Fly by Wire (2010)

by Larsen, Ward

  He quickly discovered that two other manufacturers existed. Or had existed. Russia's Petrov I. A. had been annihilated in a suspicious fire on the very same day Colson Industries had burned. The only survivor, a unit of the Dutch conglomerate DSR, was presently in the middle of a three-month shutdown for retooling. On this day, according to the corporate estimate he had read, there were no more than six replacement crude oil heaters inventoried anywhere in the world.

  He continued to enter numbers into his calculator with the eraser of a pencil, the symbology of which did not escape him. New variables entered his mind faster than he could type. How long would it take to refit the Dutch plant? How would the energy markets react? What effect would extreme prices have on demand? The sheer number of variables made any answers he derived useless. Coyle stopped his guesswork.

  He slammed the pencil onto his desk and walked quickly to Darlene Graham's office.

  Coyle didn't knock, he just barged in.

  He found more people than he'd expected. No one had gone home tonight, the administration clearly functioning in crisis mode. Graham was talking on the phone. She looked surprised to see Coyle, but waved for him to take a seat. Coyle took a chair and tried to sit still, but his feet bounced nervously. The director of national intelligence watched him guardedly as she sat with the phone glued to her ear. It was a one-way conversation and she was definitely on the receiving end. When she finally hung up, her face was grim.

  Graham got up quickly from her desk, gathering a few fries. "What is it, Dr. Coyle?"

  "I was a fool for not seeing it," he began. He told her what he'd found, that a shortage of crude oil heaters was going to aggravate their entire problem. When he started spouting numbers, she cut him off.

  "I'm afraid it's even worse, Herman. I just got off the phone with the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force Command Center. There's been another round of refinery attacks, even bigger than the first."

  Coyle was dumbstruck. "But how? Our security was--"

  "They weren't ours. It happened overseas this time. Europe, Asia, the Middle East. At least thirty more strikes." Graham dashed from behind her desk with an armload of manila. As she rushed for the door, she said, "Well come on, Coyle. Oval Office, now!"

  Herman Coyle bolted upright and moved.

  Truett Townsend was showing his temper again. Coyle watched the president pace in front of the tall bulletproof windows that overlooked the Rose Garden.

  "Dammit! Didn't these companies -- didn't these governments see what happened to us? They should have stepped up security!"

  "A few did," Graham said. "Four, maybe five of the attacks were neutralized, or at least the damage kept to a minimum."

  "Four or five out of what -- thirty?"

  "Thirty-two is the latest," Martin Spector said.

  Spector had just arrived, along with Graham and Coyle. Other key members would be trickling in soon, but the president was clearly not in the mood to wait.

  "So our plan to buy refined fuel on the open market is shot to hell!" Townsend looked directly at Coyle, waiting for a response.

  "It would seem so," Coyle said weakly. He then told the president about his findings regarding the scarcity of crude heaters, and went over his latest calculations. The news was bad, but as he spoke Coyle thought he sensed a settling, as if his words, or maybe his numbers, had a kind of opiate effect on the others. When he finished, everyone deferred to the president.

  "All right, Dr. Coyle. So what do you recommend? More pleas for calm?"

  In another setting, it might have sounded sarcastic. Coyle, in fact, had spent much of his day analyzing this very question. "Calm? Certainly, Mr. President. But we must face reality. By midday tomorrow there will be cars lined up a hundred deep at every gas station in the country -- at least, those stations that don't already have plastic bags over all their pump handles. We must immediately implement a rationing program."

  "Rationing!" Spector shouted. "You want to tell Americans that they can only have one tank of gas a week?"

  "One tank is probably excessive," Coyle said.

  The president turned away and stared out across the South Lawn. He stood motionless, hands on his hips, his eyes seeming to look right through the necklace of headlights that churned over E Street in the distance.

  Coyle said, "I am not ignorant of the political ramifications, Mr. President. I think you should stress that this is only a temporary inconvenience. A few months at the outside."

  Spector argued, "We are talking about people s livelihoods. How will they get to work, get groceries, go to the doctor? Travel and the kids' hockey games will go right out the window! No, we can't do this!"

  "Mr. Spector," Coyle said, "I understand the sacrifices involved in what I am suggesting. But there is no choice here. It is going to happen. All that we in this room can do is manage the discomfort."

  Nobody spoke as Coyle s words settled in.

  President Townsend seemed to break from his trance, and he turned to face his advisors. "Dr. Coyle is right. Let's get the Departments of Energy and Homeland Security together on this. I want a realistic rationing plan on my desk first thing tomorrow morning." He pointed at Spector. "Crude oil furnaces -- our government is now in the manufacturing business. Spend whatever it takes to fast-track these repairs."

