Skyhook

by John J. Nance

  “Dr. Cole? Listen to me. You’ve got about two minutes maximum to knock that thing offline and give your pilots control again.”

  “I’m trying … stand by,” Cole replied. “I may need more than a couple of minutes. I’m running a critical diagnostic.”

  “You don’t have more than that, Doctor. You may just have to yank the plug, so to speak. Reset the computer or something drastic.”

  “What’s going on?” Hammond cut in. “Why two minutes?”

  Jeff Kaminsky sighed quietly to himself as he decided how much to say. “There’s … a possibility of an obstruction ahead of you. It’s imperative you either change course or climb, within … a couple of minutes.”

  Some twenty feet to the rear in the AWACS cabin General MacAdams replaced a handset and pointed to a window on the communications panel as he caught the attention of a young sergeant.

  “Quickly and quietly dial me up on UHF frequency three twenty-two point four.”

  “Yes, sir,” the sergeant said, punching in the numbers and giving a thumbs-up.

  Mac plugged into the console and toggled the radio to transmit.

  “Shepard Five, this is Crown.”

  The reply was instantaneous.

  “Shepard Five.”

  “Max speed and lock him up. Inform me when you’re within firing range.”

  The lead pilot of a flight of two F-15 fighters from Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage gave a brief acknowledgment. Mac could imagine them going to afterburner, the two fighters accelerating to more than twice the speed of sound in an emergency dash across the eighty miles separating them from the slower Gulfstream.

  Mac forced his mind away from the horror of the situation and focused instead on being grateful for having the foresight to launch the two fighters as a precaution against something unforeseen that might threaten civilian interests.

  That “something” had occurred. One Exxon Valdez oil spill was enough.

  “You have both targets on radar?” Mac asked the sergeant, who nodded toward his screen.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Give me decreasing range, down to six miles.”

  ABOARD SAGE TEN

  Ben Cole felt his mind accelerating to a speed he’d never experienced as he worked through the logic of the problem, eliminating possibilities one by one, struggling hard to make sure nothing he triggered would cause a sudden pitchdown. He was aware of the radio discussion about an object in front of them, but it was a shadowy snippet of information rumbling in the background. The main event was unfolding all around him, but a part of his consciousness was perversely standing to the side, exhilarated to be watching himself trying to master such a complex problem.

  The software commanding the Gulfstream was his, and there were only a finite number of possible reasons it wouldn’t release, half of which he’d already eliminated. The remaining ones, however, were even more complex, involving safety procedures to use in case of radio link failure. The system was supposed to be able to fully control an Air Force jet anywhere over the planet.

  Seven down, four to go! Ben thought, feeling the timeline stretch even more. He had a minute left. It was a numbers game now, but he should have plenty of time.

  “Ben, dammit, talk to me!” Gene Hammond was saying over the interphone. “We’re getting something on the radar ahead, about thirteen miles.”

  He took his hand away long enough to punch the interphone transmit button. “I’m working on it. Hang on.”

  “We don’t have much time, Ben! In about a minute we’re going to merge with whatever the hell that is.”

  He forced himself to ignore the pilot and stay focused. There was an additional possibility he hadn’t considered. Should he take time and probe it? That hadn’t been in his plan ten seconds before.

  No! Stay with what you were doing, he chided himself, tuning out the pilot’s voice booming in his ear again.

  “Ben, old boy, what say we just reset that damn computer of yours and let the two of us up here deal with the consequences, okay? The possibility of a sudden pitchdown won’t really matter much if we don’t regain control.”

  More silence.

  Two possibilities left. Has to be one of them.

  More keystrokes, his fingers flying with nimble certainty over the keyboard.

  “Ben, dammit, disconnect the thing NOW! Please, Ben. Your tip depends on it. Ben? For crissakes answer me! BEN?”

  One more. Murphy’s law dictates the solution will be the last one I try.

