Lockout

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Cockpit, Pangia 10 (2245 Zulu)

“Jerry, I’ve got a GPS lock.”

“On your iPad?”

“Yes. My personal one.”

“I thought you needed an Internet signal?”

“I remembered an aviation program I downloaded that has a stored map… wait… okay, we’re about…”

“What? What are you showing?”

“Jeez! This can’t be right!”

Dan peered at the small screen again, blinking and refocusing to make sure he was interpreting the map correctly.

“Where the hell are we?” Jerry insisted.

“Jerry, hold on.”

“Where, dammit?”

“Not over the Atlantic, that’s for sure! According to this thing, we’re over France and aiming straight for Paris from maybe a hundred miles northwest.”

“No shit?” Jerry’s voice had almost a whining tone.

“Looks like we just passed over the channel south of London.”

“France? Seriously?”

“That’s what it says, man, but I’m a little short on believing computers about now.”

There was silence from the captain for a few seconds before Jerry sighed heavily and replied, almost under his breath. “I hope it is Paris ahead.”

Dan looked up, puzzled. “Why?”

“Paris would be a perfect place for an emergency landing… provided we could get control of this beast.”

Jerry turned to his left, looking outside where one of the F-15s had been up until minutes before.

“He’s gone.”

“I figured. The one on the right is gone, too. If we’re really over France now, they’ll send up a couple of Mirages.”

“Dan, they wouldn’t shoot us down, would they?”

“You’re the ex-military guy, Jerry. You tell me!”

“I just flew Tomcats off a carrier. I never got involved in diplomatic stuff, and that was decades ago anyway.”

“Okay, look, I do happen to know this. The French are diffident friends at times, but, no, they won’t shoot us.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“But we can’t fly this heading forever without running into some people who might.”

“Meaning?”

“I don’t know, man. I… haven’t projected this heading, but it probably takes us over the Middle East and some places we don’t want to be.”

Jerry was shaking his head in apparent disgust, and somehow Dan knew what was coming.

“I can’t believe you saw the compass showing the wrong heading and you didn’t… recognize it!”

Okay, so let’s play “shift the blame!” Dan thought. A good pilot with the right stuff and a modest bank account would never make that mistake, right Jere?

An appropriate retort had formed in his mind, but he forced it back. They were in the middle of a real emergency, and an internecine dual wasn’t going to help regain control.

“Okay, okay…” Jerry was continuing, “the main thing is, we’ve got to get communication back! The factory where they hatched this airplane isn’t that far. Toulouse. Maybe someone down there knows how to regain control.”

Dan’s head snapped up from the iPad as he released his seatbelt and motored the copilot’s seat back on the rails, then sideways. He swiveled around to face the captain, fixing Jerry with a steady stare and an index finger held high.

“Okay, listen. We’ve got to regain control of this ship, and we have to realize those F-15 pilots are going to report that we refused their orders, and the only reason we would do that is… is…”

“If we were being forced to, or we’re deviating on our own.”

“Chicago won’t believe we’ve gone nuts. I wouldn’t if I were them.”

“So… we’re hijacked in their view? What does that do to us?”

Dan sighed deeply, looking at the floor for a second before meeting Jerry’s rather feral gaze again. “I don’t know, but… they’ll keep everyone out of our way, I guess.” His eyes suddenly shot down to the transponder control head. “We are squawking radio failure, right? The 7600 code, not the 7500 hijack code?”

“Right.”

“Good.”

“But someone could be forcing us to do that. That’s what they’ll conclude. I remember reading about the Soviets shooting down a Korean Air 747 back in the eighties.”

Dan was waving away the thought. “That risk is a long ways off. Right now, Captain, we need to prioritize.”

Dan noticed that his use of Jerry’s title seemed to have an impact. Almost imperceptibly, the left-seater sat up a bit, looking around as if suddenly realizing he was the one in charge.

“I was going to say the same thing,” Jerry began, a slightly defensive tone overlaying the barely-contained panic both of them were feeling.

“I recommend,” Dan said, watching the captain for any sign he was pushing too far, “…that our first move should be to find a radio or a cell phone or something we can use to talk to the guys who built this jet and get some help on how to get its goddamned attention!”

Jerry Tollefson nodded. “Yeah, agreed.” He started to punch the PA button on his interphone panel, but Dan stopped him.

“Wait! Let’s stay coordinated. What do you want to ask them?”

“What you said. A usable cell phone or a radio of some sort.”

“That means we’ve got to fess up to what’s happening.”

Jerry nodded. “Yeah, I get that.”

Dan hesitated, wondering if Jerry could pull it together enough to not panic the passengers and gauging whether an offer from the copilot to do the deed would be resented.

Whatever, he concluded. “Want me to do it, Jerry?”

The captain started nodding in obvious relief. “Go ahead. No, wait! I’m the captain… I should.”

“Go for it, then. Hurry.”

