Free Fall

Thirty-Eight

Clear River, North Dakota

Scotch, bourbon and then Canadian whiskey gurgled down Robert Cole’s kitchen drain as he emptied bottle after bottle.

Pungent alcoholic waves wafted from the sink, filling his nostrils. He licked his dry lips, contending with the powerful urge to keep one bottle.

Just one, a voice called from his well of sorrow. One. Please.

No, get rid of them all. It has to be done.

He needed a clear, strong mind because he had to do more than alert the NTSB to the fatal flaw of Richlon-Titan’s system, and more than just providing them with the solution. Cole’s supreme challenge would be convincing them that he was sober and sane enough to be believed.

And I’ve got to do this before more people are killed.

After he took the bottles to the trash outside his house, he made scrambled eggs, shaved and showered. Needles of hot water pricked his skin and his thoughts pulled him back across a wasteland of pain to his work on the system before the crash that took Elizabeth from him.

We’d discovered the vulnerability in RT’s fly-by-wire system and we developed a solution. They rejected our findings, retested and said the existing system was secure. But did they make any changes to the system that I’m not aware of?

That was the critical question.

He dressed then stood in his dining room surveying the files he’d recovered from the second-hand dealer in Bismarck, relieved that he’d plucked them from destruction. He had folders with printed data, manuals, schematic drawings, equations and flash drives. He’d worked late the night before, painstakingly organizing the material by subject into neat stacks.

Bittersweet memories washed over him when he discovered that some of Elizabeth’s and Veyda’s papers, books and pictures had gotten mixed up with his work. There was one of him holding Veyda when she was three weeks old, another of him helping Veyda learn to ride a bike, and another of her with her first car. Cole missed them both, ached for them both.

Where are you, Veyda? Is it too late to repair our lives?

He didn’t have time to dwell on the answers. He shifted his focus to the task before him. He read the reports arising from the Manila security conference and the claim that cyber infiltration of the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System and the Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast System was possible, affording a hacker the capability to land, or crash, any plane in flight.

Official aviation bodies around the world had dismissed the claim as only a theoretical possibility but it had prompted Cole’s team to review RT’s system. That’s when they’d discovered an unsecured back door at a connection between the aircraft’s computing systems. It was vulnerable to attack. A skilled hacker could gain access to critical flight systems.

Cole spread a number of schematic drawings on the large table in the dining room. Here was his proposed remedy, the one he’d submitted that had been rejected. They’d said his analysis had been incorrect, that they’d retested the system in Europe.

But they’d been wrong.

He consulted a pile of reports concerning the European tests. Cole knew that they were inaccurate, that the results couldn’t be trusted. He knew the issue for RT, especially Hub Wolfeson, was money. The retrofit needed to make the system secure would cost nine million dollars per aircraft. Wolfeson didn’t think the risk was worth the expenditure and had persuaded the board to support him.

Cole studied other reports that a colleague at RT had sent him in the weeks after Elizabeth was killed.

“Cole-for when you’re in shape to care. These are the changes Wolfeson approved. They cost nothing and they’re a quick fix that fails to rectify the situation,” read the note affixed to the reports.

Cole had never read the reports or looked at the schematic drawings showing the changes. He placed the drawings on the table and pored over them. As time passed, realization dawned on him. The system had been altered. It remained vulnerable but it also meant the solution he’d originally designed was now ineffective.

I have to design an entirely new solution.

A knot tightened in his gut. He’d have to do it without the help of his team, without the airline’s resources.

I’m completely alone.

Cole stared at the schematics, seeing challenges at every turn.

The difficulties began swirling before him on the table.

This is too much for me.

Overwhelmed, he dragged the back of his hand across his mouth, feeling a craving coming to life like a wild force awakening in a cage, thrashing, roaring, demanding to be satisfied.

The hangar. There’s still a few bottles of bourbon at the hangar. I could drive out there and… No!

Cole gripped his head with his hands.

Images of Shikra Airlines Flight 418 burning at Heathrow, of screaming passengers tossed about EastCloud Flight 4990, streaked through his brain.

I’ve got to do this before it happens again!