“But I…”
“NOW, DAMMIT!”
Several first class passengers were getting to their feet, unsure what was happening, as Carol closed in at the captain’s side, a hand on his arm to calm him down. But it wasn’t working, and the commander of Flight 10 leaned over again, his big hand closing on the lapel of the boy’s shirt, his breath in the boy’s face.
“You little bastard! I swear I’ll beat you senseless right here if you don’t do what I’m telling you to do! RELEASE MY COCKPIT!”
“Captain…” Carol, began.
“YOU HEAR ME?”
“Captain!” she tried again.
“WHAT?” Jerry Tollefson asked in a growl, glancing over his shoulder at Carol.
“He’s trying to answer you!” she said. “Let him speak.”
Jerry released Josh Begich with a violent lurch and straightened up to his full height, glaring at the terrified boy.
“I… didn’t do anything!” Josh stammered, his eyes huge, his right hand at his own throat as if to check if it were still intact. “Honest, sir, I…”
The girl in 3A was gesturing wildly to the laptop, her eyes huge as well.
“He had a loop going… he was trying to fool me earlier, but it was just a recorded loop!”
Begich was in total confusion, nodding at first, then shaking his head. Three male passengers had stood and were approaching cautiously, unsure who needed to be brought under control, but Carol was motioning them back.
Jerry reached down and twirled the laptop once more so he could see the screen.
“What’s your name, kid?”
“Ah… Josh… Josh Begich…”
“Where are your parents?”
“My dad’s meeting me in New York.”
“So we’re at flight level three-eight-zero, and so is this display. Our instruments show a heading of two-four zero, and so does the panel on this screen. You’re reading our panel, aren’t you?”
“Captain, he was just trying to fool me…” the girl said again. “He was… just being a dork.”
“I heard you!” Jerry snapped at her, his eyes boring into Josh’s. “What am I looking at on this screen?”
“I… it’s a mockup… it’s a cockpit like yours, sir, but… but I’m not connected to anything. I just had it running the heading and everything… where I thought we were.”
“And if I turn this computer off and rip the battery out?”
“Nothing will happen to the plane! Honest! I was just… just…”
“Our cockpit is offline! Is that a coincidence, too?”
“I heard your announcement, sir, but it isn’t me.”
Jerry grabbed the laptop and handed it to Carol. “Take it to Dan. See what he thinks.” He turned back to Begich, pressing a finger to his chest. “If I find out you’re lying, kid…”
“I’m not! I’m not lying… I wouldn’t… really! I swear!”
Jerry swiveled around, reading the distress in his lead flight attendant’s eyes. He followed her gaze to the three male passengers who’d been standing at the ready. All three were watching him now with deep alarm, saying nothing, as if unsure whether it was safe to even sit down with a madman captain screaming and threatening kids. He shook his head and waved them off. “Sorry to alarm you guys. We thought…”
One of the men was approaching. Short, rotund, and balding, he nevertheless had an air of authority about him and Jerry shook his head at first when the man’s voice reached him, low and accented.
“Captain, may I speak with you in the galley there.”
It was, Jerry realized, more of an order than a request, and for some reason the embarrassment of attacking a snot-nosed teenager cancelled his desire to pull rank and duck back in the cockpit. Instead, he followed the man in, finding a perfunctory outstretched hand, which he took reluctantly.
“I am Moishe Lavi,” he began, watching for a reaction that didn’t come. “I know a few things about command and leadership, Captain, and I know we’ve got a very big problem, but may I make a humble suggestion?”
“What, that I cool it? Yeah, you can, because I know you’re right, Mr.… Lavi was it?”
“Yes.”
“I apologize.”
“Tell me what you think is happening to this plane, Captain?”
Just for a second Jerry thought he saw a means of polite escape, but pilot platitudes such as “We’re working on the problem” or “We have it under control” sounded one light year beyond ridiculous, and so he remained where he stood, knowing somewhere in the back of his mind that somewhere he’d heard the name “Lavi,” and not being able to make the connection was bothering him, too.
“Actually, sir, I don’t have any good ideas to explain what’s happening to us. Neither the copilot nor I have ever even heard of anything like this before. I… we just left Israel, as you know, and I have to wonder if some enemy of Israel did this… but, I don’t even know how to define “this.”
“An enemy of Israel?” Lavi looked off balance for the briefest of moments. “You mean the Iranians? Why would you suspect them?”
“I don’t, at least not an active suspicion, and not just Iran. I mean, we have no explanation for what’s happening, so I suppose that’s a place to start.”
“I see. And you can’t regain control?”
What? Jerry thought. Am I not speaking clearly? He stifled the urge to make a sarcastic comment, still suspicious that he should know this guy.
“No,” Jerry answered, restraining himself carefully and describing the untouchable video game the cockpit had become.
“And if nothing changes, what are we to do then, Captain?”
That’s the question I don’t want to hear, Jerry thought to himself. What if! What if we can’t solve it before we run out of fuel? What if even then, even when all the electrics are offline, we can’t even dead stick it to an engine-out landing?
Moishe Lavi saw the expression on Jerry Tollefson’s face even before Jerry realized it himself.
“Excuse me, please, Mr. Lavi,” Jerry said, trying to mask the sudden tension in his voice. “Please go back to your seat. I have to go back up front.”
Jerry turned without a word and propelled himself into the cockpit, pulling the door partially closed behind him. Bill Breem had surfaced from the electronics bay and was perched on the jumpseat and Jerry registered the fact that Dan had the kid’s computer on his lap, an amused expression on his face.
“What, Dan?”
Dan shook his head. “Carol told me what went on. This is just a clever recording. I changed a bunch of parameters and nothing changed up here.”
The sigh from the captain’s mouth as he slid back into the command chair was almost heartrending, Dan thought.
“I thought…”
“I know. Unfortunately, it’s not that easy.”
“One other idea, Dan.”
“Go ahead.”
“If the engines stopped, and the RAT wasn’t deployed, and the battery was disconnected, there’s no way whatever or whoever is holding us hostage could not let go, right?”
There was desperation in Jerry’s voice, but what was pulling at Dan was completely frivolous—the fact that the last line of defense for electrical and hydraulic failure had a derisive acronym: RAT, the Ram Air Turbine.
“Dan?”
“Jerry, the only way that would happen, if nothing else we try works, is when we run out of fuel and the engines stop. Even then, a total disconnect would only occur if we slow down so far the engines can’t provide windmilling voltage. Then, provided we could keep the RAT from popping out and giving us electricity, which, by the way, we can’t, because it’s automatic, and provided I could find and disconnect the only battery bank downstairs, then the remaining problem is, we’d have no basic flight controls and we’d be descending, with all instruments blank, unable to influence anything. I don’t really think that’s a good solution.”