by Diane Capri
After a cascade of mechanical problems, the pilot was no longer controlling the plane. He was just along for the ride.
There was nothing Romone could do to avoid disaster.
Nothing at all.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Friday, May 13
Bolton Correctional Facility
7:05 p.m.
Fern Olson glanced nervously toward the clock above her client’s head on the other side of the partition. The guard had knocked on the glass and pointed.
“Last call, Ms. Olson,” he said as if she were sitting in a bar waiting to be served her last drink of the night.
Olson gave him a wave to acknowledge the warning. She’d never spent a night in any kind of jail, and she didn’t plan to start now. She was almost done anyway. She still had twenty-five minutes to finish up and get out before lockdown.
Petey Burns, the scruffy, rakishly young hottie seated on the other side of the glass, seemed even more hyped up today than usual. He’d become a guest of the feds before the age of thirty after he’d been convicted of grand theft auto for the last time. His specialty was high-end luxury vehicles, and his skills were much in demand, he’d told her. His criminal history reports supported the boast.
“I mean, a guy’s gotta eat, Ms. Olson, right? Customer comes calling with cold, hard cash? What’s a guy to do?” Petey said when they were discussing his latest appeal.
He had a lilting Southern accent acquired in south Alabama, he’d told her, where he’d worked at the Mercedes plant. Which is how he’d developed his particular craft.
Petey saw himself as a sophisticated thief with a smile on his face and filled with good cheer. “Stealing German vee-hicles ain’t no job for amateurs, you know? Takes skill and cunning, right? I’m an artiste, not a car thief? Car makers oughta hire me to keep ’em out of trouble, don’t cha know?”
Olson was skeptical about Petey’s artistic talents, but she had to admire his guts. He rarely stayed out of trouble for more than a few months. He’d run out of money and get right back into the game.
She smiled at him, wondering why he was so antsy today. Petey was pleasant enough every time she’d met with him. It was hard not to like the guy.
He’d described his process earlier in their relationship. Mostly, he knew how and where to acquire gadgets that he could use to “rejigger” the security systems on the vehicles. Then he’d use the altered equipment to steal the signal for a keyless entry system and start the vehicle and drive it away.
He’d bragged that the security systems were upgraded all the time by the manufacturers. But as soon as new security systems were developed, hackers figured out how to bypass them. Petey knew a few sophisticated hackers.
“The biggest weakness in the systems is the car owners, right? They’re not careful with their keys? And they don’t buy a new car every day? So a guy wants last year’s model?” Petey slapped his palms in a glancing blow and cackled with glee. “I’m outta there! Piece ’a cake!”
As good as Petey was at stealing cars, he wasn’t equally good at running from the law. Obviously. Which was how he’d acquired such a long record at his relatively young age.
When the guard had signaled the last call, Petey craned his neck around and looked at the clock. He signaled to the guard on his side and stood. “Sorry we gotta cut this short today, but I gotta run, Ms. Olson.”
“Okay. Your appeal’s another month away. We can talk more next time,” she said as she tossed her legal pad and pencil into her briefcase and snapped it closed. When she looked up, Petey was already hustling through the door on the other side, hands in the pockets of his orange jumpsuit.
Olson shook her head. After all these years, she’d seen just about every kind of inmate there was. Petey was a lot less threatening than most. She approached the door and realized the guard had stepped away. She sat down again to wait, watching the clock tick closer to lockdown.
When he returned, he noticed she was alone in the interview room and opened the door with his key. “Sorry, Ms. Olson. Nature calls, you gotta go, you know?”
“No problem.” She stepped through into the hallway, and they retraced the route toward the lobby that they’d taken earlier.
Just as they walked through the last locked door, the entire world became chaos. Everything seemed to happen at once.
Olson heard something like a thunderous sonic boom that seemed to come from the other side of the prison building.
She felt the very earth move beneath her feet.
She lost her balance and landed on her stomach on the floor.
Ear-splitting noises she couldn’t process or describe filled the lobby, feeling as if they were crushing her from all sides. Both hands flew up to cover her ears.
Emergency sirens and alarms began shrieking and blaring from every direction.
She twisted her head to look frantically, everywhere at once.
The guards who had been standing in the lobby rushed through the doors, deeper into the prison.
All of a sudden, Olson was alone in the room.
She scrambled along the floor toward the exit.
She crouched and then lunged to her feet and pushed hard on the heavy steel with her full weight. The door didn’t budge.
There were no windows. She couldn’t see outside.
“Now what?” she said.
She smelled disaster next.
The ventilation system began to circulate heavy smoke, possibly generated by a big fire somewhere within the building.
She glanced at the clock on the wall. It wasn’t 7:30 yet.
Even so, the entire prison had been locked down.
Whatever disaster had occurred, Olson couldn’t fathom.
But she knew for sure she had no way out.
“I hope to hell a tactical team is on the way,” she said, wishing she’d made the time to study the prison’s vulnerability analysis.
