really designed for airplanes, but I use it on my boat.”

There was a small electronic beep from the vicinity of the jump seat.

“There!” John Walters announced. “It’s tracking.”

“Here’s an aviation map of this area. Can you find the coordinates on the map, then tell me… how far we are from the coast of Vietnam?”

Walters took the map gingerly and unfolded it. For nearly a minute he looked anxious, a demeanor that changed in an instant as he sat up. “I’ve got us. We’re less than a hundred miles from the coast. We’ll be passing about forty miles south of Da Nang and China Beach.”

Dan cocked his head in puzzlement. “Are you ex-military, John?”

“Yeah. Ex-Air Force master sergeant. I was stationed at Da Nang during the war. How about you?”

“I’m ex-Air Force as well,” Dan said. “I was a forward air controller for two very long years out here.” He took a deep breath and rubbed his forehead again. “Here’s what I need, John. I need you to look on the other side of the map and extract the coordinates for U-Tapao. You’re familiar with U-Tapao, south of Bangkok?”

“Ridiculously familiar. I spent a year there one afternoon.”

Dan paused, thinking that over. “Sounds like a story I’d like to hear later.”

“Yeah.” John chuckled. “I even remember her name.”

Dan smiled slightly. “If you… can plug in U-Tapao and… give me a heading and the time en route at this speed, it will help immensely.”

Walters worked for several minutes with the map and the GPS unit, then scribbled a number on a scrap of paper from his shirt pocket and held it out to the copilot, forgetting that Dan couldn’t see it. He looked embarrassed as he pulled his hand back and read the heading out loud.

“You need to fly a heading of two-three-zero degrees magnetic.”

Dan nodded. “So we guessed right. We’ve been on two-two-zero.”

“So, two-three-zero now?” Steve asked.

“Yes. Just make a gentle correction to the right.” Dan turned his bandaged head back to the left. “How far and how long, John?”

“To U-Tapao, four hundred eighty nautical miles and, at this speed, a bit under two hours.” Walters paused, looking at Steve Delaney, then back at Dan. “Are you going to want me to stay up here and help?”

Dan hesitated less than a second in answering. “Yes. Not only to help with the GPS, but I’ve got another mission for you. We’re going to need several people crammed up here reading the instruments out loud on landing. Steve will fly, I’ll listen to the instrument readings, and I need you to be one of the voices.”

“Sure, but… my God, will that work?”

Dan turned his head to the left again.

“It’ll have to, John. We’re out of choices.”

The fact that Meridian 5 was still airborne was classified, but Jake Rhoades made the command decision that Kat Bronsky had a need to know. The telephoned revelation came as a wave of relief to Kat, though it was painfully obvious to both of them that the crisis was far from over, and the cause still a mystery.

“Thank God! You don’t know how… relieved I am,” Kat said, surprised to be fighting back tears. She willed the emotion away before continuing. “In fact, Jake, I’m relieved, but very concerned that we get back one passenger in particular, because of what he may know about the SeaAir crash.”

“Oh?” Jake replied, the caution audible in his voice.

“I’ll have to brief you later.”

“I guess I don’t understand,” Jake replied.

“You will. My main focus right now is what caused this disaster. What I’m sure of is that the Meridian copilot reported some sort of incredibly intense light from an explosion in front of them. I heard the air traffic control tape.”

“And you’re looking into that?” Jake asked.

“Actually, I’m trying to find out why that American business jet crossed in front of a commercial seven-forty-seven while operating as a medical evacuation flight, and then disappeared. They suspect a midair here, but there was no report of an impact. Jake, I need you to have someone get hold of FAA’s Oklahoma City aircraft registration section and find out all you can about Bombardier Global Express November-Two-Two-Zulu: who owns it, who flies it, where’s it headed, and whether it’s been specially modified somehow.”

“You think it’s involved?” Jake asked.

“I don’t know,” Kat said, “but how often have you seen a business jet playing tag with a seven-four-seven? I have no idea what might have happened, but their transponder went off, and they flew dangerously close in front of the Boeing.”

“The theories,” Jake added, “range from a midair collision to a sea-launched missile with a phosphorous warhead guided by a laser designator aboard the business jet. And Kat, we’re way ahead of you on looking up that registration info. I should have it in a few minutes.”

Kat whistled beneath her breath. “Good show, Jake. I’ll be waiting.”

