Abrahamson nodded and exchanged a glance with a couple of others on the review team as if to say, "See, I told you so." Out loud he said, "And what do you intend to do about the flight?How will you stop them?"
"By 'them," I assume you mean the hijackers."Bill Wirtz said. "Our plan is simple. We propose to shoot some white hot balls of fused quartz into the airplane's tires while it is on the ramp.The aircraft will have multiple flat tires and not be able to take off."
Sally was shocked to see small snickers pass between several team members.
"Won't the hijackers escape?" one of the NASA guys asked.
"Our mission is to stop the plane from hitting the capitol building. We want to minimize loss of life and keep the plan as simple as possible. We think it's likely that the hijackers will get swept up in the subsequent investigation."Landry replied.
Abrahamson seemed frozen. He fixed Landry with a glare. "You stated the mission correctly, Colonel. This facility must stop United Flight 93 from hitting the Capitol. But, the hijackers must not be allowed to get away. They killed my friends, my colleagues, and the Vice-President. I survived only through great fortune. Those murderers must not go free!Your operation has been penetrated by at least one Al Quiaida operative. Obviously, security and operations here need a thorough review."
Sally thought, "This guy is over the edge."It was all she could do to not stare at him like a specimen of a strange life form.
Colonel Landry said, "Perhaps a tour of the facility is in order?We can walk and talk and exchange some ideas."Sally could see that Landry was trying to de-fuse the situation.
"We will take a tour." Abrahamson replied. "But first, let me present my credentials."With a flourish he pulled a piece of heavy buff-colored paper from his briefcase and slid it across the table to Landry.
Landry read the letter and then looked at Bill. He seemed to deliberately ignore Ted and Sally. "This is a letter signed by the Secretary of Defense. It says that by the order of the President this project will be under the direct control of Mr. Abrahamson until the emergency is resolved."He paused for a moment, blinked, and gathered himself. "Okay, let's take a tour."
It took a while for the gaggle to file out of the room. Colonel Landry held the door and then fell into line just ahead of Ted and Sally. "Disappear."he said in a low voice. "The knives are out and you don't need to be here."
Ted steered Sally out the front door of the Project. As they drove slowly to the Kiddy Hangar, Sally fumed, "That pompous ass. The database guy, Rajesh, isn't part of some grand penetration plot. He got caught up in the spirit of Jihad. Abrahamson is trying to use the Project to somehow avenge the death of his friends."
"I think it's more about the loss of his prestige.â€Ted replied. "After all, you aren't a big wheel in Washington if you don't have anyone left alive on your committee. He's pissed that these guys who really didn't even know how to fly busted up his good deal."
They picked up Patrick, who didn't want to leave the base daycare facility. "So," Sally asked. "What do we do now?"
"I've seen dozens of these study groups. I've even been on a couple. " Ted replied. "They'll feel cheated if they can't have a nice dinner and exhaust themselves with meetings. Nothing is going to happen today. How about we check out that park?"
Every time they drove between the base and their rental house, Ted and Sally passed a small sign for Biscayne National Park. This time they took the left turn and discovered the new visitor's center for the largest marine park in the US. They looked around for five minutes, drove home, changed clothes, packed a picnic lunch and swimming gear and returned within an hour. They spent the rest of the day together unwinding in the park, in the water, and in a rented canoe. It was about four o'clock when Ted's cell phone rang inside the beach bag. Ted checked the caller ID and saw it was Bill Wirtz.
"Hey, Bill. What's going on?"
"Where are you?" Wirtz asked without a real reply.
Ted explained and Bill said. "That's just the ticket. I'll meet you at the visitor's center in twenty, make that thirty, minutes."
Bill showed up with a bag of fast food. It included an extra large order of chicken nuggets for Patrick. Sally frowned, but this wasn't the time for her junk food lecture.
They sat down around a picnic table in the nearly empty park. "This guy Abrahamson is a nut job. You should have seen him try to understand that if the Project's technology stopped the plane, then we wouldn't know we did it. He wouldn't get his payback."