  He fired off the final string of orders, but nothing changed, and the realization was a sudden slap. He’d been wrong, it wasn’t any of them.

  What now? Maybe a power supply lock! Oh, Lord, let it be power supply.

  “Ben, I’m sending the copilot back to either get you on channel or kill you. Please, guy, shut down that damned computer now! We’ve got eight miles left.”

  Ben could hear the forward cabin door being yanked open as the copilot burst through.

  “Ben? What the hell are you doing? Pull the plug!” the copilot yelped, but Ben shook his head before looking up suddenly. “I don’t believe this,” Ben said.

  “What?” the copilot asked, even more alarmed.

  “It won’t respond!”

  ABOARD CROWN

  For several critical minutes General MacAdams had stood in silence watching the Gulfstream’s radar target close at 340 knots on the huge thousand-foot-long supertanker. The Coast Guard had confirmed the identity, but warned there was no time for the tanker’s captain to change course.

  Mac felt himself running the alternatives over in his mind again and again, but the equation always yielded the same result.

  “Eight miles to go, sir,” the sergeant said quietly.

  MacAdams sighed and raised the microphone to his mouth, hesitating before pressing the transmit button. “Stand by, Shepard. Launch on my command only.”

  “Roger, Crown. We’re still locked, range twenty miles, and we’re slowing.”

  The sergeant was intoning the decreasing range as he watched the general for any indication the impending deaths of the three men below could be averted.

  “Six point five. Six point four. Six point three …”

  The general sighed and punched the transmit button again.

  ABOARD SAGE TEN

  The copilot had spotted a crash axe along the cabin wall and grabbed it before arriving at Ben Cole’s side. “Show me where to whack it! We’re down to seconds.”

  “No need,” Ben replied. He reached over with one hand and toggled the interphone. His other hand reached for a single switch on the side of the main computer tower. “Hang onto your controls. I’m disconnecting.”

  There was an immediate jump in G forces as the pilot yanked the jet into a climb.

  ABOARD CROWN

  “Shepard, this is Crown. On my mark … NO! Hold it.”

  The sergeant was shaking his head energetically and pointing to the radar screen. “I’ve got an altitude and course change, sir.”

  “Negative launch, Shepard. Safe your weapons. Acknowledge.”

  “He’s coming up fast,” the sergeant was saying as the fighter lead replied.

  “Roger, Crown, negative launch. Weapons safed. Standing by, and we have the target climbing steeply.”

  “Jeez Louise,” the sergeant chimed in. “He’s climbing like a … a …” The sergeant glanced up nervously at the general, who smiled back in relief as he shook his head.

  “Climbing like a striped-ass ape? Don’t worry, I’ve heard just about all of them.”

  “I was gonna say a homesick angel.”

  “Sure you were,” MacAdams chuckled, taking a very deep breath as he tightened his grip on the mike and pressed the transmit button to send the F-15s back to Elmendorf.

  ABOARD SAGE TEN

  When the copilot had returned to the cockpit, Captain Gene Hammond, the chief test pilot for Uniwave, turned control over to him and came back to talk to Ben Cole, unsure whe
ther to hug him or punch him out.

  “So, Ben, what happened with Winky?”

  “I … really wish you wouldn’t call it that.”

  He could see the pilot’s features harden in a flash of anger.

  “When a stupid piece of silicon tries to kill me, I’ll call it anything I damn well please. Now what the hell happened?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The pilot looked perplexed as he gestured to the array of computers. “But … you said you needed time, and you disconnected it successfully.”

  “No, I said I had to check to make sure it wouldn’t plunge us nose down if I turned the computer off, which is what I finally did. I had to check a series of … of readouts. The program was holding the latching relays closed, but in a complex sequence, and I don’t know why.”

  “You don’t know what went wrong?”

  “No.”

  “You don’t even know if the problem will repeat?”

  “No.”

