Fly by Wire

Chapter FORTY-THREE

Davis was almost in the clear.

Fatima had gone for his ruse, taking him for a drunk. When she was ten steps past the alcove, he silently edged to his feet, ready to make a move for the cafe. Everything outside seemed fuzzy now, the thickening snowfall churning and spinning like a million tiny mirrors in the floodlit street. Davis checked the sidewalk, hoping for a group to blend into. Hoping for a nice rugby squad, drunk and loud, headed for the next bar. He saw no one within a hundred feet. A couple were shuffling arm-in-arm across the street, and in front of Fatima a cabbie was getting in his taxi. No help.

When Davis stepped out on the sidewalk his boots crunched over the icy mix. It sounded like thunder. Might as well have been an alarm going off. He looked over his shoulder and saw Fatima stop abruptly, saw her digging into her jacket pocket.

Davis froze.

He was caught in the open, twenty feet away. Fatima s hand came smoothly out of her pocket. He expected to see the gun, expected her to whip around and take shooter's choice — head shot or center of mass. But then he saw it wasn't a gun at all. Fatima was standing on the sidewalk staring at a cell phone. Staring at his cell phone. Probably because it was ringing. Probably because the president of the United States was calling.

Just what else could freaking go wrong?

Fatima put the phone to her ear and began talking. She half turned. For Davis, there was no one else nearby, no cover except for a dead-end alcove. He might as well have been standing there naked.

Fatima stood facing him, not twenty feet away, yet by some minor miracle she didn't see him. She was lost in a cellular fog, that hazy mental limbo where people engaged distant callers as they drove their cars over embankments. Fatima s eyes were locked straight on him, but they were a blank. No alarm, no recognition.

Davis considered his options. It didn't take long — there weren't any. The gun was in her pocket. She was twenty feet away. He needed that phone right now and there was only one way.

Davis broke into a run, his first two steps skidding on the slick sidewalk. It hadn't been bad when he was just walking, but now that he was trying to move fast, Davis felt like he was ice skating, or maybe ice dancing, two hundred forty pounds of unconserved momentum in boat shoes. It didn't matter. He was committed now, no turning back — because his quick movement had drawn Fatima's attention.

Her focus came sharp as she recognized Davis. She dropped the phone, dug into her pocket. Davis kept moving, legs pumping, gaining speed. His bad thigh felt like it was shredding. Halfway there she had the gun swinging level, slow and controlled. Or maybe it just seemed that way, the world slowing down. She had it pointed right at him, and Davis heard an animalistic scream. He wasn't going to make it.

He raised his hands to cover his face, hoping his headway would carry him through the first shot. The first two. He lunged, threw himself airborne in a desperation tackle. He waited for the bullet, ready to keep fighting. Then the shot came, a deafening blast at close range. Davis screamed as he flew through the air. He heard another shot, and another, all in what seemed like an instant. Then he made contact. But not firm contact — a glancing hit. Fatima had somehow slipped beneath him. She'd ducked low at the last moment, and Davis had gone right over the top.

He came down hard, sprawling across the cement. Davis never stopped moving. He was slipping and sliding again. As he moved he questioned his body, searched for the hits. Everything seemed strangely intact, still functional. He whirled his head and spotted Fatima on the ground. Davis blindly launched himself again, his feet spinning out from under him on the ice rink that was the sidewalk. But he kept going, kept moving.

Get the gun — go for the gun!

"Jammer!"

It came out of nowhere. Sorensen's voice.

Davis stopped, fell still. He allowed his gaze to settle, tried to make sense of what he saw. Fatima was lying in a heap on the sidewalk. She was completely motionless. Sorensen closed in, both arms extended with her gun trained fast. She hovered over Fatima for a moment, then kicked away a gun lying on the sidewalk. Sorensen bent down cautiously and checked for signs of life. Apparently there were none. She pointed her weapon toward the sky and backed closer to Davis.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

Davis had ended up on his knees. He eased back, grimaced as the pressure came off his ravaged thigh. "Yeah, Honeywell," he said, his breath coming in massive gulps. "Yeah, I'm just great."

Then Davis heard a faint sound, distant but undeniably familiar. It seemed like something from a dream and brought a thousand emotions at once. He spotted the source — his phone lying on the ground next to Fatima s body, half buried in a grainy footprint of slush.

Davis scrambled over and swiped it up. "Jen? Is that you?"

"Dad! What's going on? What's all that noise?"

The voice of his daughter hit him like a train, dragged his head to another place. A place he couldn't be right now. Noise? Nothing, sweetheart. Just a friend shooting the terrorist who was about to kill me. How was school today? The phone beeped. He had another call waiting. Sorry, the president of the United States is on line two. He's waiting for me to save a hundred airplanes from crashing. Davis forced himself back.

