Once the captain’s seat was forward again, Dan descended the cramped access ladder, guiding Frank Erlichman down after him, and giving a quick orientation tour of the cabinet and the racks of electronics.
“Dan?” Frank asked, “May one ask, how much time do we have? I am aware that we can’t fly forever.”
“We have about three hours before we’re out of fuel.”
“What then happens?”
Dan shook his head. “In all honesty? I don’t know. It could mean we regain control when the engines die and the power goes off for a few seconds before the battery kicks in, then we can glide somewhere to a landing. It could mean we sit here helpless and crash.”
“Thank you for being straight with me.”
“Okay, let’s get to work. Don’t touch anything on or in that cabinet, just in case it’s still electrified or booby-trapped.”
“I understand.”
“I’m going to look for the VHF radios and start with that. You look for anything that looks like autothrottles or autoflight. Do you speak French, too, by any chance?”
“Yes.”
“Good. I forgot to ask. I don’t know if any of the placards are in French or English, but either way, we’re okay.”
The maze of wires going into tightly packed and insulated wiring bundles and harnesses was nothing short of mind boggling, and Dan kept himself focused on reading the little metal placards on the bottom end of each electronic box, increasingly pessimistic that anything would be plainly labeled. Most of the boxes were American made, with each placard full of serial numbers and date of manufacture and convoluted model numbers, but on the third rack and fifth row, he finally caught the letters “VHF” for one of the aviation-band radios.
Got it!
On the rack itself, the “VHF #1” position was emblazoned, and he loosened the circular nuts holding the radio cabinet in place and gingerly pulled it out of its cradle.
Nothing in the wire harness going into the rear of the cradle showed any signs of change or tampering. It was as if the harness was a standard factory construct, and the plug itself provided no help—only small numbers associated with each pin position could be seen when he disconnected the plug and examined it.
Dan felt his heart sink as he stared at it. What arrogance to think he could figure this out without a schematic. But as Frank moved to his side, the passenger reached out to point to the disconnected rack plug and nodded.
“You recognize something?” Dan asked.
“There is a standard pattern. Power supply, input, output, antenna leads… all of it pretty straightforward.”
“Really? Anything look nonstandard here?”
“You said the radios went off? All of them?”
“Yes.”
“And there were no lights then on the control heads, no indication of power?”
“Nothing at all.”
“Very well. You see, if I were going to build a box to seize control remotely, I wouldn’t need to use the radios. I would just see to it that they were turned off.”
“What are you saying, Frank?”
“We should try to find power to plug in… here and here… to these pins… and you might just reactivate the transceiver. The antenna seems to be in place.”
“I wish we had a circuit tester or ammeter.”
“So do I. But these instruments are all powered by the same voltage. Any positive and negative lead should work.”
They searched the adjacent rack before finding a small box several feet away with blinking lights on the front. Dan unscrewed and removed the box, disconnected the cannon plug on the back of the rack and waited for the aircraft to react.
Nothing.
“Okay, which are the power leads?”
Frank took over, cutting the two appropriate wires and pulling them through far enough to reach the back of the VHF radio. He stripped a section of insulation from each of the cut wires to the radio and spliced the power leads in, and immediately two small LEDs on the front lit up.
“Wait here,” Dan said, scrambling to stick his head above cockpit floor level.
Jerry was already waiting for him. “The number one radio just lit up, Dan! What did you do?”
“Too long to explain. That’s just step one. Call out if anything changes up here.”
“Can I use the radio?”
“Hey man, knock yourself out. We should be adjacent to Italian airspace by now. Maybe Rome control could hear us.”
“Hey… wait a second… it’s not transmitting.”
Dan pulled himself out of the hatch to stand beside Jerry’s chair.
“What do you mean?”
“The audio control panel here… it’s still dark, and even though I know I had the switch selected to the number one radio before all this crap began, when I hit the transmit button, nothing happens.”
Dan reached down and worked with the panel, then looked at his panel on the right side.
“You’re right. We’ve only turned the thing on. Can you change frequencies?”
“Yes. That’s just manual, or at least it works.”
“Can we hear anything?”
“Let me find the right ATC frequencies for where we are, and I’ll let you know, but it isn’t going to help us much unless we can talk.”
Carol was standing beside him, and Dan turned to her.
“Any luck on radio batteries for that satellite phone we were using?”
“No. That was apparently the only one on board.”
Josh Begich looked up, listening to the exchange.
“You know, that telephone can’t be too exotic in terms of what kind of charging power it needs. Perhaps we could find a charger aboard and modify it? I would bet a lot of people have chargers in their carryon bags.”
“I’ll make the announcement and see what we can find,” Carol said, turning to Dan. “And I’ll send Jeanie up to relay for you.”
“Okay, stand by on searching the bags. There’s not much room down there. Jerry? I’m going back down and keep at it.”
“Go for it, Dan. Hey… take a minute to get something to drink or hit the head if you need it.”
“I’m good, but you need a break?”
“Yeah, next time you come up, I need to get out of this seat for a minute.”
Josh was looking over at the two of them. “I thought you couldn’t control anything?”
“We can’t,” Jerry replied, knowing where this was going.
“But, that means that if you need to get up, nothing will change while you’re out of the cockpit, right?”
“Ever hear of Murphy’s Law, kid?” Jerry asked.
“Uh, no. Is that an electronics law?”
“No, it’s life. Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. If I unstrap and leave the cockpit with Dan downstairs, guaranteed that’s the exact moment we’ll get control back and go into a dive or something.”
Josh looked even more confused.
“Really?”
“Yep.”
“Okay, but then we’d have control back, right?”
Jerry looked up at Dan who was suppressing a laugh, then back at Josh Begich.