“Well, buddy, the whole fucking world is liable to hear about it now!”
“Maybe, maybe not. But I think I have the code that, if punched in, returns the damned thing to normal. If we can get it to the pilots without broadcasting a hint of an explanation…”
“Jesus, I don’t believe I’m hearing this! You know how many passengers are aboard that flight?”
“Yes, and one in particular, whose presence makes getting this solved supercritical. No questions, Rick. We can sort it out later. Can you get to the pilots?”
Another long silence and a deep sigh as Paul noticed the Washington Monument passing off to the left.
“I’ll throw that question back to our operations center. As far as I know, we’ve lost all satellite contact, ACARS telemetry, and sat phone, as I told you. I don’t know what else we can do? But what’s the bloody number?”
It was Paul Wriggle’s turn to sigh. The cell phone was in the open, a non-secure channel, but it was too late to kvetch about that now. They could always change the code in future versions.
“You use the MDCU, the Multifunction Display Control Unit keypad. Select 1 Right, and twelve boxes will open. Type into scratch pad the twelve-digit number sequence I’m going to give you, then line select 1 Right, putting the numbers into boxes. Then select 1 Right again to activate. He read the twelve-digit sequence and forced a read back, stopping himself from mentioning the fact that they’d been blasting the code all over the planet with no response.
“This will do it? Just this?”
“Yes. But, Rick, a very large warning. It has to be entered with absolute precision. After three wrong entries, it permanently locks out the computers.”
“Okay. I’m on it. You realize the questions are going to come like a fire hose, and I can’t stop all of them?”
“Yes. Please do your best. I’ll call back in a little while. I promise you a full explanation. Just… no time now.”
He punched off the phone, aware that the destination was just ahead, and he fumbled around in his back pocket for the appropriate ID, preoccupied with the question of whether he had just committed a federal felony.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Situation Room, The White House (10:20 p.m. EST / 0320 Zulu)
The significance of the terse little conference in the corridor was not lost on the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Major General Richard Penick knew CIA Director James Bergen and his deputy, Walter Randolph, only too well, and trusted neither. Sharing a routine Senate grilling with Bergen every now and then as marginally-trusted intelligence community leaders was part of the job. But the multiyear ferocity of the food fight over which agency should control the nation’s human spies, cryptically referred to as HUMINT, was making blood enemies out of formerly respectful rivals, until it had become almost an intelligence civil war.
It was especially interesting, Penick thought, that Walter Randolph and James Bergen were so engrossed in their private little exchanges, they hadn’t even noticed him brushing past with a small wave.
General Penick moved into the Situation Room and nodded to the civilian aide who’d accompanied him, primarily to watch for incoming messages, but there was no question that she was also there for appearances: The director of DIA, and a three star general at that, should never be seen without at least one aide. If that wasn’t written as a rule someplace, Penick thought, it damn well should be.
The woman shook her head ever so slightly to indicate there was nothing new to report, and that irritated him all the more. To have a major potential intelligence challenge with Israel and Iran occur simultaneously with one of his agents appearing to go silent was upsetting. Whatever was happening, it also involved the NSA, and it was a sure bet his CIA counterparts knew something and were waiting with barely concealed glee to blindside him.
Penick took his seat, trying hard to maintain a smile but hating this aspect of the job. In the military, blindsiding a major general was a career-ending move. In the civilian intelligence community, it was known as sport.
The president had become fond of walking briskly ahead of his aides, advisors, and body man and breezing into meetings with little or no warning, which he did now, loosening the bow tie on his tux as he rounded the corner. There had been too many occupants of the Oval Office, Walter thought to himself, who had no military experience and had been too tentative and wildly out of step with reality, but the current chief executive was not one of them, and it was deeply comforting to know the man understood the parameters—and the limits—of both military force and intelligence.
“Okay, folks. What’s the status of the Pangia flight?”
One of the national security advisor’s deputies ran through the basics: Aircraft still not under crew control but a strange 360-degree turn, as well as a significant slowing.
“Okay. James? Walter? What about Moishe Lavi? Is he just along for the ride? Or is this something more nefarious?”
Walter Randolph wanted badly to get to his feet and command the room, but it would be seen as inappropriate and an upstaging of the president, so he remained in place and substituted a few silent moments of referring to his papers before looking up and locking eyes with POTUS, then beginning to speak.
“First, a few new discoveries. The Airbus A330 that’s causing the problems does not belong to Pangia.” Walter quickly outlined the switched aircraft and the airline’s utter shock at the news, the missing, bogus employee in Mojave, and the allegation that former Prime Minister Lavi may be dying of pancreatic cancer. “Mr. President, with all this, we increasingly suspect the possibility of a covert op being run on behalf of, or even directly by, Mr. Lavi, and one originating at least in part within our borders.”
“Good lord! How probable is that?”
“Well, sir, the facts are lining up a bit, and the motive is very clear, if Lavi is involved. First, the missing Mojave employee. We believe he is actually a well-known ex-pat operative who at one time or another has worked for a half dozen agencies, including the CIA. His real name is William Piper. His aliases are too many to mention, which is something for a man in his late forties. He looks like a GQ model, and we figure he has a very good plastic surgeon somewhere keeping him young. We think we’ve picked up his tracks in Tulsa where the airplane was prepared for commercial service the following week, and we also have reason to suspect he has a confederate, some sort of mole, in Pangia Airways. The owner of this mysterious, identical airplane that was pawned off on Pangia as theirs… an airplane which has to have been fitted clandestinely with some sort of electronics a regular Airbus would never have… is a secretive company in Colorado Springs, which is obviously a front for someone—and not CIA, I hasten to assure you. This outfit bought the subject A330 new off the line in Toulouse and had it sitting in storage long enough to modify it for precisely this mission.”
“A front organization in the Springs?” the President asked, looking startled.
“They’re incorporated as Air Lease Solutions, but we can’t find any evidence of a single lease they’ve done as yet, and they only own one other airplane, a Boeing 737, also new. Of course there hasn’t been enough time to track down any of their principals, but we’re working on it as fast as possible. Considering the fact that Piper once also worked for Mossad some fifteen years ago, and the fact that he was last supposed to be retired from being a spook and living in Haifa with his Israeli girlfriend, this fits most of the fingerprint requirements for a carefully planned operation: They acquire and extensively modify the electronics on the aircraft and wait for the right moment to substitute it for one of Pangia’s identical airplanes, knowing that the A330 would most likely end up on the long distance, round-the-world run… especially if a confederate was doing the ship routing in Chicago. Once the aircraft is on the way, Mr. Lavi buys a ticket… which he did, in fact, buy at the last minute… and once they’re airborne, either take control of the aircraft through an installed package of electronics triggered by an external, probably satellite-fed signal, or internally. It’s not impossible that Mr. Lavi himself is controlling the aircraft from his first class seat. Maybe with a special laptop the aircraft is programmed to obey. Mix in an unknown number of sympathizers and coconspirators in the IDF and the Israeli Air Force ready to overstate the case and push everyone into hair-trigger tension, make sure Iran is informed very early in the process of who’s aboard and what might be happening, perhaps call in a sleeper agent in Tehran to whip up paranoid hysteria at a critical moment among the top military leaders, and you have the makings of a manufactured disaster.”