  “But you told General MacAdams we’re through for the night. You do realize the company brass were listening, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  Hammond sighed and shook his head. “Then God have mercy on all of us, Ben. At best, we’ve got one more shot at a test flight to make this salable, and I’ll bet with MacAdams right now we’re hanging by a thread.”

  “I know it,” Ben replied quietly, his mind already chewing over the chances of finding and fixing in time what might be a single glitch in a software program of more than six million lines of binary code. With any luck, he thought, he could complete the job by the time he reached the age of seventy.

  But Uniwave would need the problem solved in forty-eight hours.

  TWO

  TUESDAY, DAY 2 UANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA 8:25 A.M.

  In a high-rise condo overlooking Vancouver’s west end, the incongruous sounds of barnyard animals wafted through the carefully decorated interior and scratched at the exposed ear of the sleeping owner, the abrasive vibrations subtly turning a strange dream to the bizarre.

  April Rosen opened one eye and tried to focus on something coherent as her mind grappled with the possibility that pigs had found the twenty-third floor, bringing what sounded like a flock of chickens and geese along for good measure.

  She pushed herself up from the bed and blew a curtain of jet-black hair from her eyes as she turned, half expecting the TV to be the culprit, her mind spinning up rapidly and eliminating possibilities one by one.

  The TV sat dark and silent in the built-in credenza, yet the pigs persisted.

  April threw off the bedcovers and slid to her feet, disconcerted by the cacophonous concert, unaware that she was gloriously naked in front of a wall of uncovered floor-to-ceiling windows, with several of downtown Vancouver’s high-rise offices across the way.

  What in the world is that noise? Annoyance was replacing shock, her ears guiding her gaze to the bedside, where a new electronic alarm clock sat, happily spewing the wake-up call from hell. She leaned over and examined it, turning the volume down before sliding the switch to “off” to stop the clucking and snorting. The clock was supposed to play soothing noises such as surf and babbling brooks. Nowhere in the little owner’s manual had there been anything about babbling animals.

  April sighed and made a mental note to reread the instructions. She stood and stretched luxuriously, stopping suddenly when she realized she was putting on a skin show. There were guys with high-powered binoculars already zeroed in on her condo. She’d caught some of them several times before with her own set of binoculars.

  April swiftly dropped to her knees and fished on the bed stand for the remote control that closed the curtains, waiting for Vancouver to disappear before standing again. She picked up a purple satin robe from the floor, where it had slid off the end of the bed during the night, and put it on, tying the belt deftly around her waist.

  A motion detector clicked on and a small electronic chime echoed pleasantly through the condo, announcing that its tiny silicon brain had just activated her preloaded coffeemaker and raised the thermostat two degrees as it tuned the music system to light classical. The strains of Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto radiated from the hidden ceiling speakers, and she glanced up involuntarily with a smile. Classical was a touch of elegance, even when the apartment was a mess, which it seldom was. The music blended with the rich colors of the collection of paintings she’d spent far too much on, original oils by local artists. She walked into the living room, enjoying the uncurtained, panoramic view of English Bay spread out in front of her. She never tired of seeing all that beauty, and was glad she’d made the decision to mortgage most of her salary and buy the corner unit.

  April loved being the newest staff vice-president of Empress Cruise Lines, but she was equally pleased that on such a beautiful morning, she didn’t have to be in her office until early afternoon.

  I can have a leisurely breakfast, read the paper, go jogging, or all of the above.

  There was one more waking ritual before coffee, and she moved to her computer to figure out where her parents were today.

  April typed in her password before triggering the world map and opening the appropriate program, initiating a high-speed connection with the Internet. She could picture the small satellite antenna she’d paid to have installed on top of Captain Arlie Rosen’s aircraft after he’d reluctantly given in to the idea of being actively tracked by his daughter. The GPS-based system sent a burst of radio energy to an orbiting satellite every sixty seconds, reporting its position wherever they were.

