Turbulence

by Nance, John J. ;

  “It is still possible that the aircraft is on an attack mission with passengers held hostage aboard.”

  The President shook his head. “That’s a risk we will take, Bill. Get him on the ground safely.”

  The radio channel between the Enterprise and the lead Tomcat pilot was still being piped to the combined command posts, and it came alive with Chris Burton’s excited voice.

  “Home base, this is Critter. I, uh … Thank God you had us hold fire. The aircraft has just turned on all internal cabin lights, and there are faces in every window. Sir, this aircraft is full of men, women, and children.”

  ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE

  The President took a deep breath for the first time in what seemed like an hour as he sat forward. Bill Sanderson relayed the rest of the details of John Blaylock’s call and the corresponding confirmation from the lead pilot that the aircraft was loaded with passengers.

  “I think our pilot said it all, folks,” the President said softly. “Thank God. We almost destroyed over three hundred lives.”

  Bill Sanderson sighed. “Well, sir, sometimes the process gets it wrong.”

  “We’re going to want to review the process, yet again Bill. Hindsight can be good sometimes.” The Presidents remaining words were covered by another transmission from the lead Tomcat.

  “Home base, we’ve just made radio contact with the 747’s captain for the first time. He’s talking on a handheld emergency radio. He says he’s got a badly injured passenger losing blood who needs immediate medical help, and says he needs to make an emergency landing in Marseille.”

  Bill Sanderson gave a “wait” gesture to the President as several voices at once filled the air in the Situation Room and Critter’s transmission continued.

  “We’ve got two flights of French Air Force fighters here, too, sir, but we can’t talk to them directly.”

  Sanderson turned away for a moment as he issued a series of commands, then turned back to the President with a relieved sigh.

  “The French Air Force command is accepting our assurance about the aircraft.”

  “What did we tell them?”

  “That … the alert was our mistake.”

  The President laughed briefly. “They’ll love that, Bill. I’ll hear about that at the next summit.”

  “Undoubtedly.”

  “How is he doing?” Phil Knight asked Janie as she worked with the tourniquet on Brian Logan’s upper left arm.

  “Okay …” Logan answered for her as Janie looked up from the cockpit floor and said, “We’re controlling it, but I’m going to need a hospital. Fast.”

  “We’re just thirty miles out,” Phil responded, banking the 747 slightly to keep the nose pointed directly at the Marseille airport.

  “Meridian Six …” The voice of one of the Navy crewmen crackled through the handheld.

  Phil picked it up to respond. “Go ahead.”

  “Ah, we relayed your emergency medical status, and Marseille tower has cleared you to land on runway three-four, straight in, sir. Do you have the lights yet?”

  Phil glanced at the flight-management computer, which showed twenty-nine miles to go on a course straight to the end of the runway. He looked out of the windscreen into the real world, letting his eyes focus on the flashing strobe lights and sequential approach lights pulsing away in the distance.

  “Roger,” Phil said into the walkie-talkie. “I have the runway.”

  “We’re told you should turn off the runway to the right at the end, sir, and shut down. Portable stairs and medical equipment will meet you there.”

  “Thank you, Navy,” Phil replied.

  There was a pause before the voice came back. “We’re really glad you got those cabin lights on when you did, sir.”

  “Roger” was all Phil could manage, the reality that they had almost been on the receiving end of a guaranteed fatal missile attack still sinking in.

  “Can you do … something for me?” Brian Logan asked Janie, his voice thready and weak.

  “Sure. What?”

  “My … briefcase. In first class. Please don’t let them take me out of here without it.”

  “We’ll get it to you.”

  “No! I mean, I can’t leave it.”

  Janie studied him for a second, remembering the way he’d clutched the briefcase. “Why?” she asked. “What’s in there?”

  He shut his eyes against the pain for a few moments, then opened them slightly to look at her. “It’s personal.”

  “Hang on. Just hang on,” she said, her voice distracting the captain as he tried to focus on the airport ahead.