"It's not the easiest concept to accept when you have a blood lust for revenge ."Sally observed.
"You've got him pegged" Bill replied. He watched Patrick dip French fries into ketchup. "The team is off to dinner at some South Miami restaurant. Colonel Landry is working the phones, but he doesn't think he'll get out from under this Abrahamson anytime soon. He said for me to tell you to expect to go back to North Carolina in the next couple of days and not to come into the Project. He doesn't even want you two to be seen anymore by these guys."
"Sorry to leave you taking the heat
.
â€Ted replied.
"You're the one with the career." Bill said. "Landry isn't going to make general and I can go to work at any of twenty universities anytime I want. Landry is trying to protect you while keeping Abrahamson at bay. Fortunately, Abrahamson's ego is so big that he doesn't think any of us are really worth his time once he gets the keys to the front door."
"How did the discussions go this afternoon?"Ted asked.
Bill sighed. "You won't like it. I don't. You know that several passengers on United Flight 93 fought back and tried to take back the airplane.â€Ted and Sally nodded. They had heard recordings and read transcripts of phone calls from the plane. "But, they weren't able to get into the cockpit in time to prevent the plane from plunging into the Capitol building.Although he's never said it in quite this way, Landry and I think that Abrahamson is willing to sacrifice the plane and passengers in order to save the Capitol while making sure the hijackers die. The passengers will get the credit for being heroic, and they were, but they'll die."
"Did you discuss the hot bead in the brain scenario with them?" Sally asked.
"That was our first alternative after he killed the idea of taking out the tires. But, nobody is sure how many bad guys were on the flight and if they were in their assigned seats at any given moment. You know that people informally exchange seats all the time on flights. Abrahamson and his cronies won't accept the chance that any hijackers survive."
"Who are his cronies on that group?"Ted asked.
"He gets a lot of body language support form the NASA guys." Bill replied.
"Smart pebbles.†Ted replied. "NASA wants smart pebbles that can destroy a threatening asteroid or maybe even a re-entering warhead. They want to prove the concept, or at least try the concept on United Flight 93. It wouldn't take
many hits to take down a commercial airliner with a poorly trained crew of hijackers. One bead in the windscreen would do it."
"But, don't they understand that they'll never know that the plan worked?" Sally asked.
Bill was silent for a moment. "Well, let's think it through. A mid-flight disintegration of an already hijacked airplane isn't exactly like preventing a flight from taking off. If the hijackers took over and we know they took over, then we would suspect that something had been done. If the plane blew up in the air, we might look for evidence of fused quartz beads or strange structural damage. Somebody like Abrahamson would be suspicious enough to see if the Project might have made it happen."
"Bill, you're saying that we might have left some evidence of past attempts to do something? The FBI briefing material on PENTTBOM lists at least four other flights that might have had hijackers aboard. We've been so focused on doing something that we never tried to see if we had already done something."
"Be careful." Bill replied. "If we didn't have to do anything, then we didn't do it. I'm not sure what evidence we'd find."
"Bill," Sally asked. "When you sent those beads back to warn us at the restaurant, where did you get the engraved beads to shoot?"
Bill closed his eyes and shook his head. "This is the one that makes my brain hurt, Sally. You already know that I used the beads I picked up in the restaurant and at Woody's house. I sent back the same beads. I re-used the beads just like the first time we saw beads appear in Indonesia and just like the beads we sent to the Ritz Carlton in Atlanta. I didn't engrave the beads we sent to the Cuban restaurant and I can't tell you where they initially came from or how they got engraved."
Patrick left the picnic bench and went to throw rocks into the water. The three adults re-oriented their body positions to watch him, but it didn't help their brains.
"It's possible, then," Ted speculated, "that if we stopped a flight at a previous time, maybe in a parallel universe or something, that there was some evidence left behind even if we didn't know we did it?"
"Possible.â€Ted said. "You would have to say it's possible."
"Let's see what we can find out tonight." Sally said. "It might be the last chance."
