After September eleventh, his outfit had drilled a lot. And Master Sergeant Krites took it very seriously.
“How’d your shift go?”
“Did you see the news?”
“Down in Jacksonville?”
“Yeah. Airliner went down in the water. ISIS is claiming responsibility.”
The two men were silent for a moment. Then Krites said, “It was supposed to be some new type of plane, right?”
“Yeah, like a drone airliner or something.”
“Hell, man. I would never let some drone fly me around. How many died?”
“A couple hundred, I heard.”
Krites shook his head. “That’s just awful.”
The two men finished their watch turnover and Krites sat down at his desk, headset on, looking at the information on the screens in front of him. With the news of the Jacksonville terrorist incident, backup duty sections had been called in to the watch floor. Everyone on the floor was on edge, their eyes and ears alert for anything that might be out of the ordinary.
“Krites!” the watch officer called from the platform behind him.
“Yes, sir?”
“You got a call on line three. FASVAC Jacksonville wants to talk to you.”
“Got it.”
“This is Master Sergeant Krites, Eastern Air Defense Sector.”
“Master Sergeant, this is Chief Slade at FASVAC Jacksonville. We just got contacted by Fend Aerospace with an emergency. Have you heard about the accident that just happened down here?”
“Yes, Chief. Very sorry to hear it.”
“Yeah, well, I’m a little confused. First, we get word that they had a crash. That was about an hour ago. Now they’re contacting us saying that it might not have crashed. They think that the aircraft might be hijacked, and still airborne.”
Hijacked. The H-word.
Krites shot a look over to his watch supervisor and waved, eyes wide. The supervisor came running over, and a few other heads turned. Krites switched the audio to the speaker so they could both hear.
Krites said, “Say that again, Chief?”
“The Fend company thinks their drone passenger plane might not have gone down in the ocean after all. They think it might have been hijacked.”
“Someone hijacked a drone airliner?”
“That’s what they’re saying. A remote-control hijacking.”
“And where is it now?”
“We aren’t sure. We’re looking at the tapes, and we had a radar contact about fifty miles east of Jacksonville with no transponder. It was traveling south to north at twenty-five thousand feet. But that was forty minutes ago — and it’s not on my scope anymore.”
“Understood. Just to be clear, this is not, I repeat, not a drill. Please confirm.”
“That’s affirmative. This is real-world. The flight profile matched what the Fend guys said their aircraft would probably be doing.” A muffled conversation that the Master Sergeant couldn’t hear. “Yup. It was almost the exact same speed and altitude that the Fend 100 was doing earlier, before the crash report.”
“Where’s it heading?”
“Hell if I know. I don’t even have it on my radar anymore.”
Shit.
“Thanks, Chief.”
Krites looked up at his supervisor. “You catch all that?”
A young airman yelled from across the room, a landline phone in his hand. But not just any phone. The red phone.
“Sir, NORAD is on the line — asking for the duty officer.”
Krites’s boss got on the phone and began a rapid flurry of yes sirs to whoever was on the other line. When he came back, he said, “Okay — we’ve got NORAD feeding us information now — scan in on Warning Area W-122, off the Carolinas. They’re tracking something going northeast at over five hundred knots.”
“I see it. They tagged it. Okay, I got it now. It’s got no IFF. No transponder at all. It’s just flying parallel to the coast, staying out of the ADIZ. Boss, I don’t like this at all.”
“Neither do I.”
Krites said, “I recommend we scramble the interceptors.”
His supervisor nodded. “Aligned.”
24
Captain Jason Easteadt, United States Air Force, would soon be ordered to shoot down a commercial airliner. He realized this while watching the news and eating his dinner from the on-base sub shop.
BREAKING NEWS
Those two words consumed the entire TV screen. Big white lettering over a red background, ensuring that the audience was held captive for whatever came next.
He took a sip of sweet tea from a plastic straw, curious about what they might announce. He munched on baked chips and wiped away a smudge of mayo on the corner of his mouth.
Bzzz. Bzzz.
His phone vibrated in the breast pocket of his flight suit. He clicked the button to silence the phone, not taking his eyes off the TV.
“We interrupt this broadcast to bring you this breaking news alert. NBC News has just learned that a commercial jetliner flying near Jacksonville, Florida, may have been hijacked by Islamic State terrorists. We now bring you live to our expert in Washington…”
Whoa. He stopped chewing as he listened to the newscast.
“Easteadt, you catching this?” asked the other pilot on duty with him. The major was yelling from his office one door down the hallway.
Bzzz. Bzzz.
His phone again. He looked down at the messages. It was from the squadron. An emergency notification, telling him to contact the duty officer for instructions. That message had been sent two minutes ago.
He was going to get launched to intercept this hijacked plane.
Jason couldn’t take his eyes off the news. The aircraft was the Fend 100. The newscaster said that it had somehow been hijacked. He tried to think how that would be possible. Jason had just read a magazine article on it the other day — the Fend 100 was fully automated. How would it have been hijacked?
His pulse was racing. He thought about what this meant. About all the people on board. And about what he might have to do.
A circular emergency light protruded from the wall. It was flashing and rotating, covering his shocked face with yellow every few seconds. A bell rang in the hallway. It sounded like a school bell. It was joined by other sounds. Men running, yelling orders, their boots beating against the linoleum flooring.
This was not going to be like the other intercepts Jason had done. This wasn’t some off-course Cessna pilot.
A banner scrolled along the bottom of the TV screen.
Fend 100 AIRCRAFT, FIRST AUTONOMOUS COMMERCIAL AIRLINER, REPORTEDLY HIJACKED. ISLAMIC STATE CLAIMS RESPONSIBILITY. CONFLICTING REPORTS AS TO WHETHER AIRCRAFT HAS CRASHED OR IS STILL AIRBORNE.
“Easteadt!”
Jason looked up, beads of sweat forming on his forehead. The major stood in the doorway.
“What the hell are you doing just sitting there? Come on! We have ten minutes to be airborne.”
Jason nodded and rose from his seat. His knees wobbled a bit, and his head felt dizzy.
The Air Force major yelling at him to hurry was the flight lead for the two-aircraft interception unit. Easteadt grabbed his gear from his locker and jogged out to the flight line. A golf cart took him and the major out to their aircraft.
The major, noticing his unusual silence, said, “Are you good to fly?”
He hesitated. “Yes.” No more conversation. At this point, their training took over.
The major hopped off the golf cart and walked up to their separate aircraft. Their jets were being prepared for launch. Jason climbed up and strapped into his F-16. His hands were shaking as he raced through his checklist.