Detailed knowledge of the prison’s risks and readiness might have been helpful. Except for the emergency lighting, she was alone in the dark.
CHAPTER NINE
Friday, May 13
Near Bolton Correctional Facility
7:15 p.m.
Two miles from Bolton prison, the hacker sat on a lawn chair on top of a Suburban. The SUV was parked on a hillock. A pair of binoculars stood on a tripod in front of him. His gloved fingers stabbed at the keys on a laptop connected to a large mobile phone antenna.
Even in the unseasonable South Dakota cold, he sweated. Nerves.
He’d watched a hundred Hollywood movies that showed aircraft controls hacked and the plane flown by a computer from a remote location. Unlike a lot of things they put in movies, this particular stunt was actually true.
But it wasn’t like playing a video game.
Controlling an A320 so stealthily that no one knew it, including the pilot? Well, that required another level of skill entirely.
First there was the preparation of the aircraft.
Wiring had to be changed. Control signals had to be routed through new boxes.
Those boxes had to mimic the aircraft’s original commands well enough to fool the aircraft computers into accepting that the pilot was doing the flying. And then those boxes had to be expertly controlled from a remote location.
While hacking into the A320’s systems through a radio link was technically feasible, cellphones offered a much simpler solution.
But cellphones came with a huge drawback, which was one of the reasons the hacker was sweating.
Without good cell coverage, connecting with the plane’s signals was a hit or miss affair.
And finding good cell coverage with strong signals that didn’t blink, out in the middle of nowhere like this, was about as likely as, well, he couldn’t think of anything less likely at the moment.
As the A320 had descended, he’d held his breath, struggling to make that connection.
Ninety seconds before impact, he finally established a solid signal strong enough to
take control from the pilot.
He’d had only the briefest of time to change the plane’s flightpath.
The hacker got lucky.
The pilot screwed up. He had brought the aircraft in way too hot to land.
Which made the big plane more maneuverable using the hacker’s equipment.
He breathed a relieved sigh when his last-minute changes immediately took effect.
The hacker watched through the binoculars as the Airbus hurtled toward the prison and slammed into it.
“Yes!” he said, fist-pumping the air.
A satisfyingly hard hit. Not the angle he’d hoped for, but a significant glancing blow.
More than good enough. Maybe good enough to get a performance bonus, even.
He glimpsed chunks of white flying through the air as the A320 broke up. The wings and tail, probably. Ripped off by the prison wall before the long, hollow body slammed into the concrete.
The prison wall buckled, peeling outward as the aircraft tore along the side. A giant plume of dust welled up, only to be engulfed by roiling flames.
The A320 was traveling at 300 knots at the time of impact, generating enough heat to ignite the fuel.
The fuselage continued its carnage. Ripping through the prison wall like a hot knife through butter.
He nodded with satisfaction as he watched the results of his work unfold. His client would have to be totally thrilled with this. The results were awesome! Well beyond his expectations.
The big fuselage traveled past the edge of the building.
It was on the ground now.
Sliding across the concrete exercise yard, cutting through the razor wire fence, and churning its way across the grass. It left a trail of flame rising from a point under the jet’s belly and mushrooming out in yellow and black.
The plane covered the earth along a straight line. Its path entirely predictable.
The hacker moved his binoculars to see along the plane’s destructive trail. One of the perimeter guard towers came into view. He could see activity behind the glass.
The guard inside saw what was coming. His face contorted in horror.
The plane smashed through the lower half of the tower, toppling it in painfully slow motion. The manned room at the top pirouetted over the fuselage before it became engulfed in the overwhelming flames.
Two hundred feet beyond the prison perimeter, the aircraft eventually came to a stop. A trail of fire led all the way from its initial impact point to its resting place.
The building had been peeled open. The interior floors and wall were laid bare. Survivors were scrambling to get away from the edge as debris rained down and flames billowed up.
The hacker wanted to stay and watch the destruction unfold. Instead, he reluctantly turned his attention to the exercise yard.
Initially, the inmates had run toward safety and from the chaos caused by the crash. But in mere moments, they realized the escape opportunity that had inexplicably presented itself.
The guards soon realized it, too.
All hell broke loose.
He unplugged his laptop, slid off the roof of the SUV, and dived into the driver’s seat. The engine was already running and he’d pointed the vehicle down the road.
He rammed the accelerator to the floor, and the Suburban took off. Tires squealed. The lawn chair and equipment he had used to hack into and control the aircraft tumbled from the roof and scattered across the ground.
The hacker didn’t care. No one would ever find the debris. And even if they did, nothing would tie it back to him.
He had no time to spare.
The road ahead was straight. The speedometer needle climbed past a hundred. The SUV weaved as a crosswind hit.
His stomach churned, and he gripped the wheel harder, but he kept his foot planted.
When the big prison had been built, the feds had made an arrangement with the local police for additional support in the event of an emergency.
This was the mother of all emergencies, and they were at least ten minutes away. He had to get in and get his passengers out before reinforcements arrived.
