Fly by Wire (2010)

by Larsen, Ward

  Chapter FORTY

  They walked quickly along the rue Terme. Sorensen was leading, weaving among groups of late night revelers. One side of the street was bright with faux gas lamps, the other side dark. Sorensen chose the light. Davis used it to scrutinize everyone on the busy sidewalk. He knew she was doing the same, looking for Caliph, the face that had been on the front page of every newspaper in the world for the past three days.

  The night had turned messy and snow was coming down. It wasn't a fluffy Christmas mix, but frozen granules that gave the sidewalk a gritty feel and crunched under their feet. Turning into the place des Terreaux, Sorensen found what they needed.

  "There it is, Jammer. I knew I'd seen one."

  It was an Internet cafe, the standard all-hours marriage of caffeine and WiFi. Viewed from the street, the place oozed a warm, inviting light. Davis and Sorensen went in to find rows of glowing screens, soft chairs, and the thick aroma of the cafe du jour.

  Or noir, Davis figured.

  The cafe was busy, but Sorensen found an open machine and went to work on access. Davis stood behind her impatiently. Before leaving Jaber's he had dashed to the kitchen counter and swiped up a pile of papers, including the one he reckoned was the most important -- the page with the matrix of coordinates. He had rolled them up and stuffed the wad into his jacket pocket. Davis pulled them out now, unrolled and shuffled until the one he wanted was on top. Latitudes and longitudes. Something about it bothered him. Really bothered him.

  Davis racked his brain, made approximations. The coordinates were scattershot, sprayed all over the world, but a preponderance were in places he was familiar with, places he'd flown before -- Texas, Louisiana, the Middle East. He tried to add it all up. Jaber's papers, World Express 801, a terrorist taking potshots at them. The events seemed incredibly disjointed, each disturbing in its own right, but collectively unrelated. Davis stumbled to find a relationship, some link to make it all fit.

  His eyes were drawn to a discarded newspaper at a nearby workstation. The entire front page was engulfed with articles about oil refinery attacks, spiraling fuel prices, and turmoil in the financial markets. It wasn't just his investigation coming undone -- the whole world was fracturing.

  And that was when it hit him.

  His head spun. The vacuum of ideas was replaced by its antithesis -- everything came at once. He alternated between the newspaper and Jaber's printouts. He stared at words and numbers. Flight control software. Architecture. Integration. Then a picture filled his mind, an image he had first seen three days ago in Sparky s office. The overhead satellite view of the crash site. He remembered what had been off to one side, barely in view -- an image that brought cohesion to everything.

  "Christ almighty!" he spat.

  "What is it?" Sorensen asked, still typing.

  "Just keep going!"

  "We're online," she announced, sliding her credit card back into her wallet.

  Sorensen got up and gave Davis the seat. He called up a commercial mapping program, selected satellite view, and typed in a set of coordinates from the list, the ones he thought approximated the crash site. Davis had to be sure. He needed one precise picture. Seconds later he had it.

  Davis adjusted the view to zoom in. "There!"

  "What?" said Sorensen, looking over his shoulder.

  He tapped the picture on the screen. It was an overhead view of an oil refinery -- piping, stacks, holding tanks. "Does this look familiar?"

  "No."

  Davis used arrows on the screen to shift the view less than a mile. A pristine meadow came into view "There's our crash site," he said. Davis looked at the date on the satellite image. "Or at least that's what it looked like six weeks ago." He tapped Jaber's page of coordinates with a finger. "This is not a list of simple lat-longs. It's a target list!"

  "That refinery near the crash site was a -- a target?"

  "Straight from this page. And the only thing that kept World Express 801 from hitting it was Earl Moore. He rebooted the damned airplane." Davis typed in a second set of coordinates from the list. An overhead shot of a Japanese oil refinery came into view. "It'll take some typing to prove, but I'd guess that every latitude-longitude pairing on this list is the geographic center of an oil refinery."

  "Jammer -- this is scary."

  Davis looked at the list. He remembered his bombing missions from the Gulf War -- he had always been given a primary and a secondary target. The page in front of him held at least two hundred. This wasn't just a target list, it was an Air Tasking Order, a tactical war plan.

  "Every one of these airplanes must have the same code," he said, "with this coordinate list embedded. These jets have to be grounded right now."

  "How can we do that?"

  He thought aloud, "Bastien is worthless. And I'm sure the BEA won't be answering any phones until the start of business hours tomorrow morning."

  After a lengthy pause, Sorensen said, "I could do it."

  "How?"

  "I'll get through to the very top, the director of the CIA if I have to. If I can convince Langley this is for real -- I mean, really convince them -- they can patch me through to somebody with enough clout to ground these jets."

  "Okay, Honeywell. Give it a try."

  She pulled out a fancy phone and he watched her dial. Sorensen began talking to somebody, but right away got put on hold.

