Lockout

CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

Baghdad International Airport (8:40 a.m. local / 0640 Zulu)

Every minute on the ground, Ashira Dyan reminded herself, was a minute closer to a diplomatic nightmare. Making matters worse was the very real possibility that the former prime minister was in serious medical trouble. Even with his steadfast denials and iron-jawed attempts to pretend nothing was wrong, his breathing was labored and he was increasingly rubbing his left arm and sweating profusely in the relatively cool air of the desert night.

A large black Suburban belonging to the American Embassy had plucked them off the ramp just minutes after they had jumped out of Pangia’s Airbus, but for the last half hour the presumably-loyal Iraqi driver had hovered in the lee of the terminal, keeping clear of customs and the local police and waiting to ferry them safely to whatever aircraft could be found for what they all understood was an emergency exfiltration—a quick and clandestine flight away from Iraq. Moishe’s medical situation was getting worse, but he angrily refused to discuss it, and after all, Ashira thought, what can we do? Even if he had a hangnail, Moishe Lavi’s prospects of surviving a trip to an Iraqi emergency room would be nil.

Word that a Gulfstream 5 belonging to a European oil company had been chartered out of Tel Aviv made complete sense, until the plane had come to a stop on the ramp and the Suburban had pulled alongside. Ashira recognized the jet, and despite the Dutch registration number on the tail, she knew well it was one of Mossad’s many tools for rapid extraction. The pilots appeared quickly at the top of the airstairs, both of them completing the image of two Dutch nationals wholly unconnected with Tel Aviv in their professional pilot shirts complete with epaulets. But they, too, were Mossad’s men.

Ashira followed, as they shepherded Moishe Lavi into the Gulfstream. Two flight attendants greeted the former prime minister with appropriate deference as the pilots quickly started the engines and began taxiing, but the relief at leaving the ground and turning toward Israel was tempered for Ashira by her deepening concern that Moishe was deteriorating toward a full blown coronary. Quietly, she briefed the lead flight attendant, who positioned the aircraft’s first aid kit at hand and placed a charged defibrillator behind his seat. There would be nothing more they could do aside from arranging for the best paramedics possible to be waiting at Ben Gurion airport.

And that was more than an hour away.

Building 4-104, Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado Springs

Richard Duncan sat nervously across from the desk of his supervisor, his face a study in apprehension. A retired navy chief with a top secret clearance, he’d been approved years before for a job no one else wanted: housekeeper in the main offices of a black project that officially didn’t exist. Not even his wife knew where he went every evening, other than the fact that he cleaned offices to supplement their retirement income. Fifty-six, slightly overweight, and normally jovial, he had been summoned upstairs and escorted to his boss’s office.

His supervisor was fifteen years his junior in age and a genuinely nice person, Richard had always felt, but she was clearly under pressure as she entered the office now and closed the door.

“Richard, we may have a problem,” she began. “I need complete candor from you, okay?”

“Of course. Always.”

“You were the only person with access to the server room night before last, and we’ve been trying to track down a very unusual occurrence we now think may have involved one of the servers. Was anyone else down there with you?”

“No, ma’am. I’m always careful to make sure no one follows me in without clearance. I was alone.”

“Very well, then, this is the key question I have to ask you. Did anything out of the ordinary happen while you were in there by yourself?”

“Yes.”

Cabinet Room, The White House

Being unable to join the others in the Situation Room who had been watching the real time information flow had been difficult for Paul Wriggle, but the president had arranged a steady stream of relayed messages to keep him informed, while he waited with Jenny Reynolds and Will Bronson. It was especially important for internal military politics, Paul Wriggle suggested, that a mere two star such as he not be seen hanging out with the president of the United States, especially when the four star general who was the air force chief of staff was in the building.

News that the Airbus A330 had successfully landed in Baghdad with the tattered remains of number two engine on the right wing immediately raised the question of how to get the jumbo jet repaired and back in the air toward the US. Paul had been on the phone almost continuously with Dana Baumgartner back in Colorado Springs as they started to pull together an aircraft-on-the-ground team, chase down a replacement engine, and work on getting someone into Baghdad to inspect the damage. More than an hour passed before word came that a Special Forces team had already arrived at Baghdad airport to secure the A330, but that was merely step one.

The general glanced at the door again, expecting it to open at any time with the president inbound. Working so diligently while suffused with a deep sense of gloom was emotionally exhausting, but he had no choice. He replaced the receiver and met the gaze of the other two people in the room as the president and chief of staff walked in the door, sitting quickly at the table across from Jenny and Will.

“I owe you two an explanation,” the president began, “but I can explain only part of what has happened tonight. The biggest part of the mystery remains. What role might have Mr. Lavi played in all this, if he played any at all; and to that end, I wish the hell I could have teleported to Baghdad a while ago and shaken it out of him.”

“Would there be an opportunity to speak with him later, sir?” Will asked, puzzled that the president was shaking his head sadly.

“Not in this life, Will. The jet that plucked him out of Baghdad a little more than an hour ago just landed in Tel Aviv. Moishe Lavi had a massive coronary in flight and was dead on arrival.”

Jenny and Will exchanged startled glances as the president continued.