  “That’s all it is, Dad,” she’d said, hands on her hips as she stood alongside his beautifully refurbished World War II amphibian aircraft at the dock in Seattle months before. The interior resembled the parlor of a luxury yacht, with a bedroom, living room, galley, and bathroom, and her folks used it at every opportunity.

  “You’re spying on your mother and me, right?” her father had accused.

  “Wait … hold it,” April had replied, laughing. “That’s my line!”

  “What do you mean, your line?”

  “When I was a little girl—”

  “You’re still a little girl.”

  “Dad! When I was just starting to car date and you wanted me to take a cell phone with me, I accused you of spying on me.”

  “Yeah, well, you were right. We were spying on you. You were dating boys, for crying out loud.”

  “No, Dad, you said the phone was for emergencies.”

  “And you believed me?”

  “Yes, because you were right.”

  Arlie Rosen had turned to her mother, who was trying unsuccessfully to suppress her laughter.

  “Rachel? Our daughter admitted her father was right about something. Record the moment and then do CPR. She’s obviously ill.”

  “Dad …”

  He’d smiled at April then, his silver hair framing his well-tanned face, looking every inch the reliable veteran 747 captain, as he shook his head in defeat. “Oh, all right, if it’ll make you feel better. Just no cameras or microphones inside listening to whatever we’re doing.”

  “Don’t worry. It just reports your position.”

  “Position?” he’d repeated. “Which ones? Missionary, doggie …”

  Rachel Rosen had swatted him on the shoulder as April turned a deep shade of red. “Now … see …” she’d said, fumbling for words, “that’s something I don’t expect to hear coming out of my father’s mouth.”

  April chuckled at the memory. She waited for the computer program to report the latest latitude and longitude of the Rosens’ Grumman Albatross and let her eyes fall on the small video camera on top of the screen. Several of her friends now used computer-mounted cameras, too, and they enjoyed being able to see each other when talking over the web, especially her best friend Gracie in Seattle, 150 miles distant. Unfortunately, she’d accidentally left her camera on and connected to the Internet a couple of times, and once she’d been mortified to find
that she’d been broadcasting for a whole day and had inadvertently become a popular webshow. She’d disconnected in embarrassment as a small counter had flashed on the screen proudly reporting that nearly ten thousand web surfers had clicked in to watch her moving around her condo. The camera had even had a bird’s-eye view of her bed, making her embarrassment all the more acute.

  The world map now assembled itself on the screen, then snapped to a closer view, framing Alaska. The track of the Albatross’s flight from Japan the previous week appeared along with small flags marking each stop. April looked at the track from Anchorage. The trail of blue position dots showed they’d flown down Turnagain Arm and crossed the small range of mountains near Whittier before setting a course for …

  What’s this?

  A small chill climbed her back. The blue dots did not extend to Sitka, or Juneau, or any of the other places they were planning to visit. Instead they marched to the southeast for almost a hundred miles, past a tiny dot of land called Middleton Island, then turned northwest, toward Valdez. The last dot was somewhere south of the entrance to Prince William Sound and the Valdez area, maybe sixty miles out to sea.

  She zoomed the screen and ordered the program to show the time each report had been sent.

  They’re probably still in flight, she told herself.

  But the last transmission had come during darkness the night before. At 10:13 P.M. local, they had been in flight at 140 miles per hour at an altitude of less than a hundred feet and on a heading of 320 degrees, and after that, the little reporting unit had fallen silent.

  April sat back and tried to suppress her growing concern. There were a million possible benign explanations. The unit itself could have failed. They could have had an electrical failure in the airplane. She knew they could still fly and land safely even if that were the case, but wasn’t that open ocean? Her dad had always said that landings in open ocean were far more difficult and dangerous in a seaplane.

  Something’s wrong. April sat forward and grabbed for the portable phone as she stood and began pacing, a habit that always drove Gracie to distraction. April entered her parents’ Iridium satellite phone number from memory and waited for the clicks and squawks to end in a ringing sound.