Zero Day: A Novel (2 page)

“Right,” McIntyre said. “I’m resetting auto.… Now.” Nothing changed. After a moment he said, “Altitude is 42,400 and climbing. What do you think, Sean?”

Jones pursed his lips. “I think we’ve got a glitch. Shall we go manual?”

Pilots were under enormous pressure from the company never to go manual except at takeoff and on approach for landing. The computer not only flew the airplane in between but did a far superior job, increasing fuel efficiency by as much as 5 percent, a great money saver. If the pilots went manual, the flight data recorder, which kept a record of everything from preflight to postflight, would record it, and they’d have to file a report justifying their action.

“Airspeed’s dropping,” Jones said evenly. The autopilot was not only failing to keep the airplane at the proper altitude, but it hadn’t increased power to the engines to compensate for the steady climb.

“Altitude is 42,900 and climbing,” McIntyre said.

The door opened behind them and the senior flight attendant, Nancy Westmore, entered. “Are we climbing, boys? It feels odd back there.”

The pilots ignored her. “Airspeed is 378 and dropping,” meaning 378 kilometers per hour, well below the standard cruising speed of 945. “Altitude is 43,300 and climbing,” Jones said.

“Have a seat, luv,” McIntyre said. “And strap in. We’re going manual.” Westmore, a pretty blonde, blanched, then dropped into the jump seat and buckled up. The two had carried on an affair for the last three years.

“Bobby,” Jones said, “PFD says we are approaching overspeed limit.” The computer was reporting they had exceeded their normal flight speed and were approaching a critical limit.

McIntyre looked at the controls in amazement. “That’s impossible! Airspeed is 197 and falling.” The yoke-shaker program engaged and the stick began to rattle in front of him. In traditional airplanes, the yoke shook at stall. In the 787, the computer simulated the effect for the pilots.

At that moment the stall warning came on. “We’re nearly at stall! It can’t be both. Going manual … now.”

A soothing woman’s voice spoke. “Warning. You are about to stall. Warning. You are about to stall. Warning…”

But when the autopilot disengaged, nothing happened.

“Are you nosing down?” Jones asked, looking over, seeing for himself that McIntyre had pushed the yoke forward.

“No response,” McIntyre said. “Nothing. Jesus!”

“Airspeed 156, stall. Altitude 43,750, still climbing. Holy shit!”

Then the mighty 787, cruising at over forty-three thousand feet, stalled. All 427,000 pounds of the airplane ceased to fly as the plane nosed up a final moment, then simply fell toward the blue ocean eight miles below. All three experienced a sensation of near weightlessness as the plane plunged toward the earth. Westmore closed her eyes and locked her mouth shut, vowing not to make a sound.

Behind them came a roar of passengers screaming.

As it stalled, the airplane lost its flight characteristics, which depended on forward motion through the air for control. The plane fell as an object, not as an aircraft. Without comment McIntyre pulled the yoke well back, fighting to maintain some control and keep the craft upright. Without air control, the plane could easily roll onto its back. If it did, they were lost.

Under his breath Jones said, “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee…” He scanned the PFD. “Airspeed 280, altitude twenty-nine thousand.”

“Jesus,” McIntyre said. “I’ve got nothing.” The yoke was not giving him any feel. The plane was moving through space absent any control. “Engaging auto!”

Through the closed door came more screams. Neither pilot heard them.

Jones reached over and engaged the autopilot. Both men were trained that in an emergency, the autopilot had a superior solution to any they could come up with. They’d been shown example after example of pilots wrestling with airplanes until they crashed, doing the wrong thing over and over, when the autopilot would effortlessly have saved the craft.

“Patience. Give it time,” McIntyre said as if to himself.

Another long moment passed. Nothing happened. The airplane wobbled to the right, corrected itself as it was designed to do, then wobbled to the left.

“Airspeed 495, increasing; altitude twenty-seven thousand, falling,” Jones said. He resumed the Hail Mary.

“Mother of God,” McIntyre muttered, “hear me. Disengaging auto. Setting throttle to idle!”

The airplane was now in a significant dive, and the crew could feel the buildup of airspeed as it rushed toward the sea. The sound from the passengers was now a steady desperate drone. The plane was well nosed forward. The horizon, which should have lay directly in front of them, was instead high above.

“Airspeed 770, altitude twenty-two thousand!” Jones’s voice had risen an octave.