“That doesn’t mean we won’t get to the bottom of it. I’m convinced this was his doing, and a faction of the Israeli intelligence apparatus is probably responsible, but what I want to make sure of is that what you suspected, Will, is not true. The mere thought that the DIA might have been assisting Lavi is intolerable, and if it turned out to be true, I would have to deal with it harshly.”

“But, sir,” Jenny began, “…what about the aircraft? How could it lock out its pilots?”

The president glanced at Paul Wriggle and arched a thumb in his direction. “Partially because this fellow did what I asked him to do,” the president began. “No, I didn’t ask him to imperil the Pangia flight, but I did ask him to build a system that could disconnect a cockpit in flight.” The president turned to General Wriggle. “Paul? Do you want to narrate the details, or should I?”

“Your choice, Mr. President.”

“Okay, I’ll do it.” He turned back to Jenny and Will. “Do the two of you remember when President G.W. Bush promised, just after 9/11, that we’d be able to take control of airliners in the future from the ground and prevent hijackers from flying into buildings?”

“Yes,” Jenny said. “I recall he was at Chicago O’Hare at the time. It was a planeside news conference.”

“That’s correct, it was. And it was a result of incredibly negligent staff work. The airline community was agape if not outraged. No one had such a system designed, and no one thought it could work. But even though President Bush’s announcement was a grossly premature declaration, one of my later predecessors rekindled the idea as Project Skyhook, and while you don’t need to know all the gory details, when the science looked shaky, that president decided he was going to terminate the program but announce to the world that we’d already equipped every US flagged airliner with such a system, even though it didn’t really exist. It was kind of a brilliant idea to deter al Qaida, but at the last minute, a seismic shift in the intelligence picture scrubbed the public disinformation campaign and the project was shoved to the back burner. Actually, it was shelved because it would have been terribly expensive, and because there were a lot of experts cautioning that an accidental takeover from the ground with such a system could create havoc. Worse, President Bush had said air traffic controllers would do the recovery flying of a hijacked airliner, but most air traffic controllers are not qualified heavy jet pilots, so an entire cadre of standby drone pilots would be needed. Anyway, when I came into office the following year and was briefed on this, I decided to change the name of the project but keep a deep black project team working on it, just in case the idea might prove more viable with better technology.”

Will and Jenny exchanged glances.

“And the ‘it’ you’re talking about… that’s a black project, sir?” Will asked.

“Yes. You don’t need to know the official name, but I wanted a pilot project… no pun intended… for a foolproof way of taking control of a hijacked or compromised airliner from the ground. I wanted to see if the thing was ever going to be feasible, partly because I also knew that our radical Islamic enemies were never going to let go of their burning desire to hijack airliners and use them in their murderous schemes. I still think I’m right to do so. Even if we never deploy the system, we’ll learn a great deal about the art of the possible. So, I’ve kept it going as a deep black air force project, headed by General Wriggle here. Everyone had to sign a legal loyalty contract that would slap them in Leavenworth if they ever revealed any associated classified information. Of course, I’m well aware that you two haven’t signed such a contract, but I’m going to ask you to do so.”

Jenny had leaned forward to say something but the president raised his hand to stop her. “You need to hear the rest of it. Somehow the top secret test airplane, the A330 Paul’s people bought to experiment with got out of his hands last week and ended up being flown as a regular flight by Pangia Airways, and in the middle of the flight, this test bed electronics package suddenly activated. The activation signal came from NSA’s transmitters but was supposed to be triggered only from the project’s headquarters in Colorado Springs. No such test signal was scheduled. Am I right, Paul?”

“That’s correct.”

“Okay, so this is why we think we’re dealing with sabotage. That and the presence of the former Israeli PM, of course. Somehow, someone found out about the project and bent it to his purpose, and that someone had to be our old friend Lavi. I’d bet the next election on it. Lavi, Mossad, and a galaxy of very clever people are undoubtedly involved, and your suspicion, Will, that DIA was somehow involved is not outlandish, although it would be sad, if that were true.”

“And all of this to start a war, sir?” Jenny asked.

“I personally think so. Not start a war so much as end the chance of one, in Lavi’s view. But I’m convinced it was the late Mr. Lavi’s last ditch effort to create an excuse to preemptively strike Iran’s nuclear capabilities, which is what he openly expressed that he wanted to do. If so, thank God he failed. And he failed because you two refused to stay silent. Do I understand it right that you, Jenny, discovered the strange radio signals and called in Mr. Bronson here?”

“Yes, sir, but at the direction of my boss, Seth Ziegler.”

The president leaned forward slightly, his eyes boring into Jenny’s. “I understand, but it was your vigilance that placed it before him. So, I have to ask you, Jenny Reynolds, how does it feel?”

“How does what feel, Mr. President?”

“How does it feel to have very likely prevented a nuclear war?”

She met the president’s gaze, noting a kindly smile behind the question before the answer formed on her lips.

“Surreal, sir. Very surreal.”

An aide had quietly entered the room with a note for the president, who read it and nodded, folding it again before looking at General Wriggle.

“Well, Paul…” the president began, sighing, “I think our concerns about getting that Airbus flyable and out of there are over as well.”

Paul Wriggle came forward in his seat with a startled expression. “Why, sir?”

The President slid the note across the table to him. “Because, according to this, there was a smoldering fire in the electronics bay they didn’t find until it exploded in open flames. Our security team sounded the alarm when they discovered it, but it was too late. The aircraft is in ashes.”