The hacker accelerated into a sharp bend using the full width of the road. Sweeping out to the curb, kissing the apex, and kicking up clouds of dust on the far side.
The prison was to his right, black smoke billowing high into the sky as the fuel continued to burn. Lights flashed ahead, and sirens wailed.
His stomach flipped a couple of times and he clamped his mouth shut to hold back the vomit.
He liked creating disaster. But he was terrified of running toward it.
He took a concrete road to the right, smashing through a barrier marked with lawyer’s gobbledygook to cover the government’s ass if trespassers got shot.
He put his hand on the side of his seat and wrapped his fingers around the Glock. He’d come prepared to cover his own ass with bullets, not words.
Ahead, the remains of the old Airbus were still spouting flames. Fire and black smoke poured out of the windows and a hundred open holes in the fuselage.
The line of fire the A320 had laid down had taken hold on the grass to the north of the buildings.
The plane had uprooted the razor wire fences as if they were a child’s toy. The fence posts hung at lazy angles, still swaying with the weight of wire.
The hacker aimed for the largest gap in the fence and slowed.
The inmates in the exercise yard had been quick to act. Some were running and some were staring, probably trying to decide if they’d make it or get sent back to do even more time.
He shivered when he noticed a huge white guy dangling what had once been the connections between shackles from his wrists and ankles. His eyes were dull, but he moved like a man escaping from hell.
At least two dozen inmates were running like rabbits. Maybe more.
The hacker locked the SUV’s doors and kept going toward the exercise yard. He’d been paid to collect three inmates. Only three.
He steered along the left side of the approaching crowd rushing in the opposite direction. Unsure whether the Suburban carried friend or enemy, they gave him a wide berth.
Fifty yards away, two inmates had shed their orange jumpsuits. One man ripped off his T-shirt and waved it around his head.
Something no one would think to do. A bizarre action amid the chaos. A signal.
He slowed and angled the SUV toward them. As the SUV came closer, the hacker recognized his targets from the photographs.
The hacker pressed the door locks to open the doors.
Keegan jumped into the passenger seat. Walsh, holding his left bicep with his right hand to staunch the blood that seeped through his shirt, struggled into the back seat.
The third passenger, the big white guy with the shackles, was slow, but he was close and still coming. He expected to join them in the Suburban.
“Let’s go,” Keegan commanded.
“Aren’t we taking him along?” the hacker asked, pointing.
Keegan glanced out the window and shook his head.
“Are you sure? He’s on my list. He’s expecting to come with us,” the hacker said, alarmed. Not only because of the money he’d been paid and already spent. Failure wasn’t an option. That had been made crystal clear to him from the outset. His life was on the line.
Walsh cast a worried glance toward Keegan, who shook his head sharply.
“Get going,” Walsh ordered.
The hacker’s eyes widened and his nostrils flared. His breath came in short spurts. He glanced into the rearview mirror.
Walsh glared toward him. “Are you deaf? Get us the hell out of here. Now!”
The hacker stabbed the lock button again before the other inmates tried to breach the SUV.
Walsh was the bagman. Keegan was calling the shots. If Keegan said to leave the big guy behind, no argument was allowed.
Keegan was even more ruthless than the hacker had been told. Which raised his blood pressure considerably.
The
hacker stomped on the accelerator and swung the wheel hard. The Suburban kicked up dust and stones as it spun around. He glanced into the rearview mirror and saw the big man’s face settle into a deeply angry scowl.
The escaping inmates had reached the perimeter fence, crowding the way ahead. He opened the window on his side and fired a burst of gunshots over their heads. The inmates scrabbled back, and the Suburban tore through the gap.
At the end of the drive, he turned onto the concrete road and accelerated the heavy SUV up to speed. He’d need as much distance between him and the prison as he could manage. Two miles away, when they were out of surveillance range, they’d transfer to another vehicle.
The hacker had researched the three men before he’d accepted the contract. Money’s great but knowing who he’d be dealing with kept him alive. Having seen Keegan’s cold-blooded disregard for Denny’s life, he struggled to control his nerves. He really wanted to stay alive.
Keegan shrugged his shirt back on, turned up the temperature, and looked out the window.
His passengers didn’t speak. He didn’t expect them to. Men like Keegan and Walsh didn’t make small talk.
He’d have appreciated a “nice job” at least. He’d pulled off a feat not many hackers out there could possibly match.
Oh, well. He shrugged. It was what it was.
CHAPTER TEN
Friday, May 13
Bolton, South Dakota
7:20 p.m.
Almost three hours ago, after landing in Rapid City, Kim and Burke had deplaned and located the full-sized navy blue Lincoln Navigator waiting in the parking lot, exactly where the Boss had said they’d find it.
“Black SUVs practically scream ‘federal agent’ these days,” Burke had explained after they’d stowed the bags in the back and climbed into the front seats. “Navy blue is a solid compromise when we’re working undercover.”
Burke had settled behind the steering wheel, adjusted the mirrors and the seat to his satisfaction. He’d entered the address of their hotel into the GPS.