“Shit!” McIntyre said. “God damn you!” he shouted, cursing the airplane. “Reboot,” he commanded. “Reboot the fucking computer! Hurry up.”

Jones tore his eyes from the PFD. “Rebooting.” They were under strict orders never to reboot in flight. This was a ground-service procedure. Jones fumbled for the switch. “Got it! Not responding, Bobby. It’s not responding! It’s locked!”

“Kill the power.” McIntyre’s face shone from sweat. “Hurry. We haven’t much longer!”

Jones looked to his right, ran his hand and fingers down the display, found the master switch, and flipped it off. The PFD went black.

“Wait!” McIntyre snapped. “Give it a second. Okay. Now!”

Jones flipped the switch. “On!” There was a pause. The dials before them sprang to life.

From behind them came a steady roar of terror punctuated by loud noises, as luggage from the overhead compartments and laptops flew about, striking anything in their own flight path.

“Engaging auto!” McIntyre said. Nothing.

“It’s still rebooting,” Jones said. They couldn’t know for certain either their airspeed or altitude, making reliable decisions impossible. “I estimate fifteen thousand with airspeed in excess of 836.” They were nearly at standard cruising airspeed. “We’re falling fast.”

The nose was now well down as the 787 plummeted toward the earth. The air slipping across the exterior controls of the airplane had restored flight control, but the yoke still denied it to the pilots.

The sensation of falling was palpable. Behind the men now came a high-pitched howl neither could place. It was neither mechanical nor human. McIntyre glanced back, expecting the worst, and realized it was Westmore. He hadn’t thought it possible for a human voice to make such a sound. “Quiet, luv,” he said, trying to calm the terrified woman. “Please!” He turned to the front. “Disengaging auto!” In front of him, filling the entire windshield, was the blue expanse of ocean.

“It’s rebooted now!” Jones shouted.

Without warning, the plane suddenly responded to the yoke.

“Oh, shit,” Jones said, as the captain began to try to raise the nose of the plane. The dials were giving information now. “Airspeed 915, altitude eight thousand! Easy, Bobby, easy. Don’t overdo it.” If they managed to pull the aircraft out of the dive, the danger was that it would rocket uncontrollably into the sky, a situation nearly as deadly as the dive itself.

McIntyre pulled on the yoke steadily. His face was masked in sweat. His breath came out in short, labored puffs. The plane was pulling up in response to his command, but the horizon was still much too high, the space before them nothing but ocean.

“Airspeed 1034, altitude four thousand! Oh, God!”

McIntyre pulled back more forcibly on the yoke. They felt the g-forces as he compelled the airplane out of the dive.

“Airspeed 1107, altitude three thousand!”

“Come on, you bastard, come on.” McIntyre pulled the yoke well back, all but certain one of the wings was going to come off.

“Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit!” Jones said. The g-forces pressed them heavily into their seats.

“Get up, get up, motherfucker.” Behind the men, Westmore screamed again.

“Airspeed 1122! Altitude twenty-three hundred!” Jones said in a high-pitched voice, almost in falsetto.

“Climb, you bastard, climb!”

Suddenly the g-forces vanished as if an invisible hand had been lifted from them.

“We’re climbing!” Jones said with a laugh. “We’re climbing! Airspeed 1103, altitude twenty-six hundred!”

Flight 188 rocketed into the sky like a ballistic missile.

2

MANHATTAN, NYC

FISCHERMAN, PLATT & COHEN

MONDAY, AUGUST 14

9:07 A.M.

“Coffee? A Danish?” she asked with an inviting smile.

“No, thank you. I’m fine,” Jeff Aiken said, considering closing his eyes until summoned for the meeting.

“Mr. Greene will with be with you any moment.”

Jeff, still in a fog from his hasty trip, didn’t take the time to admire what he sensed was an inviting view. The receptionist was not yet thirty, stylishly dressed, trim, obviously fit, but wearing the latest hairstyle, which made her look as if she’d just crawled out of bed and sprayed it in place.

Jeff had received the urgent call Saturday night—Sunday morning, actually—right after falling into a deep sleep, still dressed, splayed atop his bed at the Holiday Inn in Omaha, Nebraska. He’d just finished an exhausting all-night-all-day stint at National Interbank Charge Card Services. Their security system had been so porous that financial crackers, as criminally minded hackers were known, had systematically downloaded the personal accounts of more than 4 million “valued” customers. News accounts reported that the data looting had gone on for two weeks before being discovered. Jeff had tracked the information loss back more than three months and guessed it had been going on even longer.