  The second-nature familiarity of slowing and configuring the aircraft as the runway lights swam ever closer diverted Phil’s attention from the smoldering fear that this could be his last landing as a captain. He lowered the landing gear, ran the “Before Landing Checklist” himself, and brought the flaps to full extension before pulling the throttles back and flaring carefully, feeling the tug of the main landing gear kissing the concrete in one of the smoothest landings of his career.

  EPILOGUE

  NRO HEADQUARTERS,

  CHANTILLY, VIRGINIA

  7:12 P.M. EDT

  “What happened in there, John?” David Byrd asked, as he leaned against John Blaylock’s oversized fire-engine red double-wheeler pickup and watched him fish a couple of cans of Guinness out of a rear locker.

  “Well … I’d say you saved the lives of about three hundred people, Colonel Byrd, sir.”

  “I saved them? Hardly.”

  John turned and grinned at him. “All in a day’s work.”

  “Is it always that intense in this place?”

  “No,” Blaylock replied as he tossed one of the cans over. “Most of the time, guys like George Zoffel are fighting terminal boredom. The job of analyzing pixels can be very tedious. But these days, with all the real-time satellite capabilities and other high-tech goodies in this new building, when some major problem unfolds, such as airplanes flying over or tanks rumbling over a border or whatever, it can seem like a high-speed video game … only with real lives at stake.” He pointed back toward the NRO building a few dozen yards distant. “But I’ll admit, this was different. This was nerve-racking.”

  David laughed. “I didn’t see you looking ruffled.”

  “Of course not,” Blaylock replied, pulling the tab on the can of stout for emphasis. “Those of us intelligent enough to turn down fighter assignments to fly large transport-type airplanes properly equipped with flush toilets are used to being virtually imperturbable. Oh, I’m sorry,” he said in mock alarm. “I forgot you were a fighter jock.”

  “That’s fighter pilot, not fighter jock.”

  “Once a fighter jock, always a fighter jock.”

  John retrieved two glass beer mugs, offering one to David, who shook his head in response. “I can’t believe you carry a bar in the back of your truck.”

  “I believe in being prepared.”

  “Ah, the Scout motto.” David smiled. “And I’ll bet you made Eagle Scout, too.”

  “No, I was a girl scout. Found quite a few of them, in fact.”

  “Scuse me?”

  “Well, I was technically in the Boy Scouts, and yeah, I did make Eagle, but I was far more interested in looking for girls during those summer camps than I was in tracking squirrels, or whatever the rest of the troop was doing.” John lowered the pickup’s tailgate and climbed up to unfold a couple of lawn chairs, before turning to David. “Come on up here and sit.”

  David climbed into the cargo bed and pulled up one of the chairs, and they both settled into silence for a few minutes, nursing the Guinness and watching the unusually bright canopy of stars overhead, sprinkled with the sparkling lights of airliners arriving and departing from nearby Dulles.

  It was David who broke the silence.

  “John, when on earth did you get to know White House Chief of Staff William Sanderson well enough to have his direct numbers, and have him trust you
instantly like that?”

  The distant roar of a departing jet rumbled over them, and John Blaylock waited it out before replying.

  “Before Desert Storm, Bill Sanderson was a Navy captain assigned to Defense Intelligence, David. I reported to him for three years, and we got to be close friends.” John looked over and took a deep breath before continuing. “I love the night air, don’t you?”

  “Yeah. So you and Sanderson are friends.”

  John nodded, tapping the beer mug lightly on the arm of the chair to the rhythm of some unheard tune. “He’s a brilliant fellow. The President’s very lucky to have him as chief of staff, and I’ve been very fortunate to have his confidence as well as his friendship.”

  The sound of crunching gravel caught their attention as George Zoffel appeared around the back of the truck.

  “Señor Zoffel,” John said with a broad smile. “I thought we’d bade you good night.”