Jen was saying, "I have to talk to you about Bobby—"

"Sweetheart…" he stammered, "not now! I'm in the middle of something really important. I will call you back as soon as I can." He was about to hang up when he added, "But I'm glad you called, Jen. Really glad."

"Dad—"

He cut her off and picked up the other call. "Davis here."

"Where the hell have you been?"

He recognized the voice. "Sorry, Mr. President." There was a very brief pause as decorum and apologies ran their course. Davis ended it by saying, "Have you got those communication links established?"

"Yes. There are—" the president paused and Davis heard chatter in the background, "ninety-six airplanes still in the air. I think we have some kind of channel to all of them."

"Think isn't good enough, sir. If you fail to connect to one aircraft, we've lost two lives and probably more on the ground."

"I know, I know. We're doing our best, Davis."

"Okay, here's how I believe this works. At the top of the hour, in five minutes, every one of those airplanes is going to have its flight control computers take over, like an autopilot you can't disengage. The aircraft will run a course to the nearest target — that is, the nearest oil refinery — then go into a dive and strike it."

Davis saw a police car pull up. Bystanders were pointing at him and Sorensen. He pulled away from the phone and said to her, "Quick! Go run some interference. I can't be interrupted."

She nodded and hustled off.

Townsend's worried voice dueled with the approaching sirens. "Davis? Are you still there?"

"Yes. Now write this part down. Tell the crew of every airplane that the sequence is initiated by the airplane clock. They can defeat the takeover by resetting it. Move it back a few hours, even a day — whatever it takes to get on the ground. If they can't get that done before the top of the hour, the software is going to take over. But control can still be regained — all the crew has to do is turn off both battery switches on the overhead panel. Have you got that?"

"Battery switches — yes."

"Turn them off for ten seconds, then back on. The airplane should still be flyable in the down time and come back up clean. The clock is the key — that's what cues the entire sequence."

"We've got it," Townsend said. "We're sending it now."

"Good. I'll keep the line open." Davis looked at his very accurate watch. Four minutes.

Townsend s voice came back, "All right, we've sent the word. So now we just wait?"

"Hell, no — I mean, no Mr. President. Now we get to work. Keep double-checking that the word has gone through. Have all the airplanes contact you once they're under positive control. Some of these planes will take hours to get on the ground. Have NORAD launch their air defense fighters. Get. them to escort as many as possible — but no shooting. They can help identify airplanes that are having trouble. Send out these same instructions to every country that can help. C-500s are flying all over the world and we have to track them all until the last one is safely on the ground."

Davis heard more chatter over the line. He looked for Sorensen and spotted her engaging the police. Her gun was on the ground and she was showing an ID. He wondered which company — CIA or Honeywell? She was going to have some explaining to do.

A woman in EMT gear came trotting toward him. She had a medical kit in her hand and said in French, "I am told you have a wound."

Davis didn't fight it. He kept the phone to his ear, but stretched out his injured leg and pointed to the spot. The woman went to work, cutting away his trouser leg. He thought, My best pair of Dockers, shot to hell.

"You must he back," she ordered.

The woman put a blanket over his shoulders, and Davis leaned back gingerly. He could no longer see Sorensen amid the gathering storm of authorities and onlookers. Bystanders were circling around Fatima s body as well, while a pair of policemen tried to push them back.

The phone on the White House end had gone to speaker. Davis heard the president still giving orders. He heard information coming from a half-dozen voices, an accounting of airplanes safely on the ground. The numbers were rising rapidly. And there were no shouts of imminent disaster. Not even one. He checked his watch. Twenty seconds to spare.

He felt a twinge of pain from something the woman was doing to his wound.

"Keep still, please," she said.

Davis tried, and with his head resting on frozen concrete, he took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

He pictured the cockpit of a C-500 and imagined the flash messages crews were getting at this very moment, imagined them resetting clocks. Others — those who didn't read the message right away, or who spent too much time deciding if the crazy instructions were some kind of twisted joke sent by a flight dispatcher — would get the scare of a lifetime. They'd be riding in an airplane that no longer responded to their commands. At that point, they'd realize the situation was dead serious and start powering down electrical busses in a frenzy to save their airplanes.

Davis hoped that's how it was all happening.

He racked his brain for anything else, any uncovered angle. Nothing came to mind. When he opened his eyes again, he was staring straight up at the night sky. There were still clouds above, but the ceiling had gone to a broken layer, the moon and stars filtering down through vague, misty gaps. It was heavenly. Davis spotted a glimmer up high, a tiny set of sequenced flashing lights — an airplane soaring miles overhead. There was a chance it was a C-500, the crew fighting for their lives. But more likely it was something better.

Still, he couldn't pull his eyes away as he watched the blinking beacons. They carried on true, no turns or swerves or dives. Just kept going, steady and serene. At that moment, Jammer Davis very much wished he was up there, slipping smooth and quick through the cold winter air.