Once he’d agreed to fly to Manhattan and negotiated a substantial fee for his time, it had taken all day Sunday to finish the security checks he’d installed on the new NICCS system. He doubted it would save the company from the ire of its violated cardholders, or federal regulators. If the company had spent a thousandth of his fee on routine security earlier, none of this would have happened. He never ceased to be amazed at the mind-set of supposedly modern executives. They still conducted business as if this were the twentieth century.

He’d arrived at the Omaha airport just in time to catch a red-eye to New York City. This would be his first trip there since the death of his fiancée, Cynthia, at the World Trade Center on 9/11, and he was almost overwhelmed by a range of unwelcome emotions. For an instant it was as if he were reliving the horror all over again. By the time he’d taken a taxi downtown, checked in and showered, he’d pushed his terrible memories aside and caught exactly ninety minutes sleep before shaving and dressing to arrive for this 9:00 a.m. meeting with Joshua Greene, managing partner of Fischerman, Platt & Cohen.

“Mr. Aiken?”

Jeff opened his eyes and realized he’d fallen asleep. He glanced at his watch: 9:23. “Yes?”

“Mr. Greene and Ms. Tabor will see you now. Are you sure you don’t want some coffee?”

“Thank you. You were right. I’ll take a coffee after all. Black.” He smiled sheepishly. “Better make it a large.”

The receptionist laughed, flashing brilliant white teeth. She showed him through the double door into the managing partner’s office. “I’ll get that coffee right now,” she said.

The reception area had been designed in a 1920s art deco style that Jeff believed was inspired by the original interior design, given the age of the building and the exterior motif. The impression was reinforced as he entered the conference room. Dressed in brown penny loafers and wrinkled tan chinos, a dark blue travel blazer with a matching light blue polo shirt, he was accustomed to looking out of place in most corporate offices. After all, he reasoned, they hired him for what he knew and could do, not for his wardrobe. With short sandy brown hair and dark eyes, he was six feet tall and thirty-six years of age and had mostly kept his athletic build despite his work. Even catalog clothing fit him well, a girlfriend had once commented.

The pair sat at an expanse of glassy mahogany. The lawyer, Greene, was well dressed, to put it mildly, reminding Jeff of Gene Hackman in
The Firm
. That had been the mob’s law firm, and Hackman had been the bad guy. The other was their IT person; she was almost, but not quite, a fellow traveler with Jeff, though her clothes had a Gap and Banana Republic look.

The well-suited man stood and introduced himself as Joshua Greene. “This is Sue Tabor, our IT manager. I thought it would save time if she sat in.”

“We spoke late Saturday,” Sue said as she rose to shake hands.

“Yes, I recall. Barely.”

They waited as the receptionist returned with a large black coffee and a Danish Jeff had not requested. Greene waved her off before she could ask if anyone else wanted anything.

Sue was slender, of partial Asian heritage, late twenties, with jet-black hair stylishly cut in a bob. Her slender lips were a crimson slash, and she wore more makeup than he was used to seeing in offices. Beneath her shirt he detected modest breasts, but her figure struck him as all angles. Her grip was firm, but there was no denying a certain shine in her eye as she met his gaze.

Greene was perhaps sixty years old and had the look of a man who spent his share of time in the gym. Broad-shouldered, he had graying hair and wore glasses with scarcely any rim, the lenses reflecting as if made of crystal. If someone told that Jeff Greene had once played football, it would have come as no surprise. While Sue was clearly West Coast in her accent, Greene came from somewhere in the Midwest. Jeff had heard a lot of that Johnny Carson talk in Omaha.

“I don’t want to waste your time, Aiken,” the lawyer said, “but I’d like to give you a brief summary before I hand you over to Sue. Saturday morning one of our associates came in earlier than usual and found himself the first in the office. When he attempted to use his computer, he could not. He checked with other computers and discovered that
none
of them were working. Sue was summoned and … I’ll let her handle that part.”

Greene cleared his throat. “I just want you to understand how critical this is. We billed more than ninety million dollars last year. We’re not a large firm, obviously, but we are highly respected in our field. According to Sue, we cannot access our computer system. This includes our litigation records, both current as well as archived, e-mail, and our billing records. She also suspects that everything may be lost, or lost in part. She tells me that until we identify the source of the problem, we cannot even access our backup records to determine if they’ve been contaminated.”