  “You did,” George said, his eyes boring into John Blaylock’s for a second before holding the palm of his right hand up and looking around. “What … are you guys doing? I was going to have security stop you at the gate on the way out to tell you something, but they said you were still out here in the parking lot having a tailgate party in the back of a truck.”

  David shook his head. “This is serious decompression, George, not a party.”

  Zoffel nodded, his face serious. “Yeah, I can tell.”

  “You still sore at me?” John asked.

  George Zoffel regarded the big colonel in silence for a few seconds as he cocked his head, his expression slowly softening.

  “Blaylock, that’s the most consternating thing about you. It’s damn tough to stay mad at you, regardless of what havoc you wreak.”

  John turned to David and raised his glass. “I’ll drink to that. I’m a wreaker of havoc.”

  Zoffel grimaced in mock disgust. “I mean, we just went through one hell of a crisis in there, during which you managed to upset the entire intelligence community, and now you’re out here sucking up beer as if nothing had happened, and you’re corrupting the morals of an active-duty officer to boot.”

  “Guinness Stout, I’ll have you know.”

  “Whatever.”

  “So what brings you out here to talk to the bad boys?” John prompted.

  “I thought I’d let you know that the French have confirmed that there were no bombs, viruses, or nasty chemicals aboard the Meridian flight. The rest rooms were semitoxic, but that’s about it.”

  “Well, thank God I got the word on that spectrographic analysis in time,” John said breezily, noticing George Zoffel’s wry expression.

  “Yeah … well,” Zoffel continued, “it’s apparently been a circus for the French authorities, not to mention the media, who don’t know the half of it. They’re focused on the passengers rioting, not the fact that the Meridian crew nearly got themselves blown out of the sky.”

  “They’re still rioting?” John asked.

  “We’re told about half the passengers came off the 747 demanding the captain and the lead flight attendant be arrested, while the lead flight attendant came off demanding they arrest the doctor she’d tried to cut in half with an axe, and meanwhile the captain is apparently refusing to say anything to anyone until he has a lawyer with him.”

  David Byrd leaned forward. “You said a doctor?”

  “You recall the name Logan?” George Zoffel asked, relaying what he knew of the accused hijacker’s disastrous entry to the cockpit. “In any event, whatever’d happened before, when she tried to hack him apart he was bringing the captain an emergency radio, not breaking in. They got him to the hospital in time, by the way. He’ll make it.”

  “So, why did that captain land in Nigeria in the first place?” John asked. “And what happened to his copilot?”

  George Zoffel leaned against the side of the truck. “The copilot is missing, and the airline’s trying to sort it all out, but meanwhile, I thought you’d be amused to know that our old friend General Onitsa is now ten million dollars richer. Almost as soon as the ten million first installment of the money from Nigeria hit the bank, Onitsa had it wired somewhere else and withdrawn. We figure it was just about a half hour later that the Nigerian leaders saw the ‘hostages’ live on CNN as they were emerging from an airplane in Marseille. The same hostages …”

  “… who were supposed to be with Jean Onitsa in the middle of the jungle.” John chuckled. “I would imagine the Nigerians are a bit irritated.”

  “You might say that.” George grinned. “But the best part is the e-mail we intercepted from Onitsa to the Nigerian government a few minutes ago. With great seriousness he announced that the hostages were in Marseille only because he knew the Nigerians would pay the ransom, and he personally ordered their release in anticipation of their doing the right thing. Then he had the temerity to give them a bank routing number so they could send the rest of the two hundred ninety million.”

  “You’re joking,” David said.

  “No, he’s not,” John replied. “That’s our Dr. Onitsa, all right. The man is perhaps the world’s greatest living opportunist, with a wry sense of humor to boot.”

  “Yeah, spoken as if you knew him personally, huh?” David kidded, his laughter dying off when he realized George Zoffel wasn’t reacting and John Blaylock was nodding.

  “No. NO! Really?”

  “Long story, David,” John replied. “But Doc Onitsa’s quite a guy.”

