To the Death

With eight major international airports closed down for both takeoffs and landings, this had been an extremely hectic morning. Aircraft were being diverted inland, or to smaller airfields in central Florida or the Carolinas. Large nonstop passenger jets moving north were being diverted out to the west. Herndon could put up with almost anything except congestion over the East Coast airlanes, where a national emergency red alert was currently operative at all altitudes.

Reports, which on a normal day were critical, today faded into background cackle. We got a medium system out to the southwest, not too big, moving westward. nothing on the president’s schedule. Andrews quiet. American 142, make a 32-degree left turn, divert to Pittsburgh. good morning, United 96. sorry about this. make a 40-degree left for Cincinnati. right now JFK’s closed.

Even the significant news that a United States Navy carrier was conducting a series of air-combat exercises eighty miles off the Norfolk approaches scarcely raised a ripple in the control room, save to make damn sure that nothing strayed into the path of an F-16 fighter-bomber screaming at eight hundred knots through cloudy skies.

Everyone was at full stretch, scanning the screens, checking out flight after flight, diverting, canceling, refusing permission either to land or leave. Their overriding task was to clear the decks as the airports evacuated the passengers, just in case al Qaeda was going to Plan B.

And right now, there were only two identified men who could help. One was Reza Aghani, still lying in Mass General with a sore arm and a firmly closed mouth. The other, Ramon Salman, had vanished not only from Commonwealth Avenue, but also off the face of the known world.

“SUPERVISOR! RIGHT HERE!” There was a sudden and unmistakable note of pure urgency in the voice of Operator Steve Farrell, a heavily overweight 25-year-old with a deceptively quick brain that might one day carry him straight into the director’s chair.

“I got a bolter,” he snapped.

“You got a what?”

“A bolter. Pilot’s ignored orders from the tower and pressed right along.”

“Where is he?”

“Right here, sir, ’bout three hundred miles south of us, heading north. He just crossed the Cape Fear River in North Carolina.”

“You got his last instructions?”

“Right here, sir. Ten minutes ago I sent him clear orders to make a thirty-degree course alteration to his left and to take a swing left around Cincinnati, leaving Northern Kentucky International to his starboard side.”

“Where’s he bound?”

“Montreal, sir.”

“Start point?”

“Trinidad, sir. Refueled Palm Beach, Florida.”

“Aircraft?”

“Boeing 737, sir.”

“Is she squawking?”

“Nossir.”

“You tried High Frequency?”

“Yessir. I went to SELCAL [selective calling] seven minutes ago. And I tried the private voice channel. I just hit the two cabin warning lights, let ’em know we’re trying. Nothing.”

“You sure she’s still flying?”

“No doubt, sir. She’s headed straight over the southern part of the state of North Carolina, slightly right of the city of Raleigh.”

“Airline?”

“Thunder Bay Airways, sir. Canadian. She has no scheduled stops in North America. Her fuel stop was not on her flight plan, according to the Miami Tower.”

“They probably ran out in Barbados.”

“Guess so. But what do we do?”

“Well, right now she’s flying over some lonely country. But I want you to alert the agencies. CIA, National Security, then White House Security. that’ll do it. They’ll take it from there.”

“What do I tell ’em, sir?”

“Tell ’em we got a fucking bolter! What else? And keep trying the cockpit, Steve. You never know. Could be an electrical problem.”

1213 Same Day National Security Agency Fort Meade, Maryland

Today Lt. Commander Ramshawe was hot on the trail of anything to do with aircraft. The short, low-key signal on his screen was informing him that some nuthouse Canadian pilot was ignoring warnings from the control tower and appeared to be heading for the North Carolina swamps. This hit him like “Houston, we have a problem” had hit the NASA ops room on April 13, 1970.

Jimmy Ramshawe grabbed the phone, direct line to his assistant. “Get me Herndon on the line right now,” he snapped.

“National Air Traffic Control Center, Operator Simpson speaking.”

“Operator, this is Lt. Commander Jimmy Ramshawe at the National Security Agency, Fort Meade. Please have the operator dealing with the Thunder Bay Airlines off-course Boeing 737 call me back right away. Military Intelligence Division.”

As always, the words National Security Agency worked their magic. Inside seven seconds, Steve Farrell had dropped his donut, mid-bite, and hit the phone.