Lockout

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

The White House (11:45 p.m. EST / 0345 Zulu)

Working from a tiny anteroom off the Oval Office, Paul Wriggle had a phone to each ear coordinating what the president had just approved: securing the Israeli Air Force’s immediate assistance in passing the unlock code to Flight 10’s computers.

“We can do that?” the president had asked. “You built that into the system?”

“Yes, but we’ve never tested it. It’s an operational back door, a way of reaching the computers aboard our aircraft from a radio signal relayed through a fighter flying alongside, one with ultra-high frequency military range capability, which all of them have. With the proper gear, we could even fly the airliner from a second seat in such a fighter, but that was just a contingency. But what we have already built in is the ability to reach the computer and lock out the cockpit with a UHF transmission… and reverse it with the right codes.”

“How fast? Does it take special equipment?”

“As Rube Goldberg as it sounds, sir, all it takes is using the keypad tones from a cell phone… just hold the cell phone’s speaker against the pilot’s microphone, and the all-important string of numbers can be transmitted over the UHF radio. Unlike their flight deck computer screen, you can try as many times as you need and it won’t lock you out if the sequence is wrong. The downside is that we’d have to provide information that is technically illegal to discuss.”

“Executive orders, Paul. Don’t worry about giving the information to the Israelis. Get that arranged as fast as you can.”