Riley’s cell phone chirped. The caller’s ID said “FBI Command Center.” Riley answered.
“Sir, I’m Communications Specialist Marten,” the voice on the line said. “Special Agent Ford wanted you to know that a second message just came across that Milwaukee news station’s tip line. It was an interstate call and lasted approximately seven seconds. It appears to be the same voiceprint. Male, foreign accent, same cryptic reference to devastating wind and Allah. The flight number he mentioned this time was United 605. Agent Ford said that there’s been no reports of any incidents from the airlines. In other words, nothing’s blown up. What do you think that means, sir?”
Why ask me? What am I supposed to do? Riley thought. “Did you trace it?”
“Yes, sir. It came from a cell tower owned by Nextel. FCC structure registration number 1207758, file number is A0121446. The FAA study is 99-AGL-4202-OE, issue date 10-25-1999 constructed 04-07-2000. Structure type is a building with antenna. Lat-long is 41-59-58.6 north—”
“Never mind all that,” Riley said impatiently. “Give me a location. What’s the tower’s address? What state? What city?”
“It’s 6600 Mannheim Road, Des Plaines, Illinois. That’s north of Chicag—”
Riley hung up as he bolted upright from the chair. He hurriedly scrolled through his phone contacts, found the one he was looking for, and dialed.
“O’Hare Airport Operations. Rebecca Marsh speaking.”
“This is a Homeland Security emergency. Get me Air Traffic Control manager Harold Flynn. Tell him it’s Jack Riley. And I mean now!”
“Yes, sir. Right away, sir. Please stand by.”
Riley could feel the blood pulsing in his neck. He knew Flynn. He was a thirty-year veteran of Chicago’s Department of Aviation and a stalwart supporter of O’Hare’s multibillion-dollar modernization plan. Sadly, the sequestration crisis had forced them to periodically close their new northern control tower. Flynn was recently given a special assignment to help area residents understand and accept plans for new runway expansions. He was strongly considering retirement.
“Jack Riley? You picked a heckuva time to chat,” Flynn’s voice said. “If this is about Flight 605, we’re already on it. I’m in the main tower, and the FBI is swarming all over the place. What’s going on?”
Thank God, Riley thought. “We don’t know, Harold. Just get everybody off that plane fast.”
“It was logged as an Airbus A319, westbound to Denver, Runway 22,” Flynn explained. “Jack, it left an hour ago.”
Riley let out an audible curse. “Where is it?”
“ATC Command has them at 450 knots and 34,000 feet. They’re approaching western Iowa.”
The FAA’s Air Traffic Control System Command Center was located in Vint Hill, Virginia, forty miles southwest of Washington, DC. The center monitored the nation’s air traffic control towers, approach and departure facilities, and high-altitude control centers. The facility also supported all electronic navigation. The center didn’t directly control air traffic, but it monitored and coordinated with other air traffic facilities and system users including the airlines, the military, and business aviation groups. The center’s main mission was to balance demand with capacity and to deal with weather and other potential disruptions. If the entire air traffic system in the United States was an orchestra, then Vint Hill was its conductor.
“Jack, I need to know,” Flynn said, his tone near pleading. “My assistant tower chief’s wife is on that plane. She’s taking their only granddaughter back to Taos, New Mexico. They could’ve booked Southwest through Albuquerque, but decided United to Denver at the last minute. You probably can’t tell me, but I’ll ask anyway — is this a hijacking?”
“We don’t know,” Riley repeated, feeling his throat constrict. A wave of nausea rolled through his stomach. “We need to get them down, Harold. And then pray.”
Chapter 27
Stuart Robertson shuffled into the kitchen, stood on a chair, and poured Honey Nut Cheerios into two bowls. He flipped through the channels on the TV and then abruptly hurried to his parents’ bedroom. He knocked once, twice, and then waited patiently until someone gave permission. That was a new rule.
He peeked his head inside.
“Mommy, where’s Dad?” he asked, his voice weak and fearful.
“In the shower,” Linda answered, rising from her dressing table and rolling a lint brush over her skirt. She eyed her son suspiciously as he burrowed into the newly made bed and pulled a sheet over his eyes. Linda froze. Her mind instantly filled with words every working parent feared when faced with a sick child: fever, pediatrician, pharmacy, vacation day. One word collectively summed things: juggle. She sat on the bed and placed her hand against her son’s cheek.
“Don’t you feel well, honey?”
“A deer got dead on the TV,” he said softly. “There was a fire.”
Atlanta’s surrounding suburbs were overrun with whitetail. In Georgia, drivers had a 1 in 151 chance of a deer-vehicle collision. She assumed he’d seen a news broadcast.
“Oh no. That’s so sad. Was it a baby?”
“No.”
“Was it hit by a car?”
“Mommy? I don’t ever want to fly on an airplane.”
A throng of bodies burst through the doors. Senior staff and aides hurriedly upscaled the room’s functionality with lighting, documentation, office supplies, and communication access.
Secretary Bridge bent next to Riley. “New York’s circuit breakers just kicked in.”
Riley gave Bridge a confused look and then incorrectly assumed that the city’s electrical grid was somehow under attack.
“From the air?”
“Wall Street,” Bridge replied. “The stock market’s been open for eleven minutes, and it just shut down.”
The president entered the room last. Most of the chairs at the conference table were empty. For a moment, Riley thought he might be asked to move up and join what was arguably the single most powerful group of government officials in the nation, sans the Secretaries of Defense and State. Riley noticed FAA Administrator Elizabeth Slavin sitting well behind her boss, Secretary of Transportation Norman Minka, and figured no such invitation would be forthcoming.
Secretary Bridge began. “Mr. President, I’m sorry to confirm that a second commercial aircraft, United Flight 605, has gone down in Bellevue, Nebraska. Debris is scattered across the Fontenelle Forest Nature Center between I-29 in Iowa and Nebraska’s State Highway 75. It missed residential neighborhoods in South Omaha by four miles. There were one hundred and eight people on board. All are feared dead. The circumstances appear similar to those in Milwaukee.”
The president sat quietly with his hands folded. He was trying to muster the strength to speak the inevitable — a decision perhaps equal in gravity to approving a major military strike. A domestic order affecting the entire nation immediately and with severe economic consequences, it was a decision unlike any other.
“What is happening to our country?” the president said soberly.
“Sir, it has to be done,” Bridge gently prodded, careful in his tone so as not to appear to be ordering the president, although that’s exactly what he was doing.
“Tell me again… are there no alternatives?”
Slavin quietly handed Bridge a folder entitled: National Security Plan for Air Traffic Shutdown. It had been prepared for this precise situation.
“Mr. President, with all due respect, two planes and a total of 260 people have been lost. We are, for all intents and purposes, under siege. Both flights appear to have been deliberately targeted with warnings announced beforehand. We were powerless to stop them. However insidious, someone, somehow, has devised a way to carry or plant explosive devices on commercial aircraft and presumably detonate them at a time of their choosing. It is unbelievable. And if such devices have somehow managed to elude our detection capabilities, for all we know there could be tens or even hundreds poised for similar detonation. It is my duty to now admit the possibility that the prior London aircraft bombing attempts and even the mysterious downing of TWA Flight 800 may have shared circumstances. That plane, in particular, could very well have been the first test. We may be facing a perfected tactic so revolutionary that none of our security systems can pick it up. Donaldson is in his grave, but I believe he was dead right.”