“Sure.”
“Good. Because there are things going on out there… things that are classified with no need for you to know… that demand we quickly solve mysteries like this. Immediately if not sooner.”
She was watching his eyes intently, but his gaze was steady, open.
Smooth operator, she thought. Probably has a girl in every port… or office. Jenny pulled herself back to the moment and cleared her throat. “Wow. So this could be a threat?”
“It could. And as a bit of a backdoor measure of the seriousness, if you have anywhere you were planning to go or do this afternoon or evening, I’d like you to cancel.”
“And what if I have an important date?” she asked, smiling.
“Break it. You’re dating me tonight, so to speak.”
She felt a little ripple of surprise flitter up her spine before he continued with a broad smile. “Me and three others back at my office.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Cockpit, Pangia 10 (2110 Zulu)
The tension in the cockpit was thick enough to slice. Not that the past four hours had been anything but correct and collegial, but Captain Jerry Tollefson had no doubt that Dan Horneman was eager to continue arguing about the Anchorage incident, the arrogance of the Arctic Eagles, and how discriminated against he felt for being shamelessly rich.
Screw him! Jerry thought. He could have just apologized and left it at that, but no, he had to attack me for letting him be a lousy pilot! Bullshit!
But there didn’t seem to be any point to reigniting the argument. Horneman, he had concluded, was a weak pilot slumming in a world that neither needed nor wanted misfits. And somehow, he was trying to evade the reality that a competent, properly trained pilot simply doesn’t have the luxury of making fundamental mistakes.
Rehabilitating a pilot’s reputation once he’s shown himself to be dangerously slow at the controls is impossible, Jerry thought. The rumor mill, after all, communicated weakness faster than light. He resented Horneman’s use of the phrase “right stuff” and mud-slinging North Star’s Anchorage-based pilots. Horneman didn’t have it, and he never would.
He’s right about one thing, Jerry thought. None of us can be comfortable flying with a man who already has the money and success we all want. If you’re insanely rich, why do this? Why play airline pilot? It was hard to even imagine what it would be like to have $500 million or what would he do with it if he had such wealth?
Jerry brought his eyes back to the windscreen where a streaming cocktail of darkness and high-altitude cirrus clouds made the view indistinguishable from that of a simulator. There were stars somewhat visible overhead through the clouds, but he did little more than glance at them. Astronomy had never interested him, although a spectacularly starry night was always exhilarating.
They were entering a patch of turbulence, just light chop at first, but for some reason the slight bouncing was promising to get worse. He glanced down at the glowing computer screens that formed the front panels of the Airbus, checking the radar, which showed nothing of significance as the turbulence increased slightly to just below the moderate level. Jerry caught himself wondering almost casually why, at the exact same moment, the entire forward panel and all the cockpit lights went pitch black.
“What the hell?”
Dan Horneman’s voice echoed his own thoughts. Jerry sat back suddenly as if struck. The entire instrument panel, consisting of four cutting-edge sophisticated video screens and including the Electronic Centralized Aircraft Monitor, or ECAM, were blank. Normally they conveyed all the information pilots needed to fly.
“What happened?’ Jerry asked. “What did you do, Dan?”
“What did I do? Nothing! We’ve just lost all our displays… ECAM… everything!”
The turbulence had grown to the level of “moderate,” and from habit, Jerry reached up and turned on the seat belt sign.
“Where’s a flashlight?” Jerry asked, his voice betraying confusion.
“Hold it… I have mine…” Dan said, pulling a small penlight from his shirt pocket and shining it around the forward panel.
Is there a procedure for this? I can’t recall one? Dan thought. How the hell can we lose everything?
“Let me… get the checklist…” Dan said, scrambling to play the small beam of light to the right in search of the Quick Reference Handbook.
“I’ve got a big flashlight here somewhere in my bag…” Jerry said.
“Was there anything on the radar?”
“No! It was clear.”
“Never thought we’d ever need a flashlight in a Scarebus!”
“Dan, do we have a reset button for the generators?”
“I’m… I’m pulling the checklist… hold it. I don’t think so… as such…”
“What the hell is going on here? Are we turning?”
“What?”
“It felt like…” Jerry began, straining to look out and up. “I guess not. Engines are still running.”
“I’ve got the Quick Reference Handbook,” Dan announced. “Lemme get into it.”
“I think we’ve lost all the generators, Dan.”
“Yeah, but… where’s the battery and the RAT, the ram air turbine? It should have dropped into the airstream by now and provided emergency power.”
“Okay, run the checklist.”
“Which one?”
“Loss of all electrics.”
“I don’t think we have one like that… let me look… jeez!”
“Wait… Dan, I can see light under the cockpit door.”
“Sorry?”
“I just looked back… the cabin’s still lit up.”
“Okay, then it’s not the generators.”
“This damn plane can’t lose all the displays,” Jerry said, “It’s supposed to be impossible! We’ve got zero instruments except for the standby attitude.”
“Okay, here’s the loss of electrics checklist in the QRH.” Dan began reading the items, holding the small flashlight in his teeth, searching the overhead panel for a reset button as Jerry found his flashlight and frantically tried to make sense of what was happening.
And just as suddenly, everything came back on line, all the computer screens snapping back to their previous illumination levels and the cockpit lights back on.
“Thank God, Dan! What did you do?”
“Again, nothing!” Dan mumbled, the small penlight still in his mouth.
“Well, you must have done something. Check the heading!”
“Steady on course, two seven zero degrees. Speed’s the same.”
Jerry could see Dan shaking his head as he stared alternately at the ceiling panel and back to the QRH. He pulled the penlight out of his mouth and turned to the captain. “I’m telling you, Jerry, I didn’t do a bloody thing! I was still searching for something TO do!”
“Then, what the hell happened?”
“I guess it cured itself, but we’d better start troubleshooting. Something knocked everything off line. It could happen again.”
Jerry had leaned forward, his eyes racing around the flight display.
“We’re still on course, on altitude… on airspeed. Everything. I don’t think it even knocked off the autoflight system.”
“Autothrottles still good?” Dan asked, verifying the indications were still correct.