Wearing their T-shirts and shorts, Ted, Sally, and Patrick followed Bill back to the Project. None of the review team's rental cars were in the parking lot, but Colonel Landry's car was still there. After they entered the building, Bill went to brief the Colonel on their idea. Ted, Sally, and their son went to their office, but the combination for the electronic lock had been changed.
"Use my office!" Landry shouted down the hall. "I don't even have the new damn combination!"
"Damn combination!" Patrick said.
Sally used the Colonel's computer to get into the PENTTBOM online files. It didn't take long to come up with something interesting. On the morning of 9/1 1, American Airlines Flight 43 never left the gate. It had mechanical problem. With a little digging into the case notes filed by individual agents, Sally found that during an interview an agent had written down a report of multiple tire failures while the plane sat at the gate.
The four adults sat quietly while Patrick scribbled on the bottom of the Colonel's white board with an erasable marker. "That's got to be us." Ted said. "The coincidence would be too great."
"The report goes on to say that three and possibly as many as six Middle Eastern looking men left the flight and were not seen again."Sally said.
"Superficially, it looks like we stopped a hijacking that must have been more important to us than the attack on the Capitol."Colonel Landry said. "When you asked me for priorities a few days ago, I told you that the attack on the Capitol using United Flight 93 was a strategic decapitation and needed to be dealt with first. But now, the question is, what horrible thing did the hijackers do with American Flight 43 that caused us to stop American Flight 43 before
we took action against United Flight 93? What could have been worse than the attack on the Capitol?"
"I'm not sure we should even ask." Sally said. "At some point I expect to find that wishing something makes it so."
GO FOR A RIDE
Thursday, September 19, 2001
0630 Eastern
Homestead, FL
Excerpt from the Personal Narrative
of Major General Ted Arthurs (USAF Ret)
Recorded July 2012
CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET/ BLACKEYE
"Things happened. We have theories how they happened. We know that changes took place, but I can't tell you with any degree of certainty what those changes were."
he phone rang early at the rental house. Ted picked it up and as soon as he answered Colonel Landry started to speak. "Ted, the carpetbaggers from Washington haven't shown up yet, but here's what I want you to do. I want you to go to New York and see if you can find any evidence that there were glass beads in those flat tires on American Flight 43. This is mostly just to scratch my curiosity, but if the beads are there, then it does mean that we leave clues behind us. That's something to know. '
"You just want me to go there and ask questions?" Ted asked. "With everybody on edge they'll probably tell me to just get lost."
"I've been calling in some favors. You'll have some help. I'm setting it up so you'll go with someone from the Air Force OSI from McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey. They'll use their ID and ask most of the questions. Routine stuff. Filling in the blanks. And then the one question about what made the tires go flat. With luck the FBI will never know you've been there."
"We could make it a flight safety item. The Air Force probably uses those tires on some aircraft in our inventory. Probably the AWACS now that I think about it. It would be natural that we'd look into a multiple simultaneous tire failure. At least it might look natural to a civilian aircraft maintenance person."
"That sounds like a better idea."Landry said. "I'll still get you some OSI help, but let's make it safety of flight. No tie to 9/1 1."
"Do you want me to fly up there?"Ted asked.
Because of the destruction in Washington, it still wasn't
easy to get commercial flights up and down the East Coast.
"No, there is no hurry and I don't want to leave a trail in the travel records. You're still on temporary duty with travel as required. Go for a drive.Take your time.Take Sally and Patrick home to North Carolina. When you get close to New Jersey give me a call and I'll setup a meeting with the OSI agents. I'll try to keep my job for the next few days."
Ted sensed that the Colonel wasn't kidding about keeping his job. He also knew that he was being kept out of the bureaucratic line of fire while still doing something important for the Project.
"Guess what."He said to Sally who was trying to negotiate clothes with Patrick. She looked at him out of the corner of her eye.
"Road trip?" she said.
"You are a mind reader too?"he laughed.
"Where to?" she asked.
"Well, I guess home to Seymour Johnson. Then I have to go to New Jersey. Colonel Landry wants me to see if there are any glass beads to be found in the tires from American Flight 43."