“Y — yes,” he stuttered.
“God, you’re such an idiot,” Gary said, turning his back to the man. He couldn’t stand looking at him. Never before in his life had he wanted to kill a man with his bare hands, not before that moment. “You make me sick.”
“I’ve always wondered how we got here,” Dr. Crawford said, “but I had assumed it was the other pilot, because we haven’t seen him since. Unbelievable.”
“There are many chemicals here that can kill you without leaving a trace,” Dr. Fortuin said, surprising everyone. The composed, calm Dutch didn’t seem like the type to think that. “Most likely, one chemical or another will kill you at the right moment. Count on that.”
Fear flickered briefly in the pilot’s eyes, quickly replaced by a hint of a superior smile.
“You’re forgetting,” he said, “that I’m the only one who can fly that 747 out of here.”
…22
Alex stood in front of the wall-sized map, staring at the piece of Russian territory shown on it, northeast of China and north of Japan. Where could a plane that size go? Where could it land? With the amount of fuel it carried, it could be anywhere on continental Russia.
She held the fresh cup of coffee close to her nose, inhaling the delicate French Vanilla flavor that filled the room. Where are you? Where on Earth are you?
A quick tap on the door, then a bulky man in his sixties entered the war room hesitantly, followed closely by Tom.
“Alex, meet Roger Murphy, former ATC shift supervisor at LAX,” Tom said. “Mr. Murphy, this is my associate, Alex Hoffmann.”
They shook hands, and the man sat down with a quiet groan, giving the map on the wall a furtive glance. Medium height and heavy set, the man wore thick-rimmed glasses and an untrimmed moustache that had lost its symmetry a long time ago. One edge was hanging lower than the other was, but it wasn’t just the hair longer on his left side; his features were slightly lower too; his lips and cheek lopsided. Alex wondered if Roger Murphy was aware that he had probably had a small stroke recently.
“Mr. Murphy, thank you for coming here today,” Alex said.
“Yeah, how can I help?” His speech was a little slurred too.
“I need to understand how someone might make a plane disappear in a different spot than it had actually disappeared.”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
She backtracked a little. “How would one know where a plane is at a certain moment in time?”
“All commercial planes are equipped with transponders,” Murphy replied. “The typical transponder emits an identification signal in response to a received interrogation signal. Radar operations depend on transponder signals to pinpoint aircraft position and altitude with precision.”
“How does it work?”
“Secondary radar pings the transponder, then sends what we call an interrogation signal. Upon receipt of this interrogation, the transponder will return its code or altitude information. Some transponders are designed to be used in busy airspace areas, and are compatible with automatic collision avoidance systems. What kind of aircraft are we talking about?”
“Umm…” she hesitated a little, looking at Tom for a split second. “A Boeing 747–400,” she replied, causing Murphy to pop his almost bald eyebrows up in an a skewed expression of surprise.
“Oh, then it most likely has best-in-class transponder equipment onboard.”
“So how can one grab a 747?”
“What do you mean?” Murphy fidgeted uncomfortably in his seat. His concerned expression showed he was becoming less and less at ease with the direction their conversation was going.
“Let me tell you what this is about,” Alex said, thinking she needed him to open up, not hold back. “We’re trying to locate flight XA233, and we’re thinking that it could have somehow made it to land, but ATC never knew about it.”
“Ah…” Murphy said, slouching a little in his chair, more relaxed. “I see where this is going. Yeah, well, I guess you could make the plane disappear if you would just turn the transponder off. Really, that’s all it takes.”
Unbelievable. Modern aviation in the twenty-first century. Huh… “That’s all it takes? No GPS onboard?” Alex probed.
“All aircraft have GPS, but it’s for the pilots’ use while in flight. It doesn’t transmit anything to anyone.”
“The pilots do get their info from satellites, right?”
“Yeah, but the airlines aren’t equipped to retrieve, interpret, and use that type of information from the satellites. No one is.”
“So, if you wanted to grab that 747 and land it here, somewhere,” she asked, pointing her laser spot casually at the Russian mainland near the Pacific coast, “how would you do it?”
He stood with difficulty and scratched his balding head. “This is where they were last tracked?” Murphy asked, pointing at one of the red pushpins.
“Yes.”
“You could do that two ways, I guess. It depends, really. You could start by dropping altitude, then kill your transponder, do a course change, fly back these few hundred miles, then land.”
“Why drop altitude?”
“So that the last transponder ping sees you in distress, losing altitude right before the so-called crash, right?”
“Ah, yes. You’re right.”
“But there’s a small problem with this method. Ideally, you’d want the plane out of the air when the alarm sounds.”
“What alarm?”
“When a plane is assumed crashed, all nearby radar stations will start searching everywhere, and everyone starts looking. At that time, you want your hijacked plane to have landed already.”
“So how do you pull that off?”
“Easiest way? With another plane, a plane no one will be looking for. You’d bring the second plane really close to the 747, above it or under it would be best. Then you synchronize transponder codes. The Boeing turns its transponder off, at the same time as the other plane turns its transponder on, using the same code. It’s programmable from the cockpit, you know. Then the Boeing changes course and heads for the mainland, while the second aircraft continues for a while on the 747’s original flight plan, pretending it’s the Boeing, then simulates the crash.”
“Wow… This way, the 747 lands before anyone even looks for it, right?” Alex confirmed.
“Right.”
“What kind of plane does the other one need to be? What would work?”
“Even a personal jet would do. They were out at sea, and radar doesn’t have the accuracy you’d expect. It can’t distinguish that well between hull sizes. That’s why we need transponders. So any jet can do it, as long as it can match the 747’s cruise speed and altitude.”
“Which is?”
“Speed? 500 miles per hour, maybe 550.”
“Which jets can match that?”
“Non-commercial? Cessna jets would do that, a Dassault Falcon 50, Learjet, there are a few.”
She exchanged a quick look with Tom, barely able to hide her enthusiasm. If there was a way, there was hope. She refocused.
“Why would you grab a 747? Can you reuse it?” Alex asked.
“I guess I could, if I’d repaint it, strip it of all Universal Air markings, replace its black box, yes, I think I could.”
“How much is one of these planes?”
“About 200 million dollars,” Murphy replied without hesitating. The man was a walking and slightly slurred talking aviation encyclopedia.
She frowned. This theory didn’t make much sense.