Lockout

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Shanwick Air Traffic Control Facility, Shannon, Ireland (9:45 p.m. local / 2145 Zulu)

Devon Knightly, the evening lead supervisor of Shanwick Control, had been waiting for the connection with Pangia’s command center in Chicago. At last someone identified as Pangia’s operations chief came on the line, the voice puzzled and brimming with questions.

“Devon, is our crew squawking a radio-out or hijack code?”

“Neither. They’re still on the normal assigned code. There was no warning or radio contact of any sort before their 180-degree course reversal. My lads had a bit of a struggle clearing everyone out of his way. We were hoping you folks might be able to reach him by Sat phone or ACARS,” he said. ACARS had become a near-universal airline link between airborne cockpits and dispatchers.

“Understood…” the man replied from Chicago. “I’m told we’re trying, but no response yet. But I’ve got a more urgent question for you. If you project his new course out, is it steady? And if so, where does it appear to lead?”

“We did that, sir, and yes, it appears steady, and if you project it out over hours, it would take them right back across the Med and to their point of origin, Tel Aviv. It’s almost as if his flight computer decided to return to the first fix.”

Devon let his mind fast forward to an image of the big Airbus approaching the Middle East, and the mere thought of an unauthorized airspace breech anywhere in the area throttled up his already racing sense of urgency.

“That’s what we’ve been thinking,” the airline operations chief was saying, “…along with the worry that they could have changed the transponder code to let us know if they’d lost radio contact. It’s more like they could be fighting a major problem and looking for an emergency landing point.”

“It’s possible, I suppose,” Devon replied, trying to push the Middle Eastern images out of his mind to concentrate on the conversation, but it was as if a panther had silently padded in the door to stand there with deadly potential, impossible to ignore.

Devon Knightly pushed himself back to the moment. “All we see here in Shanwick is your crew flying the reverse course at the same altitude. Of course, he’s got London, Paris, Frankfurt, Dublin, and Amsterdam all available for emergency landing fields… and yet the fact that he appears to be headed back to the Middle East raises the possibility of a hijack.”

“Can we keep an open line with you, Devon?”

“Most assuredly. I’ll have someone standing by for you. Oh, one other matter. Your aircraft’s course reversal triggered a resolution alert on a British Air seven-four, and the Speedbird started climbing. So the TCAS boxes were agreeing that British Air would be told to climb whilst your aircraft would be directed to descend.”

“Yes?”

“Well, you see, your chaps remained at the same altitude, as if they didn’t get the same alert.”

“Oh! Okay, got it,” the Pangia chief replied.

“I should go, seeing as how I’ve a growing list of air defense and air traffic control facilities to alert. The British, for one, are going to be quite annoyed. Please let me know the instant you contact your crew by whatever means.”

“Will do.”