Fly by Wire (2010)

by Larsen, Ward

  "What do you mean?"

  "You've got eight letters after the K"

  "So?"

  "So I could call you V-8."

  "A nickname?"

  "In the Air Force we refer to them as call signs. You know, like Goose or Maverick."

  "I saw the movie. Do you give one to everyone you meet?"

  "Just the people whose names are a mouthful. Smith or Jones I could handle, but you can't expect me to call you Anna V. Sorensen for -- well, for however long this investigation takes."

  "You could just call me Anna."

  He cocked his head, gave her a quizzical look. "But then again, V-8 isn't very original. I've heard it before. We'll come up with something else."

  " We will, Mr. Davis?"

  He smiled. "Just call me Jammer."

  "And where did that name -- sorry, call sign come from?"

  "My first fighter assignment. When you get into dogfights there's an unwritten rule that you say as little as possible on the radio -- another pilot might have something important to say, like, 'Break right dummy, you're about to get gunned!' As a new guy, I found the air-to-air tangles pretty intense. I tended to babble on the radios. Pretty soon the guys were giving me a hard time, told me I was jamming' the frequency."

  "Jammer." Sorensen nodded like she got it. "I think Dr. Bastien might call you something else. You two didn't exactly get off on the right foot."

  "He'll come around. Has to -- I'm on the investigation team, the token foreigner."

  Her eyes narrowed in mock suspicion. "And you're a pilot?"

  "I am an operations human factors liaison."

  "Uh-huh. Pilot."

  He asked, "So what's your specialty?"

  "I'm here representing a contractor."

  Davis glanced at her ID again. "Honeywell. Avionics?"

  "Yes."

  Davis figured she might keep going, spout off some fancy qualifications. Nothing came. "Any other Yanks here?" he asked.

  "I met a guy from Rockwell and somebody from the FAA." She nodded across the room. "But these people are from all over the world."

  "The C-500 is a global machine, so we'll get a global investigation. In the old days, a company just built an airplane and stamped their name on it. Now it's different. Avionics suites, landing gear assemblies, wings, entire fuselage sections. Designed and built all over the world. Computers coordinate the measurements and specs, then everything is shipped to one factory and snapped together like a big model airplane."

  "Maybe they didn't use enough glue on this one."

  He raised an eyebrow.

  Sorensen smiled awkwardly. Her pale blue eyes then flicked over the room. "So given what you've seen so far, Jammer, what's your opinion?"

  "I found the Burgundy a little brusque for this time of day, and the foie gras was definitely underdone."

  One corner of her mouth curled up. "You don't have any ideas about what brought this airplane down?"

  "I always have ideas. But there's a lot I haven't--"

  "There you are!" a strident voice interrupted.

  Davis looked up to see Bastien on final approach. He had a glass of red in one hand and gestured freely with the other. "I see you have found a fellow American. And a beautiful one at that."

  Davis was quick with, "I'll look even better after a good shower."

  Sorensen put her knuckles to her mouth, stifling a snicker.

  Bastien forced a half smile. "You must come to the press briefing, Monsieur Davis."

  "Press briefing?"

  "It is next on the agenda, our second. There is a great deal of interest in this tragedy."

  "There always is," Davis said. "What we need is a good scandal to drive it off the front page."

  "PrecisSmentr Bastien said enthusiastically. "If only our president would have another of his affairs of the heart!"

  Bastien was downright jovial. Davis wondered if it was the wine.

  The NTSB would have frowned on alcohol in the middle of a workday, but you couldn't keep the French from their wine. As a kid, back when the cockpit doors of airliners were simply left ajar on long flights, he remembered watching Air France pilots take wine with their in-flight meals. He wondered if they still did.

  "But until something drives our work onto page two," Bastien looked over his shoulder and whispered theatrically, "we shall have to throw them something tasty."

  The investigator-in-charge loped away.

  Davis looked at Sorensen. "I wonder what he meant by that."

  She shrugged and said, "I don't know. Should we go find out?"

  "I think we'd better."

  Chapter NINE

  Washington, D. C.

  President Truett Townsend walked quickly through the West Wing corridor, his usual morning entourage in tight formation -- three Secret Service agents, Chief of Staff Martin Spector, and two aides. Townsend was a tall man, and his long strides forced the others to nearly trot to keep up.

  The presidents energy level was already high, having been raised by his morning workout. He alternated each day -- an hour of weight training or forty-five minutes on the treadmill. It kept him trim, but that wasn't why he did it. Townsend had come to find that his daily session in the White House gym was the only time when he could think without interruption, no one trying to slip him a memo or whisper in his ear. He'd made far more good decisions on the squat machine than in his regular bipartisan congressional meetings.

