Tom Wilson had also left the cockpit for a few minutes, and Dan seized the opportunity to sit back down in the right seat, looking at Jerry.
“What’s going on?” Dan probed.
Jerry was all but hyperventilating as he held up and shook the latest cell phone he’d tested.
“Nothing, Dan! Not a goddamned thing! We might as well tape notes to rocks and drop them!”
“Jerry… take a deep breath,” Dan said, startled at the beet red color of the captain’s face, and worried that Breem would pop up from the E and E compartment below like an opportunistic meerkat and renew the “who’s in charge” debate.
The captain looked back as if his copilot was yet a new distraction he couldn’t comprehend.
“Excuse me? Who the hell do you think you’re talking to?”
“You need to know who’s your ally, and that’s me. I’m talking to the captain of this ship. I just chewed on Breem to make sure you stay the captain of this ship! And I’m doing what any good first officer would do, offer my best professional advice.”
Jerry’s eyes had flared as he leaned forward over the center console, his index finger in motion as if pointing a gun at the copilot, his voice almost in a hiss.
“Listen, Danny, when I need someone to wet nurse my attitude, I’ll…”
“You’ll do what?” Dan interrupted with equal force. “You’ll license me to speak if it pleases your highness? Giving you tough advice is what teamwork is all about, Jerry—as you well know. You taught crew resource management, remember?”
“I don’t need to be insulted.”
“I’m not insulting you, Jerry. Jesus, is everyone here so thin skinned? I’m merely suggesting that the situation is momentarily overwhelming you the same as it is me, and we both need to take a deep breath.”
Jerry snorted as he shot an acid look at the copilot.
“Why?”
“Because you’re worrying me, okay?”
“How? How am I worrying you? Aren’t you worried? Jesus, man, we can’t get control of this jet and…”
“JERRY! Listen to me! You wrap yourself around the axle like this and you could have a stroke or heart attack, and I can’t solve this dilemma alone. Okay? Mark it off to enlightened self-interest. Calm down, Captain, sir! We need calm, cool leadership! Steel nerves, like when you were flying Tomcats in the navy. That’s a challenge I can’t even imagine.”
“What? Calming down?”
“No, hitting a pitching postage stamp of a flight deck on a ship at 150 knots in a massive fighter and living to tell about it!”
“Oh.”
At last a sigh, Dan noted, as the captain slowly nodded and said, “Yeah… okay. You’re right. Sorry.”
“May I make another suggestion about the situation?”
“Yes, you may! I don’t have a clue where we go from here.”
“Okay, we’ve only tried a few of the phones. Let’s get the cockpit door back open and get Carol and Tom and maybe one other of her crew up here to start working their way through the rest of this bag of phones until someone maybe makes contact with someone on the ground. Meanwhile, if you’ll strap in, I’ll go back down to the electronics bay and see if Breem has any new ideas, and if we can figure something out.”
“Why should I strap in, Dan?” Jerry snapped suddenly, as if a wave of resentment had suddenly washed over him. “We have absolutely no control over anything up here,” he added, ringing the call button for the flight attendants.
“What if the bird suddenly reverts to manual law and pitches over violently and you’re caught unprepared sitting sideways while I’m off the flight deck?”
Jerry looked up and stared at his first officer for a few seconds as if seeing him anew, the flash of anger diminished as he nodded.
“Okay, Dan. All right. I get that.” He turned back toward the front panel and fumbled with his seatbelt before motoring the captain’s chair forward on its rails. The call chime sounded, and Dan lifted the handset to approve Carol’s reentry, punching the overhead release button simultaneously.
“How can that help, having you go back downstairs, except to keep an eye on Breem?” Jerry asked, as Carol came through the door.
“Remember when we lost the radios and thought we were still flying west, and I went below and reported back that this was a nonstandard configuration?”
“Yes.”
“Jerry, there’s a whole part of the compartment down there filled with a cabinet of some sort I’ve never seen before on a 330. I didn’t try to open it, but since something has electronically locked us out of our own controls, maybe it’s something to do with that cabinet. I need to look at it again.”
“Right.”
“Gentlemen, what can I do?” Carol asked, her voice filled with tension, as she eyed the bag of phones and the fact that neither pilot was yet using one.
Dan quickly explained the assignment and she turned to recruit one of the other flight attendants waiting just outside. She reached for the door to close it, and Dan caught her hand.
“Leave it open, Carol,” Dan said. “We can’t even control the aircraft. I’m not particularly worried about anyone else trying. You agree, Jerry?”
The captain nodded, his thoughts elsewhere, as he tried once more to click off the autoflight system, to no avail.
“Okay, I’m going down to the electronics bay. Jerry? I need you to motor your seat as far forward as you can stand again. When you move your seat back, you all but seal off the hatch.”
“Got it.”
“Wait…” Carol responded. “Before you go, I need to at least tell you about this one report from a first class passenger.”
Half out of the right seat, Dan stopped. “Go ahead.”
“I’m sure it’s useless information, but there’s a young teenage boy, an unaccompanied minor, in the seat ahead of this fellow, and he’s got some sort of computer program running that our passenger thinks could mean that he’s somehow… I’m embarrassed to even repeat this silliness… but that somehow he’s hacked into the cockpit systems and is causing all this.”
Suddenly Jerry Tollefson was completely engaged. He stopped motoring the seat forward and half turned to his right to ask Carol to repeat the details.
“The kid’s got a computer program on?” Jerry asked. “A UM? No parents aboard?”
“That’s right.”
“NOW?”
“Yes. Right now.”
“Jesus!” Seat belt straps were flying as Jerry moved the seat back and scrambled out, brushing past Carol to reach the cockpit door, fire in his eyes as Dan caught his sleeve.
“What?”
“Jerry, that can’t be the answer.”
“Yeah? Then tell me what is? Closest thing to an explanation I’ve heard so far.”
“At least wait till I strap in,” Dan managed, but the captain was already through the cockpit door with Carol on his heels.
First class cabin, Pangia 10
To the passenger who’d reported his suspicions, all concerns that he wasn’t going to be taken seriously evaporated as the captain himself fairly burst into the cabin. The four-striper moved straight to the boy in Seat 3B and leaned over, grasping the edges of the seat, shaking it slightly.
“Look at me!” the captain demanded. “Are you electronically messing with this aircraft?”
The girl in the window seat had suddenly snapped awake.
“What?” the kid managed.
“Let me see that computer!”
“That’s my…”
“GIVE ME THE COMPUTER! NOW!”
The laptop was rotated on the boy’s lap, and the captain’s eyes narrowed as he took in the instrument panel of an Airbus A330.
“Listen to me kid, or you’ll spend the next twenty years rotting in a French prison. You’re going to undo whatever you’ve done! You hear me? You reverse that immediately and return full control to my cockpit.”