Skyhook (2 page)

“I don’t know, General. Stand by.” He triggered his transmit button again. “Sage Ten, we’re going to pull the circuit boards on the computer up here and disconnect you.”

“NO!” A voice from the Gulfstream cut in.

“Who’s this?” Kaminsky demanded.

“Ben Cole. Don’t pull any circuit boards! If your computer’s doing this and you get the wrong board first, it could pitch us down.”

Kaminsky glanced at the general in puzzlement as he answered.

“You know what’s causing this, Dr. Cole?”

“No … but… I’m guessing. The problem may be down here, but it may not.”

“How about killing the radio links between us, then?” the test director asked.

“Wait on that, too,” Ben Cole replied. “I’m working on it from here.”

“Sage,” Kaminsky said, “we’re still showing you at fifty feet, three hundred twenty knots.”

Hammond’s voice growled back at them. “Yeah, and Winky is goosing my throttles to max thrust. Would someone check up there to make sure there’s not an island ahead or something?”

A shout marked Ben Cole’s return to the channel. “Okay! Our computer’s the culprit. Go ahead and shut down the radio link.”

Kaminsky mashed one of the intercom buttons and relayed the order to another engineer at a console ten feet away. “Shut it off. All right, Dr. Cole, the link is history. Are you released?”

There was a long pause before the pilot’s voice returned from the Gulfstream.

“No,” Hammond said. “Dammit, it’s still locked up. Ben? What the hell’s going on back there?”

The channel fell silent for several long seconds as one of the test engineers on the AWACS rose quickly from his position and came forward, pushing in alongside the general and Kaminsky. Mac MacAdams noticed the man first. The haunted look on his face meant a new emergency. The general put his hand on the test director’s shoulder and turned him toward the worried subordinate.

“What?” Jeff Kaminsky snapped.

“There’s a … problem ahead,” the test engineer said.

Kaminsky’s attention was shifting slowly to the engineer as he kept one eye on his readouts. “Spill it,” he said.

“Ahead, on my radar, about forty miles, there’s a big ship.”

Jeff Kaminsky swiveled around to look the engineer in the eye.

“What do you mean, big ship’?”

“Sage Ten is at fifty feet,” he said. “I know this part of the Gulf, and this target’s big.”

“He’s in Sage’s way? A big ship?”

“Yes, sir. Dead-on collision course. He’s on a heading of one hundred twenty degrees, about a right angle to our guy.”

“He’s big enough to have a superstructure fifty feet above the water line?”

“If it’s a supertanker out of Valdez, yes. The hull will be higher than that. If he hits, he’ll broadside the hull. Even if he misses, he’ll hit one of the ridges on Hitchinbrook Island twenty miles farther.”

The general caught the tech’s shoulder. “You’re saying it’s a loaded tanker?”

The man nodded. “He’s a loaded thousand-foot-long supertanker southeast-bound making eleven knots on my scope, coming out of Hitchinbrook entrance to Prince William Sound. Ships like that usually stand at least seventy feet above the water when loaded,”

the engineer said, wondering why the general turned suddenly and disappeared.

Jeff Kaminsky sighed and nodded, then turned back to his screen.

“Keep me informed,” he said, regretting the utter uselessness of the remark.

“Sage Ten, Crown,” Kaminsky said. “How’re you doing on the disconnect?”

The chief software engineer Kaminsky had met several times replied, his voice taut, “I can’t just kill the computer without knowing which channel I’m dealing with.”

“Dr. Cole? Listen to me. You’ve got about two minutes maximum to knock that thing offline and give your pilots control again.”

“I’m trying … stand by,” Cole replied. “I may need more than a couple of minutes. I’m running a critical diagnostic.”

“You don’t have more than that, Doctor. You may just have to yank the plug, so to speak. Reset the computer or something drastic.”

“What’s going on?” Hammond cut in. “Why two minutes?”

Jeff Kaminsky sighed quietly to himself as he decided how much to say. “There’s … a possibility of an obstruction ahead of you.

It’s imperative you either change course or climb, within … a couple of minutes.”

^ome twenty feet to the rear in the AWACS cabin General MacAdams replaced a handset and pointed to a window on the communications panel as he caught the attention of a young sergeant.

