“The citations focused on working conditions—specifically in the aircraft maintenance hangars. InterTrans’ aircraft mechanics tend to be error prone. They are overworked. Emphasis is on doing the maintenance work fast and getting the plane back into service rather than doing it right—”
“I’m not surprised,” Jack said. “I know how InterTrans handles its financial operations. Something was short-circuited for an experimental modification to be placed on a commercial flight without anyone knowing about it.”
Gallagher held up one finger, “True. But don’t forget it was also this breach of internal controls that allowed InterTrans to fly with an undisclosed remote piloting system aboard that actually saved the aircraft and the lives of 147 people. Damned bit of coincidence if you ask me.”
Jack stared at Gallagher. “Coincidence doesn’t seem to have much of a place in these air disasters.”
“I misspoke,” Gallagher said. “Luck or coincidence has no place in operating a commercial airline.”
Jack continued looking at Gallagher. The man was smart, thorough, and experienced. The same questions kept recurring. Why was that remote piloting system in that particular aircraft? How did Reagan just happen to be in the vicinity with a remote piloting control station at the ready?
“What’s next?” Helen asked.
Gallagher had personally placed the flight data and the cockpit voice recorders on an F-18 that roared off the carrier deck bound for NTSB headquarters in Washington DC. He looked at his watch, “Been over four hours. NTSB should have something by now. Let’s go make a call.”
* * *
Chapter 11
“What’s the preliminary assessment?” asked Gallagher into the speakerphone. It was now 2:15 a.m. on the West Coast—just fourteen hours after the controlled ditching of InterTrans 3361. The brightly lit LTS450 loomed over their worktable in the hangar.
“We’ve only had two hours to conduct our analysis,” said the NTSB’s specialist, Rob Cohen from across the country in the NTSB’s DC offices.
Jack spoke up, “Sorry to push you guys. It’s important. Besides, the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder are like new. Not what you must be used to.”
“I understand, Mr. Schilling. Gallagher asked me to go directly to the data feed from the flight deck pressurization system.”
“You found something?” Gallagher asked.
There was a pause on the line. “Maybe. We looked at the pressurization settings for both the flight deck and for the passenger cabin.”
“Dr. Cohen,” Jack said, “I’m not an aircraft investigator. Neither are the people I’ll have to report this to. Layman’s terms, please.”
“Right. So think of an aircraft as a giant balloon. We need the air pressure inside to be at an exact point of equilibrium. Too much pressure and the plane will explode. Too little and those inside won’t be able to breathe.” Cohen described how the system brought in fresh air, and then expelled it through outflow valves just above the floor. “The main cabin pressurization system was operating just fine.” Cohen made sure they understood the cockpit settings confirmed that. “Okay so far?”
Jack said, “Tracking you just fine, Dr. Cohen. Let’s get to the cockpit pressurization.”
“Right. It’s unusual to conduct such an experiment on a commercial airliner. I have all the performance info I need to evaluate the flight deck pressurization system.”
“And?” Helen asked.
“And, there’s an anomaly. Several, actually. The flight deck pressurization system failed to provide sufficient oxygen to the crew. You didn’t need me to tell you that. But I needed to rule out some things. We’re the NTSB. It’s what we do. The first item to rule out is physical damage to the system. Tom, your guys on the scene sent me photos of the pressurization system’s impeller blades.” Cohen gave them a briefing of rotational damage, metal fatigue, and foreign object contamination.
“Did you find any such damage?” Gallagher asked.
“No. Nothing physically stopped the flight deck pressurization system from doing its intended job. But―and here is where the flight data recorder really came through―the settings shown by the flight data recorder in the back of the plane were different from those your investigators found in the cockpit.”
“What does that mean?” Helen asked.
Gallagher spoke up, “It means that the pilots thought their pressurization system was performing as it should be. But somehow the actual valves, blowers, and compressors that performed the pressurization were doing something else.”