The local manager of the American-owned corporate jet facility had rushed eight miles from his home when he heard an FBI agent was asking questions of his workers at 3 A.M. Once he arrived, his assistance had proven invaluable. With permission to speak, the employees who fueled and serviced N22Z gave Kat a detailed picture of the aircraft, its two pilots, and its two passengers — all male, all close-mouthed and secretive, and all Americans, as far as they could tell.

When Kat was through, the manager escorted her back through the beautiful new private terminal and handed her a plastic bag containing the fuel charge slip.

“Hopefully, it will have some fingerprints for you,” the manager said. “I also had our employee who touched the slip include a plastic sleeve with his fingerprints.”

“Thank you. I appreciate your assistance,” Kat said, smiling warmly.

“Can you tell me what this is all about, Agent Bronsky?” the manager asked.

She shook her head. “I’m sorry, but not yet. Perhaps next time I’m in town. But this is very important, and the FBI thanks you very much again for your help.”

He smiled thinly and bowed as he held the door open.

Kat was approaching the consulate’s car when the satellite phone in her purse rang. Jake Rhoades was on the other end.

“FAA’s Oklahoma City people have reported in, Kat. The registration number ‘November-Two-Two-Zulu’ is not assigned to a Bombardier Global Express. It’s not even assigned to a jet. The registration number on the plane you saw is definitely bogus.”

“Bingo.” Kat sighed and shook her head. “I expected that. It rather confirms that they’re involved.”

“Really?”

“Jake, there was no midair.”

There was silence in Washington for a few seconds before Jake’s strained reply. “Well, Langley’s convinced there was. What do you know, Kat?”

“I know the radar signature of a small jet with its transponder, and I saw the radar tapes. He didn’t crash. Trust me. He turned away from the antenna and dove to the surface to disappear. We need to know who owns that specific jet.”

“We’ll need the manufacturer’s serial number for that,” Jake said.

“The guys who fueled it here in Hong Kong didn’t make note of a serial number, but then they normally wouldn’t. The registration number was painted on just like it should be, and their credit card was accepted for the fuel. I’ll fax the charge slip after I dust it for prints.”

Kat stopped for a second, realizing she was practically dictating to her superior. “Look, Jake, I know I’m not officially on this case yet, but I think I can make some significant progress before the NTSB gets in position. And correct me if I’m wrong, but the Bureau’s going to be the lead agency on this anyway, correct?”

“If it’s a criminal act, a sabotage or shoot-down, there’s no question, Kat. At least the Air Force agrees with you. They think it was a missile.”

“Are you okay with my pressing ahead?”

“Would it make a difference if I weren’t?” he asked.

“Of course! Am I not your obedient servant, Mr. Deputy Assistant Director?”

Jake chuckled. “No way am I going to bite on that one, Kat.”

“Smart man. But really, may I press ahead?”

“Absolutely. Screw Langley. What, exactly, do you suggest?”

“I… think I’d better hang right here with this consulate car and driver until the aircraft lands safely somewhere. I’m thinking out loud.”

“Understood. Go ahead.”

“Well, I think if they land in Vietnam or Thailand, for instance, I should probably cancel that meeting at the consulate and catch the first flight to Bangkok to interview the pilot and anyone else who can shed some light on what hit them.”

“I concur. I don’t know how we’ll get the diplomatic clearances, but let’s wait until we know where they’ve come down.”

“Are we getting minute-by-minute intelligence updates from CIA?”

“Actually, Kat, Langley’s relaying the updates from the National Reconnaissance Office. I’ll call you back as soon as we have a resolution.”

“But what’s the latest?” Kat asked. “What’s the aircraft’s status?”

“It’s still flying. Currently they’re approaching the Vietnamese coastline. Langley thinks they have more than enough fuel to make Bangkok, and they seem to be headed almost directly there.”

“Jake, the bogus ‘N’ number tells me this may be a sophisticated operation of some sort. It might be a really good idea if NRO could scan the airspace around that Meridian aircraft just in case Two-Two-Zulu is still in the neighborhood.”

“You mean, could the Global Express still be out there shadowing Meridian?”

“Precisely. If they are, special security arrangements would need to be made the second that seven-four-seven lands, because the Global Express will undoubtedly touch down right behind him. If they’re hostile, the occupants won’t be happy Meridian hasn’t crashed.”

“I’ll relay that immediately.”

“You do understand my concern?” she asked.

She could hear Jake sigh on the other end. “Unfortunately, yes, I do. Whoever’s flying and controlling that business jet is going to be determined to finish the job they started.”