“Nice. How was Aliana?”
Sam smiled. He and Aliana dated a number of years ago, before she broke it off with him because of his reckless lifestyle. A few weeks ago, their lives had been serendipitously smashed together again. As it was, he owed her a trip to a warm deserted island in the Pacific. Instead, she got a four-wheel driving trip in Moab, Utah.
He couldn’t answer for himself where they were, but it was nice to spend a couple days with her again. Maybe next time he’d take her to Tahiti. He met Tom’s prying gaze. “It was nice.”
“Good for you,” Tom said, knowing when to leave it alone.
Sam stood up. “Shall we go find some coffee?”
“Sounds good.”
A man took a seat next to them without ordering anything.
Tom, always protective of Sam, glared at the man as though he might be another attacker.
The stranger ignored him, turning to Sam instead. “Sam Reilly?”
Sam studied the man at a glance.
The stranger was wearing a suit and tie. His hands were clean. He wore glasses and looked more like an office worker than a hitman. Besides, if he worked for whoever had tried to get him killed, the man wouldn’t have made his move right here — in the middle of the security department of an international airport.
“Yes,” Sam replied, offering his hand. “Can I help you?”
The man took it with a surprisingly firm grip. “Gerry Emple.”
Sam arched his eyebrow. “I’m sorry have we met?”
“No. I work for the NTSB Air Crash Investigations.” The man showed him his credentials. “Any chance we can talk?”
Sam glanced at his watch. It was 8:30 pm. He had an hour to kill before his flight. “Sure. You mind if I get a coffee?”
“No problem.”
“Tom wants some coffee, too.”
“Not a problem. It’s my shout. He might be able to help, too.”
“Okay, it’s a deal.”
Sam and Tom followed him through the security screening section and stopped at a coffee shop in the departures lounge.
He took a seat. This time of the night there weren’t many customers.
Sam smiled. “So what’s this about?”
Gerry said, “I need your help.”
“To do what?”
“I was told you can find things.”
Sam grinned. “You’re going to need to be a little more specific. What exactly is it that you’re missing?”
“An aircraft.”
“Big or small?”
“An A380’s crashed. We need someone with your expertise to help locate it.”
Sam’s smile disappeared. He shook his head. “Christ! A second A380 in a matter of months. Two of the safest aircrafts in the world. It’s going to cripple the aviation industry.”
“No. Just the one. Phoenix flight 318.”
The muscles in Sam’s face hardened. “I thought you found that three months ago? There were no survivors.”
“We just pulled it up from the seafloor. The entire wreck was staged.”
“I thought you found the wreckage three days after it disappeared?” Sam shook his head. “It had intentionally weaved its way throughout a series of radar towers and avoided detection, only to eventually run out of fuel and ditch straight into the Mediterranean Sea.”
Gerry looked at him like he didn’t know what to say, so kept his mouth shut.
Sam continued. “You even released footage from outside the wreck. You sent an ROV down there and found bodies.”
“We did.”
Sam took a sip of his coffee. “So you’ve got the right aircraft?”
“Only one problem.”
Sam put his coffee down on the table. “What happened?”
“We brought up all of the bodies.”
“And?”
Gerry swallowed. “None of them belonged onboard Phoenix Flight 318.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Sam was working hard to suppress a grin.
It’s hard to steal any aircraft, let alone an Airbus A380, one of the largest and most technologically advanced commercial passenger jets in existence. Then, to make the world believe that the wreckage had been found, only to discover on autopsy that none of the bodies belonged on that flight?
Well, that was nothing short of magic.
The airline industry had gone to great lengths to ensure large commercial aircraft didn’t just simply disappear. Sam had never flown large aircraft. Most of his training and experience was with helicopters, starting in the US Navy. But he had a basic understanding of the process for monitoring airspace. The standard practice used two radar systems, primary and secondary. Primary radar detected and measured an estimate of a plane’s position using reflected radio signals. Secondary radar relied on targets equipped with a transponder that asks for the plane’s identity and altitude. All commercial airlines have a transponder, which automatically sends a transmission with a unique four-digit code when it receives a radio signal sent by radar. This is the data sent to air traffic controllers, who monitor the airspace.
When traveling over the ocean, there is no radar coverage more than a hundred miles away from land. When flying overseas, pilots switch to a high frequency (HF) radio for long-range communication. Commercial pilots are then required to check in at fixed location points through what is called “oceanic communications.”
Most modern passenger planes are equipped with a flight management computer known as an FMC that automatically makes a transmission report with the plane’s speed, altitude and position at specific points throughout the flight. The pilots then connect the autopilot to the route programmed in the FMC and the airplane will follow the programmed course and make check-ins at fixed location points. Of course, to disguise this, all someone would have to do is simply switch off the FMC and change their direction.
In addition to the FMC transponder, most aircraft have an ADS-B: automatic dependent surveillance broadcast — which provides a data downlink containing various flight parameters to air traffic control systems. The transponder broadcasts on 1090 MHz and other aircraft in the vicinity receive those data as well. Using the aircraft’s latitude, longitude, course direction and altitude, complex computers at Oceanic Tracking Stations can produce a radar-like display of the aircraft.
What surprises most people, even today, is that although all large commercial planes are equipped with GPS to track their location, it only lets the crew know where the plane is, not the air traffic controllers, whose network is almost entirely radar-based. If a plane goes off course over the ocean, there isn’t any way for air traffic control to know its exact location.
Sam exchanged glances with Tom, trying to gauge his reaction, but his friend’s expression was customarily opaque.
His eyes returned to Gerry, and he asked, “You want to tell me what you know so far, from the beginning?”
Gerry opened up a small folder, laying it out on the table. “Phoenix Flight 318 departed La Guardia International nearly three months ago enroute to Marco Polo International Airport in Venice. It departed on time at 6:55 p.m. New York time. They were designated a standard NAT-OTS.” Gerry looked up at Sam and Tom. “I assume you know what that is?”
Sam nodded. “The North Atlantic Organized Track System.”
It was a structured set of transatlantic flight routes that stretch from the northeast part of North America to western Europe across the Atlantic Ocean. They ensured aircraft were separated over the ocean, where there is little radar coverage. These heavily traveled routes are used by aircraft traveling between the two continents, flying between the altitudes of 29,000 and 41,000 feet inclusive. Entrance and movement along these tracks were controlled by special Oceanic Control Centers, whose controllers maintained separation between airplanes