“Yeah,” said Rob Cohen from his office in Washington, DC. “They shut down halfway through the flight at 37,000 feet. And the pilots never knew. So as far as they were concerned, looking at their enviro control panel there on the flight deck, everything was fine. Except, they weren’t getting sufficient oxygen. They had no clue what danger they were in. They became sleepy; suddenly fell asleep, and finally, succumbed to hypoxia. Asphyxia followed.”
There was silence on the line for a minute as everyone pondered the implications. “How could there be changes in the flight deck pressurization without the pilots having either made them or being aware that something was wrong?” Jack asked.
Rob Cohen said, “That’s the question we’ve been working to answer. Tom pointed us in the right direction. But the means by which it occurred is another matter.”
“But you have a theory,” Gallagher said. “You always do, Rob.”
“As a matter of fact, I do,” said Rob. “Set aside this being the only new plane in the InterTrans fleet for a minute. Focus on the flight deck pressurization system and remote ground control equipment. The pressurization system is the means. Gain control of that, and you have the capability of incapacitating the flight crew. The remote ground control system aboard this jet is the method. My theory is that the LTS engineers at the manufacturing plant in France probably connected just the basics—airspeed, altimeter, vertical speed, attitude, heading, and turn coordinator. Those six controls would have been adequate for any caretaker flight crew sitting up there monitoring the work of a ground-based pilot. Things like the enviro system—while capable of being adjusted by the remote ground controller—wouldn’t need to be reported to the cockpit instruments. Afterall, this was just an experiment, right?”
Jack saw Gallagher’s eyes grow wide. He understood too. “So someone gained command of the plane’s remote ground control system and simply shut down the flight deck enviro system,” Jack said. “That’s why the valves and compressors were shut down, but the cockpit instruments showed them at the proper settings.”
“Wait a minute,” Helen said. “Wouldn’t the pilots have seen their enviro controls weren’t functioning where they set them?”
Gallagher answered, “Not with the enviro controls. Most pilot control inputs produce some sort of confirming response from a secondary instrument in the cockpit. Like when they push the throttles forward, they expect to see the airspeed indicator increase. If it doesn’t, they know something is wrong. But there is no feedback loop in the enviro system. If they set the cabin pressure to 7,000 feet, they just assume that the system pressurizes the aircraft to 7,000 feet. So if someone wanted to incapacitate the flight crew and crash the plane—this particular plane, that is—that’s the way they’d do it.”
“That’s pretty much our conclusion here in DC,” Rob said.
“Why’d the BBJ-2 crash in Elkhart?” Jack asked.
Gallagher stood up from the table and stretched. The lights in the hangar poured down on the scene: One giant jet with a dozen people working around it and a dozen more sitting at tables on their phones or pounding away at lap top computers. “It was a less sophisticated attack on the jet’s cabin pressurization system.” Gallagher described the routine maintenance done on the jet before it departed from JFK.
“Who did the maintenance work?” Jack asked.
“Panda Air Maintenance Services.”
“A Chinese owned compan
y,” Jack said. “Listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange.”
Gallagher explained, “The pressurization system was serviced by one of Panda’s FAA licensed aircraft mechanics. Then his work was reviewed and signed off by his supervisor—also an FAA licensed and certified aircraft mechanic. My NTSB investigators have the paperwork and copies of their licenses there in New York.”
“Are these two still at work?” Jack asked.
Gallagher looked at his watch, “It’s been a good twelve hours since they would have worked on the plane. It launched, flew to Elkhart and crashed. They’re both off shift, Jack.”
“Let’s get them. I don’t care if we awaken entire households.” Jack was already dialing his cell phone.
“NYPD Intelligence & Counter-Terrorism.”
“Brian Andrews, please,” Jack said.
“I’ll connect you. Who may I say is calling?”
“Jack Schilling.”
“Oh, Mr. Schilling. Hello. I know you by reputation and by the news video of you saving the Pope last year. Well done. I’ll connect you immediately.”