“Quickly and quietly dial me up on UHF frequency three twenty-two point four.”

“Yes, sir,” the sergeant said, punching in the numbers and giving a thumbs-up.

Mac plugged into the console and toggled the radio to transmit.

“Shepard Five, this is Crown.”

The reply was instantaneous.

“Shepard Five.”

“Max speed and lock him up. Inform me when you’re within firing range.”

The lead pilot of a flight of two F-15 fighters from Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage gave a brief acknowledgment. Mac could imagine them going to afterburner, the two fighters accelerating to more than twice the speed of sound in an emergency dash across the eighty miles separating them from the slower Gulfstream.

Mac forced his mind away from the horror of the situation and focused instead on being grateful for having the foresight to launch the two fighters as a precaution against something unforeseen that might threaten civilian interests.

That “something” had occurred. One Exxon Valdez oil spill was enough.

“You have both targets on radar?” Mac asked the sergeant, who nodded toward his screen.

“Yes, sir.”

“Give me decreasing range, down to six miles.”

Ben Cole felt his mind accelerating to a speed he’d never experienced as he worked through the logic of the problem, eliminating possibilities one by one, struggling hard to make sure nothing he triggered would cause a sudden pitchdown. He was aware of the radio discussion about an object in front of them, but it was a shadowy snippet of information rumbling in the background. The main event was unfolding all around him, but a part of his consciousness was

perversely standing to the side, exhilarated to be watching himself trying to master such a complex problem.

The software commanding the Gulfstream was his, and there were only a finite number of possible reasons it wouldn’t release, half of which he’d already eliminated. The remaining ones, however, were even more complex, involving safety procedures to use in case of radio link failure. The system was supposed to be able to fully control an Air Force jet anywhere over the planet.

Seven down, four to go! Ben thought, feeling the timeline stretch even more. He had a minute left. It was a numbers game now, but he should have plenty of time.

“Ben, dammit, talk to me!” Gene Hammond was saying over the interphone. “We’re getting something on the radar ahead, about thirteen miles.”

He took his hand away long enough to punch the interphone transmit button. “I’m working on it. Hang on.”

“We don’t have much time, Ben! In about a minute we’re going to merge with whatever the hell that is.”

He forced himself to ignore the pilot and stay focused. There was an additional possibility he hadn’t considered. Should he take time and probe it? That hadn’t been in his plan ten seconds before.

No! Stay with what you were doing, he chided himself, tuning out the pilot’s voice booming in his ear again.

“Ben, old boy, what say we just reset that damn computer of yours and let the two of us up here deal with the consequences, okay?

The possibility of a sudden pitchdown won’t really matter much if we don’t regain control.”

More silence.

Two possibilities left. Has to be one of them.

More keystrokes, his fingers flying with nimble certainty over the keyboard.

“Ben, dammit, disconnect the thing NOW! Please, Ben. Your tip depends on it. Ben? For crissakes answer me! BEN?”

One more. Murphy’s law dictates the solution will be the last one I try.

He fired off the final string of orders, but nothing changed, and the realization was a sudden slap. He’d been wrong, it wasn’t any of them.

What now? Maybe a power supply lock! Oh, Lord, let it be power supply.

“Ben, I’m sending the copilot back to either get you on channel or kill you. Please, guy, shut down that damned computer now!

We’ve got eight miles left.”

Ben could hear the forward cabin door being yanked open as the copilot burst through.

“Ben? What the hell are you doing? Pull the plug!” the copilot yelped, but Ben shook his head before looking up suddenly. “I don’t believe this,” Ben said.

“What?” the copilot asked, even more alarmed.

“It won’t respond!”

For several critical minutes General MacAdams had stood in silence watching the Gulfstream’s radar target close at 340 knots on the huge thousand-foot-long supertanker. The Coast Guard had confirmed the identity, but warned there was no time for the tanker’s captain to change course.

Mac felt himself running the alternatives over in his mind again and again, but the equation always yielded the same result.

“Eight miles to go, sir,” the sergeant said quietly.

MacAdams sighed and raised the microphone to his mouth, hesitating before pressing the transmit button. “Stand by, Shepard. Launch on my command only.”

“Roger, Crown. We’re still locked, range twenty miles, and we’re slowing.”