Jerry punched the appropriate button and adjusted his headset microphone, activating the PA. He sat in silence for a few seconds, collecting his thoughts and trying to imagine the best way to break the news that everyone aboard was being flown by an electronic ghost.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain… Captain Tollefson. I need you to listen very carefully. As some of you had already noticed, we have reversed course and are, at this moment, about a hundred miles northwest of Paris, France. We have experienced a very unusual failure in our autoflight system, and although we are in no present danger with plenty of fuel, many of you also noticed that we were intercepted by US Air Force jet fighters a while ago. The reason is that we have lost all of our radios… not just the satellite system for Internet and phone calls. And, we have been unable to get the system back, so we can’t talk to air traffic control, even though they know who and where we are. I now need to enlist your help. If there is anyone aboard who has a radio capable of transmitting and receiving aircraft frequencies, please ring your flight attendant call chime immediately. For those of you with cell phones that work in Europe, I ask you to take them out now and turn them on, and if you have a steady signal and can reach anyone below, we need to borrow that phone in the cockpit immediately. For anyone with a handheld satellite phone, we also need to know if you have a lock-on signal. Anyone who can assist, please immediately ring your call chime.”

Call chimes could be heard through the cockpit door, and Dan triggered a call to Carol.

“I’m opening the door. Just give us anything you collect from the passengers.”

“What in heaven’s name is going on, Dan?”

“We can’t disconnect the autopilot, and we need to talk to someone on the ground about why.”

“Can’t… what?”

“That’s why we turned around and didn’t know it.”

“Can’t you…”

“Carol! Please! Just go get us phones that work. We’ll explain later.”

“You need to explain more now,” she replied. “To everyone! You should see the looks back here, and I don’t want panic.

Jerry had punched off the PA to call the cabin, and his finger now poised over the PA button once again as he shot a questioning look at Dan.

“What?” Dan asked.

“Was I too vague?”

Why don’t we just tell them we’re in a giant pilotless airplane! Dan thought to himself. But Jerry was asking for guidance. This wasn’t the time for flippant answers.

“I think,” Dan began, “…that if I were back there as a passenger, I’d rather know the entire unvarnished truth. They will undoubtedly find out later.”

“Yeah, got it,” was the reply. Another deep sigh and Jerry punched the button again.

“Okay folks, let me describe to you precisely what we’re dealing with up here. It’s our policy not to dance around or obscure anything. In a nutshell, our autoflight system will not disconnect, and we have not yet been able to find a way to regain manual control. Further, the airplane reversed course on its own while falsely displaying normal indications that we were westbound and over the Atlantic headed for New York. Normally we would just pull circuit breakers and disconnect the system, but it is resisting our efforts to do so. Now, machines and computers are not sentient, so there is a simple explanation for this, and we will find it. But that’s the reason we need to establish an alternate way of speaking with folks on the ground, so we can solve this problem more quickly. Both of us up here promise to keep you fully informed at all times.”

Dan was nodding as Jerry punched off the PA. “Well, done, Jerry. Tough job well done.”

A genuine flash of appreciation crossed the captain’s face like the momentary flare of a candle on a dark night, and at the same moment the cockpit door burst open. Captain Bill Breem, his face almost purple with apparent anger, stood in the doorway, his voice loud enough to be heard in first class.

“WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON UP HERE?”

Jerry half turned in his seat and smiled as disingenuously as possible.

“And a good evening to you, too, Bill!”

First class cabin, Pangia 10 (2255 Zulu)

The passenger call light had brought Carol routinely to the side of a fashionably unshaven male in his forties who looked up and motioned her closer.

“Ma’am, could I talk to you, perhaps in the galley?”

“You have a cell phone or radio, sir?”

“Well… yes, but it doesn’t work. I…”

“Right now I need to deal with an airplane full of call lights,” she said, strain showing clearly on her face.

“Yes, but… I need to… to report something the pilots may need to know.”

“Report what?”

He glanced at the seat row ahead, noting the teenage boy who had partially closed the lid of his laptop, but the glow of an aircraft instrument panel could still be seen on the screen.

“Ah… in private, when you can… please,” his cultured British accent easy on her ears.

She nodded, not unkindly. “Follow me, please.”

The man scrambled out of the aisle seat, unnoticed by the woman in the adjacent window seat still too absorbed in her book to notice, and followed Carol forward to the galley where she had him step inside the curtains.

“Okay, tell me.”

“The pilot said he’s having trouble with the autoflight system. I… believe I may possess a clue as to why.”

“Go ahead.”

“I believe the young chap sitting ahead of me in 3B is fooling around with the controls of this airplane.”

“Excuse me? How?”

“He’s a computer hacker, and he’s trying to impress the girl next to him. He’s been manipulating programs for the past hour. I know computers. He’s up to no good.”

The look on Carol’s face told it all: She didn’t believe a word of it. Worse, she didn’t think it possible.

“I’ll tell the captain, sir. Please go back to your seat now, and thank you.”

“You’re quite welcome, but you do understand I’m dead serious?”

“I understand.” He felt her hand on his arm, propelling him gently but with unmistakable firmness back into the aisle and to his seat.

But she didn’t go straight to the cockpit, he noticed. Instead, she went aft and returned with a bag of collected cell phones first, disappearing then into the cockpit. Surely now she would inform the captain, he thought.

He studied the scene one row ahead, the shoulder-length blonde mane of the girl in 3A falling to the left of her seat against the window, sound asleep, the kid leering at her now without subterfuge, his eyes all over her as she slept. He sat with his partially closed laptop showing that same cockpit view. Whatever he’d prepared on that screen to impress her, he obviously wasn’t going to change anything until she awoke.