“Hey Jack,” bellowed Andrews into the phone. “How’s it going?”
“Brian, we’ll catch up later. This isn’t a social call. You can probably guess to whom I’m reporting at this very minute.”
“Your godfather, the President?”
“The very same. I need your help, buddy. It’s about the InterTrans 3361 near miss in Los Angeles.”
“You don’t mess around do you, Jack. What do you need?”
“There was an aircraft mechanic and his supervisor at Panda Air Maintenance Systems there at JFK yesterday morning working on the private JetNow plane that crashed in Elkhart, Indiana. We want to determine if two of their people had the opportunity to tamper with the cabin pressurization systems before takeoff.”
“You think that may have caused the crash?”
“We know that’s what caused the crash. These two persons of interest were the only ones with the opportunity to tamper with that system.”
“So what? We yank these mutts off the street, bring ‘em in and grill ‘em under a bright light?”
“We’ll be extraordinarily lucky if you can even find them, Brian. Call me when you have something. And thanks, buddy. The President will know that you rogered up when we needed you.”
* * *
Chapter 12
Jack Schilling looked across the NTSB’s conference room table at Tom Gallagher. “Quite a facility you have here in Washington DC.”
“It’s the most comprehensive center for modern aircraft accident investigations in the world.” Gallagher explained that the NTSB’s campus trains new investigators and conducts secondary accident investigations. He seemed proud that NTSB’s Go-Teams worked on everything from aircraft accidents to maritime, trains, trucks and highways, pipelines, and buses. “Pretty much every commercial mode of transport in the US.”
“Mr. Schilling?” said one of the investigators holding a landline telephone out. “NYPD Intelligence and Counter-Terrorism Bureau for you.”
“Thanks,” Jack said. “Brian?”
“None other, Jack. We got the Panda Air Maintenance guy who actually did the work—”
“Hang on, Brian. I’m putting you on speaker.”
The investigator who handed him the phone took it and pressed the buttons. She nodded for Jack to proceed.
“Okay, Brian. You’re speaking to the whole crash investigation team here in DC. Go.”
“Yeah. Hi, everyone. NYPD Intelligence and Counter-Terrorism arrested and took into custody the mechanic who serviced the Boeing Business Jet that crashed in Elkhart, Indiana. We’ve been interviewing the mutt for an hour now. I gotta tell you, though, he’s not your guy. Everything he says he did to that jet’s cabin pressure system matches exactly with the paperwork. He replaced some parts as prescribed by the routine maintenance manuals. Our guys went to the maintenance hangar and got the part boxes. Serial numbers all match. I even brought in an aircraft mechanic from another company to observe the interview—it gets a little technical sometimes. This guy didn’t find a flaw in anything he said.”
“Okay,” said Jack. “Fine. What did his supervisor say?”
“That’s a problem. The mechanic who did the work says it was a busy night. Lots of planes to service and return to flight status. His supervisor immediately put him on another job while he reviewed the guy’s work on the pressurization system.”
“So the mechanic was not there while his supervisor had the pressurization system bay open and exposed?” Gallagher said.
“Right. The mechanic who did the work was already in a different part of the maintenance hangar working on another plane. Time stamps on tool and part requisitions confirm his story.”
“And you haven’t found the supervisor?” asked Jack.
“Sorry guys. He signed off his review of the InterTrans JetNow plane. Apparently, he closed and latched the pressurization door on the aircraft. Then his boss says he got an urgent phone call from home and left immediately. It was right near the end of his shift. No one thought anything of it.”
“Brian, did the NYPD go to his home to get him?” Jack asked.
“He never arrived. We checked the exit points in the city—airlines, buses, even the ferries—”
“And?” asked Jack.
“Got a hit on China Air. The guy used his passport at the gate. He had already reserved a one-way seat on the next flight to Hong Kong. Paid in cash.”
“So now what?” Jack asked. “Can’t we just extradite him?”