  The president kept talking. Each new department head that came into the room was given an assignment. At that moment, Herman Coyle was proud of his president, glad he'd voted for the man. As he sat and watched the scene, however, something bothered him. It was triggered when the president started hounding Darlene Graham for new information on Caliph. She had little to give, and somewhere deep in the recesses of his mind Coyle found that he was not surprised.

  Someone brought in the latest update and Coyle reached out to take a copy. He saw that it was a partial list of the latest targets. Singapore, Iran, China, Italy. Caliph wasn't playing any favorites. Then something else about the list struck him, the same thing he'd noticed about the domestic attacks -- these were not the biggest facilities. They were large, but second tier. Like everyone else, Coyle had reasoned that this was because security would be easier to circumvent. Now he began to revisit the conclusion.

  Herman Coyle was not an expert on terrorism or national security. But he was a man of logic. As he considered the attacks, he put them together as a whole and ruminated on the symmetry, the almost mathematical pattern to the sequence of events. And in a moment of clarity that bordered on the divine, there it was -- sequence.

  He sat very still and an odd corollary flowed to his mind. As a boy, Coyle's hero had been Albert Einstein. He had read everything he could get his hands on about the world s greatest scientist. Einstein's work ethic was legendary, but by his own admission, his fame had been cemented on a few moments of genius. Inspiration sometimes came at four in the morning after spending a long night slugging through equations, and sometimes it came in the shower. Clarity. Herman Coyle had finally had his own moment, and it had come in the Oval Office as the president was barking orders to his director of national intelligence.

  Coyle jumped abruptly to his feet and shouted, "It's not Caliph!"

  Townsend stopped in mid-sentence. The room fell still, except for the two Secret Service men by the door whose hands were unexpectedly poised at the fronts of their jackets. Coyle relaxed.

  "I beg your pardon?" the president said.

  "It's not Caliph behind this. At least, not in the way we think."

  The president walked across the room, slowly and deliberately, until he stood directly in front of Coyle. He was a good head taller. "Then who should we be looking for?" he asked.

  Coyle drew a blank. He had proven one solution wrong, yet not come up with an alternative. "I'm not sure, sir. But I think I can find out.

  The president of the United States stared at him hard, like he might divine more detail by some kind of telepathy.

  "I'll need a lot of help," Coyle said. "FBI, Secret Service--"

&nb
sp; "Secret Service?" Darlene Graham interjected.

  "Maybe the SEC. I need full access, everything, and the highest priority. We have to be fast."

  Townsend s eyes became slits. "Fast? Why?"

  "Because we have less than twenty-four hours."

  "Twenty-four hours until what?" the president queried impatiently.

  "I don't know. But look at the pattern. On each of the last three days there has been a strike of some sort. It might not be further suicide attacks -- but if something else occurs it will likely be on the same schedule. You see, I fear we've totally misread the motivation for these attacks. And if I'm right, I might be able to reverse engineer to discover who is really responsible."

  The president kept staring. Then, very slowly, his head began a series of nods that gradually increased in amplitude. On the fifth, he said, "All right, Coyle. Whatever you need, you've got it."

  Chapter THIRTY

  Smoke swirled around Ibrahim Jaber as he worked on his laptop, a thin blue haze that drifted by the room's subtle currents. An empty soup can served as his ashtray, and next to that a cup of hot cereal gone cold stood waiting. As he pecked at the keyboard, Jaber thought the apartment seemed cool. He had already turned up the heat twice, but wind whistled through cracks at the fourth-floor window. It was an urban breeze, the air outside having accelerated to squeeze through the narrow passage between buildings. Bernoulli's Principle, he mused. The same concept that gave his airplanes flight.

  When Jaber finished his work, he began composing an e-mail to his wife. Contemplating the words, he sampled the cereal. It was decidedly bland, but he kept spooning it to his mouth, knowing it was one of the few things he could keep down. The medicine was helping less now. It no longer touched the pain. Yet Jaber resisted the urge to up his dosage. To do so would dull his mind at a time when he needed all his wits about him. Just a little longer.

  Jaber stared at the flashing cursor as he arranged his thoughts, the hard reality setting in that these could be his last words to his wife. He began:

  .

  Dearest Yasmin, I am about to begin my final journey home. I cannot say when, or even if I will complete this voyage, so it is time for you to know more. My work for the last two years has been the most challenging of my career, and also the most rewarding. Soon, you will be told many things regarding what I have done. You may be confronted by many people. Some of what they will say is true. Other parts, less so. I ask only that you trust in this -- all I have done is for the benefit of you and our sons.

  My condition has not improved, and thus you shall soon be alone to care for Asim and Malik. Others may intervene, offer to help you. From them, take what you will, but always trust in the arrangements we have already discussed. Above all, tell no one of the existence of this account.

  As for you, Yasmin . . .

  .

  Jaber's fingers hovered over the keyboard, motionless, like a concert pianist about to address a demanding passage. So much came to mind he did not know where to start. A knock on the door startled him.

