At New York Center, those air traffic controllers who were not frantically trying to reroute traffic away from the hurtling sub-sonic darts slicing through their air space, were watching the little blips approach the bigger one as their hearts stopped.
As he approached Manhattan air space, a chill went through the Major’s pressurized flight-suited body. Haus saw the airliner already over the center of the island. Knowing immediately that the rules of engagement just took him out of the equation, he keyed his mic. Now under the control of an orbiting AWACS, he proceeded to lay out the tactical situation, “Big Daddy, be advised target is over city, I have no clear shot, request permission to break off attack and try to signal.” It was a rhetorical request. The airborne military traffic controller circling above in the converted 707, operating under the same rules of engagement, crackled back, “Affirmative, Baby Eagle; break off your attack; try to interdict.”
The fighter pilot then contacted his wingman. “Maintain combat air patrol status until replacement Eagles arrive.” His wingman banked his swept wing fighter, to start a racetrack pattern around Manhattan Island.
A passenger on the left side of the aircraft looked directly down to see the roof of World Plaza on 8th Avenue at 50th Street. Meanwhile, in the cockpit, the beeping of the Vector Oriented Radar receiver caught the co-pilot’s attention. The cockpit GPS showed the position of the aircraft as being midway down the island still dead center of the river.
Mandy Weinstein was watering her fuchsia, which was hanging in a macramé cradle in her window on the 95th floor of the Empire State Building. She dropped her watering can when she noticed the giant cockpit and huge wingspan of the 767 coming head on, right at her. She screamed and backed away at five miles per hour.
The co-pilot saw it first. His instinct was to reach for and disengage the autopilot switch, but the captain reached for his switch first and jammed his pen in it. The co-pilot’s identical control became non-operational due to the captain’s override. He lunged at the captain. In the struggle, he punched the older man, breaking his jaw and shutting out his lights. With his hand aching, he fumbled for the lodged pen. It broke off in the switch. The building loomed large in the windshield. The first officer having recently served as a flight engineer on older birds, instinctively reached for the circuit breaker panel and took the gamble of his life; he threw one without checking to see if it was labeled Autopilot. It was in the general area he remembered from the manual and that would have to do because he was already putting his weight onto the yolk, so that it would bank hard right the instant the power to the servo-controlled mechanism was interrupted. That 420-volt signal was stopping him from saving his life and countless thousands.
The yoke disengaged and the screaming plane made a rollover right bank. Literally flying sideways wing tips pointed straight down to 34th Street and up to God. The belly of the plane missed the side of the 1931 building by seven feet.
The windows and walls shuddered as the passing fuselage blocked the daylight to the 95th to 97th floors. The upper wing tip would have knock King Kong off the top.
At that moment hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers hearing the horrendous roar of the acrobatically strained engines, looked up with the same thought, “Oh, God, not again!” They then breathed a common sigh of relief as the on-edge plane reappeared from behind the building and righted itself as it climbed to the safety of the heavens.
The cockpit reading on the flight data recorder would, upon analysis, show the plane was actually four seconds arc east of where it should have been. The co-pilot was hailed a hero. The captain committed suicide, hanging himself while in police custody the first chance he got. The understatement of the year was that “the people aboard that plane and in the landmark building were very lucky.” Others around the globe, however, were not as fortunate.
Throughout the world, six planes crashed. One into a mountain in Tibet, three missing their airport runways by less than 2000 feet, and two in a mid-air collision over Argentina. In the short 30 minutes of distorted time, 1,714 people were killed around the world.
Ten minutes later, the temperature in the cesium core of the Atomic Clock was cooling, significantly decreasing the amount of electrons emitted and, in effect, slowing the clock again. Ten minutes after that, it was back to normal time, as if it had never varied. Barring any further intentional cross coding to the chip, this would never happen again.
At 12:20 PM, Press Secretary Spence stepped behind the podium in the White House’s pressroom. The papers in her hand were the text of the president’s reasons for urging Congress to pass the Farm Subsidy Reform Act. Instead, she said, “The American government has two hours to surrender and cease its reckless course. Nothing less than the total dissolution of the government will be acceptable. If this demand is not met, all planes, everywhere, will crash and all hydroelectric plants will burn out. Every nuclear power plant will explode and all of this nation’s infrastructure will be destroyed.”
The press corps was stunned to silence. After a second, the room erupted in questions. Spence took no questions, exiting the room. Walking at a brisk pace past the guards, she took a shortcut through the White House barbershop. Quietly, she picked up a pair of scissors and slid them under the sleeve of her jacket. She double-stepped down the nine flights of stairs, passed the uniformed guards, and approached the Situation Room. The Secret Service agent at the door questioned her with his glance.
“I need to see the president immediately,” she snapped. He permitted her access. The Secret Service agent on post behind the president watched her approach with a bit less than his usual penetrating stare. It was the glint that first caught his eye. Instantly, the “best of the best” agents in the service reached for his gun. Spence, now thirty feet from the president, pulled out the scissors and held them like a dagger in front of her.
“Freeze,” the agent growled as he chambered a round and aimed in one smooth motion. His menacing stance did not stop Spence’s advance. The other agent, on post across the table on the opposite side of the room, blasted through the chairs and scurried over the slippery top of the conference table in an effort to grab her. The Secretary of Labor, seeing a gun pointed in his direction, bent down to duck as the hurling agent’s leg slammed into his head. The agent stumbled and before he could steady himself for another attempt at her, the first agent fired three times. Although his intention was “shoot to wound,” Spence was shoved a foot to her left by a Cabinet member who went ducking for cover, rendering the shots aimed at her arm and shoulder fatal. Spence’s body spun around from the fusillade. Her teal business suit instantly blossomed red with blood. Multiple exit wounds, the size of silver dollars, punctuated her back.
The president, who first looked up at the sound of the agent going over the table, was now under the weight of a third agent who threw his body over him. The two standing agents immediately scanned the room with the barrels of their guns while ordering the entire Cabinet to get down on the floor. The president was unceremoniously thrown into the anteroom for safety, guarded by two crouching agents, their guns drawn and trained on the entrance to the sit room. The agent who had let Spence in kicked away the scissors from her hand. Reynolds saw that she was, amazingly, still breathing. He went to her and cradled her head.
“Why, Naomi? Why did you do this?”
She was remarkably calm, he thought, as she choked for her last breath and with a puzzled look on her face, uttered, “I don’t know why. I don’t know, but I had to die, Ray.” And then she was gone.