“There is an extradition treaty between Hong Kong and the United States. It’s been in place since 1997. But—and this is a biggie—Hong Kong has the right to refuse extradition when that surrender interferes with the defense, foreign affairs or public policy of the People's Republic of China.”
“Let me guess,” Jack said. “This aircraft maintenance supervisor has already been deemed critical to the PRC’s national defense.”
“You got it, pal. The China Air flight left US airspace hours ago. It’ll land in Hong Kong shortly. There’s nothing the NYPD can do. The Under Secretary of State to whom our Police Commissioner spoke says their hands are tied until China completes its purchase of the next hundred billion in Treasury Bonds being offered next month. Sorry, Jack. He’s not about to upset a $100 billion apple cart for the crash of a private jet carrying some fat cat execs. Let me know if there’s anything else I can help you with.”
Jack sat there for a moment. He scanned the investigators sitting around the conference table. Each was watching him. “Okay,” Jack began, “we have a deadly puzzle. Here’s what we know: The InterTrans business jet crash in Elkhart may be only the first. We must assume that it was caused deliberately. So we have a murder investigation in addition to an aircraft accident investigation. Tom, how is that going to work with your people?”
“NTSB works only on accident investigations. Nothing criminal. We’ll bring in the FBI immediately. Homeland Security too, it sounds like. NTSB will conduct its parallel investigation. NTSB will support both agencies as much as we can.”
The table around him erupted in conversation. Everyone wanted to throw in an opinion. Jack continued to sit there in silence. He knew this was a puzzle they needed to solve. Else a lot of people may die before their time. That’s what’s scary—that people can cause such destruction and not be accountable. It haunts those of us whose job it is to hunt them down. God knows I’ve done it for more than 20 years in the service, then in the Bureau. The agencies whose job this is are too busy fighting among themselves for the credit. I don’t give a damn about credit. Besides, they’re too big and slow. This job needs a mobile, agile, and hostile unit to ID the perps, go get them, and stop the next attacks.
Jack looked around the table. Who has the one in a million skills to do that? Who? Tom Gallagher is one. For the smarts and the aviation background. Helen, for her common sense and ability to use the technical data to connec
t the dots. Plus, she knows a ton of people who may be helpful. Me? If push comes to shove, I want Smitty and me right there, locked, and loaded. Who else?
Jack focused his gaze on Rob Cohen. Already, he liked the NTSB investigator who so quickly made sense of the flight data and cockpit voice recorder information. “You said that someone gained command of the commercial jet’s remote ground control system,” Jack called across the table to Cohen, “then they deliberately shut down the flight deck enviro system.”
“Wait a minute, Jack,” Cohen said. “NTSB does not issue seat-of-the-pants causes for air crashes without a full and complete report being issued—”
“But you can,” Jack insisted.
Cohen thought for a few seconds. “Anyone wants my opinion, that’s what happened. Plain and simple. The LTS450 was hacked by a remote ground control station. They turned off its flight deck pressurization system. That’s all it took. End of story.”
* * *
Chapter 13
Colonel Li Yong deeply inhaled the smell of rich leathers and the sweetly intense polish made of bee’s wax. Workers used it to hand rub the circular Brazilian moon wood table top to a rich honey-colored gloss. Li Yong lifted the buckles of his leather satchel and separated the binder-clipped pages into three short stacks—Targets, Attack Plans, and Future Control—then lined them up neatly in front of him.
“Colonel Yong! Your report. Please.” The Chairman of the Central Military Commission sat in the middle of the other four—the President of the Central People's Government, the Secretary of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the President of the Central Party School, and finally, Xi BigBig—Mandarin for Big Daddy. He was the General Chairman of the Communist Party.
Li Yong tapped the pages before him one final time. “Xi BigBig and members of our great country’s maximum governance, four years ago you gave me a project. It evolved into a plan. Today, the first attack occurred. The second is happening as we speak.”
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