  As he approached the West Wing conference room, Townsend slowed. A phalanx of Marines and Secret Service surrounded the entrance. Discreetly embedded in the frame of the entryway was a collection of security sensors. Townsend passed through and a distinct beep sounded. Without hesitation, he went back out to the hall, raised his arms, and one of the Secret Service men scanned the president of the United States with a hand wand as if he was a commoner at the airport. The offending contraband turned out to be a stainless steel cork-puller he'd inadvertently stuffed in his jacket pocket the night before.

  "Sorry, guys. My bad."

  "Not at all, Mr. President. You're clear."

  It was a drill that none of Townsend's predecessors, nor their staff members, would ever have tolerated. But it had been one of this president's first directives. If he went through security, everybody did. The move brought some grumbling from his staff, but it had gained Townsend immediate standing with his security detail. As he'd put it to them, "If you guys can put your lives on the line for me, the least I can do is make your job easy."

  Followed by Martin Spector, Townsend entered the conference room where the participants of the Daily Intelligence Briefing, or DIB, had already assembled. The director of national intelligence, heads of the FBI, CIA, and Homeland Security, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were all present. The vice president was abroad, fostering goodwill in the Far East.

  As Townsend entered, JCS Chairman General Robert Banks came to rigid attention. The rest all stood and clasped their hands in front, the parallel civilian posture. This was another of Townsend's decrees. He didn't get any personal thrill from it, but there were always military officers at these meetings, and if they were going to show respect for the office of commander-in-chief, then so could everyone else.

  The president took his seat at the head of a large conference table, his shoulders framed by a sagging American flag on one side and the presidential standard on the other. Townsend broke into a smile as he looked expectantly at the crowd. His face was not classically handsome, but more often described as having "character." His nose was a bit too large, close-cut hair mocked a receding hairline, and deep vertical furrows framed his mouth. There was an air of the West about Truett Townsend, a no-nonsense pioneer quality that had served him well during his campaign. He had proven wrong the adage that only candidates from big electoral states could reach the top. Amid a faltering economy and the federal budget nightmare, the electorate was in another of its "change" moods, and no one on the ticket was as far removed from D. C.'s chron
ic ills as the two-term senator from the frigid, bison-roamed wilds of Wyoming.

  "Good morning, everyone," said the president. Even his voice came from the frontier -- no silky orator's inflection, but a rich rumble of Rocky Mountain granite.

  "Good morning, Mr. President," replied the chorus.

  Everyone settled in and Townsend nodded to the DNI, Darlene Graham. "Go ahead, Darlene."

  Graham was a tall, big-boned woman with long dark hair and a sultry voice -- Townsend had always thought she'd have looked and sounded right at home leaning on a piano in a smoky nightclub. Graham had spent twenty years working her way up the intelligence community ladder, and she was guiding things confidently after eighteen months at the helm of the country's combined intelligence post.

  She began her briefing. "We had a relatively quiet night, sir. There were a few skirmishes in the tribal areas of Pakistan -- the government forces are cracking down again. We suspect it will last for a week or two, then things will die off. We have good Predator coverage on the area, just in case any of the cockroaches try to scatter into Afghanistan."

  The president nodded his approval.

  Graham went on, "There was a market bombing in Khandahar, a few IED attacks on remote roads -- the usual chaos. Oh, and two defectors came over from the North Korean army. Not a big deal, but at least it's not the Middle East."

  "Thank God," the FBI director said.

  There were a few questions, which Graham fielded knowledgeably, and then a projection screen came to life at one end of the room. She began to manipulate a remote control. "Mr. President, you asked me yesterday for an in-depth briefing on the man who is quickly becoming our biggest thorn." A photograph of a very familiar face filled the screen, the same picture that was plastered on bounty posters all over Iraq. "We all know his face."

  "Hell," General Banks said, "the way he posts photos all over his Web sites -- its like the guy's got a PR campaign."

  Graham continued, "His given name is Abdul Taim. We all know him as Caliph. He grew up in Mosul. A dropout from university, he joined the resistance soon after our invasion of Iraq in 2003. He made his name initially as a sniper, with a reputation for engaging our own snipers. He had some success, I have to say."

  "He'd have been no match in a fair fight," General Banks argued. "For a time our shooters were going in with an entourage, then getting left on their own in a hostile urban environment. The locals knew where our guys were and passed it along. If a sniper doesn't have concealment, he's not a sniper. He's a target."

  "Point taken," the president said.

  Graham continued, "Caliph acquired quite a reputation, and eventually a following. As you all know, about twenty months ago we launched a concerted effort to take him out. We actually received some timely, accurate intel on his whereabouts and a SEAL Team was sent in. Unfortunately, the size of the opposition force took us by surprise and there was a heavy firefight. Still, we thought we had him. One of the team members got an ID on Caliph, took a shot from medium range. Caliph went down, but there wasn't time to confirm the kill before our team had to pull back."