  Jaber instantly looked at the window. He had pulled the curtains back to allow the rising sun to enter, hoping for a little added warmth. It had been a mistake. He could be seen from outside, and so now he had no option of ignoring the caller. Jaber quickly tabled the cereal and folded his computer without even shutting it down. He went to the curtains and closed them. With no time to stow the laptop under the hidden floor panel in his bedroom, he shoved it into a bookcase behind a tall row of scientific reference books.

  He went to the door and opened it cautiously. His gaze sharpened when he saw her. "What are you doing here?" Jaber asked in a harsh whisper.

  She tromped in without invitation, wheezing as she passed. "That's a lot of stairs you got out there."

  Jaber shut the door and watched her collapse into his best chair, the springs pinging under her weight. He went over and drew the curtains shut. "Why are you here? We cannot jeopardize things now. Less than a day remains." Jaber had more to say, but his words were interrupted by a coughing spell. Retching and struggling for air, he dropped to the couch for support.

  "You don't sound so good," Fatima said. "You taking your medicine?"

  Jaber nodded as he recovered.

  She pointed to an old television. "You been watching the news? Caliph's martyrs, they doing a good job."

  "Yes, I know." It had long perplexed Jaber that so many young men and women could throw their lives under the bus that was militant Islam. But then he considered the economy of Egypt and her neighbors. A man who was well fed, prosperous enough to care for his family, would never consider martyrdom. But a man who was hungry and desperate -- he might go to any extreme. This Jaber knew only too well.

  "What about you?" she asked, disturbing his thought. "You finish that update thing, huh? Caliph, he wanted me to ask."

  "Of course, yesterday." Jaber looked at his watch -- it was now seven in the morning. "Seventeen hours remain."

  "So how you do that? By computer or something?"

  "Yes, my personal laptop has the software codes. But as I warned, we are now at the point of no return. The navigation updates are uploaded every two weeks. By the time the next one comes--"Jaber's voice trailed off. He pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and tapped until one showed. Feigning hospitality, he turned it toward Fatima.

  She cackled. "No. Those things will kill you."

  He found some amusement in the fact that Fatima's answer had come in a raspy voice. Jaber recognized it as the kind of resonance a woman acquired, one cured by a lifetime of harsh tobacco and shot-grade whiskey. He lit up, then tensed as she reached for the framed photograph next to his chair.

  "Pretty wife," Fatima said. "Good looking boys, too." She held it up high in one hand, like a lawyer displaying evidence to a jury. "Caliph, he's gonna take good care of them."

  Jaber said nothing. He willed her to put it back down. "What about this bothersome American, Mr. Davis?" he asked. "Caliph was supposed to do something about him."

  "Yeah, I know. He got some guys to do that, but they screwed it up. That's Algerians for you." Fatima chortled again.

  Jaber was left to wonder if she was speaking of the same men who had been at his own side three days ago. If so, the fact that they failed did not surprise him.

  Fatima got up and went to the window. She pulled aside one of the curtains Jaber had just closed and studied the street outside. "This a pretty good view," she said.

  Jaber wanted to tell her to keep it closed, but he clenched his teeth tightly. Again he felt the cold, and he could not stop his thoughts from drifting a thousand miles away to the resilient warmth of Egypt.

  Fatima began to wander the room. "You got that computer here?" she asked. "In this place?"

  Jaber was very tired. So tired he nearly told the truth. But then something else came out, from where he had no idea. "No, I keep it in the safe at my headquarters office in Marseille. It must be kept secure at all times."

  Fatima nodded, kept moving. "That's smart." Her great figure swayed under layers of cloth. Thankfully, she ended up by the door. "Okay. I'll tell Caliph everything is ready. That will make him happy."

  Jaber watched as she let herself out.

  As soon as she was gone, he went to the door and threw the bolt. He walked slowly to his chair, eased down, and took a long draw on his cigarette. If there was any consolation to his condition, it was that he would never again have to endure Fatima Adara.

  Jaber had always considered himself above Caliph and his lot. Blinded by rage, they were such simple people. Not stupid, or even uneducated. Just simple. Fatima, of course, was a heathen. But the rest were so predictably pious -- ruled by religion, and thus inseparable from the currencies of faith, hope, and prayer. A man of science, Jaber had never bothered with such delusions. He had been drawn into this unclean affair by a faith in other currencies, the denominations far more practical.

  Caliph had offered assurances regarding the long-ter
m security of his family -- yet here Jaber had taken matters into his own hands. He would trust no one else when it came to Asim and Malik. He had found some distaste, of course, in what they'd asked him to do. But he also could not deny the excitement, even the pleasure he derived from it all. There was a distinct sense of satisfaction when one outsmarted the world.

  Jaber looked at the picture next to his chair before closing his eyes. Soon it would all come to an end. And then he would find peace.