  Zoffel pursed his lips and looked at John Blaylock.

  “One other item, Jonathan,” he said.

  “Sure.”

  “Remember how you spoke to Randy Brady, one of our spectrographic technicians from the control room, and asked him to do that emergency analysis of the light bouncing off the arms of the alleged hostages?”

  “Of course,” John answered. “That’s what turned the tide. You know, when he gave me the preliminary results.”

  George Zoffel had a smile on his face. “Uh huh.”

  “What about it?”

  “Well, Randy was very apologetic that it took him so long to call you with his analysis, and was quite concerned when he was told you’d already left.”

  “Oh, he called with the final analysis? Good. But he shouldn’t be apologetic,” John said. “That early evaluation of his did the trick. So … what’s his final analysis of what made those arms in the pictures look lily-white?”

  “Essentially what you told Admiral Sanderson: white mud, composed of clay, chalk, shale, and water, rubbed onto their skin to make them look Caucasian. Fast, cheap, and effective for the satellites.”

  “Good. Damn clever of Dr. Onitsa,” John said. “Say, George, one other thing …”

  “And,” George Zoffel continued, ignoring Blaylock’s attempt to change the subject, “Randy said to explain to you, John, that during those intense moments when we were getting ready to blow the 747 out of the sky and you called him, he had to first send a string of commands to the satellite’s camera array before it could perform the evaluation for you. He had just received the preliminary results when I talked with him … after you’d left.”

  “‘Preliminary results’?” David repeated, looking puzzled and wondering why John had fallen silent.

  Zoffel nodded. “Yeah. Preliminary. As in, his first report. Randy called just now, before I came out here.” George Zoffel turned and waved. “Good night, gentlemen. Well done.” He walked back toward the building leaving John Blaylock in silence as David Byrd slowly turned to look at him.

  “Preliminary?”

  John shrugged.

  “You guessed?” David said.

  “Well …”

  “You … you told the White House Chief of Staff, for God’s sake, that you had evidence you didn’t have?”

  John Blaylock sipped his beer with exaggerated relish and sat back in the lawn chair, looking off in the distance. “We didn’t have time to haggle,” he said. “They were going to shoot those poor buggers out of
the sky.”

  “But, good Lord, John, what if the airplane had been empty and the hostages still in Nigeria and the 747 really was a Trojan Horse?”

  “You were convinced,” Blaylock said, without expression. “And that was unbelievably impressive to me. We reservists always defer to our active-duty counterparts, you know.”

  David was all but sputtering. “But … that was my analysis, not … not based on anything solid. What if you’d been wrong?”

  “That’s not the right question, Davie,” John replied, his left hand behind his head. “The right question is, ‘What if I’d been hesitant to act?’ What if I’d waited for the confirmation which I already knew would not come in time and which, indeed, only came just now? We’d have killed over three hundred men, women, and children on the basis of a flawed assumption.” He reached out with his beer mug and tapped David’s shoulder for emphasis.

  “You convinced me, David. I wanted more proof, all right, but we’d run out of time. I had to trust my instincts, as well as yours.”

  MARSEILLE INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT

  5:15 A.M. Local

  “Now I have a question for you, Inspector,” Janie Bretsen said, as she looked at the English-speaking French police official. The two other men and a woman who had been taking notes during the questioning of passengers and crew all looked up.

  “Certainly,” Monsieur Christian LeBourgat replied.

  “Is there a plan yet for getting these people on their way? It’s been four hours since we landed.”

  He laughed pleasantly and nodded. “Your airline has a replacement aircraft and crew on their way right now from London. They will take your passengers on to Cape Town, and a new set of pilots will fly your aircraft back to London. You didn’t know?”

  She shook her head.

  “I know you’re exhausted, Miss Bretsen, and we’re finished here.”

  “Are you arresting anyone?” she asked.

  The inspector shook his head. “No,” he said, closing the notebook in front of him. “Everyone is free to go. Including you, of course. You had requested an international telephone, oui?”