  "I know that soldier personally," General Banks said. "He doesn't miss."

  Graham said, "None of us here would doubt it, General. But in the weeks after this mission, incontrovertible evidence was received." A new photograph came to the screen, the terrorist lying in a hospital bed. His head was heavily bandaged, his eyes barely open. The mouth seemed to hold a smirk, and to one side was a Baghdad newspaper headlining his demise. "There were other Web postings and a number of firsthand accounts. Our analysts went over it all very carefully and determined that Caliph definitely survived."

  "So we almost had him," the president lamented.

  "Yes. And not only has he survived, but since that time Caliph has gone to ground."

  "We try to squish a pest, and instead we create a legend," lamented Chief of Staff Spector.

  "It would appear so," Graham admitted. "Unfortunately, his survival has only magnified his legend. More recent evidence suggests that Caliph has assumed a new role. No longer a trigger man, he has become a leader of sorts, an apparition who is rarely seen but controls an extensive network. We hear his name constantly when we interrogate detainees. By laying low, Caliph has become more potent than ever. He organizes the disorganized, takes loose bands of individuals and turns them into networks with common, coordinated strategies."

  Spector asked, "And in your opinion, what are these strategies?"

  Graham fingered the remote again. The next picture was of two buckets, both brimming with a gray, glutinous substance. "The photo you see was given to us by Dutch intelligence yesterday. Two days ago, on an anonymous tip, they raided an apartment outside Amsterdam. The tenant was a Yemeni national -- at the onset of the raid, the guy blew himself up in a closet with some sort of improvised explosive. The police recovered what you see here. The exact chemistry is still being analyzed, but we think it involves aluminum and an oxidizer, maybe ammonium perchlorate."

  "Which gives you what?" Spector asked.

  "A high-temperature accelerant. Someone was trying to start a very hot fire."

  The president said, "Do we know what this guy's plans were?"

  "The Dutch are going over a computer as we speak, but so far they haven't found anything about a specific target. They did, however, find a martyr's video. It is quite clear that this fellow was one of Caliph's followers. He was only in the apartment for about two weeks, but given the level of preparation you see here," Graham gestured to the screen, "we think the strike was very near."

  "Why the Netherlands?" General Banks asked.

  "We don't know. But there are two other recent arrests that could be related -- a Pakistani national who was detained in Indonesia, and an Iraqi picked up on immigration violations in Portugal. Both have been positively linked to Caliph's network, but neither has given any useful information. Chances are, they don't know much -- they were just awaiting instructions."

  "He's branching out," President Townsend said, "not restricting himself to the Middle East any more "

  Graham replied, "It would appear so. Caliph is up to something. Perhaps something very big."

  The president leaned back in his chair, laced his fingers behind his head. He wished aloud, "If we could only find the bastard."

  The FBI director asked, "Do we know how he manages his network?"

  Graham said, "Much is done by way of the Internet, Arabic Web sites with coded messages. But there are occasions when direct contact is necessary." She spun to point the remote and a video clip came to life on the screen. A large, shapeless woman lumbered through a busy corridor. Her gait was almost bovine, trundling from side to side as others walked around her. The image was grainy, probably taken by a security camera, and kept replaying in a loop that repeated every ten seconds. Judging by the background, she was in an airport or a train station.

  "This is Fatima Adara. Some months ago, we identified her as Caliphs conduit -- his messenger, if you will. She's not very discreet, turns up regularly all across the region. And Adara doesn't make any effort to slip into places quietly -- she just uses her Iraqi passport."

  "Has she ever been detained for questioning?" someone asked.

  "We considered that, but thought it better to let her run in the hope that she would lead us to Caliph. We spot her occasionally. She's not very well trained."

  Spector said, "Occasionally? This implies we're not monitoring her continuously."

  Graham showed her first sign of discomfort. Her voice went down an octave. "We give Adara a rather long surveillance leash -- as I said, hoping that she'll lead us to Caliph. We've lost track of her a few times. But she always turns up again."

  General Banks gestured to the screen. "You lost track of that?"

  Graham ignored the comment. "She was last seen in Jordan two weeks ago. However, one of our analysts recently made a startling connection. As you all know, we've been trying for some time to track flows of money fro
m the sovereign wealth funds of certain oil-rich states. As petrodollars accumulate, the controllers of these funds are diversifying their holdings into a great number of businesses and investments. They are building companies, universities, even entire cities from scratch."

  "Not such a bad idea, if you ask me," said Spector. "Sooner or later the oil wells are going to run dry."

  "Yes," Graham agreed. "But we suspect that some of this largesse is being funneled to terrorist groups. And in the course of our watch, we found this--" Graham put one more photo on the screen.