“She shouldn’t. But… again… none of this was an anticipated possibility.”
Choder’s voice interceded. “Ah, sir, I would bet my career that Golf Hotel would never do anything like that, but to be honest, she has the control of the receiver’s programming and I’m afraid we’ve more or less left that to her until now. She probably knows better than anyone… well, hell, she does know better than anyone, what state the programming is aboard our, ah, machine.”
Paul Wriggle pulled up a mental image of the woman they were discussing. Gail Hunt… in her forties, single, very quiet, hired out of Boeing Military in Seattle with a long-standing top secret clearance. He resisted the tendency to wonder if her being momentarily AWOL from a vacation could portend something more sinister, but it had to be considered.
And she wasn’t a particularly happy employee.
“Paul? You still there?”
“Yes. Absolutely.”
“I… have to tell you we’d had some concern about Golf Hotel in recent weeks, and… and there was a certain amount of animosity over a personnel decision. That’s why her not coming back on time is a worry, and I was just handed a note that the place she… wait a second.”
He could hear the questions in the background if not the answers: “Is this right? Where?”
There was a fatigued sigh on the line, and the colonel came back on. “Okay…she was supposed to be at the McGregor Lodge in Estes Park, and they say she never checked in.”
Paul Wriggle shook his head as he drummed his fingers on the adjacent table and pressed the phone even tighter to his ear. “Let me ask this again, to make sure. Do we have the programming prowess among the rest of you to know what our machine was programmed to do at this stage if turned on?”
“In a word, sir, no. That was going to be a team effort that she was to lead. That’s why she wanted the aircraft out of the desert, if you’ll recall.”
“Wait… she wanted it out?” Wriggle asked.
“Yes. I thought you knew. The request started with her last week. She wanted the ship back here so we could get the onboard programming complete.”
“I didn’t realize that. But she had no idea it had left Mojave last week, correct?”
“We don’t think so. She was already on vacation, and someone there would have had to tell her, and from what we’ve learned, the Mojave people didn’t even realize they’d screwed up and pulled our airplane out until today.”
“That’s correct. Okay, listen up, folks… if our machine thought we wanted her to… to… trigger a locked situation, could she just as easily be persuaded to unlock? Think carefully, because those people are in trouble, and we’ve got to act now if we can.”
“Paul, shouldn’t we inform… I don’t know, the air staff, the White House. Someone?” Dana Baumgartner asked.
“And say what, Dana? We’re not even supposed to exist. And even if we could report it that easily, what is anyone else going to do that we can’t do ourselves?”
There was embarrassed silence on the other end.
“So, again, I need an answer. Can we countermand whatever order our machine thinks it’s been given?”
It was Choder who spoke up. “In theory, yes, if we had the final programming done. But we’re searching right now for some notes or anything to tell us where GH left the onboard processor. If it was fairly rudimentary, then it should obey the “all clear” code… if we could transmit it. If it was more complex, a simple unlock order may not work.”
“But,” Wriggle asked, “…if all it did was respond to the enabling code, can’t it be turned off?”
“We didn’t send that enabling code!”
“Someone did! Is there any danger in trying whatever generic code we have?”
“No. But, Paul, that’s not the point. Point is, our global network is not complete. We’re just over 60 percent coverage. We could go blasting an unlock message all over the planet, and that bird might not hear it.”
“Do we know where the holes are in our coverage?”
Another chilling delay filled the void.
“Yes, sir. We know most of the holes.”
“Is the Mediterranean covered, or is it a hole?”
“It’s pretty much an incomplete hole, sir. We’ve got much of northern Europe and the UK, but… but the Med is spotty.”
“Can the thing be turned off from inside?”
“Yes. There’s a code you can enter from any of the flight management computers.”
“But… you’re going to tell me we don’t have a clue what that code is, correct?”
“Yes, sir. I suppose we are. We really need to find Golf Hotel. But the thing is, the flight management computers will look like they’re dead because the displays turn off. One wouldn’t normally think you could enter anything.”
There wasn’t much cord between the receiver and the base of the satellite phone, but Paul Wriggle stood now, pulling as tight as he could to allow at least some pacing. He had to keep them moving forward, and, for that matter, he was far too agitated to sit for another second. There couldn’t be much time left for their airplane, and the people aboard.
“Okay, get the release sequence, open the network, and blast it continuously as far and wide as you can. How soon can you get that going?”
“We figure an hour or less.”
“Text me the moment you start the transmissions, and the moment, if any, that you get a response. Keep looking for Golf Hotel… ask the rangers in Rocky Mountain, call any friends we have at FBI for help, check state police and morgues, and meanwhile someone please make sure she hasn’t left some weird message on her desk or her email. Also… someone call Ron Barrett, the owner at Mojave Storage and find out who the employee was who made the mistake. Let’s make sure it’s not someone who knows our lady, okay?
“Yes, sir.”
“Do your best and do it as fast as you can, please! I’ll be touching down at Andrews in two hours, and if we haven’t got this nightmare resolved by then, I’ll be enroute to our boss. Where things go for us from there is anyone’s guess.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Aboard Pangia 10 (0135 Zulu)
Dan was working on assembling a toolkit full of scavenged items from his and Jerry’s flight bags and the forward galley when Carol brought Josh Begich to the cockpit door.
“May we come in, gentlemen?”
Dan nodded, reaching out to shake the young boy’s hand. “Absolutely. What’s your name, and how old are you?”
“Josh, sir, and I’m almost fifteen,” the boy replied, his eyes wide and watching warily, lest the captain recognize him and resume his attack. Jerry, however, was studying the forward panel.
“Are you good at wiring things, splicing, insulating, tracing?” Dan probed.
“No, sir. Well, I know basic circuits and stuff. But I’m good at programming.”
“Okay. Stay up here.”
At that moment Bill Breem and Tom Wilson appeared with a male passenger in tow they identified as Frank Erlichman, a man in his fifties with a perpetually startled look on his weathered face.
“Frank, is it?”
He nodded. “Yes.”
“And your background, sir? American?”
“Yes. Well, born in Germany but now from Duluth. I’m an electrical engineer. I know wires and circuits, and was an avionics repairman five years back,” Erlichman explained, with a slight accent.
“Okay,” Dan said, “Let me explain what’s going on and how you two can help.
Dan briefed them on what he was planning, ignoring the wide-eyed look of fear on the young boy’s face.
“There’s only room for two of us down there. Mr. Erlichman? You come down first. Josh, please stay here, sit in this right-hand seat when I get out of it, and let the captain run you through whatever wiring diagrams we can pull up on our iPads. They’ll be pretty rudimentary, but they might help you figure out the philosophy of the wiring as it should exist, and there may be a diagram of where all the black boxes are in relation to what they do. Look at the autothrottle and then the autoflight system in general. I’m stabbing in the dark, fellows, but the only reason I think we have a chance is just this: Whatever that damned cabinet down there is for, I don’t think the designers ever expected anyone to mount a serious and sustained effort to retake control. I’m just guessing, of course, but I don’t think they had security uppermost in mind, or I would have never been able to open the side of it.”