The sergeant was intoning the decreasing range as he watched the general for any indication the impending deaths of the three men below could be averted.

“Six point five. Six point four. Six point three …”

The general sighed and punched the transmit button again.

The copilot had spotted a crash axe along the cabin wall and grabbed it before arriving at Ben Cole’s side. “Show me where to whack it! We’re down to seconds.”

“No need,” Ben replied. He reached over with one hand and toggled the interphone. His other hand reached for a single switch on the side of the main computer tower. “Hang onto your controls. I’m disconnecting.”

There was an immediate jump in G forces as the pilot yanked the jet into a climb.

“Shepard, this is Crown. On my mark … NO! Hold it.”

The sergeant was shaking his head energetically and pointing to the radar screen. “I’ve got an altitude and course change, sir.”

“Negative launch, Shepard. Safe your weapons. Acknowledge.”

“He’s coming up fast,” the sergeant was saying as the fighter lead replied.

“Roger, Crown, negative launch. Weapons safed. Standing by, and we have the target climbing steeply.”

“Jeez Louise,” the sergeant chimed in. “He’s climbing like a …

a …” The sergeant glanced up nervously at the general, who smiled back in relief as he shook his head. “Climbing like a striped-ass ape? Don’t worry, I’ve heard just about all of them.”

“I was gonna say a homesick angel.”

“Sure you were,” MacAdams chuckled, taking a very deep breath as he tightened his grip on the mike and pressed the transmit button to send the F-15s back to Elmendorf.

RBORRD SflGE TEN

When the copilot had returned to the cockpit, Captain Gene Ham mond, the chief test pilot for Uniwave, turned control over to him and came back to talk to Ben Cole, unsure whether to hug him or punch him out.

“So, Ben, what happened with Winky?”

“I … really wish you wouldn’t call it that.”

He could see the pilot’s features harden in a flash of anger.

“When a stupid piece of silicon tries to kill me, I’ll call it anything I damn well please. Now what the hell happened?”

“I don’t know.”

The pilot looked perplexed as he gestured to the array of computers. “But … you said you needed time, and you disconnected it successfully.”

“No, I said I had to check to make sure it wouldn’t plunge us nose down if I turned the computer off, which is what I finally did. I had to check a series of… of readouts. The program was holding the latching relays closed, but in a complex sequence, and I don’t know why.”

“You don’t know what went wrong?”

“No.”

“You don’t even know if the problem will repeat?”

“No.”

“But you told General MacAdams we’re through for the night. You do realize the company brass were listening, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

Hammond sighed and shook his head. “Then God have mercy on all of us, Ben. At best, we’ve got one more shot at a test flight to make this salable, and I’ll bet with MacAdams right now we’re hanging by a thread.”

“I know it,” Ben replied quietly, his mind already chewing over the chances of finding and fixing in time what might be a single glitch in a software program of more than six million lines of binary code. With any luck, he thought, he could complete the job by the time he reached the age of seventy.

But Uniwave would need the problem solved in forty-eight hours.

n a high-rise condo overlooking Vancouver’s west end, the incongruous sounds of barnyard animals wafted through the carefully decorated interior and scratched at the exposed ear of the sleeping owner, the abrasive vibrations subtly turning a strange dream to the bizarre.

April Rosen opened one eye and tried to focus on something coherent as her mind grappled with the possibility that pigs had found the twenty-third floor, bringing what sounded like a flock of chickens and geese along for good measure.

She pushed herself up from the bed and blew a curtain of jet black hair from her eyes as she turned, half expecting the TV to be the culprit, her mind spinning up rapidly and eliminating possibilities one by one.

The TV sat dark and silent in the built-in credenza, yet the pigs persisted.

April threw off the bedcovers and slid to her feet, disconcerted by the cacophonous concert, unaware that she was gloriously naked in

front of a wall of uncovered floor-to-ceiling windows, with several of downtown Vancouver’s high-rise offices across the way.

What in the world is that noise? Annoyance was replacing shock, her ears guiding her gaze to the bedside, where a new electronic alarm clock sat, happily spewing the wake-up call from hell. She leaned over and examined it, turning the volume down before sliding the switch to “off” to stop the clucking and snorting.