  Davis went back to the computer and typed more coordinates from the list. Just as he'd guessed, each set gave him an overhead view of yet another oil refinery.

  With the phone to her ear, she said,'41 gave it the highest priority. They're running a connection to Langley." She stared at the screen as she waited, her face taut with concentration. "Jammer--"

  He broke away from the computer and gave her his full attention.

  "There's one thing I don't understand," she said, her thumb pressed to a set of pursed lips.

  "What's that?"

  "If Jaber planted a virus in the system, then all those airplanes are affected, right?"

  "Probably."

  "Well -- World Express 801. Why did that particular airplane go down?"

  He shrugged. "I don't know. I guess the whole program must have some kind of trigger, some instruction to--" Davis stopped in mid-sentence. He looked back at the computer and stared at the tiny clock in the bottom right corner of the screen.

  Clock. Computer.

  "That's it!" he said.

  "What?"

  Davis didn't answer. He rifled through his jacket and found the wad of business cards still jammed into one pocket. He threw them aside one by one until he found the card he wanted. With his own phone he dialed the number scribbled on the back.

  Chapter FORTY-ONE

  The first call went unanswered. Davis got a voice mail.

  Not good. It was eleven o'clock and the Doral tech was probably asleep. Davis ended the call and redialed. On the fourth ring he got a drowsy answer.

  "Hullo--"

  "Is this--" Davis flipped the business card over, "is this Carl Wright?"

  "Yeah."

  "Carl, this is Jammer Davis from the investigation."

  "Wha -- oh, yeah. Um, do you know what time it is, man?"

  "Where are you right now?"

  "I'm in my room -- in bed."

  "Carl, listen very closely. We have a serious situation. There is no time to explain, just trust me that this is life or death. I need you to do something for me."

  There was a long pause on the line. Davis had a vision of the tech sitting up in bed, trying to decide if this was really something important or just a crank call from a drunken associate. "This is really an emergency!" he added.

  "Okay, okay. What do you need?" The software guy still seemed skeptical. Davis figured that in his line of work the word "emergency" was normally used for things like power outages or hard drive crashes.

  "Do you have a copy of the voice recording there?"

  "Yeah, sure. It's digital, so we all download a copy onto ou
r laptops in case we want to work after hours."

  "Great," Davis said." Call it up and go to the preflight portion, the spot where they lost power and the clocks got screwed up."

  "Hang on--"

  Davis heard the tech's phone rattle onto a table. The wait seemed interminable.

  Finally, Wright said, "Okay, here it is. The first officer is having clock problems. That's life or death?"

  "Can you play it so I can hear?" Davis heard a sigh.

  "All right, here goes. I'll put my phone down by the speaker."

  The audio was clear, even over the phone line -- the Doral boys had been busy with their filtering programs.

  The first voice was female, Melinda Hendricks, the first officer: This clock is all screwed up, boss. The time is way off Earl Moore answers: Ah, just leave it. The maintenance boys in Houston will figure it out. Maybe we'll get paid for the extra flight hours.

  Both laugh.

  Moore: How much is it off by?

  Hendricks: It's six hours slow. Crap, the date is off too--four days fast.

  Davis dropped the phone to his lap. He looked at his watch, did the math. Then he did it again. He remembered seeing Jaber's suitcase packed and ready to go.

  "Honeywell--"

  Still on hold, Sorensen raised her eyebrows inquiringly.

  "I hope you're making some headway."

  "Why?"

  "Because every C-500 in the world that's airborne is going to crash in forty-one minutes."

  President Townsend was still hunkered down with his staff.

  Coyle's information on who'd instigated the disaster had been a revelation. They now knew who and what they were up against. Every refinery in the world was under lockdown -- those in the United States by emergency presidential directive, and those abroad by a combination of prodding and common sense. If nothing else, there was unanimous agreement among the members of the intelligence staff that the situation had at least peaked. Going forward, the only issues were damage control and recovery.

  The president was deep in a session with Herman Coyle when Darlene Graham's phone buzzed. She flipped it open and moved discreetly toward a wall -- there were no corners in the Oval Office. "Hello"

  She heard the distinctive baritone of Thomas Drexler, head of the CIA. "Darlene, I've got someone on the phone you really need to talk to."

  "Who is it?"

  "I told you we had people working on that CargoAir accident investigation, remember?"

  "Yes."

  "Well, my agent is on the line from France. She insists that in half an hour over a hundred of these C-500 aircraft are going to dive down and crash into oil refineries all over the world."

  For the first time in all her years in the intelligence business, Darlene Graham felt a pang of helplessness. On top of everything that had already happened, it seemed perfectly insane. Perfectly outlandish. And so, by some immaculately twisted logic, she sensed it was perfectly true.

  "But Thomas, how could we allow this to--" Graham felt herself losing control. She had to do something--anything. So with an open hand she slapped the wall hard. This had two results. First, the Oval Office fell silent. Second, Graham got her focus.

  "Do you still have her on the line, Thomas?"

  "Yes."

  "All right. Patch her through to the blue line."

  Thirty seconds later, Darlene Graham had repeated to everyone in the room what she'd just been told. Anna Sorensen's voice came across the speakerphone for everyone to hear.

  "Miss Sorensen, this is the director of national intelligence, Darlene Graham, from the Oval Office. I'm here with the president and most of the National Security Council."

  Sorensen's voice replied with a slight delay, "Yes, ma'am."

  "How sure are you of this information?" Graham asked.

  "Well, we haven't really had much chance to cross-check, but I felt I had to call immediately since we believe time is so critical."

  "But what has brought you to this conclusion?"

  "We discovered that Dr. Ibrahim Jaber--" Sorensen's voice cut off. Suddenly, another voice blasted over the speaker, so loud that Martin Spector covered his ears. "God dammit! This is Jammer Davis! Who the hell am I talking to?"

  "This is the director of national intelligence, Darlene Graham."

  "Well, Director Graham, we have thirty-four minutes until Armageddon! Here's what you are going to do. First, find out where every C-500 in the world is -- there are over a hundred and fifty out there. Contact every air traffic control agency across the globe and get those airplanes on the ground -- battle speed! Second, establish a way to communicate with every airplane. Air traffic control will work, but all airlines have company data or voice communication links. Get those set up in stone. Some of these airplanes are over the ocean and will not be able to land for hours. I think I can trick the system into not going haywire." The connection seemed to fade and there was a pause. Then, "This phone I'm using is going dead. You need to call me back in ten minutes on another phone." Davis gave his own number and said, "Are you getting all this, Director?"

  Graham looked around the room. Three people were writing. "Yes, but I don't see how--"

  " You are not listening to me! People are going to die in a matter of minutes if you do not do your job! Use the FAA, Homeland Security, the State Department! Nobody in this government can be sitting on their--"

  "Stand down, mister!" President Townsend broke in.

  Davis lashed right back, "No! You stand down!"

  "Do you know who you're talking--"

  Davis' voice exploded from the speaker, "I am talking to a goddamn paper pusher who needs to go piss up a rope! Now get those comm links established and call me back in ten minutes! Go! Go! Go!" There was a distinct click and the line went dead.

  Silence befell the room.

  Everyone looked at the president, probably expecting him to ask, And who the hell is Jammer Davis? In fact, Truett Townsend didn't hesitate. Not even for a moment. "I want the FAA on line one! Homeland Security on two! Get the State Department to call every--"

  Davis sat sulking. Sorensen was right next to him, having leaned closer to hear the conversation. She sat back in her chair, and Davis handed over her dead phone. She was grinning.

  "What?"

  She couldn't seem to contain her humor.

  "What the hell could be funny right now, Honeywell?"

  "Jammer, do you know who that was on the phone? The guy?"

  He shrugged to say he didn't.

  "You just told the president of the United States to go piss up a rope."

  Sorensen started giggling uncontrollably, her eyes alight with life and amusement.

  His gaze narrowed and he looked at her hard, trying to gauge if she was serious. And then his mind went adrift. The visions of doom and catastrophe -- crashing airplanes and burning refineries -- all disappeared. At this very moment he could only see how beautiful she was. Davis had an irresistible urge to reach out and take her in his arms, to hold her and never let go. He lunged forward.

  In that same instant, the computer monitor next to his head exploded.

  Chapter FORTY-TWO

  Glass sprayed everywhere.

  Davis dove to the floor as the shot echoed through the room. He caught a glimpse of Sorensen disappearing behind a table. She called his name, but then he heard screams from the other direction. Davis looked up and saw a big woman struggling with a man in an overcoat, their arms intertwined. He couldn't get a look at the guy, but decided it had to be Caliph. Without hesitation, he clambered to his feet and lunged into the melee.

  Shoulder down, he made big contact. All three went sprawling. Davis landed near the front entrance. He got to one knee and was about to coldcock the guy when he got his first look. Mid-twenties, well dressed, blond hair -- it was definitely not Caliph. Confused, he then saw the woman. She was ten paces away, lying in a heap under a table. It only took one look for Davis to understand -- it was the woman from Sorensen's picture. Fati
ma Adara. The shooter. And Davis had probably just taken out an off-duty cop who was trying to save his ass.

  Great move, Jammer.

  Davis had taken one step toward her when Fatima rolled and locked eyes with him. She was grimacing, snarling like a rabid dog. She wrestled an arm from under her hip and Davis saw the gun. He changed direction fast and lunged for the door.

  He crashed through just as bullets smacked into wood and glass all around. Then he felt pain, like his leg had been struck by lightning. More glass shattered. Davis rolled into the street and scrambled to his feet. He looked at his thigh and saw blood. He'd been hit, but everything seemed to be working.